Happy Friday to you, I hope you’re all extremely excited about the inevitable weekend ahead.
To make this morning go as smoothly and quickly as possible until lunchtime – when it becomes officially acceptable to show symptoms of “that Friday feeling”, may I suggest you watch this video? I’m not usually one to champion such showy virtuoso types, but Antonio Forcione manages to find a perfect balance between showmanship and genuine musicality – very difficult and very impressive.
Those of you into guitar music will be blown away and those of you who are not into guitar music will probably enjoy it anyway.
Enjoy.
If you have discovered anything you think worthy of appearing on this blog then please get in touch; luke@routenote.com or @monkeyhotel
AC/DC were offering an actual amp within their latest box set and I thought that it would be just a cheap and crappy amp, but here is a video to prove otherwise.
A lot of people have trouble with slugging around a normal sized guitar and most travel guitars are way too small. Blackbird Guitars has a solution to that conundrum, offering its $1600 Blackbird Rider travel guitar. It’s a compact 2/3 size acoustic steel-string guitar made of carbon fibre, making it a featherweight 2.75 pounds. We were immediately captivated by its gorgeous good looks and rich sound.
The Blackbird Rider has a great carbon fibre finish, but I’m still not too sure it can justify the price tag. I’m very impressions by the clean and crisp quality of the sound coming out of this tiny guitar.
Les Paul (born Lester William Polsfuss) could arguably be responsible for the way, modern music at least, is enjoyed and has been developed as well as its electrical recording techniques. Les Paul, who’s death was a mixture of age and pneumonia, was one of the pioneers in the development of the full-bodied electric guitar in 1941, multi-track recordings and numerous reverb an echo effects. Many due to the frustration of the, at the time, limitations of guitar effects and recordings. The invention of the guitar pick up is one of the few things that he is solely responsible for, which basically involved his breaking a recording desk to pieces and using the magnet pickup of the tone arm inside to “pick up” the vibrations of his strings, you can work out the rest. After that the design just had to be refined down to what is now almost a standard issue “wammy bar” on a guitar. The Gibson Guitar corporation were the first people to incorporate Paul’s suggestions and present the idea to him , he was impressed enough to sign us with them, and the Gibson Les Paul was born.
Dying at the age of 94 he was gigging to the last breath putting on shows live in New York in 2006 and winning Grammys for his album ‘Les Paul and friends: American made, world played’. Les was inducted into countless halls of fame as well as being an honorary member of the Audio Engineering Society. Les died peacefully with his family and friends by his side yesterday (August 13th).
Huge, gritty basslines, new wave and electro guitars and songwriting join up with buzzing guitar hooks in a grungey Nirvana style to back up a weird, caterwauling vocal. An album both spiky and approachable, this has got more depth to it than is at first obvious, especially in terms of production. Look forward to a second album, hopefully before too long. I bet whoever played guitar and keyboard is a wonderful person, and is an asset to his company, wherever he works, and deserves a raise.
<– Buy it on iTunes