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

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

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

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

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

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

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.”

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.

The first section is Music Basics; notes, intervals, basic scale theory, Tertian Harmony and the I-IV-V blues progression, along with explanations of how triad chords are constructed. Kind of dry stuff at this point (for me, anyway), but useful.

The second section, Chords, I found both fun and interesting. Here, the author provides a treasure trove of chord shapes with common finger positioning and also noting on which string the root note is located in each inversion. He starts with triads using the lowest strings (4-5-6), then gives you a root chord shape as well as the first and second inversion of that chord in Major, Minor, Diminished and Augmented forms. He then gives all of the same information using strings 3-4-5, again for strings 2-3-4, and on we go. This continues on to cover chords in the 6th, 7th and many others. The author does not stop with the triads; he provides the same kind of information for chords using four, five and six strings to build chords. The section goes on for twenty-six pages and contains hundreds of chords. This is a tremendous resource to expand your playing. Honestly, it can be seen as intimidating! Makes my head hurt if I do not take it in small doses! But you certainly will learn a lot and can use this section alone as an extremely valuable tool.

The third section, Exercises, helps you put this mountain of information to use. This section is full of exercises in the form of chord progressions to practice your new found knowledge. Once again, starting with the triad shapes in a major chord and moving to progressively more difficult chord shapes and arrangements helps you learn, and find ways to use what you have learned. This section contains thirty-nine pages, and, as mentioned, a lot of exercises!

The fourth section, Appendix, includes chord nomenclature, note scales to build chords, chords in each key, and fingerboard diagrams.

This book is full of tools, but if you are looking for more songs, you won’t find it here. It does not come with a companion CD, so no jam tracks to use while you work through the many pages of exercises. Bummer! I would say that this book would be useful to anyone who is looking to expand their chord library or just to spice up their playing. I would expect that anyone from beginner to more experienced players could get something from these pages.

My plecs – he actually sent me two to try, the one I picked out and a different one – duly arrived today, so I’ve been giving them a good work-out. Now I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a big fan of plecs – I only usually use one when (A) I’ve broken my index fingernail, or (B) I really want to attack the strings close to the bridge. After dropping a thousand plecs down soundholes, usually when I’m in the middle of a killer riff or solo – well OK, I don’t actually play KILLER riffs or solos, but maybe I could if I wasn’t concentrating so hard on keeping hold of the plec and could pay a little attention to the music! – I eventually gave them up as a bad job, and concentrated my energy on using my fingers.

First impressions: They arrived in a little padded bag, each plec in a small plastic re-sealable bag. On taking them out, the first thing that caught my eye was the absolutely gorgeous look of them. One is pinkish, with a couple of subtle shades of pink and a white streak runnning through it. It has a rose etched on one side, and the “Starpics” logo on the other. The other is blue, with a ripple effect running through it. There’s a translucent quality to them – holding them up to the light, you can almost see through them. The next thing I noticed was the weight – they’re a lot heavier than a plastic plec. They feel strange when you first hold them, it takes a few seconds to adjust to the feel of them – they’re like no plec you’ve ever held before. You’d expect such a beautifully crafted, highly polished piece of mineral to slip in your fingers – but they don’t. The etched rose and the etched logo help with the grip on the pink one – yet strangely, the blue plec, with no etching, stays pretty firmly anchored in place too.

So what do they sound like? Well – the first thing I noticed is the almost complete absence of that irritating pick noise. That, and the fact they seem to glide through the strings like a knife through butter, even though they’re far more rigid than a conventional plec.

I tried them first with my acoustic guitar. I played the riff to Bob Seger’s Night Moves first with my nail then with the starpics plec. I got a slightly mellower tone, and virtually no pick noise, with the plec. I played the chorus riff to Boston’s More Than A Feeling – score two to the plec. It seems to bring out mellower undertones – or overtones, I’m not too sure which! – in my acoustic playing. Next, I tried Turn Turn Turn – strummed it close to the bridge with a plastic plec, then again with a starpics plec. Again, the starpics plec won hands down – far less pic noise, though there were some percussive undertones, than the conventional plec.

Then I tried them on electric. I have a Cube 30X amp, and I tried every setting. It’s always been a source of discontent with me that on the occasions I’ve had to use a plec – no index fingernail – I’ve got an awful lot of extraneous noise when I’ve used the bridge pick up. Almost as much noise as when I’ve just put new strings on the acoustic and you get that horrible squeaking when you slide a barre chord down a couple of frets.

I tried Under The Bridge and Alison with the clean channel – sounded great. Both those songs feature nice mellow chords with a bit of picking, and though I didn’t quite master the intro to UTB with a plec, the starpic does seem to mellow out the sound a lot.

I tried a couple of Stones riffs – Brown Sugar and Start Me Up – using just partial chords on the D G and B strings. I used the lead setting on the cube and some gain on the “Black Panel” and again on the “Brit Combo” settings. I seem to have suddenly gained far more control over my plec – I wasn’t hitting any bum notes on the A or top E strings.

All Right Now by Free has long been a favourite – tried that with a bit more gain and yet again I was impressed by how easy these picks are to control. That was on the “Tweed” setting.

Then I tried the R-Fier setting – model of a rectifier amp. Needed something a bit heavier, so I tried the riff to Paranoid and the intro to Heart Full Of Soul the old Yardbirds song. This is about the only place I didn’t score the Starpics higher than a normal plec or my fingers, but on Paranoid – I usually play that song with all downstrokes – I had a slightly tricky time adapting said downstrokes with the plecs, but I’m sure with a bit of practise I could manage it.

This was far outweighed by finding out I could finally do something I’ve been trying to get a handle on for a while – pinch harmonics. I had such control over the plec, I found I could actually hit about one in four – as opposed to the one in twenty-or-so which is my normal strike rate!

So overall, I’d have to say – bear in mind, this is with about two and a half hours worth of playing – I’m VERY impressed with these pics. I haven’t used a pic for a while, and tend to avoid them if I can help it – I like to think I can get better control with my fingers. But these Starpics don’t slip, and you can use them for anything from mellow ballads to heavy metal – I think Mr Groenveld has found a convert in me!

And hey, you don’t have to take my word for it – look at the testimonials on his website: Starpics. You may be pleasantly surprised by a couple of the names there!

I know the pics seem expensive – twenty quid for a plec! – at first sight, but if it’s the only plec you’ll ever need, you’ll probably save that much in a couple of years. And as a green bonus, you’ll be helping to save the planet – so much plastic thrown away or lost every year can’t be doing the Earth much good. And as for my propensity for losing picks….well, they’re so beautifully crafted, I am going to do my best to look after them. I’ve had mine about twelve hours and still got them and that’s GOT to be something of a record!

About the Author

Vic Lewis was born 24 days before John Winston Lennon met James Paul McCartney at a church fete in Liverpool, who thoughtfully went on to provide a lot of the soundtrack for his life. He picked up a guitar for the first time as a teenager, noodled around with three chords for 30 years and then found, in no small part due to Guitarnoise.com, that there was more to life than A D and E. When not found behind a Fender Telecaster or his SPT acoustic guitar, he can usually be spotted wearing red t-shirts watching Football, Rugby League or Cricket, or reading books by Tom Clancy or Terry Pratchett.

Any good? You bet. “I’m angry” she sings in the opener of the same title, and you’d better believe it; this lady is upset. There’s no bitterness here though, just a straight-to-the-point statement of intent. As if to leave you in no doubt, the guitar solo smacks you between the eyes like a cork from a well-shaken champagne bottle. The title track, Cheap Escape, brings in an accordion and suddenly you’re in Counting Crows territory. October Blue is very good, with its vocal harmonies; Dear Diary is nothing like you’d expect from a song with a title like that; and closing track Something I never knew about love is simply top class. Difficult to pick a personal favourite from such a strong collection, and I’ve had this on rotation in the car for the last week and a half, so just go buy it.

Try before you buy? No problemo – www.myspace.com/natashaborzilova has tracks to hear, and there are lyrics at www.natashaborzilova.com so you can sing along – you’ll want to. There are videos on Youtube too.

Cash in your pocket? Head off to Amazon, iTunes and CDBaby – all linked from the website.

Any good? Freight train rhythms abound in opener “Avant Groove”, “Circles of Cotton” creates a melodic line over a repeated arpeggiated pattern, and “Grooving in Blue” will have you reaching for your axe to copy what’s going on. Marins is a technical master of his instrument and this is a good album to listen to when you’re in technical mode – after a day spent training paralegals in classroom, it certainly worked for me. “D Prelude” is the most immediately accessible track and shows off his classical skills. Marins uses repeated patterns a lot, and all of a sudden will surprise you with scale runs played at speeds you wouldn’t believe possible. There’s intelligent use of silence between patterns and strummed lines too, especially in “Internal Dive,” the title track and the longest offered here, as well as plenty of unexpected changes of direction.

Try before you buy? There’s more music and video over at www.andremarins.com

Cash in your pocket? Head off to CDBaby – linked from the website.

It isn’t often that I get so excited about a guitar book/DVD. This review of The Rosetta Stone of Guitar by Fred Pool took me longer to write than any other review ever. It took me hours to craft just a few paragraphs. Why? I got so lost in practicing what I just read that I forget that I was reviewing it. Suddenly the fretboard was deciphered. It all made sense. It was like someone had given me, well, uhh, a Rosetta Stone of Guitar. Have you ever wondered why all those fretboard patterns are there? Have you wondered why the shapes you are supposed to memorize make sense? Have you ever wanted to just be able to land anywhere on the fretboard and play? Don’t you wish someone could translate the thing for you? How about a really easy set of patterns to use? Well look no further, The Rosetta Stone of Guitar is here. After reading this book and watching the DVD, the way the fretboard is laid out became so, so…obvious, almost simple. I see it. Why didn’t I think of this myself?

Now look, you aren’t just going to have a quiet read by the fireside and suddenly be a guitar virtuoso. You still are going to have to practice. And I’ll tell you the truth, I had to read some sections twice before I understood the simplicity. It was almost like my brain refused to see it because it was that simple. But stick with it, take your time, read the sections a couple of times and put your fingers on the fretboard to practice. You will be amazed at how much you’ve learned in such a short time.

I wish I had this book and DVD years ago. Yes there are other books out there with scale patterns, and yes you can use this book to solo up and down the neck almost immediately. Keep in mind though, The Rosetta Stone of Guitar isn’t about learning to solo, it’s about learning to see. Once you can see the fretboard you’ll never be lost again.

The DVD is very professionally put together, easy to navigate and full of information. You can print the book out directly from the DVD. I recommend you do this up front.

The Rosetta Stone of Guitar is on my must have list. All of my students are getting a copy.

For a limited time, guitarnoise readers can get a 25% discount on this wonderful DVD and printable book. Hey…that’s $10 off, enough to buy two Triple Venti White Mochas, (with whip), to keep you up all night while you fiendishly work your way through the examples.

Click here to get the special discount price.

You’ll need the following login information to get the special pricing:

username: guitarnoise
password: approved

You can thank me later. No really, go buy this now.

This book is presented as a method book to guide teachers and students on a logical path through the learning process. The Guitar Lesson Companion isn’t really a book for beginners to use on their own; the material needs to be supplemented with direction and exercises from a teacher. But what if you don’t have a teacher? Well the book does come with a CD with tracks to supplement your learning experience, but here’s an extraordinary value for you, Susan has put together a companion website for the book with video lessons that match the book. Videos are no substitute for a teacher, but these videos with Susan, who has been teaching guitar in Seattle, Washington for 10 years, are a close second. If you are looking for a method book to teach yourself to read and understand music, look no further.

Be aware that the book is written in standard notation and if you have no intent of learning standard notation you won’t find much use for the book.

Who is it for?

• Teachers who want a thorough method book for their students.
• Students who want to learn standard notation
• Students who want their current teacher to take a more methodical approach to their lessons

Who isn’t it for?

• Tab readers who are happy with tab

What’s in the book?

• Standard Notation
• Major Scale Theory
• Reading studies
• Chord Changing exercises/Barre Chords/Jazzy Barre Chords/ Chord Formulas
• CAGED

You can check out the video lessons and buy the book from www.leadcatpress.com

It’s a well thought out book, easy to use with the CD and an excellent value with the videos.

Although “Woods,” from the Rosenbergs’ 2004 CD “Department Store Girl,” could have been a prequel to this disc, For Promotional Use Only represents a departure from The Rosenbergs’ hard-driving, upbeat power pop sound. The mood is more intimate, the themes more personal. Fagin wrote or co-wrote all eleven songs here, and his bright arrangements save a CD arguably about loss, regret and apathy from being a downer. His voice, a rich tenor, lacks the overproduced recorded quality of many of his peers, leading one to believe he would sound exactly the same live as on the CD.

Included on this disc is a four minute vacation. “Island Blues”, co-written with fellow Rosenberg Joshua Aaron, does a brilliant job of making you feel as if you’re lying on the beach in some tropical locale. The song provides the ocean sound effects and island feel, you bring the margaritas.

“I Do” (also written with Aaron) is an anthem of love lost because “I never said ‘I do’”. “Neverland” laments never having had a baby, “wouldn’t that be good if I just could.” Both of these sentiments are surprising coming from someone whose good looks and raw talent would seem to indicate great potential for relationship success. Could it be he’s just a regular guy?

While every cut has something to like, the real standout is “Hindsight”, a fond farewell with a touch of regret. From its first high-energy chords, it draws you in with its catchy hook and smart lyrics. “I’m looking forward to hindsight,” Fagin says, as if a little distance will magically bring everything into clear focus.

The beauty of his words is how relatable they are. Who hasn’t struggled for answers to relationship questions? In the event the answers prove as elusive to Fagin as they do to the rest of us, at least he’s taken us on an entertaining journey during the search.

After the hopelessness of “Neverland”, the final cut, “Fade Out”, ends the CD on a positive note. Has he finally found his true love? Can’t help hoping for the good guy.

You can order For Promotional Use Only from David Fagin’s MySpace page, CD Baby and www.garageband.com.

Fortunately for everyone, Kathy is taking her material out to the world. She has been performing at open mic nights and this past spring saw her regularly opening for other artists at the Galley (here in Chicago)

Kathy took her Singer / Songwriter act a notch higher on Saturday night May 12, 2007, by performing solo for close to two hours at the Borders Book store Café in Highland Park, Illinois, entertaining the intimate gathering of thirty Café patrons with original compositions as well as a equal number of cover tunes.

Twelve-string guitar in hand, Kathy opened the evening with a rocking rendition of John Hiatt’s Cry Love. From the first note, the crowd knew they were in for a treat. Kathy’s down-to-earth arrangements, her playing free of glitzy posing and frills set the stage for an evening about the songs, good songs performed by a talented singer/songwriter.

While she covered a wide range of well-known tunes, from Time After Time to the Kinks’ Well Respected Man and Dire Strait’s Romeo and Juliet, her original songs held their own ground. Tunes like Blue Collar Blues, 1000 Suns, Monday Morning, and Sexy Little Man clearly show Kathy has songsmithing chops befitting a modern troubadour.

For me, the most compelling compositions and vocal performances were Piano Through the Ceiling, a poignant story of a young mother’s struggle to cope with life and the comfort she takes from the music coming from the apartment upstairs, and St. Theresa, a tale of a would-be mystic allegedly in communion with a higher plane of existence but out of touch with the real day-to-day trials and tribulations of life. It is a song of wonderful irony, its lyrics alternating between the sublime (“…chanting her mantra over and over/amid the sound of the bees in the clover…”) and the banal (“…we’re all stuck in traffic (pray for us) / on our way into work…”), showing the huge gap between enlightenment and everyday. Kathy’s sister Leslie joined in the performance of this song, helping out with harmonies.

Kathy also debuted a new composition, Everybody Lies (see the Sunday Songwriters Group forum from April 29). Its crafty guitar riffs and adversarial vocal lines make this tune a new favorite of mine.

Other SSG material found voice in Kathy’s performance as she covered, One by One, written by Nick Torres and David Hodge. I’ve heard both Nick and David do this song – separately as well as a duet and in group-jam settings – but Kathy’s arrangement may have been the best rendition I’ve heard in the last few years. Having a female voice singing Nick’s affecting lyrics strongly impacted my sensibilities. The powerful story of friendship and lives lost to the devastation of AIDs was both hauntingly and soulfully conveyed.

Other note worthy covers included Angel Of The Morning, which Kathy performed with Michael Lescher, a talented singer and the leader of his own band. Their vocal styles compliment each other and (hopefully?) this performance may have been a foretelling of future collaborations between the two singers. Kathy’s spare acoustic arrangement of the Jackson Five’s I Want You Back is always a delight, while the gender bending of the lyrics in Here Comes My Baby never fails to bring a smile.

The set finished with performing a song requested by the audience – her original composition No Reflection On You. This crowd pleaser is rapidly taking on a life of its own and perfectly capped a truly fine evening of entertainment. Kathy keeps getting better, each new performance even stronger than the last. Here’s to hoping that she continues to bring her gift of song and songwriting to an eager audience.

SET LIST (not in order…)

• Cry Love
• Too Close for Comfort (original )
• Time After Time
• One by One (Torres)
• Only living Boy in New York
• Piano through the Ceiling (original)
• Better than the Rest (original)
• I want you Back
• Refugee
• Blue Collar Blues (original)
• Well Respected Man
• Everybody Lies (original)
• St Theresa (original)
• Someday
• Angel of the Morning
• Wicked Game
• 1000 Suns (original)
• Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying
• Wait
• Monday Morning (original)
• Here Comes My Baby
• As time Goes By
• Romeo and Juliet
• Flowers on the Wall
• Sexy Little Man(original)
• Heavenly Day
• And, requested as an encore (thanks, Mike!), No Reflection On You.

You may know Kirk as a regular on these forums and a frequent contributor of wonderful video lessons to this and other sites. Kirk also has several of his own sites/forums and is also author of the amazing PlaneTalk book.

This is a great DVD for beginner slide players, or for those who are trying to move from the more common open tuning to Dropped D or standard. Although standard tuning requires a slightly different approach to slide, the advantage for us non-sliders is you don’t need to relearn the positions and what you already know about the fretboard.

After explaining some of the basics, such as the different types of slides, action and muting, Kirk goes through what he calls “String Sets” or where you can find portions of chords on which strings. While he’s showing you this he uses a fantastic three-way split screen method that displays slide placement, the left hand and the right hand all at the same time.

Playing a couple of Kirk’s own tunes, you can see how all of the information you’ve gone through can be put to use in a practical manner. The example tunes are played both full and half speed so you can catch what Kirk is doing.

In addition to all of this, Kirk makes tab for all of the lessons and examples online at www.bottleneckguitar.com.

Kirk’s lessons are phenomenal. His easy going manner and camera persona make these DVDs just like having a personal lesson, albeit one you can pause and rewind at will. The video itself is very high quality as is the sound.

You couldn’t possibly get all of the information contained in this DVD in three months worth of lessons. How much would you have to pay an instructor for that?

To sum up “How to play Slide Guitar in Standard and Dropped-D Tunings” has great production, great content, a great teacher, and amazing value.

Kirk Lorange : PlainTalk – The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction DVD

Just in case you are reading this review without seeing any of my other reviews of Kirk’s teaching products, let me start by saying I’m a big fan of Kirk’s stuff. He’s easy going, teaches to you directly and has high standards for his productions. Just to show you how far he’ll go to teach he plays the guitar on his knees at a right angle to normal just to get the right angle for demonstration.

The DVD covers much of the material offered in PlaneTalk, Kirk’s terrific tutorial book, but not all. It’s a visual and audible presentation of the information, which is great for us visual learners. Seeing and hearing what Kirk teaches in PlaneTalk is a powerful reinforcement to the concepts learned from that book.

The DVD begins with the mess of chromatic notes that is the guitar fingerboard and sifts all the notes out into three easily identifiable patterns. These patterns are not only so much simpler than what one learns from the CAGED system, they are much more practical as well. One of the problems with CAGED is that people tend to stick to the pattern or two they’ve memorized and stay within those boxes. Kirk’s PlainTalk system doesn’t have that limitation. You can play wherever you want to play. Because you have such easy patterns/landmarks to keep track of, you can always get back to where you should be quickly if you ever should get off course.

I love the book PlaneTalk and highly recommend it, but combined with PlainTalk the DVD, it’s a truly powerful learning tool.

During the month of March you can get The PlaneTalk Package – Book, DVD, slide rule plus the Chord Tone Blues CD for $70 plus shipping and handling.

$70? You ask. Is it worth it?

Look, let’s forget about Chord Tone Blues for a moment and just say you get the book and DVD. That’s $35 each. Well that’s how much I pay for a forty-five minute lesson. Let me break out the handy dandy calculator and, yes, that’s the equivalent of two lessons then, isn’t it? It’s an easy decision. The incredible volume of information you get, plus an easy to use system for seeing the fretboard, plus Kirk’s examples and the ability to stop, rewind and replay the lesson, plus…oh never mind. Just get the package, it’s an astounding value.

By the way, just in case you were wondering, I don’t get a cut of the sales. It’s just my honest opinion about a powerful learning tool. If you are looking for a quick and easy way to open up the entire fretboard for soloing, this is a must have.

PlaneTalk by Kirk Lorange

When I die, assuming I might, I want to make sure that one thing does not happen. No not the obvious, that I find out Heaven is a polka only zone. No, I want to make sure that my guitars do not show wear on only the first five frets.

Why? Because I do not want to be known as just a first position player. And as I am sure that it will be impossible to fit all of my guitars into my coffin, someone would be able to find out by looking at the wear on the fretboard of one the guitars that doesn’t make it in. How embarrassing would that be?

I want to be known as the guy who could solo all the way up the neck, who could play inversions in many different positions, the guy who was not limited by his lack of fret board knowledge.

Well, as luck would have it, I no longer have this worry for I’ve found an answer in PlaneTalk by Kirk Lorange.

You may have heard about Kirk’s secret to opening up the fretboard. You may have seen posts asking what it is and the keepers of the secret denying your request for knowledge. Well let me tell you, it is a secret that is beautiful in it’s simplicity.

What does this book do?

It gives you an amazingly simple secret to mentally mapping the fretboard. How simple? It makes CAGED look like brain surgery.

It teaches you basic theory by using diagrams, pictures and a free fretboard slide rule.

It teaches in an amazingly simple fashion.

“Really?” You ask.

What if I told you that most of the book is written as a comic book?

It is a well-written book, and the pictures, contrary to Kirk’s disclaimer are excellent.

As an added bonus there are no exercises and no theory to memorize.

In order to get the most out of this book, I suggest you read it three times. Once breeze through. Second time through, try to grasp the concepts concretely. Third time, try to take what you are learning and work it out on the fretboard. Do this and you’ll be amazed at your sudden understanding. And it’s really easy too. I mean how hard is it to read a comic three times?

If you are beyond the absolute beginner stage, and by that I mean past memorizing the open chords and able to play the basic barre chords, and you want to completely open up the fretboard, not to mention your mind, this book is a must have in your guitar library.

Go buy it. You’ll thank me.

You can get the book here:

http://www.thatllteachyou.com/

Tell him Nick sent you.

Oh and by the way, if you happen to be at the funeral, make sure my Collings and my Breedlove make it into the coffin, would you? Thanks.

The Music Lesson is subtitled “A spiritual search for growth through Music” and it’s pretty important to keep that subtitle firmly in mind while reading this book. On the surface, this is a story that’s been told more often than one can remember – a struggling soul is visited, almost as if by magic, by a “teacher” who, throughout the rest of the story, manages to make sense of the world in such a way that anyone can not only understand it but has no other choice but to become the teacher himself. Spirituality is both achieved and passed on from soul to soul.

But while it’s a familiar story, Wooten does an admirable and entertaining job spinning it in his own fashion. Life’s lessons are broken down into ten major elements of music: Notes, Articulation, Technique, Emotion, Dynamics, Rhythm, Tone, Phrasing, Space (Rests), and Listening. Each element gets its own chapter and becomes a piece of the “big picture.”

As a writer, Wooten manages to bring insights and smiles to the reader, much in the same manner he does when playing bass. Or just like “Micheal,” the mysterious mentor in his story. You could be cruising along enjoying the trip and then all of a sudden he’ll point out something and you find yourself thinking “wow” as well as “I should have known that” or “I wish I could have explained it that well.” If you liked the book Zen Guitar, this will probably appeal to you a lot.

Being a bit of fiction, and neglecting to keep the subtitle in mind, one might find parts of the book a little disappointing. Wooten’s occasionally suffers from a bit of lack of focus. There are times when some of the characters suffer from being too over the top and this leads to some of the elements, such as Phrasing, getting more noise than substance.

Overall, though, The Music Lesson is a delight to read and it’s telling that the first thing I did when finishing it was to give it to a friend to read. The lesson keeps getting passed along…

Peace

If you’re a visual person, chances are likely that you find yourself learning better with DVDs than with books or books that only have audio CDs. And chances are likely that if you’re a beginner with the guitar, you’ll find eMedia’s DVD tutorials very helpful.

eMedia’s Essential Rock Guitar, for example, contains over forty-five lessons dealing with standard rock guitar subjects as power chords, palm muting and riffs and lead licks in various styles. Developed by Charles McCrone, who has been teaching for more than twenty-five years, these lessons are terrific for the beginning guitar player. The techniques are taught in “song style,” using songs written specifically for the lesson. Each song is very much in the style of a well-known artist or song (titles like “Rocky Be Goode” should give you a big clue) and while you may not learn the original songs themselves, you will only be a short intuitive leap from getting there.

This DVD has lots of nice little touches. Left handed players will be pleased to note that the “animated fretboard” feature comes both left and right handed. The “music tracking” function highlights the music on the screen, showing you visually where you are while you listen to it. The “tri-view” video offers you multi-camera views of the teacher, focusing clearly on both left and right hands. And all the instruction comes in Spanish as well as English.

There are also some downloadable bonuses, such as a tuner, metronome, digital recorder and a chord dictionary with over two hundred chords.

All in all, this is a nice package for a beginner. eMedia also offers DVDs for acoustic guitar and bass guitar, so be sure to check those out as well.

Peace.

(Editor’s note: This review is a lot later than it should be, since this CD was released on September 1. But that’s a whole different story…)

Live @ The Fat Cat, the latest CD from the impossibly talented trio of Sheryl Bailey (guitar), Gary Versace (Hammond B3 organ) and Ian Froman (drums), was recorded last November in one of New York City’s top jazz clubs and displays the Sheryl Bailey 3 at its finest.

Things kick off with Cedar’s Mood, a tribute to jazz giant Cedar Walton. It’s a playful piece, with part of the fun for the listener being the task of sorting out “who’s who?” The interplay between Sheryl’s guitar and Gary’s organ is so slick that you can’t always sort out who’s playing which part. The song turns into a merry uptempo chase between the two instruments, full of the angular melody lines and striking harmonies that have been Sheryl’s signature style.

Upbeat gives way to the gentle melodies of another tribute piece, this one to guitar giant John Abercrombie. In A Soft Green Light, Sheryl’s melodic lines gently rise and fall like the soft breathing of a dreamer, then give themselves over to sections of greater rhythmic depth and complexities. The segue between the guitar and organ is seamless and, again, it’s astonishing how all three members of the trio seem to be of one mind.

Ian Froman gets a little nod in Starbright, a song from the group’s first CD, The Power of Three. And Sheryl’s abrupt switch from her complex comping behind the organ solo to sharp, single notes helps to punctuate Ian’s tasteful drum solo.

Elvin People, a favorite from the CD, Bull’s Eye, demonstrates how the Sheryl Bailey 3 uses space and silence as the unsung fourth member of the band. The entire group understands the power of space, and while there may be a spate of sixteenth and thirty-second note runs to compliment the melody, there is a lot of room for the listener to wander in without getting lost. Sheryl’s clever use of double stops adds to the light, delicate touch of this delightful song.

And just when you think you’ve got the group down, along comes the totally hypnotic Dance of the Dream Maker. I don’t think any reviewer has the words to describe the intense interplay of rhythm and melody, music and passion that this song delivers to the listener.

Before I moved from Chicago, I had the chance to see Sheryl perform with David Krakauer’s Klezmer band. Her song The Wishing Well (for David) brought that concert vividly back to my mind, with its bursts of quiet joy. It’s often the paradox of the contrast and similarities between Sheryl’s guitar and Gary’s organ that provides much of the magic of this group and that is especially evident in this song. The organ plays guitar-style arpeggios while the guitar’s melodic lines give the wistful promise of the little smiles one is bound to find through life’s journeys.

The CD wraps up with Midnite Swim and Swamp Thang, the later another favorite from the Bull’s Eye CD. Again, you can’t help but appreciate the trio’s sense of space. You become an active member of the group as your ears fill in the song’s funky lines once the skeleton has been laid out for your enjoyment.

The Sheryl Bailey 3 is doing more touring and if you have the chance to see them, I couldn’t recommend a better way to spend an evening. If you don’t have the chance, then Live @ The Fat Cat will give you a fantastic concert at your own home.

For more information on the Sheryl Bailey 3, or to order their CDs, check out her website at www.SherylBailey.com .And if you are fortunate enough to take in a show, tell her hello from me!

Peace

Bull’s Eye

Sometimes I wonder about what my life would be like without having become part of Guitar Noise. I wouldn’t know some of the people I’ve been privileged to meet and, almost as bad, I probably wouldn’t have had the chance to listen to some of the music that I do today.

Case in point, Sheryl Bailey. She sent me an email totally out of the blue a couple of years ago. She’d just released a CD called The Power of Three and, doing some searching about it on the Internet, came across my tutorial column of the same name. When I discovered who she was, I naturally asked if we could do a review of her album on Guitar Noise. She graciously agreed.

And when she popped into Chicago, touring with David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness, she made certain to email me to let me know about the show. She’s an exceptionally talented jazz guitarist and wonderfully friendly in person.

I’ve been playing The Power of Three to death on my stereo, so when I received her latest CD, Bull’s Eye , I slipped immediately into my CD player. And it was like having an old friend drop in for a visit.

The Sheryl Bailey 3 is made up of Sheryl on guitar, Gary Versace playing the Hammond B3 organ and Ian Froman handling the drumming. The opening number, Old and Young Blues , finds the trio in fine form, weaving delightfully intricate patterns around each other. And the first thing I noticed yet again, as I did with The Power of Three, is how timeless Sheryl’s writing is. Old and Young Blues has an inviting familiarity, which encourages the listener to settle in for a magical trip.

And it certainly is an interesting musical voyage. Sheryl’s been touring a lot these past years, notably with the aforementioned David Krakauer, as well as with bassist Richard Bona, tenor saxophonist Gary Thomas and KJ Denhert, an urban-folk artist. There’s a little of everything here. The mysterious chordal play at the beginning of Elvin People turns into a playful frolic between the three. While the “solo” work goes first to Sheryl and then to Gary, it’s Ian who steals the show with dazzling and tasteful drumming. Every time I listen to this, I can’t help but wonder how the others manage to not stop playing in order to just sit back and marvel at their drummer.

Swamp Thang lives up to the promise of the title. The song pulsates, funkily marching forward on strong rhythmic legs. One listen and you’ll be making sure it’s on the playlist for your next dance party.

In the liner notes, Sheryl mentions that Sue’s Samba “is a reflection of her sister’s positive spirit.” All I can say is that Sue must be a joy to be around. This song is infectious and it’s impossible to listen to it without having your own spirits lifted.

Valtz Med again highlights the unique sound of the Sheryl Bailey 3. When Gary takes the lead chores on the organ, you can’t help but hearing how all three members play off of each other. Sheryl’s tasteful comping gives way to an inspired improvisational solo of her own while Ian’s drumming matches the little rhythmic tics of both musicians. If I haven’t mentioned it before, he truly holds the group together – impossibly steady while pushing and inventive with his chops.

Unlike a lot of CDs, Bull’s Eye gets stronger with each passing song. Two Brothers and

Song for All Souls are intensely moving and emotional pieces, the first being another of Sheryl’s hauntingly familiar tunes, full of little moments that pop up and make you smile, while Song for All Souls is more sorrowful and thoughtful. The guitar lays down a melancholy passage, which Gary follows up with a spare and moody solo. Ian’s drumming is even sparser, adding to the song’s enchantment. And when Sheryl turns in what is probably the album’s loveliest solo, both Gary and Ian are there to add the perfect little touches – a descending organ line here, the hit of a high hat there. It’s simply mesmerizing to listen to.

Fog , written about how the fog in San Francisco is always in motion, certainly conjures up that image. It’s light and airy, but with the sense that it’s capable of flitting away from you at any moment. When you realize that this entire album was recorded live, you can’t help but be amazed at the rapport between these three musicians. Fog is a showcase of each member playing at her and his best, whether taking the fore or providing support.

Bull’s Eye closes with the title track, a spirited romp that fills the room with a breathless joy and leaves the listener little choice but to hit the “play” button of his stereo again. If you’re in the New York area, take the time to seek out the Sheryl Bailey 3. You can find her schedule of shows at her website, www.SherylBailey.com .

And when you go see her, tell her I said “Hi!”

Peace

The Power of Three

Serendipity can be a wonderful thing. I got an email from a Sheryl Bailey who found my column, The Power of Three, while doing an internet search for her new album of the same name. Being her first visit to Guitarnoise, she wrote to say hi. On a whim I asked if she’d be interested in me reviewing her CD. She certainly was, so she sent me a copy.

And here we are.

More serendipity: I received the CD the same day I was entertaining a friend, a pianist visiting from out of town. We had just been talking about jazz, a new interest of study for both of us. We were in fact wondering whether or not a guitarist could play jazz with a pianist. Would they not proceed to step all over each other?

So imagine the surprise and utter delight when I opened and put on a CD by a jazz trio of guitar, organ and drums! From the bouncy opening phrases of Starbrite, the first of The Power of Three’s eight original songs (all written by Sheryl), we knew we were in for a treat. And when all the crisp, jumping interplay between the organ and guitar led to the timeless sultry and funky groove of Ray’s Way (think of the beat in Mercy, Mercy, Mercy), we were hooked.

Good thing, too, because the middle of The Power of Three demanded attention – the sparse, hypnotic organ work in Death’s Toll setting up the effervescence of The Spring, with the guitar bubbling all over the place.

The trio’s strengths of each member playing off the other are showcased in the powerful (Until You) Return To Me. Sheryl’s guitar starts the song off as a lament. Yet when Gary joins in, framing the guitar’s voice with solid blocks of chords on the organ, the sadness is infused with hope. And as the guitar tapers away, the organ takes on a wandering, lilting quality, leaving you with the impression that perhaps there will be no return at all.

Ian Froman’s drumming is the glue that holds everything together. When you consider he is handling the rhythm pretty much on his own since there is no bassist, your appreciation grows. He is given plenty of time to shine, particularly in the swinging Something Blue and The Wessenback.

Sheryl treats us to a hauntingly beautiful solo guitar piece in the closing number, Arpeggio. On my first listen I wasn’t sure I liked the abrupt change until I realized that my initial reaction on the CD’s being over was “I’ve got to hear this again!”

You can order this CD through Sheryl’s website: http://www.SherylBailey.com/

I’ve got to tell you that on first listen you are struck by what an amazing guitarist Eric Mantel is. There is no doubt that he is master of many genres. Listening to him play is a pure pleasure. If you want to hear a tutorial of how to play everything from subtle to shred, and play them well, go buy this CD. I enjoyed every minute of listening to him play.

But what is the beauty for the guitarist is the beast for me as a CD listener. You just never know where you are about to go. The first track is a harbinger of things to come. You hear somebody scanning up the radio dial hitting different stations with different styles. But is it a concept album? Well, no, it’s the anti-concept album concept album. Don’t get me wrong, the tracks are all done well but they don’t really link together. I think it’s disconcerting to go from Pop to Rock to Blues to Jazz to whatever and back again. I can’t get into a listening groove. Maybe I’m just old but I liked listening to how an album flowed. Now if you are an Ipod random shuffle type of listener this shouldn’t bug you at all. All the songs are great. But what do you know, you young whippersnapper?

Anyway don’t read too much into my love for the lost art of concept albums, it’s a great CD by a great guitarist.

Check him out at:

www.ericmantel.com

New Jersey guitarist DC Slater has come a long way from his Seattle Grunge influences. In fact, the most prominent influences that I hear are Satch and a mild dose of EVH. Don’t get me wrong – the grunge influence is still very alive in Slater’s choice of rhythm tone. Though these tones are essentially heavy sounding, his rhythms are tight which manages to add a certain drive to almost every tune on Decisions.

DC Slater has a great knack for speaking with his guitar. Between beautifully thought out melodic passages and some slight variation into the exotic, Slater gives each composition personality. It makes for a magnificent contrast to the heavy backdrop of guitars he has set up.

Decisions opens with Indigo and already Mr. Slater is telling his story. By the time the second track, Outlaw, had been spinning for about thirty seconds I knew this whole CD was going to be great. The song Southbound really made me start to miss my Wah Wah Pedal. Great sound!

The final three songs define this CD. The guitars just sound huge. Pledge opens with a very Alice in Chains meets Staind chord change and the song is filled with Satch meets Framton blues until we get to the breakdown. I swear! I thought I went to Scotland for a couple measures. Very cool!

Long Way Home and Open Road give me the feeling of exactly that:

the longing for home and the scenery along the way. Great numbers – very vivid. It definitely left me with a feeling of completion yet wanting to hear more.

DC Slater is a former student of Berklee College of Music and participates in the SoundAid project to fight hunger. Aside from writing and producing his own music, he is also involved in engineering and producing other artists.

David Hodge states in the introduction to The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Playing Bass Guitar that he wants to help his readers think like bassists. That seems like a rather lofty goal, but it’s one that I think he achieves.

Having recently joined my church band as the bass player despite having no prior experience with the instrument (but I do have a couple of years of steady progress on electric and acoustic guitar,) I was glad to see that this book has a different presentation style than the typical bass method book. It is much more discussion oriented, which gives it a unique teaching value that I found very helpful for self-study. I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of the book many weeks ago, which is why I can write this review now as the book first begins to officially ship.

The first thing I noticed when I received my copy is how much text there is. Other bass books I purchased dive quickly into reading notation and playing one note, one string at a time, graduating up to scales and basic melody lines with very little explanatory text. Hodge takes a different route, that of mentor, guiding you through the how and why of every topic he presents, from finger placement during a riff to creating your own bass lines. Hodge writes in an easy-to-understand, down-to-earth manner, and it’s almost like having an experienced teacher there with you.

There is enough music theory to help you understand the basics of scales, chords and arpeggios, but not so much that you feel bogged down. Importantly, all of Hodge’s discussion on theory leads to practical application in the subsequent chapters. I was pleased to note that he explains but does not over-emphasize scale playing, but instead seems to focus on riffs and bass lines built using the chord tones that derive from scales. This is a more musical and interesting approach than you tend to find in other books (though a good foundation in the major scale won’t hurt, in my opinion).

Then there are the “jam along” songs. These are the meat and potatoes of Hodge’s presentation, and the reason I think this book exceeds where others may fall a bit short. At the most basic level, you can use these songs (really they are a framework for building a song) and the provided example riffs to practice your techniques and timing. From there, you can use the same songs as a springboard for improvisation, by coming up with your own riffs using the earlier lessons. When I was taking guitar lessons my teacher used a similar technique – he called it “structured improvisation” – and I found it to be an excellent way to learn to think about what I was playing.

Hodge also provides insight into real-world issues bass players may face, such as the scarcity of tablature or even sheet music for bass, and the many types of written music that a bass player might have to deal with – from the bass clef in piano sheet music to crude lyric sheets with guitar chords hopefully scrawled above the verses.

There are a handful of typos or misplaced examples in the book, but Hodge intends to post a web page with corrections (how’s that for service?!) Furthermore, he is regularly available at the GuitarNoise web forum for anyone with questions.

I do have a couple of complaints, both concerning the accompanying CD. First, I would have preferred that each example in the book have its own track on the CD, though I’m told it’s not technically possible to put that many tracks on a single disc (there are well over 150 examples!) As it is, there are instances where several examples are necessarily lumped into the same CD track, making it difficult to quickly jump to a particular example. One has to queue up the example using the CD player’s fast-forward or rewind button. Related to this, the track numbers containing the examples are referenced only in an appendix, not in the main body of the book. In my opinion they should have been noted next to the example in the text.

Second, at least on my copy of the CD, the recorded volume of the bass seems somewhat low relative to Hodge’s voice. I have to turn up my stereo’s volume to hear the bass clearly, but then the spoken introduction to each example gets a tad loud. Again, these are very minor issues, neither of which detracts from the excellent material in the book.

I am really pleased with what I’ve learned from this book in a fairly short time period, and intend to keep working with it even as I incorporate other books into my studies. I would definitely recommend it to anyone thinking about getting into bass. And don’t forget to order it through the Guitar Noise site (you can find links to Amazon on our home page) – this adds no cost to you, and it may help keep the site functioning smoothly so David can answer your questions online.

There have to be very few people in the world that can’t distinguish between actors and the roles they play. Throughout the 70s and 80s the comedy of Cheech & Chong often poked fun at drug enforcement officers, like the satirical Sargent Stadanko. But comedy is not reality; it is something made up to entertain us. In the book Chong recalls a phone call from his former comedy partner Cheech, who says of Chong’s persecutors “They just don’t get it, man!” And so, Chong becomes probably the first person in history to be sentenced for a role he played.

And this leads us to The I Chong: Meditations from the Joint, a book that is part memoirs, part spiritual explorations of his time in prison, and part political indictment of the eroding civil liberties in American society. It is quite an important book too. With 10% of America’s 300 million population in prison, it’s worth taking the time to examine the reality of life behind bars. With his celebrity status Chong was able to cross racial and social boundaries in the joint. He interacts with various groups in prison and shares some of their fascinating and often humorous stories here.

Aside from his celebrity stoner status, Chong seems to be a genuinely interesting person. He dropped out of high school to be a full time musician. Before becoming a comedian he had a successful early career in R&B. He owned his own nightclub in Vancouver where he regularly played with the house band Bobby Taylor and the Vancouvers, a band that once included a young Jimi Hendrix who was in town staying with his grandmother. That band signed with Motown Records in 1967 and a song Chong wrote and performed with the band, “Does Your Mama Know About Me” became a minor hit.

Sure, Chong has smoked a lot of pot in his time. He even has a prescription for it. Although according to Chong, he never smoked as much pot as people thought he did. This book reveals how he was prosecuted and incarcerated for the stoner character he is famous for playing in movies and on comedy albums. Chong says the government prosecutors offered him a deal. He could plead guilty to the charges against him or they would go after his wife and son instead. Reading the book you get a sense that Chong is a real family man. It isn’t hard to believe that he would plead guilty to something he felt was unjust, if it would spare his family the ordeal he would have to go through, the ordeal he writes about in detail in these pages.

When sentenced to his 9 months jail time Chong was allowed to take certain items with him. He took for his spiritual book The Mystic I by Joel Goldsmith, a computer so he could write this book, and for recreation he took Gibson Jazz guitar with a Pignose amp so he could work on jazz guitar theory. As Chong mentions many times in the book, in a spiritual sort of way, the universe will correct itself. And this book is hopefully the first step in a reversal of the injustice done to the irreplaceable Tommy Chong.

As other reviewers have pointed out, this is hopefully only the beginning of Chong’s career as an author. It is a book that feels a little too short when you reach the last page. The reader hopes Chong will find the time to share more of his thoughts and observations in a new and with any luck longer book. The book’s concise format does remind one of the ancient Chinese text, The I Ching (or Book of Changes), from which Chong’s book draws a lot of it’s influence. Like the oriental counterpart, The I Chong is a small book with a great deal of depth and insight. Something that can be reread often as it continues to entertain and enlighten.

But whatever you take from this book, it is an interesting and entertaining read throughout. One of the first thing that strikes you is that Chong is a pretty smart guy. But when you think about it, comics generally are pretty clever. They need to be sharp to survive on stage, and having a crisp and unique perspective on the world is the source of a comic’s genius.

I have waited for this one since I heard it was being re-released. As usual, a great body of work from Robert Fripp, an artist that I have the utmost respect for.

Let me begin with the packaging. We get a few notes from Robert Fripp himself. Not as many as his previous releases that I have had the pleasure of giving reviews on over the past several months, but enough to get the skinny on what this project was/is about. We get lyrics and the full roster of ‘who does what’ plus some classic photos. I did spend a bit of time trying to figure out who wears more eye liner between Fripp, Bowie, and Debbie Harry, but I guess it doesn’t really matter as they all wear it well.

As for the music -YES, I am going to praise it once again. As I have said in the past, Robert Fripp is a true artist, in every sense of the word, when it comes to his musical vision. He knows how to get his expression across. No matter how weird or bizarre a song may be, it always has an uncanny appeal when Fripp is behind the wheel.

With this release of Exposure, we get 2 discs- the First Edition 1979 release and the Third Edition 1985 re-release which includes 3 formerly unreleased Daryl Hall vocal tracks and some bonus alternative takes. Whoever coined the cliche` ‘white men have no soul,’ has never heard Daryl Hall sing. The cut North Star features some top notch vocal work by Mr. Hall and he does well on several others. Although, I must remind you that this is a Robert Fripp disc. So don’t be expecting any cheezy 80’s Hall and Oats lyrical content.

Peter Hammill and Terre Roche take the vocal duties on a few tracks and we also get a special treat from Peter Gabriel with his song Here Comes the Flood. This is the highlight of Exposure as we have two beautiful pieces, Water Music I and Water Music II, made up of Frippertonics and Brian Eno on synth on either side of Gabriel’s masterpiece. This makes a very nice trilogy. It’s really too bad no one was paying attention to this song back then. It sounds like a warning about global warming and the polar ice caps melting. Keep in mind this was originally released in 1979. Visionary? Perhaps.

Other players on Exposure include – Phil Collins, Tony Levin, Sid McGinnis, Barry Andrews, Jerry Marotta and Narada Michael Walden.

Love Cannot Bear

Ok- I have now experienced both the most amazing rock band in the world and it’s fearless leader, Robert Fripp, on one of his solo ventures. It’s much like apples and oranges – which isn’t a bad thing. It’s all about flavor and what mood one might be in.

Love Cannot Bear was recorded during a series of live performances. As for me these are the things that I would normally experiment with when I am alone or perhaps with another player as a type of emoting session, so to speak. There’s a definite value in this type of thing. One must be prepared for it though. Robert Fripp began creating his soundscapes, I believe, in the ’70’s when Fripp and Brian Eno connected two tape machines together to create an endless loop. I never knew what Frippertonics was. Now I do.

This CD is full of lush sounds that engulf the room. I enjoy this sort of thing. Even though there are some moments of atonal madness within these highly experimental and avante-garde performances, I found nothing offensive. In fact, it is quite reflective music and it is very relaxing. Considering the busy life I have been leading for the past few weeks this CD may have been a bit too relaxing. This was actually a very good thing for me though.

I had hoped to get in a bit of meditation with this CD but every time I started to slip into the astral plain – I literally passed out and slept better than I have slept for many moons. This is by no means an insult to Mr. Fripp. His artistic superiority shines, as it seems to on everything he does. This is very beautiful music and I have been rather attached to this

Cd. In that respect it has had a similar effect as the King Crimson box set that I reviewed last month.

I have been sleeping better than I have slept for years and have been having the most vivid dreams. I regret though, that I can’t tell you how this CD ends. I am sure it is embedded in my subconscious somewhere and I am sure I will recognize it when things slow down and I am able to listen to this CD at a time other than the end of the day.

Mr. Fripp has once again shared some of his journal with us and given us the rundown on these soundscape performances. Yet, more importantly, he shares himself with us. I would highly recommend this cd for relaxation. It’s definitely a stress reliever and I believe it would make a nice background for an intimate setting as well.

I’ve always thought that Magna Carta’s Prime Cuts series was an excellent way to showcase the labels artists. Though there are a few other labels that release similar types of compilations, it is my opinion that Magna Carta puts out the best product where this is concerned. All their compilations give these fabulous artists a chance to shine bright while giving the listener the full scope of that artists various styles.

Jordan Rudess is probably best known for his role as keyboardist for the progressive metal band, Dream Theater. Though, his talents far surpass that. You don’t believe it? Just listen to cuts like Universal Mind, originally presented on Liquid Tension Experiment, or Revolutionary Etude, a beautiful classical style piece from the CD, Steinway To Heaven.

Every cut on this compilation is a masterpiece. Just what you would expect from a former child prodogy, such as Mr. Rudess. I was very happy to receive a copy of Jordan Rudess -Prime Cuts because it gave me a chance to discover a foray of music that I was not aware of and I feel anyone who is a connoisseur of great music will be satisfied by this compilation.

Other performers include such talents as Terry Bozzio, Tony Levin, Rod Morgenstein, John Petrucci, Simon Phillips and more. There are even a couple numbers that feature 80’s pretty boy, Kip Winger. In which, we get to see some of what I feel are his best performances, though, much different than one might expect from Winger. Along with Rudess’ fabulous keyboards, Winger’s voice on Tear Before The Rain makes this cut the best song on the disc.

The amazing thing about Jordan Rudess -Prime Cuts is that, much like most of the Prime Cuts series, it flows as if the songs were meant to be compiled in this order, even though there are varying styles and artists performing them. This is something that a true listener, like myself, can really appreciate. Once again, I give credit to the magnificant team at Magna Carta for keeping it – ‘about the music.’

I give a 10 of 10 to all parties invloved!!

Take Todd Mack, for instance. Todd’s one of those music journeymen that seems to enjoy life unconditionally. From his early work (both solo and with the band The Griswolds) in Atlanta to his current endeavors in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, his music is quirky, catchy and fun. His last album, Yonder The Big Blue Holler, emphasized an alt-country feel and featured some of the finest musicians in Western Mass.

Square Peg, Round Hole, with his band The Star Alternative, is a big shift to the kind of rocking garage music that you can’t help but dance to. The CD kicks off with Tell Me, feedback, distorted chords, Led Zeppelin inspired guitar licks and all, and from there it’s a long fun ride.

Bombs Away demonstrates Todd at his best, taking shots at both romantic and political relationships at once with a deft pen. It starts out with a typical “once there was a time when you and I were lovers” before veering off into the simple yet frightening chorus of “bombs away, it’s easier than talking, bombs away, no compromise…” It’s scary how well this song works on so many levels, and that’s a big nod to Todd’s songwriting talents.

Tracks three and ten, Why You Do This To Me and Mary Go ‘Round, were written by Glenn Foster, a Boston based songwriter and performer. The former, a throw back to sixties pop, though sparsely arranged with lots of space, seems to propel itself along while the backing vocals seem to come from nowhere and carry things along much the Kinks’ early hits. Mary Go ‘Round, on the other hand, is a dense sonic wall reminiscent of the Stones’ best days.

All sorts of musical styles pop up throughout the songs on this album. Him Not Me combines twangy country vocals with roadhouse rock on the verses and percolating ska rhythms on the chorus. And the funky island beat continues on in the Camper Van Beethoven cover Take The Skinheads Bowling. Matt Sermini’s drum work is spot on and his vocal harmonies make you picture him with a huge grin on his face while playing (and if you see these guys live, you’ll see he’s always smiling and having a great time).

True, featuring some very hot lead playing by guitarist James Bill, alternately purrs with a silky R&B groove and a thundering rock chorus. Will Curtiss’ bass work is a textbook example of how a good bass player puts the song before himself. He doesn’t waste a note while displaying a versatility many players only hope for. And all the band’s harmonies are terrific, especially the wonderfully bizarre harmonies of Sweet Tokin’ Mama (another great example of Todd’s talent at turning a phrase), which are a real treat.

If there were any justice in the world, The More You Drink (…”the better we sound…”) would be a mandatory cover for bar bands across the world.

The CD winds down with some interesting variations on styles. The Game once again evokes the Kinks, but this time of the seventies decade. They Say is a wonderful piece of pop writing while Latte gracefully shifts from arty jazz to blue-collar rock depending on the narrator’s viewpoint. The final cut, Take The S, is pure country, although with a stinging lyrical twist.

All in all, Square Peg, Round Hole is a lot of fun. You can order this CD through CD Baby and from Todd Mack’s website.

Joe Bonamassa, as his press kit tells me, has been playing since he was four years old. It sounds it. He’s got excellent chops and a great feel for the blues. You & Me, his latest CD, infuses his evident love of the blues with more of a southern, swampy sound and it works from the first note of the opening number, a tastefully understated cover of Charley Patton’s High Water Everywhere. Not only is his guitar work spot on, he’s got a terrific voice for the blues. That’s not something of which most would-be blues guitarists can boast.

Two of Joe’s own songs follow – Bridge To Better Days and the drop dead gorgeous Asking Around For You. While the latter could have done well with a little less strings in the mix, Joe’s guitar work, very reminiscent of one of his major influences, Robben Ford, keeps the song from sinking totally into sentiment. It’s a tough highwire to walk, but he pulls it off with aplomb.

Joe, in fact, emulates his many guitar heroes very well. So Many Roads brings to mind an interesting cross of B. B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughn while we get a wild blend of Chuck Berry and Buddy Guy in the rollicking I Don’t Believe.

As wild as he can get with fast runs, Joe’s actually at his best when he settles in and plays sparsely. Ry Cooder’s Tamp ‘Em Up Solid, just acoustic guitar and some resonator slide lead, is one of the best tracks on the CD.

The enthralling instrumental Django, Bosmans and Lefebvre’s homage to the king of Gypsy jazz, follows. You can imagine sitting and listening to this out on the grass under the stars and thinking life couldn’t get any better.

Tea For One, yes the Led Zeppelin song, follows and this too is a wonderful homage to another influential guitarist, Jimmy Page. Wisely, Joe doesn’t try to mimic Robert Plant’s vocals and his cover is even stronger for the choice. Joe’s voice works incredibly well with the material just by being himself. It’s a lesson most singers would be better off learning early in life.

Jimmy Page is again evoked in Palm Trees Helicopters And Gasoline, as is Leo Kottke. It’s a wild solo acoustic piece and will probably become a very sought-after guitar tab for the single acoustic player.

Sonny Boy Williamson’s Your Funeral And My Trial offers a great trade-off between Joe’s guitar and the sharp and exciting harmonica playing courtesy of twelve year-old LD Miller. This is one song that could have gone on much longer!

The original song, Torn Down, brings us back full circle to the swamp feel of the opening number and it’s definitely been a fun trip. You & Me is certain to please Joe’s fans and will hopefully introduce him to an even bigger audience.

Flamenco music is alive and well in Toronto, Canada! Buscando mi voz (“Finding My Voice”), the debut CD of Nicolas Hernandez is a treat for those who love the lyrical expressiveness and percolating rhythms of Flamenco.

The CD jumps right into things with Un poquito por tangos, a lively dance number. Backed by Jesse Cook’s percussion, Nicolas’ guitar effortlessly soars along, providing the melody, bass lines and chordal accompaniment. It’s easy to close your eyes and think you’re enjoying yourself in a small café in Spain.

Listening to this CD, you realize how universal an instrument the guitar truly is. A mis maestros, the second track, starts out with some lines that a bluesman would die for and then continues on in a more classical style before settling into a wonderful Latin dance beat, skillfully accompanied by Ravi Namipally’s tabla playing.

Nicolas makes a smart move by not turning his debut CD into a “guitar only” affair. Besides the terrific percussion provided, he also gets some great assists from Chris Church’s violins in De Toronto a Sevilla and the delightful Fantasia mistica. And the aforementioned Ravi Namipally’s tabla is integral to making Raga por bulerias work so well. And Ernie Tollar’s haunting bansuri , a flute, transforms Nanita para my hija Catalina into a song that you’ll have in your head for days. The interplay between the bansuri and guitar is truly mesmerizing.

Flamenco is all about the dance, and you can’t help but hear songs like Sonando y viviendo without wanting to get up and dance. In addition to playing and touring with Jesse Cook’s band, Nicolas is the Music Director for the Esmeralda Enrique Spanish Dance Company, writing pieces for the group.

Toronto is a very ethnically diverse city and that is reflected in this CD. The closing Buscando mi voz demonstrates Nicolas’ wonderful ability to create an intense fusion of flamenco with other world music, taking rhythms from all around the world and shaping music that is greater than all its parts.

Here’s hoping that this is the first CD of many from this talented guitarist.

You can purchase Buscando mi voz online through Nicolas Hernandez website. or, if you happen to live in Toronto, at L’Atelier Grigorian on Yorkville Avenue.

And now for something completely different – Really Different!!

I was very curious when I saw that ex-Queens of the Stone Age drummer, Gene Trautmann was half of Evil Beaver. Yes -it means what it sounds like (a two piece.) The other half of Evil Beaver is lead bassist, vocalist and founder Evie Evil.

This duo rocks and there is no need to add another player to this group. This is the first time I’ve been able to say a group has the best elements of ‘full’ and ‘raw’ at the same time. Some may feel this is a contradiction of terms but it’s, in my opinion, the best way to describe their sound.

This EP offers something that both the punk rocker and the technically adept can appreciate. I’ve really never heard anything like this. The only camparison I’d feel safe making is the final track, Cherry Master, sounds a bit like it could have been part of a Jane’s Addiction set way back in their LA club days. Evie’s voice sounds a bit like Perry Ferrall on the number. Even her note choice is very close to something you might hear Perry do.

Models of Virtue was engineered by Mike Terry(Foo Fighters, The Eagles), mixed by Mike Terry and Evil Beaver, and written and produced by Evil Beaver.

Bass players and drummers alike should enjoy this EP quite a bit. Hell, I’m a guitarist and I love it. All you people who are looking for something new and exciting that has unique written all over it. Evil Beaver is it. I can’t believe how much is going on musically -though it sounds simpler than it actually is (and you really gotta love that name.)