A very cool home made guitar

Came across this guitar made by Dennis from Vermont

It's played with a slide, and has three strings tuned to an open chord, A-E-A at the moment. It also has a home built internal pickup (also homemade) into it and it can be plugged into your Pignose or Marshall stack if you so desire.

You can hear it on these songs

DMenard at Soundclick

A 2 hour special song

I pulled together another new song during 2 hours free time on Friday. Start to finish 2 hours (and it shows). Not really happy with the vocal track but got the overall sounds I was after.

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/pagemusic.cfm?bandID=314739

Rock and Roll Bitch The Video

Our friend (and forum host) Zoetrope used the game The Movies to make a video for his song Rock and Roll Bitch. Very cool

Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones

Posted by Zoetrope

I've been looking a long time for good earphones to wear while riding the subway. Most of the noise canceling earphones I looked at were too expensive. Then I started looking at sound isolating earphones. The best for the money are the Etymotic Research ER6i Isolator Earphones at about $87.50. That's a lot for a pair of earphones, but how much is your hearing worth? Before I had these I either had to crank the volume all the way up to listen on the train, or just sit and listen to the train rattling along. Now I can have the volume very low and hear everything fine, with almost no background noise. I even keep them in when I'm not listening to music, just to block out the train sounds. The earphones come with several different tips so you can fit them snugly in your ear canal. This reduces environmental sound levels by 30 to 35 dB. The sound quality is quite good. While I wouldn't advise wearing them for biking or driving, since you really can't hear what's going on around you, they're great for trains and planes.

New Song

I continue my experimental stage with another new song called Swim. I did all the music and "production" with Albert Forssall, currently of France, creating the chorus.

Please check out Swim on My Soundclick Site

Quickie Book Review: How To Write Songs On Guitar – Rikky Rooksby

How To Write Songs On Guitar – Rikky Rooksby

What is it: A large format book including a lot of chord diagrams, a simple introduction to basic music theory and tips/guidelines on writing songs. The book focuses primarily and chords and has very little information on melody.

A great deal of the book focuses on the chord progression used in hundreds of hit songs, breaking them down and explaining how/why they work in a brief and simple manner.

Who is it for: Invaluable for the beginning songwriter (songwriter not musician) and a useful reference/guide for the more experienced songsmith.

My two cents: An outstanding book. As a beginning songwriter 2 years ago I struggled to get started but this book really set me in the right direction. I still use it almost every day as a reference for ideas on keys, chords, chord progressions and song structures. For me it’s an invaluable guidebook to songwriting.

My Studio Video Part 1

I realized that the 30 second vids my camera takes would be great for You Tube so I made one of my bedroom studio. Here's part 1. I was told that tidying it up was no Rock and Roll so here goes. Not very professional but it's a start.

Part 2 is down below and I'll see if I can get a video of me recording the show sometime soon.

My Studio Video Part 2

Part 2

New Touch Screen iPod's

Thanks to Ben of the Blue Casket for this one. Apple's latest patents

http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1902

Free Gibson Guitars

A bunch of contests for free Gibson guitars. Fine them here http://www.gibson.com/AllAccess/Contests/

Summer NAMM 2006

Interesting products in these lists

http://www.zzounds.com/article/blog/post01.html
http://www.zzounds.com/article/blog/post02.html
http://www.zzounds.com/article/blog/post03.html

*The Boss RC-2 Loopstation looks like fun (though useless)
* Boss Micro-BR looks like an amazing handheld recorder
* Alesis ControlPad is a nice looking drum trigger pad
* The Zoom H4 is an odd unit. It's like a field recorder for news guys and
podcasters but also a recording interface with guitar effects, why both, don't ask me
* New Tascam interfaces but Chas tells me they offer nothing new
* The Schecter Girls look pretty good (Page 3)

Well here we are

The first post in my personal show blog. Who knows what, if anything, it will be. The idea is to post information on the show, music related stuff and anything else that I find interesting.

Thanks and check back regularly.