October 2014 – Soul Factory, Dance Track, Steve Vai, Flyrig

Flyrig by Tech 21

Hi and welcome to October’s post, this month has involved gigs, recording, teaching and new gear!!!. I recently had some incidents where lugging a heavy amp to a gig was not necessary also I found my self at rehearsal with a mass of gear and not needing most of it so as a result i purchased the Flyrig by Tech 21. It’s a great bit of gear that has an amp simulator built into it meaning I can go direct to a PA, it also feature a plexi style overdrive, reverb and tap tempo. It’s great for a rehearsal and recording with and some times is a better option to gig with. I still prefer playing through my Egnator amp but for certain gigs and situations its more convenient to plug direct. I have added the link here so if you think it’s the kind of thing that you are after you can take a look. Tech 21 Flyrig.

Gig with The Beatniks

I have been busy gigging this month but two that stood out was one with the Beatnicks where we simply rocked out a lot and I decided sweep picking was the best way to solo over Sweet Home Alabma (not the most tasteful choice but very funny). We had a slick gig and the Flyrig sounded amazing. The other gig that stood out was with Soul Factory a 10 piece funk soul band complete with full brass section put together by MD Richard Green. It sounds so good when gigging live with a brass section, everyone upped their game and the gig was a roaring success.

I have a small home studio set up and it enables me to record guitars at home for a variety of different projects and one of those that came up this month was recording some guitars for a dance song by producer AGX. This is nice to do as it is quick and brings some variety to a normal week of rock and classical music. Here is a link to the track

@The Studio

I have had 3 new students start this month and i thought i would give you a brief description of what was covered so you can get an idea of the variety of levels I teach.

Student 1 – 12 Years old, had lessons last year but keen to start her grades.

Student 2 – 31 years old, has a solid grasp of chords and songs but want to explore scales, lead work and technique in a rock context.

Student 3 – 69 years old, has always been a blues player but would like to get to grips with jazz chord voicings and creating tension in his lead lines.

With these students i discussed what their goals were and we sketched out a rough time scale and the steps we would take in order to achieve these goals. This gives the student something to aim for and gives me a structure to work through in order to help them get to where they want to be.

A student of mine Teresa is learning the epic For The Love Of God by Steve Vai which is an instrumental guitar piece featured on his album Passion and Warfare. The piece is very technically challenging and i recorded a video of my self playing it so that she could see close up what I was playing. A solo like this is not all ways possible to play for a student but together we have worked out a way in which it is possible to play it using a different technical approach on the original. I look forward to hearing her version soon but in the meantime here is an excerpt from the main solo.