Children of Bodom has the new song they wrote for Viva La Bands Vol. 2 up on their MySpace page. It’s called Tie My Rope.

The album is slated for release on September 4th and includes songs from 19 other bands and has 7 exclusive songs.

Head over and check it out.

I don’t tend to purchase CDs that I haven’t already listened to. I don’t like the risk involved. I have been burned once or twice buying an album that I know had a song I liked just to find out the rest of the album is crap. In this case, I took the risk. I bought Friday Night in San Francisco having only heard a few songs here and there from Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucia individually. I couldn’t have named a tune of their’s and I had never heard them all together, but for some reason that day I was feeling frisky. I bought the live album without ever hearing a shred of it.

I was initially quite amazed. I listened to it in the car a bit, I ripped it at work and listened to it on my quiet night shifts. Overall I was pretty happy with my purchase. Then, I don’t really know why, but I stopped listening to it for six months or so. A week or so ago I was browsing my CD collection for something to listen to on my daily work commute and I grabbed it almost instantly. For some reason this time around I am so much more impressed with the music. It has hit me on another level all together.

Al Di Meola, John McLaughlin, and Paco de Lucia form a group known as The Guitar Trio. They have released two studio albums, one in 1982 and one in 1996 and then two corresponding live albums. Friday Night in San Francisco was released in 1980. The album is all acoustic guitar. There are no accompanying instruments, no vocals, and the only percussion is made by the guitarists slapping their guitars.
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The Guitar Zeros have taken a Guitar Hero video game controller and modded it into a real instrument. They have interfaced the guitar with a computer to trigger synthesized guitar sounds. In fact, they have done this with two Guitar Hero Xplorers, one for guitar and one for bass.

In the video interview on CNET News the lead guitarist gives us a few details on how exactly it is done. Basically they hooked the guitar up to the computer and then used a synth program called MAX/MSP to trigger the sounds. I’m not exactly sure how the interface works, but he says he uses the binary system to play notes. So basically you could program each binary number to a note in a scale. That takes all of the skill out of it though because then you could just button mash and never go off key.

Sadly, these guys are about 25 years ahead of their time. If they had have come up with this in the early 80’s [see Keytar] they would be superstar one-hit-wonders already. I do have to give credit where credit is due though, these guys are pretty big geeks. I love to mod electronics to use them in ways they might not have been meant to, so I envy their skills on this one. If you are interested you can check out The Guitar Zeros website for a guide on how you can hook up this rig for yourself.

[Via Now Toronto]

To add on to my previous post about intense finger picking guitarists, here are some songs that I have learned over the years. It didn’t take me very long to come up with this list and I think that is because they are the ones that I play time and time again just because they are so much fun. Some of them aren’t even that hard, but will make you look like a guitar god. They are all very unique and it baffles my mind when thinking about what had to go into creating such an original song. Specifically Blackbird is a very simple yet creative piece of guitar writing.

Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
The Beatles - Blackbird
Crosby Stills & Nash - Helplessly Hoping
Led Zeppelin - Babe I’m gonna leave you
Zakk Wylde - Another Spoke In The Wheel

So download the above songs and grab the tabs.

As I said in my post about Michael Amott’s guitar setup, I went and saw Arch Enemy and Chimaira last night at MacEwan hall. I wasn’t really sure what to expect but I must say it was one of the better shows I have seen.

I went with a buddy of mine and we arrived after the first band. We got there just in time to watch them setup for God Forbid. They were pretty good for the most part. They had a really rad singer, but their sound setup wasn’t the greatest. You couldn’t hear the guitars over the bass and most of the backup vocals were pretty off key. (more…)

I think this is going to be my last post in this series for now, but I have been saving the best for last. In my first post on AllMusic I was talking about different (non-internet) sources for finding new music and probably the most valuable for me is my friends. I found out about most of my favorite bands through friends. (more…)

Throughout my guitar playing years my musical tastes have changed greatly. I started out very closed minded when it came to music and I really think I have grown because guitar has allowed me to appreciate many different kinds of music. The following songs changed my musical path and introduced me to a whole new world of music.

Nirvana - Come as you are
Nirvana’s come as you was monumental because it was the first song I taught myself to play on guitar. It was a really easy song to pick up and really got me hooked on playing. (more…)

Realizing that AllMusic.com isn’t the only music database online I figured I would turn my Where to Find New Music post into a miniseries of posts about other sites that have similar functionality.

In this installment I’m going to show you a ridiculous web application called Pandora that was created by the Music Genome Project. What is Pandora then? Well think of it as your own personal radio station that only plays music that you like! Wouldn’t that be nice? Well Pandora is the closest anything has come to just that. The advantage to Pandora over a site like AllMusic.com is you get to go by the sound of the music, not just the name of a band or song. (more…)

Nothing beats the feeling you get when you find a new band that you love. You know, when you get really excited about a new guitar player or group that you just want to listen to them all of the time. Usually you find new bands through reading magazines, talking with friends, or just by chance. Some of my favorite music was found just by chance, including Led Zeppelin and Zakk Wylde. Other bands like Dark Tranquillity, Himsa, and Children of Bodom were referred to me through friends. It’s all music that I couldn’t imagine living without.

But what happens when you are in a slum, all of the music you have is old and the thrill is gone. You are looking for something new, but similar to what you are interested in now, but don’t know how to find it. I hope I can shed some light on some great resources for finding new bands.

Allmusic.com is one of my favorite music databases. It has been around for quite some time and has some really great features for finding new music. (more…)