The Fender Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster and the koa alternative certainly look a simpler design in comparison to other Telecasters, as they don’t have a scratchplate. But it’s this very feature that really shows off the beautiful flame maple top as its name suggests, finished in amber gloss-lacquer which gives the guitar a premium aesthetic look which is uncommon on Telecasters. The remaining parts of the guitars body are made of lightweight empress, which tonally is very similar to mahogany.

The neck of the Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster is arguably as stunning as the body. Just like the koa model it’s made from the very attractive flamed maple but on this guitar the fingerboard is also maple. They both share the same 9.5”-14” compound radius and 22-frets. The pickups are upgraded Fender American Select series Telecaster single pickups giving the guitar, unsurprisingly, the traditional telecaster sound. These are connected through a three-way selector switch controlled with a no-tone load knob, which allows a clear natural sound even when played at high volumes. The Select Maple Top Telecaster as well as the other guitars in the series has a Fender Select Series medallion on the underside of the neck, just to make you feel that bit more special.

The Fender Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster is one of three special guitars in a stunning range which all come with a free custom G&G Fender select case, cable, strap and polishing cloth. If you’re looking to treat yourself to one the best Fender Telecasters on the market you’re in for a tough decision, but you wont regret it despite which one you go for.

Fender Select Carved Maple Top Telecaster was written by Special to Guitar Noise for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Finger picking freaks some beginning guitarists out. It can seem so complicated and involved and it’s easy to hear an accomplished player performing some finger style wizardry and think that you’ll never even begin to sound that good.

Fortunately, Andrew DuBrock’s latest guitar tutorial book, Easy Fingerpicking Guitar – A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Patterns & Techniques, does a thorough job of giving the beginning guitarist the necessary basics to start exploring all the possibilities of finger style guitar.

Each step of basic fingerpicking is presented in a simple sequence. You begin by getting your thumb to serve as your bass player, picking out the notes on the three low strings. Then Andrew gets you to add in your index finger and to have both the thumb and the index finger work in tandem. Once you are confident that you can use your thumb and index finger on various chords that involve playing different combinations, he then teaches you how to add in your middle finger (working solely with the thumb) and then the ring finger (again, just with the thumb to start with).

Next, Andrew guides you through is using various combinations of fingers in conjunction with the thumb. Before you know it you are employing all your fingers to create some simple (and beautiful!) finger picking. He also introduces you to alternating bass patterns and discusses how to adapt your finger picking patterns to bring out the tonal highlights of different chords.

You may consider Easy Fingerpicking Guitar a “prequel” to Andrew’s excellent book on Travis Picking. After going through Easy Fingerpicking Guitar you’ll be more than prepared to tackle on Travis picking or any of the many fingerstyle songs you’ve been hoping to play.

Peace

Andrew DuBrock – Easy Fingerpicking Guitar – A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Patterns & Techniques was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

This book serves as an excellent companion to Gustavo Assis-Brasil’s Hybrid Picking for Guitar,  which is probably one of the best tutorials you will ever find on the technique of hybrid picking.  As you may already know, hybrid picking is using a combination of both picks and fingers. The thumb and index finger hold the pick and usually play the lower strings (D, A and E) while the other fingers – middle finger, ring finger and pinky – pluck the higher strings. And, as I mentioned in my review of Gustavo’s earlier book, this is a technique used by many artists of many musical styles and genres, from  country to folk and ethnic genres (such as Celtic and African music) as well as blues and jazz.

This book starts out with an introduction to the basic essentials of hybrid picking and then goes through a few pages of basic  exercises to get you into the hybrid picking mindset. The early exercises are meant to ease you in – they are simple and methodically work you through various string combinations in order to warm up your hybrid picking skills. If you’ve not gone through the exercises of Hybrid Picking for Guitar you’ll still be able to handle these. But if you’re serious about learning hybrid picking, do yourself a favor and start with the earlier book!

This book is more about what you can do with hybrid picking than it is about the technique itself. Essentially it gives you close to a hundred pages of various styles of “lines and licks” that you might use for soloing and improvising. The lines are presented according to how they were created, through the use of triads or pentatonic scales or through the use of other modes or intervals. You’ll find melodic lines that emphasize jumping intervals more than an octave, lines that use intervallic sequences and motifs, and modern sounding atonal phrases. And each example is meticulously detailed as to how to play it with hybrid picking. Each pick stroke and each finger gets into the act to produce some beautiful and mesmerizing lead lines.

Even if you’re not into hybrid picking, this book has a lot of ideas for potential soloing material. Better still, Gustavo gives a little explanation with each example of where and how it might best be used. If you think your soloing skills could use a bit of a boost, you’ll find lots of potential help here.

The only drawback is that each example is done in eighth notes – there is no rhythmic variation to any of the lead lines. This is a minor quibble. Anyone who solos well has always got phrasing on his or her mind and the lack of phrasing in the examples allows you to come up with an almost infinite number of possible ways to play any single line.

As with Hybrid Picking for Guitar,  Gustavo put a lot of thought into producing Hybrid Picking Lines & Licks for Guitar. For more details, including how to order your own copy, go to Gustavo’s website.

Peace

Gustavo Assis-Brasil – Hybrid Picking Lines & Licks For Guitar for All Styles was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Many guitarists know the term “Travis picking,” which describes a certain style of fingerpicking the guitar, but only a small percentage actually have heard the playing of the man it’s named after. Nowadays, like many labels musical and otherwise, “Travis picking” refers more to a broad range of fingerstyle guitar techniques that were inspired by Merle Travis’ original playing than to the playing itself.

Andrew DuBrock’s latest guitar tutorial book, Travis Picking (A Guitarist’s Guide to Fingerpicking Techniques, Patterns and Styles) does an excellent job of giving the guitarist the best of both worlds. He not only breaks down the essential elements of Travis picking, he also provides tips and insights into the playing techniques and idiosyncrasies of this guitar legend, as well as those of Chet Atkins.

Travis Picking is divided into three parts, each dissecting and discussing the three essential elements of the Travis style. First you get the foundation – the solid thumping of the alternate bass notes being played with the thumb while the fingers handle bits and pieces of the chords on the offbeat. Once you get a good grasp of the basic syncopated style involved in Travis picking, DuBrock then guides you step by step to embellish what you’ve learned with three-string bass patterns and pinches of melody notes on the higher strings. He also gives you instruction on incorporating walking bass lines into your picking as well as demonstrates variations on the patterns you’ve learned.

All the time spent on the basics prepares you for the book’s second section, which focuses on adding melody lines into the mix. Not simply adding the melodies, you’ll also enhance them with syncopation and dynamic shifts in notes all made possible by what you’ve learned about Travis picking. Additionally, you get some advice about taking creative liberties with the accompanying chords.

The instruction you get on either one of these two sections is already more than what most books offer you. But on top of this you get a third section that goes into the personal styles of both Merle Travis and Chet Atkins, full of helpful examples and exercises to help you understand and absorb the amazing techniques of these great guitarists.

For those of you who haven’t read any of the fantastic books he’s already written, Andrew DuBrock’s teaching and writing style is a gift to guitarists of all levels. While this book requires the reader to have more than a beginner’s skill set, DuBrock patiently guides you through each step of the process of adding the Travis picking style to your personal repertoire. He is thorough and encouraging and he is also a lot of fun to read!

The CD that accompanies the book is well recorded and DuBrock’s examples are played cleanly and clearly. Some beginners may want to have a “slow downer” type software to have some of the examples played at a slower speed. As the examples become more complicated he does break them down into very short bits which are easy to pick up at the speeds demonstrated on the disc. And his playing is as inspirational as it is helpful.

As mentioned, this book isn’t for the very beginner, but anyone who wants to learn how to create the magic that Travis picking can add to one’s playing should own a copy. You won’t be a beginner forever and Travis Picking will help you make great progress with your fingerstyle playing.

Peace

Book Review – Travis Picking by Andrew DuBrock was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

What do you call four Norwegians gathered around a single mic?

If one of them is holding a trombone, then it’s Flea Market Band playing Norway’s finest Bluegrass punk.

And

What are the odds that someone you met online who lives half a world away would end up playing a club three short blocks from where you work?

One hundred percent, it seems!

Imagine my surprise when I found out Lars and his band, The Fabulous Flea Market band would be playing the Black Cat club here in Washington DC. From Oslo to right next door, go figure.

The Black Cat is a small club in DC where at 8:00 on the dot they roll up the garage doors to let indie band fans stream in. Black Cat is famous for cheap tickets, cheap beer and great indie music. Tonight was no exception.

The Fabulous Flea Market band is a four piece band with a fairly typical bluegrass makeup: Mandolin, banjo, guitar, upright bass, violin and uh, the occasional trombone. It wasn’t hard to pick out Lars. He looks just like his picture, plus the trombone is a dead giveaway. He also sings harmony, plays harmonica, guitar, egg shaker and violin, all very well.

The band looks like an old fashioned bluegrass band, well besides Lars, and they play around a single mic a la Flatt and Scruggs in the early years. Very tight harmonies complete the bluegrass image. However, in complete contrast to that image the music they play in very modern, with modern themes and a catchiness that borders on pop. Although there was a small crowd at the Black Cat that night, they all got into it, clapping, dancing, singing and hooting and hollering. We even sang along on some of the songs in Norwegian. Who knows what we were singing, something about being a stalker I think, but it was a blast.

I was going to put down my favorite song here, but I loved them all. It was a fantastic show. I hope to see them again. Maybe I’ll even drive down to see them in Richmond.

If you have a chance to see them while they’re here, do it. You can find the schedule here.

The Fabulous Flea Market Band is:

Chris Gambert
Anders Bjornvold
Lars Kolberg
Kurt Amundsen

And right here you can see “The Drunkard’s Daughter,” recorded live from the Black Cat!

The Fabulous Flea Market Band Live at the Black Cat was written by Nick Torres for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

It almost seems quaint and cliché in this day of seemingly instantaneous worldwide connections to say that music is a universal language capable of breaking down barriers and building friendship and understanding among people. But when you think about it, a good reason why it’s become cliché is because it is still fundamentally true.

Take the eponymous debut disc of Burning Gums, a “new” jazz trio comprised of players whose individual accomplishments read like a lifetime of playing every single style of music the world has ever known. First, there’s Ron Jackson, a guitarist, composer and arranger who’s currently based out of New York but has performed with artists as diverse as Taj Mahal, Cissy Houston, Rufus Reid, Larry Coryell, David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness, the Boys Choir of Harlem and Little Anthony and the Imperials, just to name a few. And literally, it is just a few of the many music icons he’s worked with.

Then you’ve got Norbert Marius, a bassist from Hungary who’s studied at the Bela Bartok Jazz Conservatory in Budapest and has played with the likes of Melba Moore, the Fifth Dimension, Arturo Tappin and Mister Mister’s John Lang.

Finally, add Japan’s Matsuura Hiroyuki on drums and percussion, who has worked with jazz greats like Marc Cary, hip-hop stars The Roots, reggae legend Milton Henry and even the Ivory Coast’s Sekouba Diakite.

Actually, to list all the musicians and musical styles of each of these three accomplished players would take more than a dozen pages! But the cool thing is that you can hear how it all comes together on their debut CD.

Burning Gums kicks off with Norbert Marius’ “Samba de Queijo,” a classic take on a classic style which gives each member of the band a chance to shine and only hints at the delights to come. Jackson’s following offering, “Excerpt of Tina III” might remind you a bit of Weather Report, especially in the exciting interplay between guitar and bass.

Things then get downright funky with Marius’ arrangement of Benny Golson’s “Killer Joe,” and then breathtakingly beautiful with “Sacred Love,” which while written by Jackson, demonstrates how each member of the group feeds off of and then gives back to the others. The interweaving of the drums and bass under the guitar provides a tangible energy.

And it gets truly great with “Going Bush,” a percolating Afro-Caribbean tune of Jackson’s that is so infectious that you can’t not get up and dance to it. It is so light and delightful and ends far too quickly.

The trio then pay tribute to Miles Davis with a Marius arrangement of “So What,” complete with hauntingly melodic guitar, amazing grooving bass and compelling (and propelling) drums.

Two more pieces of Marius follow – first “Mangrove DoReMi” an evocative piece where the bass sets the stage with a wonderfully melodic line, played against chirping birds. I know that sounds a bit silly but it truly works! The angular guitar creates an arresting counterpoint to the bass while the drums lock everyone and everything – musician and birds – together. The second piece, a sort of bebop bossa nova called “Madras Parallel features a wonderful solo from Matsuura.

The CD concludes with Jackson’s “Park Slope,” an eerie and moving piece that seems to walk you right down the streets of New York. As you tag along with the band you shift from the strange to the delightful, occasionally stopping to examine an interesting shadow or alleyway before moving on again.

Burning Gums, like all good albums, will present something new to you with each listen. And you’ll keep going back to find more.

Peace

Burning Gums was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

I made a point of asking him who it was and the next time I was in town I picked up a copy of Goran Bregovic’s Silence of the Balkans. Since then it’s been one of the most treasured CDs I own. Part of it was certainly the location and the company and that particular time of my life. But it was certainly also the music. Whenever I listen to it now I not only feel what I did then, but I also always find something new, even though I’ve heard it, literally, thousands of times. And I never expected to hear anything like that again in my lifetime.  

So imagine my surprise when I first listened to Inside Outsider by longtime Guitar Noise community resident (and contributor) Arjen Schippers, who goes by the performance name of “Sleutelbos” (among others, I am sure). Once again, I found myself in the magical, musical equivalent of an epic story that I am certain I will never totally understand, but I’m thrilled to be part of the journey.

People seem to be happier when they have some sense of familiarity with the unfamiliar, something that can give a sense of it being like something else that they know they like and enjoy. To those, it might help to say something like Inside Outsider is a bit like a cross between Pink Floyd and Moby – but that comparison is just a starting place. Arjen’s musical pallet contains more than just influences. It has an identity and soul all its own.

Each song flows almost seamlessly into each other. The opening sequence of “Birth,” the first track, hints at classical music as well as metal and synthesized rock with a hint of jazz tossed in as the drums pick up. The synthesized sounds are trying to become voices but they’ve not quite gotten there yet. Likewise, the rhythm doesn’t solidify until the start of the second track, “Carcrash,” which definitely sounds like it could have been a missing track from Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. His vocals are haunting, holding long notes while a horn plays underneath. The keyboards become even steadier and spookier by the time “Childhood Memories” starts. The main vocal is a bit freer, but too soon gives way to a female public-service voice discussing child abuse, which in turn gets lost amid a free vocal choir and the crying of children. And we enter “The Loneliest Kid Alive” in a maze of synthesized, jazzed-up rhythm and electronic piano and ambient noise.  

And it all reaches the first big pay-off in “Hello.” The chorus of falsetto voices, accompanied by the chiming, clock-like rhythms placed me firmly back on Santorini where I watched some of the most beautiful sunsets. But even the sheer gorgeous sound contains bits of static. There are the slightest hints of grating and rasping noises, not quite hidden in the strumming of the acoustic guitar which will later become the even more rasping laughter in “The Architect.” And when the strange falsetto returns in “Please,” the initial percussion will remind of nothing as a tap dance played out while a kettle whistles softly in the background. It’s almost anticlimactic when the haunting vocal from earlier returns in “Love Song 69,” but when that voice combines with the harmony of the falsetto voice, everything becomes compelling again. “Love Song 69” slow things down a bit and the strong single acoustic guitar, accompanied by stark and somber strings, is replaced by piano and much lusher orchestration of “The Great Unknown,” building everything back up again.

Rhythms become more hypnotic in “Jelly Jezus,” a synthesized mesh of dance-club beats and electronic psychedelia only to turn totally deceptive in “Diagnosis,” which sounds like it should also be a straight dance beat but it totally confounds anyone trying to find a steady place to tap his or her foot. The female narrator returns to discuss psychotic episodes and suicide in “Happy Haze,” which is perhaps a bit of unnecessary overkill (“unnecessary overkill” itself being incredibly redundant), but it does a great job of setting up the plain and falsetto vocals teeming up again in “Faceshifter,” so when they sing that “…the sky may fall tomorrow…” you can’t help thinking that may not be a bad thing. The strings turn lush again and reveal the beating heart and a new female narrator who proclaims the scripture of “Armageddon” and then turns back into the original female narrator in “A Happy Ending.”

All the discussion of psychosis and suicide then takes a back seat to the strident and moving string quartet, and eventual piano, of “Give Me Fiction.” The power of this one song is enough to totally eclipse all the preceding discussion. It’s impossible to listen to without feeling that being alive is totally worthwhile, if only to be caught up in the emotions of this compelling instrumental piece. “Give Me Fiction” then impels you onward to “You” whose complex piano parts perfectly fit the longing in the vocal. Both the piano and vocal simplify themselves in “Here and There” but gain intensity as the song spills into the final track, “It Might Have Been.”

Inside Outsider is one of those albums that one has to listen to in one, if not several sittings. It demands attention but rewards the listener with astonishing depth and layering. It’s not the sort of music that one is usually used to, but there is no limit to how it will amaze and amuse you with its curiosity and beauty. It will take you out of wherever you are and place you in a totally new and different world.

You can track down a copy of this straight from Arjen. His website is http://www.sleutelbos.com/

Peace

Sleutelbos: Inside Outsider was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Ho Chi Minh City used to be called Saigon. Today, it is the largest city in Viet Nam. On April 10, 2011 Bob Dylan and his band brought their latest tour to this city of nine million people. The show took place outdoors on the campus of RMIT University, just a little outside the hustle and bustle of the crowded city center.

Of the 8,000 tickets available only about half were sold. The show was all general admission on the grass of the university sports field. The regular ticket price was about $50, making it quite expensive for the average Vietnamese consumer. Recently the Backstreet Boys played to over 30,000 people at the sports stadium in Ho Chi Minh City, which should give you an idea of who the average consumer is! More than half of the people in Vietnam were born after the war ended thirty years ago and many of them haven’t even heard of Bob Dylan. His songs of peace and protest certainly resonate more with the foreigners, who easily made up half of the crowd.

This show was only Dylan’s fourth of the year. He played in Taiwan and then two nights in China before arriving in Viet Nam. Over the past few days some news reports have made a big deal out Dylan allowing the governments of China and Vietnam to vet his setlist. Their point seems to be that Dylan was once perceived as a protest singer, whether he agreed with that role or not, and he should seize the opportunity to protest on their behalf. I don’t really understand the reasoning behind it. What protest have those journalists who are calling for bravery made themselves? Bob Dylan is a performer and on this Asian leg of his tour he has shown he simply comes to play.

In fact, it’s typical of a Dylan show that he doesn’t generally interact or even acknowledge the crowd until the encore, when he briefly introduces the band.  In some ways there’s not much point to Dylan trying to communicate with the crowd in any way other than through music. A lot of the crowd didn’t seem to be paying that much attention to the show itself. True, it was a warm night and everyone seemed to be enjoying the music and the freedom of a general admission concert.  I saw a lot of people twittering, making status updates, snapping photos (of themselves) and chimping throughout the show.

They should have paid more attention because it was a rare, once in a lifetime chance, for the both the Vietnamese and the expats living there to see Bob Dylan. He and his band played an excellent show, rolling through the excellent selections of their eighteen-song set and offering new arrangements on everything, not just the old songs but the new ones as well. The show opened with “Gonna Change My Way of Thinking” with Bob playing keyboards. As the song ended he quickly grabbed a guitar and launched into a very different sounding version of “It Ain’t Me’ Babe.” The new arrangement had Bob playing a simple riff on his electric guitar and the chorus was stripped down so much that you’d think you weren’t supposed to sing along on the “No, No, No, it ain’t me” babes.” Each new arrangement brought an element of surprise to these songs that people have probably heard many, many times. For what Dylan lacks in stage presence, he makes up for in his ability to craft fresh sounding arrangements with his band that never wanders far from blues rock.

While Dylan played keyboard for the majority of the evening, he did pick up a guitar for four songs. The aforementioned “It Ain’t Me Babe” plus “Simple Twist of Fate,” “Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum” and the newer song “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” Bob didn’t touch an acoustic guitar all night but this was a rock show, not a folk festival. His touring band consists of Charlie Sexton, Stu Kimball and Donnie Herron on the various guitars: electric, acoustic, dobro and pedal steel. George Receli turned in a smashing and flawless performance on drums while Tony Garnier rounded out the rhythm section alternating between electric and stand up bass. And regardless of what you may have heard over the years, Bob’s voice is fine. You can always figure out what song he is playing and understand every word. Perhaps the outdoor setting helped because the sound was as good as you could have hoped for. Vietnam should be lucky to get more artists and shows like this in such a laid back setting. Security was almost non-existent with people bringing in their own bottles of beer and wine (not to mention marijuana) and yet there were no problems at all. Everyone fed off the good vibes this road tour was bringing to town.

At some point Bob Dylan’s tireless touring will end. While Dylan and his band are still making the rounds you should do yourselves a favor and check him out near you. He’ll be playing in several corners of the world this year so check to see if he’s playing near you.

Setlist: Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, It’ Ain’t Me Babe, Beyond Here Lies Nothin’, Tangled Up In Blue, Honest With Me, Simple Twist of Fate, Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum, Love Sick, The Levee’s Gonna Break, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall, Highway 61 Revisited, Spirit On The Water, My Wife’s Home Town, Jolene, Ballad Of A Thin Man, Like A Rolling Stone, All Along The Watchtower, Forever Young

Bob Dylan Live in Ho Chi Minh City was written by Paul Hackett for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

It’s definitely the capo, or rather the Spider Capo from Creative Tunings, Inc. It looks like this:

As you can see, this capo is made up of six individual units, clamped together onto a single bar. Since each of the six segments has its own “string hammer,” if you will, you can set this capo so that it clamps down on one single string or any combination of strings you desire.

For guitarists who like to experiment and create new and interesting arrangements, this capo is like having a portable muse of tuning that you can call upon whenever you like. If you like DADGAD, for instance, but don’t like to mess with the tuning of your guitar, particularly when performing, placing the Spider Capo on the second fret and connecting on only the A, D and G strings will give you EBEABE, which is DADGAD up one full step. No need to bring a second guitar or bore the audience while you’re retuning.

In many ways, the Spider Capo is much like the Third Hand Capo we reviewed here at Guitar Noise ages ago. But the folks at Creative Tunings have definitely improved upon that idea quite a bit. First off, the capo fits the guitar a lot better. Second, both the clamp and the individual string segments are adustable. You can use the Spider Capo on any guitar you own, whether it’s a classical, acoustic, electric or twelve string. Setting up the Spider Capo initially takes a little patience, but after working with it for less than an hour, you’ll be able to place it on and adjust it without any effort at all.

If you enjoy creating new tunings and playing around all up and down the neck of the guitar, you’ll probably enjoy the Spider Capo a lot. They’ve also got a “Mini-Spider” capo that fits banjos, mandolins, ukuleles and other small necked instruments. And one of those is next on my “wish list!”

Peace

Spider Capo from Creative Tunings, Inc. was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

When one picks up the guitar, or any instrument, the initial stages of learning are a heady rush. You can’t take in all the basics fast enough, but you’re making music and making progress so you just keep going. At some point, though, you either hit a plateau or you realize that while you’re making music, it doesn’t always sound, well, musical. Or at least as effortlessly musical as other musicians seem to sound.

Total Acoustic Guitar, by Andrew DuBrock, gets you over that initial hump from eager but idling beginner to musical intermediate. The author tackles three major areas – rhythm, finger picking and lead playing – and guides you through the various steps to become more skilled and confident in each of these important facets of acoustic guitar playing. For the “somewhat beyond beginner” guitarist, you’ll find it full of  ”tips and techniques for becoming a well-rounded player,” as the book’s subtitle aptly states on the cover.

After a brief, but surprisingly thorough overview of the basic skills beginners should know by this point (open position chords and simple strumming – including alternate bass style and easy walking bass lines), Total Acoustic Guitar introduces the reader to syncopation, playing scratch rhythms and rhythm fills, and using arpeggios as a rhythm technique. You also tackle acoustic guitar power chords and learn some very cool and exotic sounding open string chords that are simple variations on the open position chords you learned when you first started playing guitar.

The fingerpicking section starts out with very simple and basic picking patterns and takes you up through Travis picking and pinching techniques. You’ll be able to play some impressive blues and finger style guitar when you’ve worked your way through this part of the book.

The final section on leads teaches both technique and the basic theory necessary to understand how to apply the techniques to the music you play. Pentatonic scales (major and minor) and blues scales are examined, as well as the normal major scale and natural minor. You also get instruction on mixing scales to fit the mood and style of a song. DuBrock also teaches the importance of slurs (hammer-ons, pull-offs, slides and bends) and his teachings of the use of open strings and double stop playing will make your acoustic solos sing out.

The CD that accompanies this book is well produced. DuBrock has made very good arrangements of familiar Public Domain songs to illustrate the techniques he teaches. All the audio examples are clear and the reader should find them all very helpful.

Andrew DuBrock is an outstanding teacher as well as a fine writer. Anyone who’s read Acoustic Guitar Magazine at any point in the last ten years is undoubtedly familiar with his fantastic work as both writer and editor. He has an incredible knack for making the trickiest of techniques understandable to anyone and his writing is as interesting and entertaining as it is enlightening and educational. More important, he can inspire you to take the steps needed to take your playing to the next level. He is encouraging and supportive all along the way, just through his written words alone.

If you’re relatively new to the guitar and have gotten to a point in your playing where you’re wondering if you’re ever going to be better and make everything thing click musically, then you should give Total Acoustic Guitar a read. If you follow DuBrock’s instruction and advice, you will undoubtedly see and hear marked improvement in your guitar playing.

This is another book that will go on the Guitar Noise “Highly Recommended” book carousel!

Peace

Andrew DuBrock: Total Acoustic Guitar was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

“…when you perform, the music and the audience are what count. Whether you’re cruising effortlessly or working through every phrase isn’t relevant to the music’s impact of the audience’s experience. An analogous example would be the athlete who scores a winning goal. The team is victorious and no one cares whether the scorer was in the zone or whether she wrestled with a throbbing headache or a loosely tied shoe. Correspondingly, when an audience is transported by beautifully presented music, it’s unimportant whether the musician performed with ease or had to contend with distracting thoughts and a stubborn itch. Of course, every performer wants to be as free as possible on stage. But if you can’t perform well unless you’re in a peak state, then you can’t function as a professional musician.”

Gerald Klickstein – The Musician’s Way
Chapter 11 – Performing like a Pro

At its heart, music is the communication and sharing of emotion. Any successful performance involves both artist and audience finding or building a rapport between them where emotion and experience, harmony and dissonance, lyrics and melody create a musical bond.

None of this happens, of course, without practice. And this is where Gerald Klickstein’s book, “The Musician’s Way – A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness,” steps up to help guide the musician to make the most of his or her practice in order to be the best possible performer.

“The Musician’s Way” is wonderfully thought-out and organized. It is arranged in three parts – “Artful Practice,” which deals with just about every conceivable aspect of practice you can think of; “Fearless Performance,” which uses many of the earlier practice ideas to help the musician create his or her best possible performance; and “Lifelong Creativity,” which explores the ways of growing the mind (maintaining and evolving one’s musical creative side) as well as keeping the body fit and ready to play music for as long as one lives.

As with most books of this nature, you can read it from cover to cover (and you will!) and take in more information and ideas than you might think possible (and you will!) but you will also find it a book to keep around and to constantly refer back to as you develop as a musician. Moreover, the concept that Mr. Klickstein sets forth can apply to so much of your life, you’ll find yourself using his ideas for a lot more than just practicing and performing music.

The third chapter (“Practicing Deeply, II”) alone is worth about five times the cost of the book itself! While every musician understands the need to practice, few understand how to practice in such a manner that progress is being made. Many will go about their practicing duties – for example, repeating a musical phrase that’s giving them trouble – without taking into account how best to learn from the repetition. Mr. Klickstein spells out his “Principles of Artistic Repetition: Insisting on Excellence; Rejecting Mindless Repetition; Aiming for Growth Rather than Sameness; and Evaluating Continuously” in such plain and useful language that the reader both grasps the concepts and finds himself eager to begin a new practice session in order to try them out!

This enthusiastic encouragement lies at the heart of Mr. Klickstein’s writing. Whether he is outlining how to draw up a personal practice plan, discussing the roots of stage freight, or cautioning on playing position, you feel that he truly both wants you to succeed as a musician and believes that you can. Using research and study as well as personal anecdotes, he serves as your willing guide through the tangled mess one can easily make of one’s practice and performing habits. He brings you to a place where you can be your best, but (even more importantly) he also demonstrates how to achieve your best on those occasions you don’t have your best with you.

While Mr. Klickstein is a renowned classical guitarist, “The Musician’s Way” is a book that will benefit any musician. He touches on aspects of all performers, from guitarists to violinists to drummers to vocalists, and has plenty of tips for everyone.

Ultimately, he understands that it’s the musician’s mindset that often dictates the success a performer will have. In his section on “problem solving” in the aforementioned Chapter 3, he gets that “divergent thinking is more about asking question than finding answers. With clever questioning, solutions to problems reveal themselves. In the midst of a predicament, the inspired notion that you seek aren’t marked with signs; they’re hidden, so you just can’t ask how to reach them…To question your way to gold, you have to concoct pointed queries that illuminate subtle distinctions. The more incisively you probe, the more likely it is that you’ll score a triumph.”

Regardless of what instrument you play or how long you’ve been playing or what level of musician you consider yourself to be, you will find a tremendous amount of beneficial material in this book. I can’t recommend it enough.

You can buy ”The Musician’s Way” at your local bookstore, or order it through the Guitar Noise Reccomended Reading Book Carousel, on our “News Page.” Just click on the picture of the book cover!

And you can also keep up with more information and tips from Gerald Klickstein at his Musician’s Way Website.

Peace

The Musician’s Way – A Guide to Practice, Performance and Wellness was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

There’s an original song on Steinar Gregertsen’s first CD, Southern Moon Northern Lights, called “Will the Wind Ever Remember,” which could easily be considered a tribute to the late, great Jimi Hendrix. Steinar obviously has a great love of Hendrix’s style – not only as a guitarist but also as an arranger and a producer.

Steinar’s latest CD, Standing Next to a Mountain, carries this love and respect of Hendrix’s music one step further by giving us incredibly beautiful and original interpretations of nine of Jimi’s songs, taken from various points of his career.

It’s only appropriate that “Will I live tomorrow?” the first line from “I Don’t Live Today” (from Hendrix’s debut album Are You Experienced?) opens up the CD. Steinar’s arrangement begins very open and stark, using a single note pedal on the bass with intertwining guitar lines to hypnotically build momentum until the song explodes in an electric crash of volume and distortion. His guitar solo is not only clearly inspired by Hendrix, it is also worthy of him in terms of emotion and expression.

You can hear Hendrix’s legacy throughout the entire CD, not just in the soloing but, probably more importantly, in the little details. While the lap steel guitar provides the “vocal” melody in “Angel,” it’s the silky smooth, Hendrix-inspired rhythm fills that make the piece stand out.

Likewise the wonderfully moody and sparse arrangements of “May This Be Love” and “Bold as Love,” both with Claudia Scott on vocal, could have been way overdone. But with its intricate interplay between acoustic, electric and slide guitars, it’s a perfect example of how a great arrangement is all about space and not about filling every space with notes.

While Steinar handles most of the instrumentation (and some of the vocals) on the CD himself, along with great drumming and percussion from Tom Rudi Torjussen (who really puts the groove into songs like “Drifting” and “Belly Button Window” – both of which, and “Angel” as well, come from Hendrix’s posthumous album, The Cry of Love), he also shares the musical spotlight with other very talented musicians.  On “Remember,” Tom Principato contributes a terrific guitar solo that makes this early blues / R&B styled arrangement positively jump. And “Manic Depression” is given an old timey music hootenanny make over with Espen Larsen on guitar, Geir Emanuelsen on banjo, and Ole Kelly Kvamme on the acoustic bass. It’s absolutely magical. Espen Larsen also contributes the beautiful acoustic guitar work in the closing number, “Pali Gap,” an instrumental song from the posthumous Rainbow Bridge album. Marianne Rodvelt provides beautiful harmonies on both “Pali Gap” and “Remember.”

Jimi Hendrix is widely considered to be one of the greatest and most influential electric guitar players of all times. By creating new, interesting and exciting arrangements of his songs, Steinar Gregertsen not only pays honor to his guitar hero, but also keeps Hendrix’s spirit of innovation alive and strong.

You can find Standing Next to a Mountain at CD Baby. And you can also find it on his own website.

I highly reccommend it.

Peace

Steinar Gregertsen: Standing Next to a Mountain was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

1. I’m a sucker for a great bargain.
2. I don’t play flashy, fast stuff.

Well, you can pretty much scratch number two off the list.

I was scrolling through the forum pages on guitarnoise, when I came across a post from Al (“allman1979″), asking about George Pittaway’s “Easy Roll Guitar Method.” I was told the trailers on the website were humorous, and lo and behold, they were. And $15? Really? For a DVD by the guitarist from 4 out of 5 doctors, the nationally touring and signed to a label George Pittaway? Puh-lease…see number one above. I plunked down my cash and anxiously awaited the arrival of the DVD.

So what is this Easy Roll method? Well, it’s based on hybrid picking with what George calls “engines”. These three, count ‘em three, simple patterns will allow you to play with speed all over the neck. You can use a flatpick and fingers, thumbpick and fingers or just fingers. George is right! It is easy to get the rolls going. Heck, some of the patterns play with only one finger of your left hand. In fact, the first pattern George shows uses only one finger, and only one fret. As George says on his website, if you can drum your fingers on the table, you can do this. There is a lot more content than just that on the DVD though, it will take a while for you to get through it all. It’s an incredible value.

You can learn a lot of stuff from the internet or reading a guitar book, but you miss out on the little snippets of expertise you’d get from sitting around with an experienced player or teacher. George manages to get this information through to you in this DVD.

When you get your DVD, don’t be intimidated by the beginning section. It’s a showcase of what you can do. It takes several minutes before you get into the actual instruction section. George teaches in an easy to understand, light and humorous way that makes watching the DVD enjoyable as you learn.

If there is any drawback to Easy Roll it is this, there is so much information packed into the DVD that you will spend a tremendous amount of time rewinding to go over what you just saw. It’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

George also includes more video, FAQ and additional information on his website. You can take a look at the word by word content, (and more) of the DVD in George’s DVD Companion freely available on his website under the “Get DVD” tab.

This DVD is an incredible bargain at $15. Go take and look at the videos on his site and buy it. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in hybrid picking and opening up their soloing. This DVD is for the advanced beginner and beyond.

Website: www.ezrollguitar.com

Easy Roll Guitar Method by George Pittaway was written by Nick Torres for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Despite knowing this, there are no end of websites, books, tutorial CDs and DVDs which proclaim that, with their assistance, you can become a virtuoso guitarist in a week, a day, an hour, thirty minutes. Whatever.

This is one reason why Len Collins’ Guitar Breakthough DVD is a bit of a breath of fresh air. Len understands that learning is a lifelong journey. He even addresses this on one of the pages in the “Resource Materials” section of the DVD, saying, “Guitar Breakthrough is not a “teach yourself to play guitar” program. It’s here to show you the solutions to all your problems and musical worries.”

The Guitar Breakthrough DVD consists of seven “lessons” spread out over the course of three hours on this two disc set. Essentially, you get to sit in on these “lessons” as Len works with either Collin or Matt, who are at various stages of development in Len’s program. At the conclusion of each lesson, the scene changes to two young guitarists, Rob and Alex, who are jamming at home and conveniently putting the skills learned in the lesson just passed to practical use as they work on songwriting and arranging.

Len’s teaching style is comfortable and disarming. He’s the eccentric uncle at the family table that is both good for a laugh and for pearls of wisdom. Because what Len is trying to teach (more on that in a moment) is usually presented so cut and dried, there are all sorts of minor entertaining moments, usually brought onscreen by animation. And there’s a bit of a storyline, too, just to keep you both entertained and on your toes, involving brothers in bands, sisters who are sisters, nuns who make sandwiches and other objects of affection. Seriously.

While all this silliness is going on, though, you find yourself learning. In “Fretboard,” the first lesson, Len starts out by teaching the notes of the fretboard and does it quickly and painlessly. It’s a bit scary how easy it is to learn and you also have to wonder why people make such a big deal about not learning them.

But this is part of the dichotomy of the guitarist. It is certainly possible to learn the instrument without knowing notes, without reading music, without doing anything but copying what someone says. People often spend more time arguing why they don’t have to read music than it takes to learn how to! Len understands this and tries to provide his students with reasons for learning and, for the most part, he’s good at this. The lesson on “Reading Music” is clear and concise.

The ultimate goal of Guitar Breakthrough is to give you enough knowledge, enough musical tools to take you to the point where you can improvise and solo. So once the first two lessons are under your belt, you move on to “Scales,” then “Chords” (the four basic chord types), then “Chords with Hats” (suspended chords, sixths, sevenths and so on), “Modes” and then the final lesson, “Expected Changes,” which deals with the non-diatonic chord progressions one often runs into in music.

This is a lot of material. Just about all of Guitar Breakthrough is about the brainwork that, along with practice, gets your hands to the point where you can play what you hear. And, correctly, Len spends much more time on building that foundation than on all the things you’ll see and do once you’ve got the tools to work with. In other words, this DVD is going to help get your head in a position where it can help your hands, and get them both on the same page.

To help with this, each disc has a section labeled “Resource Materials.” That’s initially a little confusing as the set of “Resource Materials” on Disc One is the exact same as the set on Disc Two, but this way you don’t have to going changing discs in the middle of a lesson. There are over three hundred pages of resource material in fact, so you certainly don’t want to print them out twice! A lot of the pages are reaffirmations of what you’ve learned in the lessons, but there are also ready-made charts of chords, scales and other charts that are all discussed in the actual “lessons.”

If nothing else, going through this DVD may make you have enough of those “slap your forehead” moments and send you back through all the other books and DVDs you’ve collected because you’ve suddenly figured out how everything fits together.

So, then, who is Guitar Breakthrough for? That’s an interesting question and there’s no easy answer. It’s certainly not for everyone. Any teacher who believes that one method will work for every possible student is not very realistic. And while Guitar Breakthrough is excellent at what it does, I’m not certain I would recommend it to someone who just picked up a guitar for the very first time five minutes ago. Even Len concedes this point, as he states on the sixth page of the Resource Material section: “Guitar Breakthrough is not essentially a program for new guitarists.” But I would recommend that an absolute beginner go through this material after, say, two or three months of getting down his or her basic chords and strumming.

Likewise, people whose sole interest in guitar playing is to copy music rather than to create his or her own, may not see the point of learning these basics, even though it will certainly help make the learning a lot easier by being able to see chord shapes and scale patterns in the music being copied.

And if you’re a guitarist struggling with rhythm and strumming, you’ll probably won’t find much solace in learning to read rhythms, although it’s exactly the thing that you will need.

Guitar teachers may want to give this a go as well, and let Len do some of the work for them!

In short, while Guitar Breakthrough may not cure all your music worries, for a lot of people it will carry them through to a point where they can start to make better progress.

As long as it doesn’t make you dream of nuns delivering sandwiches, you should be alright.

Peace

Website: Guitar Breakthrough

Len Collins’ Guitar Breakthrough DVD was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

This disc of eight Christmas songs (The First Noel being the only “carol” of the bunch) is brought to us by producer Ivan Valles, a gifted drummer/percussionist who owns IVM Music in Miami. Not a place one typically associates with Christmas.

“Jack Frost” and the band are, Ivan and some of his talented musician friends. The CD contains the blurb “Holiday songs that everyone loves in an easy listening jazz feel” and that’s a fairly good description. This is certainly a disc that you would want to have playing if you were having a Christmas dinner party.

Giovanni Piacentini’s vocals seem straight out of the 1940′s. He seems a bit of a throwback when compared to vocalists who seem more concerned about their chops than the song. From the first verse of the opener, a jaunty version of It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, to the closing, haunting melody of I’ll Be Home for Christmas, you can almost picture him singing in one of those old black and white holiday movies.

But the real “jazz feel” is supplied by the wonderful understated piano and keyboard work of Simon Char. His light touch carries the group, and every time he gets a short space to solo, he strikes just the right balance. He certainly lives by the old adage, “leave them wanting more.”

And “more” is kind of the feeling you have when listening. You sort of wish there was more jazz (and less “easy listening”), more chance for the group to truly showcase their stuff. Some songs, like The First Noel, Christmas in Killarney and White Christmas are done a little more straight than one might have liked. And there are certainly some strange moments – Silver Bells, in particular, is a song that has some strange choices in arrangement, from the out-of-nowhere slide solo to the chord progressions in the choruses – but on the whole this CD gives you just the right touch of the holiday spirit.

Peace

Jack Frost & the Christmas Band – Volume 1 was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

While I was in Quebec City last summer, I saw a street musician playing a table of wine glasses, each arranged to a particular pitch and also arranged on the table in such a way to make it (relatively) easy to produce melodies, harmonies, chords, and bass lines. “Easy,” of course, meaning easy if you knew what you were doing.

Denver-based guitarist Bradford certainly knows what he’s doing. You don’t have to get very far into his first CD, “The Ninth Ring,” to appreciate that he is someone who has developed some very serious guitar skills. He can certain shred with the best of them.

But fortunately, he also has a great ear for melody, harmony and phrasing, which makes this CD a lot more interesting than most of the “hey-I’m-a-fast (very fast) –guitarist-who’s-put-together-a-CD-of-all-guitar-music” that you’ll find out there. That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of fast shredding going on. But Bradford does a great job of making the technique serve the song and not vice versa. This especially vividly realized in “Sky Solo,” Witches Brew” and “Tonight.”

The down side of the CD is that, again like most guitar guys, he uses a lot of programming and loops. Don’t get me wrong – it sounds great. I just think it would sound even better if he had people to bounce musical ideas off of rather than machines.

Case in point – while all twelve tracks of “The Ninth Ring” are certainly worthwhile, my favorites are the last two: “THS” and “Legend.” Interestingly enough the first is one of Bradford’s earliest instrumentals, which, to me anyway, sounds like it was meant to be performed live, with a group of musicians. It’s a wild romp, cleverly using dazzling sweep picking and string skipping techniques over a rollicking blues / rockabilly rhythm. Guitar and bass lines soar and glide together, like jets at an air show. This is a perfect example of song and speed merging to create something absolutely stunning and wild. It’s pure fun!

Likewise, “Legend” is also a lot of fun in its own way. The guitar work is spare, serving a lovely hypnotic melody (synthesized marimba?) that sweeps you along in its wake. And it’s telling that (reading the liner notes after listening) this song received a good deal of reworking, courtesy of comments from Internet listeners. Being able to create the music oneself is a gift; making use of your listeners’ reactions often makes the gift greater.

Which is why, strange to say, while I like this CD a lot, I am looking forward to more from Bradford. He states in his liner notes that he considers this CD “the pinnacle of my own artistic expression up until now, both from a performance standpoint, but also from a songwriting and audio engineering standpoint.” Personally, what I hear on this disc points makes me think that there’s even better music to come. Here’s my hope that Bradford finds some musicians that he can work with to produce an organic masterpiece that will make him redefine his pinnacle.

Peace

Bradford – The Ninth Ring was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Who? Ahmond has worked in movies (including “Having Our Say”), commercials and as a songwriter for an Atlanta theatre group. This is his debut album

Any good? This is very unusual material. Title Track “A Boy You Once Knew” features fingerpicked guitar lines, understated piano and some mellow string lines. The rhythmic qualities of “Go To Africa” will work their way into your head and soon have you tapping along. “Thundershoes” is superb, the simple guitar line reminiscent of “Hero” by Enrique Inglesias, and this is the standout track. Or is it? “Those Darn Things” opens like a show tune but once the guitar kicks in it has more hooks than a fishing trip and you’ll be singing along before you know it. This is a standout track too; it‘s a hard decision to pick just one. “Everything Eden” reminded me of “Dear Jessie” from Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” album, not because of any huge similarity in the vocal lines but by the well-balanced use of strings. Closing instrumental “Collision” is used on the HBO series “Rome.” As you’d expect from his stage training, Ahmond’s vocals are crystal clear. The cover artwork (reproduced on his website) is excellent.

Try before you buy? http://www.myspace.com/ahmondband Turn the volume up loud

Cash in your pocket? The regular sources – iTunes, Amazon, Napster and others. Access from Ahmond’s website www.ahmond.com

Ahmond – A Boy You Once Knew was written by Alan Green for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Take Tunes for Solo Guitar by Jan Jankowski. Here are thirteen wonderfully crafted tracks of Jan playing his guitar like a magician whose can blur the borders of traditional genres. From the not-quite traditional Spanish guitar stylings of the opening song, Jusek, to the melding of classical, blues and ragtime in Double Bends, the romping penultimate number, he provides a wide pallet of music to wander through and wonder at. The sweet romantic mood of Courting Kath gives way to the shimmering Celtic flavor of Seal Harbor / Jesseb through the Bog. The moodiness of The Trials of Saint Knab can best be described, if possible, as a medieval song being played by an acoustic guitarist from the psychedelic era of the sixties. And there’s more than a hint of Hawaiian slack key in Zosha i Hannia.

Just studying the intricate, careful way Jan lays out the final number, Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme, taking the simple guitar line and providing all the orchestration surrounding it (horns included) on a single guitar for this incredible arrangement is enough to make you want to listen to the CD all over again.

The album is available at CDBaby: http://cdbaby.com/cd/janjankowski

Peace

Jan Jankowski – Tunes for Solo Guitar was written by David Hodge for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Who? John Scott Evans has an impressive CV. He’s been on the same bill as Chet Atkins, and worked with Corinne May and the Atlanta Chamber Orchestra, amongst a very long list. This is his third solo album.

Any good? JSE’s playing is sublime, and his recorded tone is excellent. This is an album of melodic fingerstyle work that you can put on and work to and isn’t going to have the neighbours complaining in the middle of the night. “Streams In The Desert” has moments of Irish folksong, “Alive”, the album’s opener, leaves you wanting more (and wondering why it isn’t ten minutes longer). No particular standout track, although “Sailing” makes you sit up and take notice and “Allen‘s Town” is hugely enjoyable. It’s a good collection but you’re not going to hear it on mainstream radio; it’s tailor-made for the film industry so expect to see it mentioned in closing credits, not to mention on someone’s soundtrack CD sometime.

Try before you buy? No problemo – www.johnscottevans.com has tracks to hear – the player is down at the bottom left corner of the screen.

Cash in your pocket? Click the “Buy Music” tab on John’s website and you’ll find links to iTunes and CDBaby. You can also use John’s website to order his tutorial book, “Guitar Basics Book 1.”

John Scott Evans – Above the Sun was written by Alan Green for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise

Who? Asteria. Do pay attention. An ambitious five-piece from Crown Point, Indiana. They’ve toured with Rookie Of The Year and Forever The Sickest Kids. “Hide your daughters…” reads the press pack “…Asteria will be rolling into a city near you …with no regard for public safety.” Brave words. Does it deliver?

Any good? Yep. “Top 30 album on smartpunk.com” says the press pack. These guys are not Punk, they’re not nearly radical enough. They do rock like there’s no tomorrow, though. Opener “I’ll Get You My Pretty (And Your Little Dog Too)” tips the lyrical hat to the Wizard of Oz screenplay, and there’s nothing wrong with that. “Finding Love In A bottle Of…” shows an early Cars influence, and “Paper Scissor Stone” shows a sophisticated musicianship that will have you hitting the repeat button. And then “I’d Swear You Were Steam” screams that they’ve been listening to The Coral. How much better can it get. This is the standout track. A huge pity my review copy wouldn’t play in the car, I’d have opened the window and ramped up the volume.

Asteria EP was written by Alan Green for Guitar Noise. A good guitar player you will be if you visit the above site. © 2012 Guitar Noise