Danny Gatton Videos!

Here’s a great series Danny Gatton did before the Hotlicks tapes. 9 parts.

Thanks to 4engle. He’s got some good vids here

Vintage Burns Ad

I like the “just as if they were real musical instruments” line.

Love Pedals

I’ve been looking for a smaller echo pedal lately. I think my Boss Space Echo sounds great but between that and my Dunlop volume pedal, there’s not much space left on the pedalboard. I’d like something I could throw in my Guitar case when I go to a jam. I can do without the tap-tempo and the crazy space noises the Boss has. I came across these Love pedals , Andy Sumners from the Police swears by them. They’re very reasonably priced for a hand-made boutique pedal. I’m looking forward to trying one of these  Echo Baby’s out, they also make a Mini Tremolo and a way-cool dual channel,booster,overdrive called the Les Lius.

Big Joe Burke Hits the Road Again

Once again Big Joe Burke is heading east, to Edmonton and Calgary, with stops in Nelson and Nanton. Not sure what or where Nanton is but I’m sure I’ll find out shortly. Last time we went east, we had Mike McDonald (not the Doobie bro) from Junior Gone Wild open for us at the New City in Edmonton. We also ended up playing “Calgary’s Home of Heavy Metal”, Vern’s. Strangely enough, the Punks and Metalheads loved us.Playing Johnny Cash’s “Cocaine Blues” will win over the toughest audience.

This time we’re promoting the new disc “Quiver”. We have 3 songs on the top 10 Country Finals Chart at Songvault #3, 4 and 5. The dates on this trip are;

Oct 7 -Edmonton, Alberta(Emporess Ale House)

Oct 8- Nanton, Alberta(the Auditorium)

Oct 9- Calgary,Alberta(2 shows, the Palimino-early:4.45 and Shuckalucks- headlining:9.30)

Oct 10-Nelson, BC (the Royal on Baker)

Visit Big Joe Burke on Myspace and the Main site

Check out the new disc “Quiver” and our debut “Love or Money” at CD Baby

Come out and say hi, if we’re in your town. Our lovely merch-gal G from YVR productions, will have plenty of CD’s and T-shirts available. We’re all looking forward to getting out Vancouver for a few days.
Here’s a slideshow of “Toe the Line” from Quiver

New Deadcats Disc Preview!

“Look as Hell” is finally done, 2 years in the making, first new Deadcats material in 4 years! So we’re pretty excited about finally getting it done. As usual it covers Rockabilly, Instro-Surf, Garage-Punk, Country, and Psychobilly. There’s a guest appearance from Paul Pigat on Hank’s Cadillac, he lays down an incredible solo. This is the first Deadcats disc with horns, “Motoloco” features a couple of Trumpet parts that drive the tune. “Motoloco” was the first tune we recorded, we were hired to write and record a theme song for a new video game, that was never released. So if you’re wondering what possessed us to record a song with 1 word in the lyrics, that’s why.

This our first disc using the Upright Bass instead of our signature “Bucket Bass Sound”. You could hear the Bucket(washtub) on recordings, but it just didn’t cut it live. Sure, it looked cool lighting it on fire but it was really just a prop. Marc L’Esperance did a great job, this is by far the best sounding Deadcats disc since “Bucket of Love”. He’s a master of coaxing incredible performances from players. You can hear a good chunk of the disc on the Deadcats Main Site

Guitar Pick Punch

This looks like a cool idea. You can cut your own Guitar picks from sheets of celluloid. $24.95 plus shipping WILL buy you a lot of picks, pretty neat idea. I can see this appealing to the do-it-yourselfers. Here’s the website

Lessons From the Rev

9 part interview by D’Addario’s Guitar.com. The quality isn’t great, it’s a 2nd or 3rd generation copy but the info is good. I wish they would re-post this on guitar.com. Enjoy some amazing picking!

Thanks to garageink74 on Youtube, this is one of the best Rockabilly/Psychobilly Guitar vids I’ve seen. If anyone knows where I could find the originals, do tell.

How Do You Visualise Musical Info?

Howdy, Reddit readers. Thanks in advance for checking this out.

This is something everybody does differently. Self taught Guitarists tend to use Chord boxes and string/fret numbers. Some people see the notes on a 5 line staff, some see colors. Do you visualize the entire fingerboard? To me it’s  like whistling or humming. I  just think of the melody in my head(and the Root notes of whatever key, I’m playing in) and hopefully my fingers automatically play them. It took me a good 5-6 years of practicing 4 hours a day, to reach this level of proficiency. I want to find a fast/easy way of getting beginner Guitarists over this hump.  How you see the parts you are about to play?

I need to find the simplest, fastest and easiest to remember way of looking at Chords and Melodies. I don’t mean writing charts, this mainly a visualization exercise but feel free to use a diagram. It helps if you tell me whether you are self-taught and if you read music(not TABs).

I find that when you play different instruments or even use alt tunings, you have to simplify the way you store Musical information. Any tricks, tips or ideas would be greatly appreciated.  There might even be a Deadcats or Gorehound Sound T-shirt in it for the best comment.

Building a Maj Scale

As hard as I try, to avoid writing about Music theory, I need to find an easy way to help my students understand the fingerboard as quickly as possible. A Piano keyboard is simple. It goes low-hi, left to right. Notes are never duplicated, sharps and flats are color coded black, there’s no micro-tones (in between notes from bending) and you don’t need to learn how to tune a piano before you can play.

The two  most important points I want to make are; Think of the fingerboard like a piano, 12 frets in a line. When you learn a scale, melody, chord or progression on one string, it’s easy to visualize how the notes relate to each other. Of coarse this only works for Open strings, so learning this one pattern will give you five different scales;E,A,D,G and B.

Secondly, forget about naming notes with letters. Yes you should learn what ALL the notes on the fingerboard are so you can always find your Root note. When you are playing scales or songs,  Numbers are much easier to remember AND visualize. Europeans often learn the Do Re Mi scale instead of notes but neither of these methods work as well as Numbers

Unless you are one of the approximately 10% of N Americans with perfect pitch, you need help visualizing and internalizing the distances between notes. This generally takes weeks or months to understand, so don’t panic and think “oh my god, he’s making me learn more math”. If you can keep the 12 months in a calender straight and remember a 7 digit phone number, you should have no problem.

So here it is without further delay, the Da Vinci code of Western Musical Theory in all it’s advanced mathematical glory; 2 2 1 2 2 2 1.

Add em up, it’s 12. One for each fret. That number again 221 2221, Use the fret markers to help line up their positions on the fingerboard. Once you can clearly visualize a 12 fret section of the fingerboard(again Don’t worry about what all the notes are) and how the 8 notes in an octave are spaced out, you are halfway to understanding the scales, modes and chords in every key. They are ALL based in this same simple formula.

That’s it, 2212221    Wholetone, Wholetone, Semitone, Wholetone, Wholetone, Wholetone, Semitone.

Once you learn the formula, you can build a Major scale in ANY key. Every Octave is exactly the same so you only have to visualize ONE octave, don’t forget the note’s on either end are the same (Root note, Tonic)

Learning to do this on one string is the key to figuring out the grid pattern of 6 courses(strings)

All 6 of the strings are spaces evenly in Fourths (5 fret space) except the space between the 2nd and 3rd string is shorter, a Maj Third interval(4 frets)

Getting to know all the intervals will help you understand how all the notes relate to each other and why Major keys sound very different from minor.

I learned Music theory as a youth (11-16) so it was mostly a matter of memorizing everything I could whether I understood it or not, it was in the memory banks. I wish someone had showed me the importance of learning (and visualizing) intervals as well as notes. It’s important to just visualize the ONE Octave. When you think of the Octaves above and below the one you are using, this triples the amount of info you need to keep straight. Aside from being at a higher or lower pitch/frequency, an A is always an A, a Fifth interval is always a Fifth. Avoid taxing your brain with duplicate notes.

Rhythm works the same way, the spaces are as important as the accents.  It’s natural for Guitarists to use letter notes, but it will limit you. When you learn a song by the Chords eg  a C, F, Dm, G progression. You can only play it in C. If you learned it as a 1, 4, 2, 5 progression (in C), you’ve already done the math. You can transpose easily and you can SEE how the notes relate to each other.

Please comment if you have an easy way to demonstrate or visualize the Major scale.

One of the hardest things about teaching is putting yourself in the position of trying to learn a subject all over again. So please let me know if you find this reasonably easy to follow.

Take time to visualize the fingerboard, without having it in front of you. Can’t sleep? Don’t count sheep. The half hour before you fall asleep is the Best time to learn (and retain) new info. Count frets, visualize the fingerboard and how the different scales chords and progressions would look on one string. Try it, it works great. Don’t think about that new Guitar you can’t afford or how many cool sounds you could make with a phase oscillating wank o tron 2000 pedal with 3 preset modulating “spasm” modes. All that fancy stuff is not going to make you a better Guitar player.

Just one more time 2212221 call today, be a better Guitar player tomorrow. I can’t promise that this will make sense overnight. Take some time and internalize how the Major scale sounds. There are literally thousands of songs built around the Maj scale. Some of my favorite examples are;

the Andy Griffith Show theme, (oops, there’s a min 3 in there too) that’s why it sounds kinda bluesy

Sailors Hornpipe,

Brown Eyed Girl,

Home on the Range,

Candle in the Wind,

Walk on the Wild Side,

Rebel Rouser,

Dixie/Yankee Doodle,

Dueling Banjos

Please send me any suggestions I could add to this list.

Free Stuff

Anyone starting a business, a band or just promoting themselves should know about these 2 great companies. First Vista Print gives away free business cards, post cards, t-shirts, hats, posters. You just pay for shipping. The free offers are halfway down the page to the left.  And You Send It will let you send large files for free (up to 2GB) like movies, Wav files. If anyone  knows of any other useful free stuff or services, please let me know. No free Guitar lessons please.