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2010-05-16T01:58:00.002+02:00

Ladies and gentlemen, here is Mr. Chris Broderick. Yes, I'm a big Marty Friedman fan, but NO, I won't talk shit about Mr. Broderick, because I've seen him play some jazzy stuff and I liked it.

Nevertheless, I'd like you to watch the following video :

Now here is my piece of advice, and if you must learn only one thing from this website, it should be the following statement :

Any solo that doesn't feature a single bend is A PIECE OF SHIT !

What people don't tell you about scalloped fretboards.

2010-04-26T06:09:00.003+02:00

There is a Japanese pharmacist out there who's the best Yngwie imitator, he plays everything note for note, you have to check him out, he's amazing.

Watching him made me want to play on a scalloped fretboard, and I started looking for one, then found a very nice Carvin guitar with a scalloped fretboard on eBay. Lucky !

You've all heard Yngwie and others say "it's harder to play fast on a scalloped fretboard but you get a better grip for the bends". I've always suspected that was bullshit and they were sayng it to show off, like "Man, I play so fucking fast, I need to handicap myself or else my fingers will burn".

Now that I have tested my guitar, I can tell you what a scalloped fretboard truly is :

- it's not harder to play fast. BULL.SHIT. Maybe if you're Rusty Cooley it makes a difference, not if you're a normal fast player.
- it IS harder to do slides.
- it makes pull-off so easy you'll just cry over all those years you've wasted on a normal fretboard.
- chords are easier to do because your fingers have more grip on the strings.
- pieces for finger picking become 10 times easier (like The Portrait, Dee, etc.).
- sweep picking feels easier too, though at first your fingers might occasionally slip under the strings.
- you WON'T press so hard as your chords will sound sharp. This is a common fear among players who haven't tested a scalloped fretboard yet, like "there is a risk to press too hard and make everything sound sharp". BULL.SHIT. It doesn't happen with chords, nor single notes, everything just play like a normal fretboard, intonation-wise.

Now you know what a scalloped fretboard is about.

Guitarists I won't ever talk shit about : Marty Friedman

2009-09-27T01:17:00.019+02:00

Why will I never talk shit about Marty ? Because Marty is awesome, and if you've been joining the spineless crowd that calls him a weaboo because he's been living in Japan, congratulations, you've made it into my "class A assholes" book.

To my great despair, Marty Friedman is still very underrated as a guitar soloist (regular absent of "best guitar soloist of the year" polls), and I RAAAAAGE every time I stumble upon some video of him and Paul Gilbert, and guys in the comments think that Paul is a better soloist than Marty.

Protip : Paul is a great and reliable guitar player, but a horrible soloist, and I can sense from miles away guitar players that have been influenced by Paul as a soloist (especially in Japan) : they suck. Even Paul himself said so (he actually said that students influenced by him sounded shitty, whereas students influenced by The Beatles sounded great). If you want to know, I think he's actually more of a Jimmy Page-like player, coming up with great riffs and all.
Yes, copypasta of your drills into a song and calling it a solo makes you a horrible soloist : Paul is a scales&patterns kind of soloist, wich is the shittiest way of soloing ever. Watch that "terrifying difficulties" video above, find some melodic phrasing in his soloing and prove me wrong.
Plus Marty has a much MUCH better tone.

Things that objectively makes Marty a great guitar player and soloist :
- fucking awesome tone.
- fucking awesome tightness in the rhythm.
- fucking awesome left hand technique (vibrato, bends, etc.).
- his soli are always about melody and phrasing, not about ripping some mechanical patterns he's been rehearsing for hours.

Things that fit my personal tastes in Marty's playing :
- great use of tensions and fucked up notes nobody is expecting, plus awesome resolutions (Marty's solo starts at 3'43").
- original soloing for every song. I mean no disrespect for people like Steve Morse or Yngwie Malmsteen, for instance, but seriously : you've heard one of their soli, you've heard them all. These guys, as good as they are, they're overusing their gimmicks, it's to the point where I could pick up 3/4 of their soli by ear just by linking gimmicks.
There is no such thing as gimmicks in Marty's playing and I find that absolutely stunning. Joe Satriani and Steve Vai also have gimmicks, but not Marty.
Of course he's using gimmicks of structures (like, repetition), but nothing such as licks.

And no, I won't even say shit about his WTF?!-way of holding his pick...

Guitarists I won't ever talk shit about : Nuno Bettencourt

2009-07-01T22:45:00.029+02:00

Why will I never talk shit about Nuno ? Well, first of all, because the guy is fucking handsome, and if you say shit about handsome guys, people will assume you're jealous and then your argument is invalid, whatever it is.
Not only is Nuno so hot your girlfriend would instantly drop you for a date with him, the guy is also endowed like a donkey, as we'll soon demonstrate.

You see, when asked about the transcription of his "Flight of the Wounded Bumblebee" in a magazine, Nuno said : "I've seen the transcription. It was really note-for-note, but I don't actually play all those notes, I'm using a delay, so I'm only playing one note out of two."

What kind of enormous shlong must you have, in the nineties, when every guitarist tries to become the next Yngwie Malmsteen and play faster than the next guy, to tackle the magazine who transcribed your song and bluntly say to guitar professionnals that you ACTUALLY PLAY TWICE SLOWER THAN THEY THOUGHT YOU DID ?!!!
Hey, DragonFraud fanboys, are you getting the hint or what ?

Speaking of which, I kind of remember that DragonFraud uses the most shameless excuse for not being able to play their own songs live : they're drunk.
That's too bad, because I have yet to see a guitar video where Nuno is not stoned like he's jet-lagged from another planet, and the guy STILL is able to nail his solo, and he even says he's sorry for "fucking it up". When asked to play it again slower, because as high as he is, he can STILL play it at full speed, he plays it... at nearly the same speed ! Is that guy dense or what ?!

No, he's not ! He's NUNO BETTENCOURT ! Nuno doesn't know what time is because he IS time ! The guy's so tight on ryhthm that the UTC would probably be 10% more accurate if it was based on Nuno's playing.

And when asked to design his own model of guitar, what kind of shit does he come up with ?
One of the best rock guitars ever made, no less !
Everyone who has already played on a N4 knows it's the real deal. The sound is just great, the design is practical and that Stephen's extended cutaway is just awesome.

Did I mention that Nuno was also proficient on many other instruments, like the drums ? Does he brag about it ? No, he doesn't. The reason people started to know that Nuno can play the drums is because Joe Satriani talked about it : you see, they all were at Sevilla in 1992 for a big guitar event, like some kind of penis competition, and when there were only guitar players on the stage for the rehearsal, people went like "Err...guys, we don't have a drummer". That's when Nuno put his guitar down and went behind the drums to help everyone because, you see, he didn't mind.
And other guitarists were just blown away.
How cool is that, huh ?!

But you know what ? Though those are good enough reasons to praise Nuno, I haven't tell you yet why I respect him : the guy spends 99,9% of his talent in writing songs.
Though his shredding abilities can piss off even Mr Scary, who once called him a "fiery little fucker", Nuno doesn't shred that much. Being the Mandingo of the guitar world, he doesn't need to compensate for anything dick-related and thus doesn't try to impress other guys with endless fretboard masturbation.
He writes songs because songs are for cool guys, and are actually more difficult to write than some 3-chords-BGM you'll solo over for 5 minutes.

Did I mention the guy was fucking handsome ?

Guitarists I won't ever talk shit about : Zakk Wylde

2009-06-26T10:46:00.014+02:00

Since I've been dissing and ranting for a long time, I thought it may be cool to explicit that there are still some players that deserve some praise.

Why will I never talk shit about Zakk Wylde ? Well, first of all, because the guy looks like a fucking Viking, and if I were to badmouth him, I probably wouldn't live long enough to brag about it to my friends.

To be perfectly honest, I know nearly nothing of his work with Ozzy Osbourne, and I didn't like the few songs I heard from Black Label Society.
The only thing I really know of Zakk is his "Book of Shadows" album.

Book of Shadows is probably one of the best guitar albums ever recorded. EVER. Not only is that album perfect in every aspect of Zakk Wylde's talent, from songwriting to performance – not only on the guitar or any instrument the guy could lay his hands on, but also as lead vocalist –, the album is also perfectly crafted.

Do you think Zakk would let anyone mess with all those tracks he recorded himself (since he plays nearly every instrument on the record) ? You bet he wouldn't ! So he had the legendary Bob Clearmountain mix all those tracks and there you have it : the album just sounds perfect.
I swear if you're one of those guys who don't mind listening to that album as ripped 128kbps .mp3, I curse you to play on Chinese-made shitty guitars for your whole life, since you don't deserve any better.
The cover, the booklet, the art direction, everything contributes to making that album a jewel.

No one could ever listen to that album and not think highly of Zakk Wylde.
And I'm not even talking about his stage presence nor his hardcore interviews...

You're doing it wrong !

2009-02-24T12:33:00.007+01:00

Yeah, I know, I've already written something about that video.

But this time I'm not going to laugh only at his face, but also at his playing.

Adam Fulara, you're doing it wrong.

The instrument you want to play is not the guitar, it's called a piano. Save some bucks and go buy one.

What's that you say ? He's playing it on a guitar on purpose ?

Well, you see, I think it would take him much less time to learn the piano than to learn to play that stuff on a guitar. I mean, do you think he would make that face if he was playing that on the piano ? Certainly not.

If you're playing a double-necked guitar with both of your hands on the fretboards, you've been mistaken : the instrument you want to play is not the guitar, it's called a FUCKIN' piano !
So stop making a fool of yourself and play the adequate instrument.

What's that you say ? Stanley Jordan must be mistaken too, then ?

Have you ever seen Stanley Jordan with that face ?

Thought not.

Rhythm skills+ good looks ? AWESOME !

2008-09-22T00:46:00.002+02:00

Those girls probably won't buy the Introspection tabs, but it's OK, they deliver anyway !

Debunking John Petrucci.

2008-08-26T12:53:00.021+02:00

A long time ago, I was a guitar nerd, so one day I bought a CD (yeah, I'm talking about a time where people actually didn't mind buying CDs) called Guitar's practicing musicians vol. 3. There was a piece of music on it called "Bombay Vindaloo", by a band called Dream Theater.
I liked it very much, so I bought another CD, that one from Dream Theater, called "Live at the Marquee", which featured that track. It had other very good tracks, like "Another hand - The killing hand", the intro of which I immediately picked up by ear, or "Metropolis", the intro of which everyone loves, because it's just fucking awesome.

After that, I obviously bought other albums of Dream Theater, and became a big fan, waiting anxiously for their next release : "Awake".

"Awake" delivered everything a DT fan could dream of : great songs, great production, that album was really excellent. Oh yeah, the cover artwork was very good, too.
The only problem with Awake was that song, "Erotomania", because it became too big, for the wrong reasons.
"Erotomania" is an instrumental track which features 2 soli, the second one being a fast (160 bpm, if I remember well) scale broken into string-skipped-quintuplets-pattern.
As soon as the album was released, a transcription of that song was made available in an issue of Guitar World (that I bought, of course, it's the one about punk with a pink cover), and I have to say that I learnt "Erotomania" with the fingerings given in the magazine, that are different from the fingerings found in the song book later released and supervised by John Petrucci himself (but all of you probably don't give a fuck, since you're used to getting your tabs from the internet, right ?).
I bought that book too.

So that was the time when I was a big DT fan.

Then some disasters occured.

The first one, I wasn't aware of, but its consequences were the most terrible.
The second one was the release of "Falling into Infinity", which was the next DT album (I'm not counting "A change of Season" which was good, too) and sucked big time. It actually sucked so much you could see it by the cover : isn't that one of the shittiest album cover you've ever seen ? Especially for a progressive rock band ? I bought that album because I was a DT fan, but even then I thought that was probably one of the shittiest cover of my whole collection of records, and God knows the Varney team has skills when it comes to shitty covers. Like this one, for instance.

That's when I stopped listening to Dream Theater, something like 10 years ago.

Lately, a friend of mine lent me some DT stuff ("Octavarium" and such), telling me that they've become good again. I gave it a try and I have to say : it sucked big time, much more than before.
Of course, it sucked mostly because it was Dream Theater : had it been any other band, it could have been OK. But from the band that once released "Awake", you must be kidding.
It's the exact same shit they've been doing : the same passages of that "riding guitar", the same way of structuring songs, the same lyrics that make me want to butcher a nun...
No seriously, what's your problem, people ? Have you listened to DT lyrics, lately ? "Life is this, life is that" ? What's with all the preaching ? I already have a dad, thank you James Labrie, I don't need you to become my new daddy. As for what life is about, I think I figured it out already.

So while I wasn't looking, Dream Theater didn't evolve and kept doing the same thing. That's cool, because it means I didn't miss anything, right ? Well, there is something that evolved in Dream Theater, and it's John Petrucci's fear.

You remember that I talked about a first disaster that I wasn't aware of at the time. I haven't all the details, actually, but I'm judging by the effects of it and will try to go back in time. The following paragraph is purely fictional, yet probably close to what really happened :

John Petrucci loves his guitar (did I tell you that I bought his first JPM model as soon as it had been released ? Cheap hardware but great sound, really, especially with a clean tone), so it's no wonder he goes to guitar shops regularly to see what's new, try some new gear and all.
Since DT is touring because their latest album, "Awake" has just been released, he actually goes to guitar shops all around the world. Lucky guy !

John Petrucci likes the atmosphere of guitar shops, it's not only about the gear, it's also about signing his own new Ibanez model, giving some masterclass or watching young guitar players who try to impress everybody by playing some Satriani or Vai stuff. It reminds him of when he was a young padawan...
But not that year.

That year, every time John passes before a guitar shop, he can hear a young dude playing that "Erotomania" solo. No more Van Halen's "Eruption", no more "Satch boogie", no more "The Animal"... Now the kids are after him and they practice like madmen to get that fucking solo done !

John then feels something in his stomach, but it's not like the famous electric butterflies, much more like when you got bad grades and your parents are about to find out...

So John knows what he has to do : more practice. He won't let them catch up, and if they practice 8 hours a day, he will practice 16 hours a day ! And if they practice 10 hours a day, he will practice 20 !
Practice has become a terrible obsession for John, but each day has only 24 hours. John is so desperate he starts reading book about black magic - a pact with the devil may solve his problem -, but one day, he finds the solution ! It was there, before his eyes all the time, and he didn't realize !
What a fool he was ! It was so simple though : include practice into songs, so you can practice while playing your songs, while recording your songs, while playing live ! You can practice all the time !!

And that's how you got it : now, every John Petrucci's solo is a piece of shit thats sounds like a drill because it is a drill.
All those tasteful things he used to do, he won't do them any longer. All those melodies, those bends, those emotions he could throw into his soli like the ones of "Voices" or "Scarred", that's over.

John Petrucci experienced the worst thing that can happen to an artist : he became self-conscious.
He used to play what he wanted to play, but now he's just playing what people expect him to play. "Play faster, John !", "John, you're my God, you can play so fast and so clean !".
No one will say "Hey John, you know those littles notes you play during the second verse of "I walk beside you", that sounds tasteful and I really like it !".

He still has a great tone, a good sense of rhythm, of course, but his soli are crap. Machine-gun crap.

John, you've lost it (but I do like those notes you play during the second verse of "I walk beside you").

Oh yeah, by the way : I still like to listen to Mike's drums. That's the only thing I can find interest in when listening to Dream Theater. As for John Petrucci, though I dislike his mechanical playing, I still find his interviews enjoyable.

Shôryûken'd...

2008-05-24T23:33:00.015+02:00

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.

2008-05-18T23:15:00.002+02:00

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 !

2008-05-05T12:09:00.008+02:00

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 !

2008-02-11T10:13:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-15T11:02:00.000+01:00

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

2008-01-08T09:35:00.000+01:00

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 !

2007-12-06T17:19:00.000+01:00

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

Why DragonForce sucks like never before !

2007-11-21T13:06:00.000+01:00

In response to my previous article about DragonForce, someone spotted my ignorance by saying : “find better guitar solos, YOU CANT!!!”. Infuriated, I searched in my CD collection for a better solo than anything DragonForce has ever recorded and, to my great disbelief, I actually couldn’t ! Nevertheless, I have listed at the end of this article some guitar soli that, though they can’t hold a candle to DragonForce's creativity, you may want to listen to, for, let’s say, your personal information... *giggle*

On a completely different matter, let’s have a little game for guitar players ! I know I sometimes sound like an arrogant arse and I wouldn’t like you to get too much of a negative opinion of me. So let's play together with something very different from my usual rant, a game called "the Joker" :
I’ve browsed a lot of Youtube stuff and picked up 2 videos of completely unknown guitar players, at random. Your mission, should you accept it, is to watch those 2 videos in their entirety (less than 5 minutes each) and find which one of the 2 guitar players is a total joke.

Since all my readers probably don’t share the same virtuosity level and/or theoric knowledge, here is a hint for the beginners : this joke of a guitar player does not only perform one of the cheapest and most boring pattern of swept arpeggio ever, he also has a sweep picking so far from perfection that you could play as good as he does within 2 weeks of practice. Enjoy !

Unknown guy #1 :

Unknown guy #2 :

I know it's kind of difficult, so it's okay to ask your guitar teacher or your friends to help you.

As promised, here are some soli that, as lame as they are, you may find decent :

Lynch Mob - Sweet Sister Mercy
Greg Howe - Divided World
Steve Stevens - Look in her Eyes
Brendt Allman - The Trees
Racer X - Lady killer (notice how the second solo sounds like Georges Lynch)
Extreme - Get the Funk Out
Dream Theater - Under a Glass Moon
Dokken - Kiss of Death
Steve Morse band - The Oz
Yngwie Malmsteen - Soldier without Faith
Steve Stevens - Atomic Playboys
Shawn Lane - So What (you can find some guy trying to play that lame solo here)
Eric Johnson - Venus Isle
Frank Gambale - Another Alternative (pretty long, due to a duel with the keyboard)

Why the Guitar Community sucks.

2007-11-07T14:04:00.000+01:00

You can’t say that 99% of people are dumbasses and allow yourself to think that the musician community has to be the God-chosen 1% left. Actually, guitar players are dumbasses too.
The more I read about them, the more I listen to them and the more I read their stupid comments on Youtube, the more I realize guitar players are true assholes.
How can I be certain ? Well, they’ve been giving proof of it for 20 years, you know.

When Van Halen became popular, the guitar community didn’t thought “whoah, the guy’s got great riffs !”, nor “whoah, the guy’s got a great sense of rhythm !”. No, the only thing that they focused on was his right hand on the fretboard and they went “whoah, that tapping stuff looks super-cool !”. Of course, I couldn’t blame all those wankers if they had come up with creative stuff like Joe Satriani’s “Day at the Beach” or Steve Vai’s “Building the Church”. That’s some interesting tapping. But no, all those morons came up with were triads arpeggios, except they were playing them with tapping, just to look cooler. Tapping had become nothing but a gimmick. From now on, tapping is compulsory in a solo.

Then came Yngwie Malmsteen. The guy was playing on shitty gear. First, a Fender strat guitar, which, as you may know, is not really what is recommended to play heavy metal stuff because single coils don’t sound fat enough. Then Marshall amps. Let it be known : Marshall amps sound like shit. If you read all those interviews in your 80’s-90’s guitar magazines, you’ll notice that all the guys are playing on “modified Marshall amps”. For your information, “modified” doesn’t mean that the volume pot has been customized in order to be able to go up to 11. It means that the amp doesn’t sound like a Marshall any longer, and the main reason for this customization is that Marshall amps sound like shit. Period. Look at the guitar players whose tones have been revered for decades : they just don’t play on Marshall amps and now you know why.
Ok, so comes this guy from Sweden, Yngwie, and he’s playing on shitty Marshall amps, with shitty single coils, and he sounds like a FUCKING JUGGERNAUT and guess what ? No one notices. No one notices the tone, the phrasing, the articulation. Once again, the guitar community will focus on the most irrelevant parts of Yngwie’s playing, the speed and the harmonic minor mode, and turn them into gimmicks. From now on, everybody will try to play as fast as possible.

Then comes Steve Vai and guitarists discover how to abuse the lydian mode and the whammy bar. This time, too, abuse of the whammy bar will become a gimmick and there you have it : 2 decades of shitty music. From now on, you can forget the Les Paul, the only thing you need is a good vomit-like painted Ibanez guitar with a fucking whammy bar. And 7 strings.

Sweeping has also been turned into a gimmick. Who uses sweeping correctly these days ? Frank Gambale, that’s all. 95% of the swept arpeggios you can hear on records are basic one-note-per-string-arpeggios, based on canonic positions. There is nothing creative in there, people do sweeping for the sake of it because, you know, “you have to be able to do it, and show it”.

And today you have a band like Dream Theater. Do you think guitar players gave a thought about Dream Theater’s use of weird time signatures ? Do you think when their album “Awake” was released the guys listened to the intro of “Scarred” and thought “hey, that’s tasteful” ? No, they went straight to “Erotomania” and practiced the string-skipping solo with strict alternate picking. That’s all the guitar morons learnt from Dream Theater : “I must improve my alternate picking !”. From now on, strict alternate picking is compulsory when not sweeping.

The result of all that mess is that most of guitar players picked the wrong things to learn from great guitar players and ended up playing fast boogies with a shitty tone (but in strict alternate picking !).

Dave Mustaine doesn’t have a whammy bar on his guitar, he didn’t go to Berklee and he OWNS you all. Because someone like Dave Mustaine didn’t fall for all those gimmicks. He doesn’t play shitty boogies to display his guitar prowesses in swept-and-tapped arpeggios and he doesn’t try to play faster than the next guy. He plays heavy metal songs.

Someone like Dave Mustaine probably belongs to the 1%. Do you ?

What is a "good" guitar player ?

2007-10-09T11:33:00.000+02:00

You’ve seen it in polls, you asked the question to yourself, you even may have lost friends after some hot argument about “who’s the best guitar player in the world ?”. At some point, every guitar player has to estimate his own value, as well as his heroe’s.

So here is my point of view. First of all I will explain what can help you estimate your own “guitar player” value, then give you some hints about guitar heroes.

1) It’s easy to think you’re good when you’re covering some Malmsteen stuff over CDs, but I found out there is one objective way to evaluate yourself : recording a song. I’m not talking about recording your improvising over sequencer chords, I’m talking about having a band and some guys in a studio waiting for you to record your track on the first take.
How many takes does it take for you to be able to record the perfect track ? no misses, the sound you want, tight rhythm, the accents you want where you want, the perfect track. And I mean “the whole rhythm track”, the whole fucking xx minutes rhytm guitar part, not some pattern you’ll copy and paste on your computer. When you get the job done most of the time, you’re probably a good guitar player. At least you’re probably a reliable guitar player.

2) The other aspect you shouldn’t neglect is the live performance. It’s one thing to be able to play the way you want in your room, and it’s another to be able to play the way you want on stage. You know, when you guitar starts to scream because your amp is too close to the front speaker and you have to fight with feedback every time you let a note last for more than 2 seconds. Or when you can’t hear yourself because some asshole on the console doesn’t know his job. That kind of stuff. To be a good guitar player, there are many things you should know beside playing the guitar (unfortunately…).

About “who’s the best guitar player”, here are my 2 cents :

I think we should make a difference between "guitar player" and "musician". While many players have a technical mastery of the fretboard, I’ve found very few to also have a harmonic mastery of the fretboard. Blazing through scales and chosing the right note at the right moment are different things. Not to mention blazing through right notes at the right moments…

Styles is also something to consider if you don’t want to fall in a sterile “who’s stronger, elephant or rhino ?” debate. You just can’t compare Johnny Marr, Frank Gambale and Tommy Emmanuel.

Composition. For instance, everyone knows Jimmy Page is a sloppy guitar player. Please listen to the “Black dog” solo and tell me how a guitar player can be that sloppy. Nevertheless, Jimmy Page came up with many excellent songs and Led Zeppelin is without a doubt a milestone in rock n’roll music history. On the other hand, we all know many guitar players that came out of Berklee or the GIT that have now disappeared from the face of the planet because they couldn’t write a decent song.

Phrasing. To me that’s something that sets good guitar players apart from the rest. People like Marty Friedman, Yngwie Malmsteen, George Lynch or Joe Satriani are better than other guitar players because they can phrase. They have mastery of the fretboard AND they know how to use melodic phrasing. This is a very important point that few guitar players were able to pinpoint and that mistake is the very cause of all the 80’s and 90’s mess. Yngwie Malmsteen is a genius. It’s not my own opinion, it’s not that I praise Yngwie or anything (he did some shitty albums, too), it’s just a fact : Yngwie Malmsteen is a genius. He’s one of the very few, if not the only one that can use speed and power at the same time and on top of that with a very good phrasing. Because everybody failed to see that, we had millions of guitar players thinking “hey, the guy’s fast, I’ll play faster than him and be famous”. No sir, you won’t, because you missed the point : you’ve become a fast guitar player with a lame tone and you’ve been blazing meaninglessly through scales for decades, that’s all.
If you don’t know how to phrase, you can be the fastest dude on Earth, no one will remember your name because your soloing will mean nothing to people.
I’m telling you : many - and I mean MANY - guitar players know more theory, play cleaner and faster than Joe Satriani. They really do. But Joe still smokes them because he can come up with good phrasing that give consistency to what he plays. I mean, let’s face it, though he knows a whole lot of theory, Joe is using a very minimalistic vocabulary in his playing : lydian, phrygian dominant, dorian, here you are, the whole Satriani discography. But the guy is very good at rhythm playing and he can phrase. That alone makes him musically miles away from all the others. Can you believe that ? And I don’t even like what he’s been doing lately, but still, it’s something that’s beyond one’s opinion, the guy is revered as a guitar god and there is a simple reason for that : his phrasing. You may find it boring, predictable, I do agree it is (sometimes). But no Paul Gilbert, no Scott Mischoe, no John Petrucci, no [insert a million guitar players name here] can phrase like Joe Satriani. Surely they can play his stuff, but they can’t come up with his stuff.

Now do yourself a favor : listen to the Hotel California solo. God knows I really hate this song, it’s so cliché, but listen to that solo. That’s phrasing. That’s completely different from what we’ve been fed with during the 90’s but that’s where you should start to learn from. Scales are just a nice way to say “I have nothing to say in my music so I will put as many notes as I can so you think I’m good”.

Well, it works with apprentices, beginners and morons. Not with musicians.

Alternative alternate picking ?

2007-07-04T15:30:00.000+02:00

If there is one thing that kills me when reading a guitar magazine (whatever the country), it’s lessons about alternate picking. Some magazines allow 1 or 2 pages to the mastery of alternate picking. Every time they interview people like Steve Morse, John Petrucci, or Patrick Rondat, you can be sure they will go for some questions about their “alternate picking technique”. Well, I’ve got great news for you : THERE IS NO “alternate picking technique”, you morons !!
“Alternate picking” means you do a downstroke, then an upstrock, then a downstrock, etc. And if you’re in a funky mood, you could even reverse that order and start with an upstroke. END OF THE STORY. Is there any other way to do “alternate picking” ? NO. So stop the bullshit about “learning alternate picking”, or “improving one’s alternate picking”. You want to improve your alternate picking ? Take any tab or music sheet and play it with strict alternate picking, that’s all. Even better, don’t pick “any” tab or sheet, but rather “specific” tab or sheet, like some Frank Gambale’s stuff and play all his swept shit only with alternate picking. When you’re done, you can burn all those magazines that tried to “improve” your technique because you’re miles away from what they tried to “teach” you.

Kicking your ass all over...

2007-06-23T19:55:00.000+02:00

Hello everyone ! Remember when I said I'd post videos of my friend when there would be some ?
Well, it's NOW !
My friend Fred eventually got rid of his procrastination and got himself a decent internet access, so it's no problem any longer for him to upload/download big files. As soon as I knew that, I asked him for some of his videos because I knew it would kick ass.
The video hereafter is Fred playing Greg Howe's "Bad Racket" tune. I chose this one because there are some misses so you know he is playing it for real. And since the song is not played in its entirety, I hope it's OK with copyright stuff too... ;-).

Unlike most of people who put shitty videos of themselves on Youtube, Fred only makes videos for himself, just to get some objective recording, check his mistakes and play better. I was the one who made it a Youtube vid so I can embed it on my site.
Fred is a dedicated guitar player who has not yet mastered the axe but still plays like a badass motherfucker (take note : all my friends are badass motherfuckers !), as you can see. He's also one of the nicest guy out there.
Keep on shredding, dude !

Back to the old house...

2007-02-25T22:00:00.000+01:00

Today I'm in a special mood, so I'm going to teach you the most important thing of all. Free.

Do you know why you probably suck as a guitar player ? Because you probably take lessons with the kind of teacher that is going to teach you the 5 positions for each scale, teach you tapping, sweeping, and will make a perfect shredder out of you. Or worse, a fusion guitar player capable of smoothly improvise over weird chords changes. You're doomed.

You see, your teacher thinks it's the right thing to do because he was very influenced by Yngwie Malmsteen, or Allan Holdsworth, or Eddie Van Halen, or any other guitar player who could play some great rock n'roll stuff and bang the girls. Play clean, play fast, know which note to play on which chord and you're the king.

Your teacher has probably never heard of Johnny Marr. Which is too bad, because there is most probably more genius in one song of Johnny Marr than in the whole discography of Steve Vai. Oops.

Nowadays, teacher are just turning aspiring guitar players into brainless turds who will spend hours in their rooms improvising with a sequencer. You will be the best improviser of your room and instead of releasing records and build great songs that millions of people could enjoy, you will just show your face on Youtube.com in a feeble attempt to impress other guitar players.

The only way to music you've been shown is the path of technique : you spend hours on your instrument and you can play like Steve Vai. But a harsh and hidden truth awaits you : if you've done so well, it's just because the technical gap is an easy one to fill.

The most difficult gap is the taste one. That one you won't be able to fill only with hours of improvisation over a 3-chords pattern.

Be aware that your guitar heroes will mean absolutely nothing in the Music History when compared to bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Smiths, The Cure, Led Zeppelin, or Pink Floyd. You won't find any swept arpeggio in the recordings of these bands and they probably don't play as clean and as fast as your heroes, or even as you, but they definitely spent less time in their rooms than you do.

Ibanez and me...

2006-12-27T13:21:00.000+01:00

You know, when you've been playing for many years on many guitar brands you develop a kind of sixth sense towards gear.

I've been playing Ibanez (a "sabre" model and the first John Petrucci model, the JPM 100, that I've lately sold on eBay) for something like 6 years and I can now say that there are basically 3 types of Ibanez players :

- Ibanez whores
- fanboys
- beginners.

The thing is, every time I see a guy with an Ibanez guitar I know there are 80% chances that the guy sucks as a guitar player. Let me explain :

1) The Ibanez whores are, as the name implies, people who are paid to play on Ibanez guitars. Steve Vai and "Joe Satriani" being the most famous. Don't misunderstand me, there is nothing wrong with that. I mean, a guitar brand offers you to get your own model, with your own specifications, and you get as many guitars as you want ? Any musician would sign. I would. What you must understand is that those guys would play the same on any other guitar, because they can play.

2) Fanboys. I would say that 90% of people playing on Ibanez are fanboys. Really. When I see all those guys on Youtube playing on this :

I know all these guys think there is a kind of "Steve Vai Inside" sticker on the guitar. Just because Steve Vai plays on this doesn't mean you will sound like him or play like him. I can't say this guitar is a piece of shit but I can say that for the same price you could get a baby that looks 10 times better. I mean, look at the guitar : it's WHITE. For the price you get a plain WHITE guitar, whereas if you asked Carvin you'd get a AAAA quilted maple top guitar with super high craftsmanship. But because you're such a fanboy you probably never heard about Carvin guitars, right ?

I've already talked about a friend of mine (the one that couldn't help playing shitty because of a really bad rythm guitar player). Well, that friend of mine played most of his life on an old shitty plain yellow Aria Pro II. He did not change pickups nor anything, he just trained his fingers so he can play on anything because the sound comes from the fingers, remember ? When you see him going on stage with his shitty guitar you start thinking that he must be a noob, then he starts shredding your ass out and sweeps arpeggios all over the place. As soon as he puts some of his stuff on Youtube, I'll link to his videos (he doesn't play on that guitar any longer though...).

3) Beginners are an easy prey for Ibanez for several reasons, like fanboyism, beautiful ads, beautiful guitars, and affordable guitars. Let's face it, Ibanez guitars have a sweet design and are quite affordable. They don't play bad either. The problem is that manufacture-wise, it's cheap. The neck feels cheap, the accessories are cheap (screws and all), plus there is that so common "composite sound" that has no real personality, it doesn't sound woody. I think that cheapness is really what defines an Ibanez guitar and that's why I switched to something better.

Beginners also lack the technical knowledge that could help them smell fishy stories... Take this one for instance :

That's the "new" tremolo developped by Ibanez. It's called the ZR bridge (for "Zero Resistance") and it should be revolutionary. OH REALLY ?! Let's be a bit technical here : a "normal" tremolo uses a knife edge as a point of contact between the floating bridge and the guitar body (the position of the floating bridge is maintained by the tension between springs in the guitar body and the tension of the strings). The problem is that the permanent friction tends to make the guitar end up out of tune. Here the knife edge is replaced by ball bearings, which sounds like a really cool idea : no friction, so the guitar stays in tune forever. That's the beautiful story Ibanez wants to sell you, but 2 "details" remain untold :

a) that ball bearing system has been discovered and already been used for decades by French guitar maker Patrice Vigier (Vigier guitars). A revolution, indeed.

b) "ball bearings" means "less friction", which also means "less contact between the bridge and the guitar body", which also means.... "great loss of sustain". Oooops !

To be honest, Vigier doesn't talk about it either...

Not all the people playing on Ibanez suck, but when I see a guy with one going on stage I know I shouldn't have high expectations, because guitar players who are really serious about their gear or sound usually tend to play on a more personal kind of gear, something that's not "the average".

Cry me a fucking river...

2006-12-09T11:57:00.000+01:00

If there is one thing that beginners do better than intermediates or pros it's to complain/bitch/whine about their guitar/amplifier/cables/
pick/fingers. Man, if I had received 10$ each time I've heard my pupils whine about their gear, I could probably buy a new guitar by now.
The thing is, most of the items above can be bought. The only one you can't change is your fingers. Sure, Steve Vai's got the perfect hands to play the guitar - or any other instrument, actually - but guitar is like fencing : it's not the sword that cuts, it's the skills.

All of you crybabies out there should check this out :

I know, his music sucks big time and he dresses like shit (reversed cap + curly hairs ? Come on !), but at least he can play the guitar decently. And you know why ? Because the guy probably thought it would be a good idea to turn whining time into practice time.

Now for all of you miserable morons who still think you will never be able to play amazing stuff because you've got small fingers and it's such a hindrance to play fast/swept arpeggios/wild stretches and such, please look at this guy :

His name is Frank Gambale and, as you can see, his fingers look nothing short of yummy cocktail sausages. With hair.

Now here is the same guy, many years later, performing "The Flight Of The Hairy Sausages" just for your viewing pleasure :

Frank Gambale actually released a guitar video called "Chopbuilder" which is a great testimony of how much the 80's totally sucked fashion-wise, but is also one of the best guitar instructional video ever released. If you're serious about your guitar playing you should definitely buy the DVD from Frank's site.

If you think you sound shitty because of your gear, there is a high probability that you would actually sound shitty on any piece of gear. It's your fingers that make the sound, not the gear you're playing with.

The truth about "Joe Satriani"...

2006-12-05T19:37:00.000+01:00

Well, I think that one of my duties as a teacher is to tell the truth to my pupils. You know, like not saying to someone that he plays great when in fact he doesn't. Teachers should tell the truth.
Today I'd like to share a sad truth.

You know that bald guy with sunglasses that makes gigs around the world and plays Joe Satriani stuff ? Yeah, that one guy you go to see in concert with "Joe Satriani" written on the ticket. Well, sit down son, because.. you see... that guy is NOT Joe Satriani.

Yeah, I know, I know, he plays the same stuff and he plays on the same guitars. Big deal. I buy that very same guitar tomorrow and you'll start calling me "Joe", ain't you ? That's not so easy.

I don't want to say things like "Joe Satriani is dead so his producer uses a double", or things like that, we've already heard it with Paul mc Cartney's supposed death. Maybe Joe is not dead, maybe he has just retired somewhere and lives happily with his family, I don't know.
What I DO know is that this guy IS NOT Joe Satriani. You want proofs ?

Evidence#1 : pictures

The guy on the left has made tons of magazines' covers and books, and videos and gigs and he NEVER EVER wore sunglasses. And he had hairs. The guy on the right, well, he looks more like a bank robber than like a guitar player, doesn't he ? Actually that guy on the right always wear sunglasses because... He's got brown eyes. Joe's are blue.

Evidence#2 : pictures again

Image Google "Joe Satriani" and what do you find ? Millions of pictures of the right guy, and some pictures of the left guy. Well, it's pretty normal since the right guy is Joe Satriani and he's famous. Except the REAL Joe Satriani was already famous since 1986 and the fake is around since 1996. Ten years of fame each, and such a huge difference in the media exposition ? Isn't that weird ?... As a matter of fact, the new Joe Satriani is touring non-stop since 1996 with the G3, as if someone wanted people to see him, to know he's real. Think about it, something smells fishy.

Evidence#3 : the music

That's probably the most obvious element. Listen to "Crystal Planet", what do we get throughout the album ? Great riffs, and nothing after that. That's the way the new Joe Satriani composes : great riffs, poor songs. You won't make me believe that this is the same guy who wrote "The Mystical Potatoe Head Groove Thing", "Surfing With The Alien" and such. Same goes for the "Supernatural" album and his live performances with the G3. I've seen the REAL Joe in february 1993, during the Extremist tour and there is NO WAY one can mistake the two. The fake lacks consistency. He's a good guitar player, no doubt, but he's NOT Joe Satriani. Get over it.

Attack of the clones

2006-11-29T23:29:00.000+01:00

Do you remember the name of all those guys who used to play "neo-classical" stuff and tried to play minor harmonic scales faster than the speed of light just to be the next Yngwie Malmsteen ?
You probably don't and neither do I, because all those wankers were stillborn.
The problem is that our fellows musicians tend to have a short memory and the new trend seems to be playing like Greg Howe.
I remember the time when I had to lend my own "Introspection" CD to my guitar teacher because he didn't know Greg Howe had an album out. He lent me Stephen Ross' "Midnight Drive" in exchange, and I was very happy about it.

Oh, you don't know who Greg Howe is ? Check this out :

While I do agree that being able to play like Greg is something any guitar player must be craving for (me included), playing like Greg is certainly a bad idea because, as musical history has already shown, the fate of clones is to die without a name.

So unless you happen to be Arkadiy Starodoub and you can play like this :

you'd better stop emulating Greg's playing and find a style of your own because if I ever want to put some Greg Howe in my ears I will probably listen to his stuff, not yours.

Your assholeness scientifically proven

2006-11-22T19:22:00.000+01:00

First of all, I have to say that the theory hereafter has been made public some years ago by French guitarist and teacher extraordinaire Michel Sigwalt.

So you think you can play fast as long as you want and that people will still care for what you're playing ?
WRONG.

Actually, human's ear (or rather brain) naturally functions according to the Fibonacci numbers (also known as "sequence of Fibonacci", more infos here). Basically, it goes like this :
0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ,21, 34, 55, 89, 144, etc.

You take a number and add the previous number to get the next number. Pretty easy.

So your brains works like this : it will care about the first note, about the second note, the third, the fifth, etc. As you can see above, the more numbers you get in the sequence, the larger the gaps.

What does that mean, music-wise ?

It simply means that when you've reached the 145th note in your solo (and the faster you play, the faster it comes), people's brain won't give a damn until you play the 233th note. That's right, all the notes in between could be played for nothing. This especially applies to all the bluesy-pentatonic shit you use to play for hours as soon as you encounter some A7 chord.

Now there are some good news and some bad news...

The bad news is that most of the notes you're playing are certainly played in vain. Well, it's highly unlikely that ALL the notes you play are important, or at least equally important anyway...

The good news is that you can take that piece of information and make it work to your advantage by :
a) making short soli, in order for most of the notes you play to be paid attention to. Highly recommended.
b) making your soli more and more interesting and appealing with time, so the brain keeps on paying attention to what you're playing. Nice examples would be John Petrucci's "Under a Glass Moon" solo (Dream Theater's "Images and Words" album), or Steve Stevens' "Look in her eyes" solo (Vince Neil's "Exposed" album),

This explains why I couldn't help falling asleep during John Petrucci's solo in his "Damage control" (from the "G3 in Tôkyô") : too many notes, or - to be more precise - too many useless notes. That shit was boring as hell.

Now you can keep on shredding, losers.

Speed vs Melody

2006-11-22T18:48:00.000+01:00

One of the drawbacks of playing fast is that you can't play fast AND sound like you're playing a melody. You don't believe me? Ok.
Take a melody of 10 notes, make it play at 1000 bpm by your computer, what do you get ?
Certainly something that sounds like "blouip !" or "gluiip !".

But that's not all, there are is also some mechanical reasons which prevent you from playing a melody when you're playing fast :

To be able to play fast, you have to make the silence time between each note as short as possible. There are basically 2 ways to achieve that :
a) play the same note again.
b) play the closest note to the one you've just played.

The reasons are that it takes less time for your fingers to move, and it takes less time for your brain to ask your fingers to move to a close position (the hand doesn't move) than to a remote position (the hand has to move).

So what you get when you try to achieve ultimate speed is either tremolo picking (same note picked as fast as possible) or chromatic patterns (playing notes that are next one to another regardless of harmony). Both can't be considered as melodic.

Of course, you could say that techniques such as tapping and sweeping allow you to play fast notes that are remote from the first one, either by tapping a remote note with your right hand or by picking a note close to the first one but on a different string. Touché.
But if it makes you evade the mechanical hindrances (for how long ?), you still have to cop with our first rule : the faster you play, the less melodic it sounds.

We'll soon see other reasons to make you slow down a bit...

The way you do the things you do.

2006-11-20T20:24:00.000+01:00

Let's suppose you're a beginner.
Let's suppose your best friend who started playing the guitar before you makes you listen to some Joe Satriani song, let's say "The Mystical Potatoe Head Groove Thing".

Now enlightened, you've discovered your next goal in life : to become able to play that song.
So you buy the songbook, or download the tabs on the internet (or try to pick it up by ear and screw up the whole thing).
Now let's see if I can read your mind.... what you're going to do is... play the main riff... then start learning the lead guitar... yes, that's right, I can now clearly see that 99% of you will do so.

Now the bad news : doing so will make you a loser.
Sure you will be jumping in your room with the CD playing in the background, and you will be able to impress your friends with that cool-looking arpeggio. But you know, there are hundreds of guitar players out there who did the same as you, and can probably play that song better than you, so if one of them invites you to play that song with him (maybe Joe Satriani himself !), he may want to play the lead guitar and you'll have to play the rythm guitar. Oh, you didn't take the time to learn it ?
Too bad, Satriani will play with someone else, I guess....

When you learn a song, whatever it is, the very first thing you should learn is the rythm guitar. Don't think I knew that from the beginning, I did the same mistake as you, of course. But among the things I learnt, one is that a reliable rythm guitar player is something priceless. I have one of my friends who once played onstage with other members of his campus. They had an excellent drummer (they did a samba interlude in the middle of Satriani's "Time Machine", go figure...), but their rythm guitar player was awful. When the solo time came, my friends kept on playing shitty because he had to rely on that rythm guitar player who couldn't keep the rythm. As a lead guitar player, having to play with such people is a REAL pain in the ass. Why do you think Steve Vai hired Tony Mac Alpine as a rythm guitar player ?
Playing the rythm part of a song will build your endurance (try to play the rythm part of 10 songs in a row) and being able to rythmically support other musicians in a band is not to be taken lightly, because in music rythm is everything.
Sure you want to shine and steal the show and get laid, but if that's really the reason why you're playing the guitar, just forget it. Please become an actor instead.
When you'll understand the real achievement that being an excellent rythm guitar player is, you'll start becoming a much better musician and your lead playing will improve accordingly.

Why DRAGONFORCE sucks.

2006-11-19T20:00:00.000+01:00

Yeah, you read it right, there is no question mark, therefore it's not a question, it's an explanation.
Dragonforce seems to be one of the new guitar sensations, at least if I refer to the number of praises I can see in Dragonforce videos comments on Youtube....

So why does it suck so hard ? Here are the reasons :

1) The name. "Dragonforce", come on, what kind of shitty name is that ? It sounds like some anime or video game skill, not like a band's name. As a matter of fact, using "dragon" in a band's name will make you sound like a nerd, addicted to Role-Playing Games and spending more time pinching his pimples than working on his string-skipping exercices. So all of you retards out there with band's names like "Dragonslayer", "Dragonkiller", "Dragon's breath", "Dragonite" and everything that includes the word "dragon", you know now how much of losers you are.

2) The music. At least, Herman Li and Sam Totman admit it : one of their main influences is video games music. Too bad they spent hours on their instruments to sound no better than a Nintendo NES while hundreds of talented people here and here actually play real video games music with the artistic soul Dragonforce is desperately pursuing...
As for the drums, I know sequencers with more feeling than Dragonforce's drummer. If I want to listen to a sledgehammer, I'd rather listen to some Fear Factory record.

3) The sound. Dragonforce tries to mix the energy of speed metal with video games sounds. Let's face it, it sucks. The guitar sound is just terrible, it conveys absolutely no power whatsoever. Since the drummer sounds like he's trying to dig a tunnel, the guitars end up sounding even feebler. As if it were not enough, Herman Li and Sam Totman decided to remove every aspect in their playing that could give consistency to any solo they do : no bends, not a note longer than half a second, no slides, no double stops, even their artificial harmonics sound like glitches, and of course NO MELODY (which sounds obvious, since speed and melody are not really compatible, as we'll see next week). Any Yngwie Malmsteen or George Lynch alone owns both players of Dragonforce. Period.

If you're a big fan of Dragonforce, you probably suck at guitar playing, so grow up. Playing the guitar is not "being able to move one's fingers as fast as possible on the fretboard". Any monkey with a guitar and a metronome can eventually achieve that. Playing the guitar is something different. That you don't know yet.

PWNED !

2006-11-19T19:08:00.000+01:00

Here is an important lesson : if you have to show yourself playing something, you'd better look good.

Look at this video

This guy's name is Adam Fulara and he's really good at what he does. You can even say amazing. The only problem is that you probably spent 1 second looking at his hands and the rest of the video looking at his face, wondering what kind of giant turd he was about to drop (you can read the comments for this video, everybody says the same thing).
As a guitar player, I know that his face is just the expression of his brain about to melt because he has to figure out the independent movements of both hands. But he should have chosen another angle so you can see his guitar better and not his face. This reminds me of Billy Sheehan saying that he voted for Paul Gilbert during the L.A Guitar Wars because Paul was the only one not to look like he was about to commit suicide should he miss a lick.
Looking like a moron when you're playing alone in your room is one thing, showing yourself playing on Youtube is another. The same goes if you're going to play onstage.
Try to look good because not everybody in the audience is good enough of a guitar player to be able to judge you on what you play rather than on how you play it.

First lesson...

2006-11-18T23:07:00.000+01:00

First of all, I'm here to talk about music. If you think I'm going to teach you scales and modes and all that stuff, I have 2 things to tell you :

1) You're damn wrong, you'll find plenty of sites out there to teach you that.
2) It's precisely what those sites won't teach you that I will. So you'd better stay tuned.

Speaking of which, have you ever met someone who could swear that Kirk Hammett (Metallica's soloist) is a Guitar God, the best guitar player in the world, a guitar player that combines speed and taste ?
Well, that person is WRONG. Kirk Hammett is one of the most overrated guitar players in the world, and I'll tell you why : Kirk Hammett plays out of tune.

Have you ever watched those "instructional videos" tapes or DVDs that teach you tapping, sweeping, modes and "how to play like *insert name here*" ? All of them, and I'm saying ALL OF THEM share the very same first step : tuning up your guitar.
Think about it : the teacher doesn't only want you to be in tune with him so you can jam along with the video, since you can't. Most of the time you have to hit "pause" to play the exercices and there is no jam session in those instructional videos.
What the teacher wants you to understand is that playing in tune is the very first step in learning to play the guitar. Playing in tune is ESSENTIAL.
It seems mister Hammett skipped this first step. Music-wise, Metallica's"Ride the lightning" is an excellent album that, unfortunately, I'm unable to listen to just because mister Hammett makes it sound so out of tune that it's just unbearable. And in case you're wondering, I don't even have perfect pitch, go figure...

You may play fast, you may play loud, but check that you play in tune. And I'm not talking about your guitar, I'm talking about you.

Another guitar site ? Why ?!

2006-11-18T22:51:00.000+01:00

Because there are few good guitar players, a lot of bad guitar players and MILLIONS of assholes out there who can't see (hear ?) the difference between the former and the latter.
I'm here to help them.
I'm fed up with seeing the "shredding" jerks on Youtube, and even more fed up with the comments. I've seen an Asian wanker (you know who he is, he's playing shit on a white JEM guitar) praised as if he were a guitar god and Stephen Ross treated like shit, go figure...
You want to become a better guitar player ? Whatever your level, there is still more to learn, and I'll teach you what.

By the way, english is not my native language, so please bear with it, I do my best.