March’s Guitar World is out and I’m pretty stoked about this one because it contains a step by step guide to playing Crazy Train. It includes a tab and a video lesson on the CD. I have already pretty much mastered the song. The video doesn’t include all of the little fills and licks, but the tab does a good job at illustrating them, so anyone should be able to learn the song from this lesson. One other thing worth noting is the video of Eric Johnson playing Cliffs of Dover on the CD. I haven’t heard that song for a pretty long time and when I watched the video I melted. It really is an amazing song and is 10 times as amazing when you get to watch him play it.

5 Song Transcriptions

1. Fall Out Boy – Dance Dance
2. Johnny Cash – Folsom Prison Blues
3. Green Day – Jesus of Suburbia
4. Eric Johnson – Cliffs of Dover
5. Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train

The Magazine also includes the following articles:

The Cover Story: Randy Rhoads – Tribute to Ozzy Osbourne’s Guitar Genius!

The tribute is actually a series of articles that give a rounded overview of Randy’s career and his tragic demise.

Randy Rhoads & Ozzy Osbourne

A dove, a bat, an airplane. Launching his solo career with guitarist Randy Rhoads, Ozzy Osbourne found both fortune and tagedy in the form of flying objects. (more…)

I have been a huge Zakk Wylde fan for at least 5 years now and I have always been fascinated with his playing style. He plays with blistering speed and has some of the most unique sounds I have ever heard. By far though, his signature is the heavy chunky riffs filled with screaming pinch harmonics. It’s pretty frustrating when you are trying to learn a song or style and just can’t get it to sound the same as the original. This happened to me when I started learning Black Label Society riffs. So why couldn’t I make it sound the same as Zakk did? Well most of it had to do with my gear; I needed some EMG ZW Set active pickups.

The major difference is active pickups use a battery to re-amplify the sound before it even gets to your amp. That’s what gives you that extra chunk, scream, and sustain that Zakk is famous for. The EMG ZW pickups are a set of 2 EMG pickups, 1 EMG-81 for the neck and 1 EMG-85 for the bridge. As soon as I put them into my guitar and powered it up I could tell the difference, and if you really want to hear it, try tuning your guitar down to D tuning. Nothings better. (more…)

The POD XT Live is the newest member of the Line 6 POD family. The XT Live is an extension of the popular POD XT but made with the live performer in mind. It is a multi-effect floor processor with a bite. It can be used for any guitar amp or can plug into any Line 6 Spider amp to become a full control unit. The XT includes many features such as stomp boxes, effects, amplifier, and different amp models. Best of all, the unit comes complete with a variax input and is USB ready.

Musicians Friend reviews the Line 6 PODXT Live and writes “For relatively minimal cost, a POD provides a world of guitar tones-models of all the major amps, high-quality cab emulation, plus a whole slew of effects. All this in a compact, easy-to-use unit with all the right connections and pro quality sound. In short, a POD makes it possible for the average-joe guitarist to record really pro-sounding tracks, even on a family-PC-based recording setup.”

(more…)

Six-String Masterpieces
50 musicians and artists have come together to create a display of custom decorated Dean ML guitars. There are a lot of major artists contributing including Zakk Wylde, Alexi Laiho, Dave Navarro, James Hetfield, Joe Satriani, Rob Zombie, Ted Nugent, and many more.

The exhibit debuted at this year’s NAMM convention in front of 50,000 people. I really would have killed to go to NAMM this year. It sounds like it was a really great show. The website for The Dimebag Darrell Art Tribute has a few galleries of the making of the guitars and the showing at NAMM as well.

The exhibit had incredible response with many people saying it was the highlight of NAMM. The exhibit will now tour to no less than ten major US markets at top concert venues, museums, music instrument retail stores and Fine Art Galleries during the spring and summer of 2006. At the completion of the tour, the Art Guitars will be auctioned off via one of NYC’s top auction houses/galleries, with funds being donated to a foundation that supports Music Education in our schools.
From: http://www.deanguitars.com/sixstringmp/

Some of the guitars are really impressive. I especially enjoyed the one drawn by tattoo artist Bob Tyrrell.