Isn't it funny how synergies or serendipidies occur? I am just getting ready to start the Specialist Blues, Rock and Jazz guitar program at Berklee on Monday (so excited) and I was clearing out some old guitar lessons and I came across some photocopies of the Martian Love Secret lessons by Steve Vai from 1989 (!!!). I actually had the original magazine (from which I made the copy) and I remember reading and devouring the lessons as a teenager. There was something about these lessons which really spoke to me, and changed the way I approached the guitar and even more dramatically life. I really recommend you give them a read if you need to be inspired and are looking for something beyond some simple guitar exercises.I had seen Steve Vai performing the year previously (1988!) with David Lee Roth on the Skyscraper tour and that had been a revalatory experience too, it is funny that all these years later I am finally embarking on the course I wanted to all those years ago.Believe in yourself and your dreams"I am that....."PeaceNeil
Inspiration Lesson in Creativity by Steve Vai | Tocal Day 9
Just stumbled across this video clip by Steve Vai on How to be successful and wow it certainly is a very inspirational piece and lesson, I think no matter what creative art you pursue, or in fact whatever career path you follow, I think we could all take something from watching this video. Thanks Steve Vai...what an nice little boy....Follow the dreamPeaceNeil
2013 - What is the challenge now?
Well seeming how I don't have my piece a day any more, I am going to be focusing on new challenges for the New Year and I will be writing more about this in the next day or two, once a few things are finalised. But, some of them include releasing the new Light B4 Sound CD project, finish writing and record a guitar EP under the name of Neil Spencer Bruce (watch this space) and also engage more with my online community and friends. This means I will hopefully be posting lots of helpful videos and posts on things which I think will help and inform you guys out there, of course I am open to suggestions of any questions you need help with. So to start with here is a link to a very useful guitar lesson, which might help you when trying to formulate a plan for practicing in the new year.Interms of a daily challenge, I am now setting myself the target of tweeting a useful tweet everyday for a year, of course you can be the judge of how useful it actually is! This will also be incorporated into a daily blog post here! It is based on what the ethos of this blog is.....thoughts on a creative life.....So here we go again :)Enjoy and have a fantastic 2013.PeaceNeil
How to play “Price Tag” by Jessie J - Quick and Easy Guitar
Been asked by a few people to perhaps post some easy guitar lessons for contemporary songs, so I thought what the hell and decided I would give it a go. I thought I would label them “quick and easy” guitar lessons, so here we go…..a quick and easy guitar lesson to teach you the basics of playing the guitar parts from Price Tag by Jessie J.Any questions please drop us a line in the comment box below.EnjoyPeaceNeil
Gigging Musicians on LinkedIn
Hello everyone,Just to let those know whom might be interested that I have created a group on LinkedIn for Gigging Musicians to discuss all things about gigging! Why not pop over and say hello!You can find the group here.You can also take a look at a blog post I wrote on top gigging tips here.EnjoyPeaceNeil
Gigging life saver - Neil's top tip 2
Don't over look a cheaper guitar as a backup. As we know you should always take a backup guitar to a gig, in case of any number of posible problem scenarios (most usually string breakage and tunage issues), so rather than taking your prized strat or Les Paul etc out, look at cheaper but reasonable guitars to gig with. You never know when some drunken reveller will get up and do untold damage!Top Tip 2 - Take a cheap guitar as a back upPeaceNeil
Guitar lesson - what are you saying?
After watching Guthrie Govan's professor shred lesson, which I wrote about here and this fantastic lesson by Paul Gilbert. It really has struck me that one of the failings in my playing is the ability to say something new and different sometimes. I think we can all fall into a rut of saying the same thing when we are speaking as well, so this isn't just about guitar playing, but in life too. It is also possible to draw on that analogy and look at the similarities between guitar playing and speaking/writing/singing. One thing you could try is to record yourself speaking with a dictaphone or computer etc and then analyse the way you speak and then do the same with your guitar playing. Do you say things the same way? Do you play the same licks, with the same emphasis in similar places, same words, same sentence structure?So what does this have to do with gutar playing you ask?Well, I am starting to think, and this may just be a personal thing, that because when I speak, I tend to say and phrase things similar with in my comfort zone, that this is coming across when I am playing guitar too, so I am trying to slow down, think more about what I am saying and the key...what I want to say and how I want to say it. Then I am applying this to the guitar, trying to say things in a different way, trying to phrase things different, different 'sentence' constructions, different emphasis on different words. And of course, longer words in longer sentences for those shreding moments!!Looking at guitar playing, we could perhaps draw these example analogies
- A shredding lick could be seen as being similar to saying a very long, complex sentence perfect, precise and fast.
- A rock lick could be seen as being similar to saying an exclamation or sentence in a chatty or colloquial way.
- A blues lick could be seen as being similar to saying a chatty, colloquial sentence with emotion.
And so on....If we consider the situation where someone gets some chewing gum in their hair, the following might be examples of the structures described above....
- "There seems to be some chewing gum stuck in my hair, could you please help get it out?" - might be the shred version
- "Aaarrggh arrrrghhhhhh....gum in my head....arrrgh get it f***ing out!!!!!!!" - might be the rock version
- "Damn..... got some gum stuck....stuck in my hair.....get it out will ya" - might be the blues version
Thinking of these sentences and then thinking of how they might sound if you played them on the guitar gives you an idea of where I am coming from. I would recommend trying it perhaps with each of the sentence above and see what they sound like. Then taking that to your playing and seeing if you can say the the same thing, but in a different way, or should I say take the same thing and see if you can play it in a different way.Be interested to hear you comments! Please add them to below!Enjoy!PeaceNeil
Gigging life saver - Neil's top tip I
Here is another top tip for those gigging musicians out there. This tip is something which has proved extremely useful on many occasions and has the potential to save a gig.With the advent of smartphones, iPads, iPods etc it is possible to store and read documents such as pdf or word documents on the phone.The top tip is to download the user manuals for all the pieces of equipment you are using and have the stored on your mobile device, so if something goes wrong you can easily open the manual up and find out what it going on. You can also keep documents of various settings etc and have them easily to hand. An easy solution is to download something like Dropbox and store them from your computer and sync with your phone. Of course you can store all manner of useful things that way!I know you can always download manuals via a smartphone, but my experience has shown that when you end up gigging in the middle of nowhere, you may not have a wifi or 3G signal and thus can't get online. Having them locally on a device could save your life :)Having the manual for my TC Nova System on my phone was extremely useful recently in finding out how to fix a problem I was having with level anomalies!PeaceNeil
Fantastic guitar lesson by Guthrie Govan
Guthrie Govan is fast getting a reputation on the internet (and deservedly so) and being the best guitarist out there, not just because of his ability to play in an style (well!) and shred (as is evidenced by this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUZK9dasP8s). But because he is also a fantastic teacher as well! There are so many clips out there on youtube thankfully, but I find this one a brilliant lesson to all us guitarists that I just had to share it!! I have certainly taken a lot from it!!Enjoy!!PeaceNeil