Shôryûken'd...

Sometimes life gives you a present.

Sometimes life asks you to try harder.

Sometimes life just shôryûkens you in the face !

You see, I've become quite confident in that perfect pitch shit. I've been practicing for quite some time now and I'm glad to say that YOU CAN GET PERFECT PITCH EVEN IF YOU WEREN'T BORN WITH IT !
For Christ's sake.

So right now I'm able to recognize the white notes on a keyboard (= C major scale) on 3 octaves with, like, 99% accuracy. For someone who's supposed not to be able to acquire it, that's not bad. I still have some troubles when I add the black notes of the keyboard, but I'm sure I'll be able to achieve a 12-tones perfect pitch.

Today I went to some friend's place and there was this Japanese girl that I knew had born-perfect pitch, but I've never had witnessed before.
So we're sitting about to eat, we start talking about perfect pitch, how we hear the tones (like, the tone I recognize the most easily is B, because it sounds like you're about to stumble onto C) and my friend just tries to tease her, so he strikes his half-full glass of water with his chopsticks and asks "what tone is this ?".

She makes him strike again, and says : "it's a F". She then turns to the piano behind her and hits the F key.

IT WAS A FUCKING F !!! OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDD !!!

You see, my point as a guitar teacher is to tell my pupils they shouldn't blame the gear, right ? It's not the fingers size, it's not the cables, it's not the strings. It's supposed to be your effort, right ? right ?

I mean, if there is something we've learned from Japanese anime, it's that with effort we can overcome anything and anyone, right ?

But Mother Nature just harshly shôryûken'd my face today. Not that I'm about to quit or anything, but I feel like 1/3 of my life gauge has been taken away...

Put that guitar down and listen.

There are guitar players that should let their guitar do the talking.
They open their mouth and you can't help thinking : "You're an asshole, shut up and play !".

And there is this guy. As I've already said, I don't even like his late stuff, but there is something about him : every time he opens his mouth, nothing comes out but sheer musical intelligence.

Enjoy.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Perfect Pitch !

Hi there, it's been a long time !

You may remember one of my firsts articles when I said I didn't even have Perfect Pitch. Well, it may be about to change.
But first, let's talk about Perfect Pitch.

Every time you look for the words "perfect pitch", it's associated with another word : "myth". Hence "the myth of perfect pitch".
Well, let's make a clear statement here :

1) Perfect pitch itself is not a myth. Some "real" people have it, on planet Earth, so it's a FACT. And by definition, FACTS are not MYTHS.

2) What is regarded as a myth, however, is the ability to obtain perfect pitch if you weren't born with it.
So while people usually don't argue that perfect pitch does exist, they use to argue about the possibility to obtain it. Some say you have to be born with it, some say you have to get it before you're 5 year-old, some say before 20. Some say "bullshit !".

3) Perfect pitch is not a fixed ability. It's not simple like "you have it or you don't". Even people who have it don't have it at the same degree.
Pefect pitch is the ability to sing or recognize a tone without previous reference, like, you're at a party and a beautiful girl comes to you :

Beautiful girl : Hi !
You : Hi ! What's you name ?
Beautiful girl : I'll tell you if you can sing me some G#.
You : WTF ?!

Therefore you can say you've got perfect pitch to some extent if you're capable of singing or recognizing a single tone (let's say A, for instance). But that's obviously not what musicians are looking for. They don't want the maid room, they want the royal suite.
So further into the ability, some people can recognize and sing all the tones. Then clusters of tones (like chords, for instance), those clusters may be of 2, 3 or 10 notes.
At the end of the spectrum, we may have people capable of identifying the frequency of the tone :

Mr Freak : can you give me a 440 A ?
You :*playing the piano* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Mr Freak : What kind of A is this ?! This piano sounds horribly flat, that was a 439 A !
You : WTF ?!

Okay, so let's make it simple : it's usually OK to say you've GOT perfect pitch if you can sing in tune or recognize the 12 tones.

That was the definition part. Now to the news.

I thought it would be cool to be able to write on my blog that though I'm about to be 35 I've managed to GET perfect pitch at my ripe old age. Just to piss off the guys who say you can't.
The good news is : it seems to work, slowly but surely.

And in case you're thinking I'm gifted, or that I had it without knowing it, here is a real story that, though shameful, proves that I DIDN'T have it :

Some years ago I tried to enter the American School of Modern Music in Paris, France. There were several tests, first some writing exam, then the oral exam where you had to play some stuff, recognize chords and sing some music sheet.
I failed miserably at the second part. Here is how it went :

Teacher : *playing various chords on a piano*
Me : *failing at telling what kind of chords they are*
Teacher, thinking "at least he'll get this one" : *Major 7 chord face*
Me : "Major 7th ?"
Teacher : "yes"
Me : "YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAHH !" *running everywhere, high-fiving everyone in the room*

I was that bad.

So lately I really wanted to improve my ear and I looked on the net and all, and there was one guy who gave a simple hint : just listen to the tone of your phone every hour.
The thing is, I have the kind of job where you're on the phone several times per hour. Not only that, but since we have an internal line, the tone I get when I pick up the phone is E. Then I dial 0 and get the national A. So every time I pick up the phone I get to memorize 2 tones instead of one.
Not only that, but A is a perfect fourth above E and, as you may know, France's national anthem "La Marseillaise" starts with a perfect fourth interval. Lucky me.

I've started 2 weeks ago. Before picking up the phone I sing an E, pick up and check, readjust my E, then sing an A, dial 0 and check again.
Thanks to the Marseillaise, my A were always in tune from the start, but my E were flat (more like D, actually). Now I'm just a little flat with my E, but I can sing A without hearing the E first.

So my advice is : there are tons of "methods" to get perfect pitch, but before buying anything, try the telephone trick, it DOES work. At least you'll get a perfect A.

The other "trick" I use is a Nintendo DS software in Japanese called "Tenohira Gakushuu - Zettai Onkan Training". Please, DO NOT mistake it for another game with the words "zettai onkan" (wich means "perfect pitch"), "Zettai Onkan Otoda Master", which has nothing to do with perfect pitch training !
I'm using that soft every night before sleeping, it starts with chords recognition (it says it works better when starting with chords instead of single tones).

I can't say I've become Mr P.P. yet, but the music I hear in my head is a lot clearer. I've read that some people were able to get the 12 tones in 1 week, but I'm not in a hurry.
I've had many readers coming here thanks to the DragonForce articles, let's see how many will come for the Perfect Pitch...;-D.

This blog is also well known for its ranting tone, so here is the ranting part :

How is it that most people talking about perfect pitch on discussion fora are orchestra musicians ?
I mean, I can understand the quest for perfect pitch when you're a jazz musician improvising on chords thrown at you without warning, but what is the frigging purpose of getting perfect pitch when your job is about READING MUSIC ?!!! WTF ?!

Nuno was damn right !

If you've ever read interviews of Nuno Bettencourt, you know that the man gets a bit pissed off when he's asked for transcriptions of his licks. The reason is that Nuno learnt everything by ear, spending countless hours to understand what he was listening to, and he thinks that giving tablatures to people is spoiling them.
When you start the guitar, you may think that it's kind of extreme (no pun intended), and that Nuno should be a little more tolerant and cooperative.

Then you grow older, hopefully a better guitar player, and you stumble upon this video. The reason I didn't embed it is because I want you to go read the comments. Right now there are 49 comments, out of which only one says it's bad (in Spanish).
All the other comments are from deaf assholes who honestly think the guy nailed the solo, when he's playing something that's very far from the original "Kiss of Death" solo, and he even makes mistakes.
How in the world is that possible ? There is even one guy who says "Incorporating Open string soloing (:53) was a REAL eye-opener !"
WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU SAYING ?! How can you listen to the original solo and NOT realize it's played with the open E string ?!

People, you just kill me.

Here is another version of the "Kiss of Death" solo. As said in the comments, it's probably the best version on Youtube, and the guy actually nailed it (some fingerings don't look very Lynchesque, though...) :



I have one problem with that version, though : it doesn't sound right. As some people said in the comments : he's a clean player. Too clean. He's playing that solo like he learnt it from tabs, there is no rage in his playing, his vibrato is too soft. If Lynch plays it like a tiger, this guy plays it like a cat.
Granted, he knows how to play it and should be able to add some rage in it easily.

But people, please use your ears : it's not because you've got the notes under your fingers that you're playing the same thing. There is a lot more to music than the notes.

Common sense

Here is a piece of advice few guitar teachers will give you because it's a bit out of the "guitar lesson" domain, but since I've seen this mistake many times, I thought I should give you some warning about how you should treat your amp. I suppose many of you go to their friends places to play, or put their amps in their cars when they go to a studio or to a gig.

How should you lay your amp in your car ?

Well, I've seen MANY people lay their amps with the face (where the sound comes from and the brand name is visible) upward. You SHOULDN'T do that. There is a speaker inside of your amp and that speaker consists of a cone ending with a magnet. That magnet is pretty heavy and if you put your amp with the face upward, it means every vibration of your car and the Earth gravity will make that heavy magnet pull on the membrane and may eventually tear it.

An even worse way of laying your amp would be to have it "standing", because the up and down vibrations of your car are perpendicular to the direction the membrane is supposed to move (forth and back for a standing amp) ! The best way to lay your amp in your car is face downward, so the magnet is on the top of the cone, thus reducing the vibrations (the weight of the magnet prevents the membrane of the cone from moving too much).
Just my 2 cents.

Mr Nox 1 - Ibanez 0

Hello folks, Happy New Year to everyone !

You may not play on Gibson, but you might be interested by this article.

Now take a closer read at this quote : "Steve Vai, for example, told me he realized that he can play chords now that he couldn’t play before because they always sounded wrong."

Hey, what's that ? Chords sounded wrong on those fabulous white JEM ? Steve Vai, The God Of Guitar can't get his Ibanez shit properly in tune ? Woah, I'm shocked !

I didn't get the girl !

I’m preparing a long article for Christmas (not purposedly, though), so in the meantime I’ll try to entertain you with a short story :

A long long time ago, I was eighteen and enjoying the electric guitardom. I was a big fan of all the guitar players of the 90’s (Satriani, Vai, Malmsteen, Vinnie Moore, etc.) and, let’s admit it, playing those guys’ stuff was fun as hell. Every time there was a party and a guitar, I would play, jam, entertain people with lightning-fast soli. Not to show off, though, I enjoyed playing the guitar, that’s all. One night, there was a HUGE party at a friend’s place and half of my high-school was there. OK, maybe a quarter. There were obviously other guitar players, at least one, and there was this girl that was as dumb as a cow but hot as hell. I can’t remember her name, but I clearly remember that most of the guys had their eyes on her. There were several rooms in the appartment : the main room, where people would listen to very loud music, dance and eat (and drink themselves to death, of course), my friend’s room, where some guys would play Mario Kart on the SNES, and the parent’s room where we were, 2 friends of mine, another guitar player, and the girl. Since the other guitar player and me were showing each other some licks, the girl started to say that it must be cool to play the guitar and that she’d like to learn it...
Sounds like an opening, right ? Well, I have to be completely honest with you and tell you straight that even on a deserted island she wouldn’t have humped me. Hummm, maybe she would have because she was kind of slutty, but not in normal conditions and I knew it already, so it’s not like I just should have said something like “see those fingers flying on the fretboard, how about you let them fly on your G-spot ?”. Not at all. But at least it would have been some kind of special relationship if I could have taught her some guitar and make everybody else jealous. Remember I was 18.

Now you see, there are 2 kinds of guitar players : the technical player and the song player. I could play Malmsteen stuff, but without a backing track it didn’t sound that good, you know (try it someday : entertain people with “Far Beyond the Sun” with only your guitar…). So if I was to teach you the guitar, it would probably be something like “OK, here is a warm-up exercise, put your fingers that way, try to keep the rythm even, etc.”. And the other guy, he was more of a song player and he shew her Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall”. If you don’t know that song, let’s make it simple : it’s a ONE-CHORD SONG. You just strum one chord et voilà : you’re playing a real song ! It didn’t take you much time, it didn’t take you a tremendous memorizing effort, nor fingers synchronization, you know how to enjoy the guitar 5 minutes after you’ve picked up the instrument.

Guess who she chose for a teacher.

Gilmour : 1 - Malmsteen : 0