John Mayer Shows Off
One of the most interesting things about John Mayer is that he changes things up every now and then. Early in his career, he was categorized as a pop artist, and then he switched things up by touring with Pino Palledino and Steve Jordan as the John Mayer Trio playing mostly blues-oriented music.
On his current tour, he seems to be merging his pop tastes with his blues tastes, as evidenced by this video recorded at his recent Houston tour stop where he shows off a little on guitar (ala SRV) during the song “Mercy.”
(via Gibson Lifestyle)
SRV’s Lenny on a Ukelele
The other day, I was browsing UkeleleHunt.com, a site devoted to the ukelele, and noticed the following video of a cover of Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Lenny” by Jason Arimoto.
If you enjoyed the “Lenny” video, check out some of Jason’s other videos on his YouTube channel. There are some great videos of him playing covers of “Little Wing” and “Daughters,” as well as some original music.
Air Guitar Championships
Rob Weychert, aka Windhammer, recently blogged about his experience of becoming the Philadelphia regional champ of the U.S. Air Guitar Championship:
Parading around on that stage in front of all those people, playing an invisible instrument without a (pardon the pun) shred of self-consciousness, I came to realize that I wasn’t even thinking about what I was doing. It was simply what came naturally, what the music caused to be as it passed through me. Is it silly? Sure. Is it stupid? Absolutely not. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, as far as I’m concerned, that’s also a pretty accurate description of rock and roll.
Sounds like it was a blast! You can watch Windhammer’s winning performance below.
If you think you’ve got what it takes to be the next Air Guitar Hero, there are still a number of regional competitions coming up, including competitions in Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Utah, Washington, Oregon, California, Arizona, Nevada, New York, and Texas. See a list of all of the upcoming competitions on the Air Guitar Championship Web site. It’s hard to believe that they’re not coming to Nashville or Atlanta. The National Finals will held on August 8, 2008 in San Francisco.
(via Shaun Inman)
Mike Rayburn
I was listening to Music Business Radio this past Sunday night, and the featured guest was guitarist/comedian Mike Rayburn. He was giving some great advice about being a successful independent musician, but my interest was really piqued when I learned he was also a classically trained guitarist. He’s quite funny, and manages to successfully merge comedy and music. But, what I was most impressed with his guitar playing ability. Here’s a video of Mike playing Quicksilver:
How to Break Out of the Pentatonic Box
I recently came across this great video by Joe Cefalu of Shred Academy about breaking out of the pentatonic box. Enjoy!
Adrian Holovaty
Adrian Holovaty is known in the Web development world as one of the creators of a Python Web programming framework called Django. The framework is named after gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. In addition to being a fan of Django, it turns out that Holovaty is an excellent guitarist in his own right.
On his personal Web site, Holovaty has offered several downloads of his music. In addition, he has created a YouTube channel that includes several videos of him playing solo acoustic guitar. The videos include Holovaty playing his arrangements of several Beatles songs (Yesterday and Strawberry Fields Forever), Stone Temple Pilots (Interstate Love Song), Django Reinhardt, and others. There are also covers of several TV theme songs. Holovaty’s arrangements are very good, as is his playing.
Adrian plays a Gitane DG-250M guitar. This guitar is similar to the Selmer guitar that Django made famous and that is closely associated with “gypsy jazz” music.
Below is a video of Holovaty playing a composition of his own called “Discovery”.
YouTube Hero - Eric Mongrain
I was browsing YouTube the other day for interesting guitar-related videos, and I came across a video called AirTap! featuring a guitarist named Eric Mongrain, and with over 2 million hits on YouTube, I’m certainly not the first person to discover Mongrain. Mongrain uses a technique called “lap tapping” where he places the guitar on his lap and taps the guitar like a pianist would play the piano. I was expecting somewhat of a gimmick, but AirTap! is actually a fairly interesting song.
If you’re a fan of Michael Hedges, then you might like Mongrain’s music. He cites Hedges as one of his primary influences, and it shows in his music. Check out AirTap! below.
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About
Welcome to my guitar blog! My name is Josh, and this site is my attempt to celebrate the guitar, its history, and its players. Read more...
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