Alexi Laiho is a pretty popular guitarist these days so I thought I would go through some of his stuff that I have been learning. Alexi likes to use a technique called sweep picking. Although it is a “picking” technique, it takes both hands to do this guitar trick.

Sweep picking is like strumming a chord, except you want to accentuate each note in the “strum” . What you are actually going to do is pick several different notes in succession on adjacent strings with a very very slight pause in between notes. When switching strings in the direction of low to high you always pick the string down, when switching from high to low you always pick up. Using this motion it allows you to play notes much faster than if you were to alternate pick. The catch though, is you must have great coordination between both hands. As your picking hand moves up and down the strings, your fretting had has to be quick enough to keep up.

Forget trying to explain it using words, lets watch Paul Gilbert show us how in this video:
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A big announcement at this year’s NAMM Show was that of the release of the Stratocaster VG, Fender’s first modeling guitar. After spending a few days researching Gibson’s digital guitar, I figured I might as well take a look at what Fender is offering.

The Guitar

This guitar starts off like any other American Stratocaster. It has an alder body, maple neck, and rosewood or maple fingerboard. It has 22 medium-jumbo frets and three American Strat single-coil pickups in the standard fashion. You get your familiar master volume and tone as well as a 5-way pickup selector switch. The bridge is an American 2-point synchronized tremolo. The hardware and pick guard are all in standard Strat form. Like I said, it is exactly what you would expect from a regular tried and true American Strat. The sound is output through a standard 1/4″ analog jack on the front of the guitar.

In addition to all that normal Strat stuff, there are a few extra components which make this a modeling guitar. First there is a Rolland VG hex pickup right between the bridge pickup and the bridge. This hex pickup allows for each string to be individually sensed and processed. There are also two additional 5-position knobs; one for selecting a modeling mode and one for selecting a tuning. The last difference is a little blue battery indicator light. That’s right… I said battery. The VG requires 4 AA batteries to power the internal processing unit. So what does all this jazz do? Well, each string is individually processed and modeled depending on which tone and tuning you select, then that modeled signal is output through the 1/4″ analog jack just as it always has. This means that you don’t need any extra equipment to use the modeling features, just plug it into your amp and go.
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Although Chuck Schuldiner is known by many, I really think he is one of the most underrated guitarists of the past 50 years. He is considered by many to the founding father of death metal. Chuck was the founding member of the band Death. In fact, the bad was more or less just a front for Chuck’s musical efforts.

There are several reasons why I love Chuck’s style. First off, he was very good at utilizing alternate timings in a song. You don’t have to listen very closely to hear the timing change at several different points in the above video and it really works.

Just watching Schuldiner’s fingers move is amazing. His style of playing was very strange. He brought his fingers so high off of the fingerboard when shredding, yet his playing is so fluid.

Sadly, Chuck passed away of a brain tumor in 2001 after struggling through treatment for two years. Initially there were reports that he was on his way to recover after surgery, but later it was discovered that the initial diagnosis was incorrect. There was a relapse and when Chuck needed immediate treatment he was denied due to lack of funds. Many artists in the industry held events to raise money for Chuck, but he continued to grow weaker and died of pneumonia on December 13th.

If you are interested in hearing more of his music, visit the Chuck Schuldiner memorial website.

I have had several people ask me “Have you heard Don Ross??” after learning that I love to play guitar. Well aside from others asking me that question, no, I had never heard of him. I finally decided to check him out, and I wish I had earlier. Don Ross is a Canadian guitar player from Montreal. He started to teach himself guitar at 8 years old and at 26 began to seriously pursue a career in music. He has over 10 albums to his name and has won the U.S. National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice.

His musical style can not be classified very easily. It is an instrumental kind of new age fingerstyle acoustic rock. He goes from very relaxing tunes to very up-beat technical songs. Here is one of my favorites from the videos available on YouTube.

If you do a quick search though you can find many more. Three songs I have listened to now and I can already see that he is going to become one of my new favorite acoustic artists.

If you like his music, head over to Don Ross’ official website and buy his CD.

Zakk Wylde, love him or hate him, has developed quite the product empire. Despite never really breaking into the mainstream with Black Label Society, even as much as other similar bands like Lamb of God and Children of Bodom, Zakk has an amazing cult following. Because of this he has been able to build up quite the product line.

There was a time when Wylde was the be all and the end all for me. I thought he was the king shit of life and if I ever had a dream it was to be able to play like him. I have since broadened by metal tastes, but I would still love to have one of these on hand when I just want to plug in and play some BLS.
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Create Digital Music has a post on Ubuntu Studio. Apparently it is an all-in-one package of audio/video/imaging tools for Ubuntu. Right now it sounds like it is a standalone distribution. This is interesting to me because I actually use Ubuntu as my main OS. I will be giving this a test drive April for sure when it is due out.

Check out the Gibson YouTube Channel. Basically just a bunch of YouTube videos that have people playing or talking about Gibson guitars.

There is a Slash video lesson in this Shred Masterclass column at Ultimate-Guitar.com that I liked.

Van Halen will reunite to do a North American tour in 2007. The reunion will include David Lee Roth, Eddie & Alex Van Halen, and Eddie’s 15 year old son will be on Bass.

Biréli Lagrène is an amazing Jazz guitarist. He sort of plays his own breed of gypsy jazz and I like it. You hear me talking on here from time to time about “acoustic shredding”. Well this guy can do it… but jazzified.

First emerging as a 13-year-old guitar prodigy in the 80s, Lagrène was often compared to guitarist Django Reinhardt. At that time the boy had been playing for 9 years already. That’s right… started when he was 4. After a few albums Biréli tried to shake the Reinhardt parallels by changing his style to more of a rock-fusion sound. His current music is more jazz oriented, but still has that strong Reinhardt influence.

If you liked the above video, check out Biréli Lagrène’s official website.

I got a tip today that for 2007 the high priced Ozzfest tickets will not only drop… they will be free!

Sharon and Ozzy along with the tour’s producer Live Nation will be turning to sponsors to cover the bill. Ticket prices have been soaring over the past few years as artists demand more to play summer shows. Ozzfest has been running for 11 years and this year they will pull the plug on ticket prices. I’m not sure what face this will take. Obviously they must already get some of their funding from sponsors. I guess we will have to wait and see what a fully sponsored concert will look like.

Ozzy will be returning to headline the festival, but the rest of the bands are still unannounced. Sharon says she already has some bands that are committed, but she is hoping that more will be excited to take part in this ground breaking event and jump on board.

Sharon points out, “we have bands committed, but we’re hoping that after today’s announcement we’ll have a whole influx of artists who want to be a part of something this ground breaking. We know there aren’t any major headlining acts that would tour all summer for nothing, but we’re confident we can turn some of the genre’s biggest bands on to what we’re doing and have them come out to play a date or two. If they’re in town and want the rush of performing in front of 20,000 frenzied kids, they’re more than welcome to join us. They can sell their t-shirts, CDs and whatever else they’ve got. They’re also welcome to book their own shows in local venues on the day of OZZFEST. I’m not stopping them. People have to be creative and think of alternatives.”

How to get tickets is not 100% clear as of now, but the announcement says fans can visit www.ozzfest.com and www.livenation.com for links to sponsor websites which will have details on finding them. It also notes more details will be coming.

25 dates have been announced, starting in Los Angeles on July 7th. Although the schedule is not finalized, other cities on the tour as of now include San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle, Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, Dallas, San Antonio, Kansas City, St Louis, Chicago, Indianapolis, Columbus, Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Hartford, Charlotte, Atlanta, West Palm Beach, Nashville. Sadly, still no Canadian dates to be heard of. (Sharon: We like metal too!)

You can read the entire announcement at Ozzfest’s official website.

The Gibson HD.6x Pro Les Paul has been available for a few months now. Still there is a lot of vague and sometimes inaccurate information on the net about it. In fact, after all I have read I still had a bit of confusion about what exactly this guitar can and can not do. So I decided to do a bit of research.

Just to reiterate what has been talked about on countless websites, this is the first digital guitar from Gibson. Now, digital guitars have been available from a few different manufacturers for years, but I find the term Digital Guitar has been used to describe a wide variety of products. Line 6 for example has had the Variax digital modeling guitar for quite some time. So what exactly is the Gibson 6x.HD Les Paul?
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I have just added a couple sites to my blogroll so I thought I’d point them out.

MusicGadgets.net

I have come across the site more than once in my online travels and have decided to make it part of my daily reads. The site posts interesting news and information about great music gadgets. It is an open topic music gear site, but there are a lot of guitars and guitar related posts to read.

Check out the main page at MusicGadgets.net or here are a couple of noteworthy posts that I found interesting:
Midomi, recognize the song with your singing
Tronical PowerTune System
DIY again: credit card picks
Monster Guitar Picks

Indieguitarist

Here is another guy, who like me loves guitars and music. I dont know what more I can say about it. I have had a lot of fun reading his posts so I added him as well. Check out this post about his guitars. He has some nice ones, and his collection has actually grown. He sent me a picture of his Wall o’ Guitars and I am seriously jealous.

I was just surfing a bit and came across this Alexi Laiho interview from January 25th, 2007. It looks like Children of Bodom have just released a new live DVD called Chaos Ridden Years: Stockholm Knockout Live (2006) so Modern Guitars Magazine sat down with Alexi to talk about everything metal.

I have been a huge Children of Bodom fan for about 2 years now. They are one of the many great metal bands that have come out of Eastern Europe over the past few years. Alexi’s call to fame was his amazing playing style and his unique vocals. Although, in the interview he admits he didn’t choose to be singer, he was “stuck with it”. He credits a lot of his technique to virtuoso Steve Vai and living metal legend Zakk Wylde. Personally I love the guy for his ability to play in such harmony with the bands keyboardist Janne Wirman.
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