Archive for the ‘YouTube videos’ Category
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7
Dec
2009
Gustavo Guerra plays Andy Timmons’ “Electric Gypsy”
A fantastic cover of the Andy Timmons’ tune Electric Gypsy:
5
Dec
2009
Vinnie Moore guitar lesson
The Vinman talks a little and plays a little:
It’s great to see how his style has changed over the years, from the “neo-classical” shred dude, to a more bluesy-rock style. I still like to give his old albums a listen now and again, but the new stuff is great too 
4
Dec
2009
Fallen – YouTube Webcam Jam
This showed up in my YouTube list today, and I thought it was a really good example of a collaboration gone right. Some really nice playing in there, and it’s quite well put together as well:
1
Dec
2009
David Gilmour – The Black Strat
Interesting video with the legendary David Gilmour about the new David Gilmour Signature Series Stratocaster from Fender.
I don’t really get the whole “relic” thing myself, but it would be a fantastic guitar for an over-cashed Gilmour fan. Certainly something I’d have on my post-lottery-winning list of things to get 
Oh, and it the vid has Gilmour playing a great Comfortably Numb solo, so it’s worth seeing just for that
9
Oct
2009
Orcon Iggy Pop Audition
A New Zealand ISP, Orcon, are doing an online remake of the Iggy Pop classic song “The Passenger” with Iggy himself as the front man for the project. They are asking for audition videos to be sent in to choose 8 people to be the “virtual band” to play the tune with Iggy.
So, I decided to whip up a quick solo and send it in to see what happens Had a play through the supplied progression a couple of times, and then realised it was time to go to bed, so I just recorded what I was jamming 
Here’s the result:
I’m not sure if it was the late-nightness of it all, but I was struggling to pick some good notes to play! Can’t beat the olde pentatonic sometimes, eh?
8
Oct
2009
Guthrie Govan Talks About Hybrid Picking
The guitar super-human, Guthrie Govan gives some examples about what he likes about hybrid picking:
Now normally, I can’t stand YouTube comments, but this one was rather good in relation to this video:
“What a very rude bald man that was,
Guthrie should have slapped him like Bennie Hill did to the old guy on his show.”
6
Oct
2009
My Journey Through Picking
One of the things that I’ve spent a lot of my guitar time on in the past (I’m talking the late 80′s here people!) is picking. Alternate picking, economy picking, sweep picking, cotton picking. Actually, I haven’t done any cotton picking now I think of it
I started out doing 3-note-per-string alternate picking, a la Paul Gilbert:
Well, not quite like that, but the idea is the same!
So, the exercise that I used to play until my hands fell off was this classic Gilbert one:
Paul Gilbert Alternate Picking Exercise
I still play this lick just about everytime I pick up the guitar, but I prefer to start it on the 5th fret of the 2nd string and play the same shapes from there.
After doing that for a while, I tried out some economy picking, the kind that only an Australian with a dayglo guitar and a mullet could teach the world:
I got this going pretty well, and then tried going back to alternate picking again, and I couldn’t do it Arghhh! So the solution to that was to practice both, in equal measures (the cooking term, not the musical term, that is).
The next thing to tackle was sweep picking. Enter Mr Malmsteen into my guitar playing world:
That’s all the Malmsteen I could handle for today I spent a large number of hours playing almost that exact same lick from the video, with the one exception being I played the second note (the C) on the 15th fret of the 5th string, instead of the way he plays it with the second note being on the 4th string at the 10th fret.
Something that I found really helpful was an exercise by Vinnie Moore, where you basically move a D major shape chord up and down the neck, sweeping as you go:
Vinnie Moore Sweep Exercise (click the image to enlarge it)
The hard bit is to combine all these techniques, as each has it’s own place in lead playing particularly if you like playing very fast. Working on each technique in isolation is important, and necessary in the beginning, but being able to switch between each one at will (and without thinking about it) takes a fair bit of effort. Practice, practice, and then when you’ve done that, do some more practice 
And then start working on your legato…
For another day I think 
Guitar player, IT guy, web designer, Photoshop hack
