Guitar Noize

Washburn brought two new 7 string acoustic guitars to NAMM 2015, the WCD187CEB (Dreadnought) and WCG187CEB (Grand Auditorium). Washburn say that the low B string on these guitars “retains its clarity and punch whether played acoustically or through an amplifier”. These guitars are part of the Comfort Series which have belly and top carves that hug the body rather than digging into it and provide a comfortable playing experience whether you’re sitting or standing.

The WCD187CEB & WCG187CEB models have a Rosewood back, Mahogany sides, Contoured Select Spruce top, Quarter Sawn Scalloped Sitka Spruce bracing, Satin Mahogany neck with 2 way Truss rod and Rosewood fingerboard. The Fishman Isys+ systen included in both models is an integrated tuner/pickup combo for versatile amplified tonal shaping, allowing precise control of bass and treble frequencies.

Suggested retail for the WCD187CEB and the WCG187CEB is $712.90.

At NAMM 2015 Michael Kelly brought their latest Acoustic range, the Triad series, which is their top of the line collection. Consistent between all four models are the exotic wood three piece backs, a solid spruce top, flamed okoume sides, zero-endpin bridge, the Triad three circle inlay elements, built in Fishman active electronics discretely installed within the soundhole, and two additional ports on the side of each model for extra sound dispersion and audibility to the player.

Pictured above is the Michael Kelly Triad Port which features an offset soundhole placement designed to create a larger resonate surface on the guitar top. As mentioned above the two soundholes on the side of each model add an extra dimension the sound of the guitar by pushing the sound up toward the player which you can see below. Having played a guitar with a side sound port like this I can tell you it is an amazing feature that lets you the player really hear the true sound that the guitar is producing. The suggested retail price is $580.

There are 3 other guitars in the Triad Series, the Triad 10E 10 string guitar (suggested retail of $580), the Triad CE (suggested retail of $445), the Triad Entwined E featuring a vine inlay (suggested retail of $525).

Alexander McKay is an old College buddy of mine, he was a great shredder back in the early 90’s and went on to tour the world with a Metal band but the rock ‘n roll lifestyle unfortunately began to take it’s toll and years of alcohol abuse began to destroy his life. Thankfully Alex managed to turn his life around and started writing acoustic songs, singing and performing again. I never knew what a great voice he had, I just knew Alex as a guitarist but when he played me some demos a few years ago while visiting Sydney I was blown away. I really hope that Alex and the Donroy crew hit their Kickstarter target because I think this will be an interesting film with a strong message and of course filled with Alexander McKay music. Alex has never given up on his dream of making music for a living and I hope he has a long career ahead of him.

“It’s a love story that grows from the trenches of booze and desperation, with an original soundtrack written and produced by Alex, making it an experience to be seen and heard. Stones is a true story, a real story, and an opportunity to give a talented musician the chance to re-launch his career. Because we all deserve one last chance, don’t we?”

The film is being produced by Donroy Independent Films, Writer, producer Don Macnab-Stark and director, producer Roydon Turner joined forces in 2011 to form this unique independent film company.

Check out the video for the song Stones by Alexander McKay:

http://stonesmovie.com/

By Pappy

Do you like Les Pauls? Of course you do - we all do to some degree or another. To say that you don’t like Les Pauls would be like saying you don’t like the third leg of a barstool: It may not be your thing, but you’d be hard-pressed to live without it.

The Les Paul is one of the electric guitar’s base guitars that so many of our heroes took up as their own and made incredible music with. It was pictures of them that adorned our walls as young teens and it’s because of those pictures none of us would turn down a Les Paul if someone offered. I mean, come on: It’s a Les Paul for crying out loud.

The history of the Les Paul is fairly significant, and people have tried to tackle it in the past, but those people weren’t Dave Hunter. Hunter lives in the guitar world, writes for guitar magazines, and has even released a string of successful books about the guitar - most memorably one about MY favorite electric guitar: the Telecaster. He’s a guy who found the magic formula for writing a fantastic guitar history book, and he did it again with the Gibson Les Paul: The Illustrated History of the Guitar That Changed Rock.

Step 1: Make it big. This book is sizable in length and height. One COULD say it’s a coffee table book, but I like to think of it as a history textbook instead.

Step 2: Make it lengthy, not TOO lengthy. Look, history - particularly of a guitar model that was there in the formative stages of the electric guitar - is long. If you cut too much out, it will be a laughable attempt to gloss over important details, but if it’s too long, you’ll bore the audience. Hunter walks that fine line well and the book is 217 pages (not counting the index).

Step 3: Make it interesting. Hunter basically wrote two books that revolved around the Les Paul and jammed them both between two covers. One is about the history and construction of the guitar, one is about the biggest names who play(ed) the Les Paul and little stories about them. Rather than put one after the other, he breaks up the history with a few bio pieces, then slides the history back in, basically peppering the book with the two sections so any readers who may not want to stay on one track for too long don’t lose interest.

Step 4: Lots and lots of beautiful pictures. The electric guitar is art that appeals to almost all of your basic senses. The reason there are so many shapes, sizes, colors, and styles, is because we like to look at them. Beautiful photographs on high-quality paper means that you can ogle the guitars until the cows come home.

Step 5: Make it durable. Durability to a guitarist is key and a nice hardcover book with stitched binding means that it will last for a long, long time with minimal protection.

Hunter did a great job (again) with this book and I’m glad to add it to my collection of his. You can purchase The Gibson Les Paul - The Illustrated Story of the Guitar That Changed Rock as well as lots of other awesome guitar and music oriented books from http://www.voyageurpress.com/.

“Jam Track Central, the home of virtuoso guitar improvisation, has announced the launch of its first ever guitar solo competition, anticipated to be one of the biggest ever! There are prizes worth over £10,000, including gear, endorsement deals with major sponsors and the grand prize of becoming a ‘JTC Artist’. The winner will join the JTC artist roster alongside some of the world’s best guitarists such as Guthrie Govan, Alex Hutchings, Jeff Loomis, Kiko Loureiro, Marco Sfogli, Jack Thammarat, Andy James and many more!”

The contest is free to enter and all you have to do is film yourself playing a solo over one of five selected JamTrackCentral backing tracks. The backing tracks will be free downloads available from the JTC site. The competition is aimed at all players, with backing tracks in Rock, Metal, Jazz, Blues and Funk styles.

Round One - Anyone can enter; all videos will be displayed on the JTC website.
Round Two – Ten finalists will be chosen. They then have to record and film an original composition. Finally the JTC judges will choose the winner and two runners up!

“The finalists will be selected by the JTC celebrity judging panel, featuring 10 of JTC’s top artists. These will include Jack Thammarat, Martin Miller and Marco Sfogli. All finalists will receive prizes from a prize pool worth over £10k, which includes products from Fractal Audio, ToonTrack, EMG, Blackstar, Roland, D’Addario and Andertons Music!”

The winning composition will be released as a selling product at Jamtrackcentral.com, and the winner will have the opportunity to become a regular JTC contributor. This will bring regular worldwide exposure and a guaranteed income from JTC’s artist royalty scheme.

The competition is due to launch in March 2015, keep checking https://jamtrackcentral.com/jtcguitarsolocontest2015 or the JTC Facebook page for more info.

Nearly two years ago I interviewed Adrian Holovaty, the genius developer behind innovative music transcription site Soundslice.com. As a front end web developer by trade myself and a guitarist I was blown away by what Adrian had achieved by creating a simple to use tab editor that you could synch with YouTube videos. Two years on Adrian and PJ have taken Soundslice to another level with a full transcription service that includes music notation, TAB, chord box diagrams and synchronises perfectly with audio or video. Soundslice is even available as a technology that you can license for your own website and some big names are already using it such as Jamplay.com, Premier Guitar, Jamtrackcentral.com. You can also now buy interactive artist verified transcriptions from the likes of Acoustic Viruoso Antoine Dufour and Gypsy Jazz master Robin Nolan.

As you can see Soundslice.com is constantly evolving and they have created a fantastic online service but they have just announced yet another tier to the business and that is Soundslice for Teachers which I think will be massive. Teachers who set up an account for $20/month or $200/year can upload notation in one of the supported formats such as Guitar Pro, Power Tab, Sibelius, Finale and MuseScore and and sync it with audio/video files or existing YouTube videos.

“Build a curriculum around the lessons, and invite as many students as you’d like, at no cost to them. Effortlessly embed your Soundslice score in any web page.”

As Soundslice.com takes advantage of the latest web technologies all lessons work in any modern web browser — including iPads, Android tablets and Chromebooks. No installs required.

Head over to the Soundslice website to check out a free trial of Soundslice for Teachers.

At NAMM 2014 D’Addario announced the arrival of a new product, actually they started giving beta sets of strings to artists to test and later in the year released the NYXL strings made in an entirely new New York facility. These strings are totally re-engineered to be stronger, louder and harder wearing. At NAMM 2015 D’Addario announced the arrival of 2 new sets of Acoustic strings that feature NY Steel and they have combined them with their EXP Coating for strings for even greater longevity, D’Addario say they last a minimum of 4 times longer… than what I don’t know but I assume standard uncoated D’Addario equivalents.

The two NY Steel sets available are EXP Coated Phosphor Bronze and EXP Coated 80/20 Bronze.

The Suhr Reactive Load “…takes the place of your speaker cabinet in your signal chain. It provides an 8Ω load for your tube amplifier (maximum 100 watts), and produces a balanced and unbalanced signal that interfaces with recording devices, effects, and power amplifiers.”

So this product is not an attenuator it just acts as a load for your amp so that you can run it silently into your DAW and use impulse response cabinet emulation for recording or a cabinet emulator hardware device such as the Two Notes Torpedo C.A.B. Also as Pete mentions in the video comments, you could run one of your amp outputs to a speaker cab and the other to the reactive load which would halve your output and attenuate the output although you might need to consult Suhr or your amp manufacturer before doing this, just in case.

Specs:
Input Impedance: 8Ω
DI / Line Out Level: +4 dBu at 7 watts input, maximum level setting
Balanced Line Output Impedance: 10KΩ
Unbalanced Line Output Impedance: 10KΩ
Maximum recommended input power: 100 Watts RMS

http://www.suhr.com/Reactive-Load/

Live and Teach Guitar are running a survey for guitar teachers to find out what marketing strategies are most effective in attracting new students and what makes successful guitar teachers stand out from everybody else. This survey will try to seek out best practices from guitar teachers around the world and analyze what actions you as a guitar teacher should focus on in 2015.

The survey will look at:

• What marketing methods do successful guitar teachers use
• What type of resources and strategies are most effective
• How do successful guitar teachers attract new students
• What to focus on whether you want to teach guitar full time or part time

Every survey participant will receive a comphrensive report analyzing the responses and outlining what strategies and methods lead to the best results.

You can get involved in the survey here: http://www.liveteachguitar.com/guitar-teacher-industry-survey-2015/

Here’s an extremely tasty new pedal from Source Audio announced at NAMM 2015, the Nemesis Delay. The Nemesis packs 12 delays into a single pedal including digital delay, warm and vibrant analog delay, realistic tape delay and special delays such as animated reverse, octave, and modulating effects. There are 4 user presets, stereo ins and outs, tap tempo, 5-pin MIDI in, MIDI thru, and expression control. Onboard controls include Time, Feedback, Mix, Modulation Depth, Modulation Rate, and Effect Intensity.

The Nemesis also has a USB port to access its free Neuro Effects Editor software for Mac and Windows, offering an entirely new set of adjustable parameters and allows users to edit, save, and share presets with others in the Nemesis/Neuro community. The pedal is also compatible with the Neuro App for iOS and Android that allows users to easily edit, download, and share presets anytime, anywhere.

http://www.sourceaudio.net/