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Archives for January 2009

Rocking Roll ship cruise

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If you are a real dedicated music love and you crave a more personal experience with your favorite band, then maybe you should check out the Ships and Dips music cruise. The company that runs this ultimate music adventure is called Sixthman Cruises. Check out the bands of the past and upcoming ship’s list to see what I mean.

Basically, the format is quite simple. The company wishes to provide the die hard music lover a chance to have a more intimate, musical adventure with their favorite band. They plop you on a boat, send you off somewhere, watch the bands around the pool or maybe you might even get the opportunity to stagger into them at the bar, nice! This type of a boat cruise may finally push this landlubber’s butt off the guitar/computer chair and directly into the great blue sea, ha!

Some of the groups in this years line up are the Bare Naked Ladies, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett (if your into him) and the best in my eyes is John Mayer! John Mayer was seen and photographed doing his version of the great Borat, in his own personal neon-green mankini!

Now this is the kind of trip that sounds like it would be a blast to anyone to witness! Just imagine you, your favorite band and a few other lucky son’s of gun’s, chillin’ out by the pool in a much more intimate environment then a large impersonal hall, listening to them jam and taking a few pics for the just because you can!

The ship is obviously trying to give you a more unique and personal setting then what is offered at any other venue. A hall might be too big, the acoustics might be pathetic and at the end of the show, it may not be worth your money. In today’s economic world, some of us are not receiving that personal concert connection that we are all craving for, but here at least it seems that somebody is picking up on that bad vibe.

I’ve never been on a cruise before and that’s fine with me. My family and buddies keep screaming at me about all the neat amenities that these floating booze cans have to offer for decades now. Also in the past I’ve been bombarded with ads for cruises in my in-box but honestly, this kind of trip does not grab my attention in the least.

The one thing that made a world of difference to me about this format that you can see on this site is that they have a on-line forum of people talking about the cruise and what they encountered on it. And I liked what I read.

Keep on Jammin’





The backwards Guitar

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The backwards guitar in this picture, is a unique approach to guitar building, from the traditional perspective that is. I would how it would sound? If you wanted to pick this thing up and had a couple of drinks in ya, it might take a second or two to get your musical bearings straight … wouldn’t it?

odd guitar

My wife brought this picture to my attention, in case you thought I found this one on my own!

How to find the name of a guitar chord

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The best site I have found to determine the name of a specific guitar chord is to use Chord Namer on the JGuitar website. Every time I figure out a song and I can’t arrive at the correct name for a chord, I have found this site the simplest and most comprehensive to use.

When I want to determine the composition of a certain song, I just figure it out. It is just that easy for me. Upon listening to any song, I can figure the chord progressions in my head. Then I put it down in Word to use at a later time. The chord format I implement here is TAB (Guitar Tablature). This is pretty much the standard and easiest way to write/communicate songs to other players, just in case you didn’t know.

The chord(s) that I come up with for songs are always more complicated then what the general guitar player needs. So the chord names are much more complex then say for example: play a B chord here and then … Now this is how the chord namer works!

Now to get a better grasp of how to understand this screen, imagine that you are holding a guitar on your lap with the guitar in the playing position. Then to get a better look at the whole fretboard and to look at where you will be placing your fingers, you would pick up the bottom part of the guitar and bring it up towards your face. Got it?

Now to how the program works!

From left to right on this screen (see link above), Mute indicates the string that you WILL NOT be hitting. So at first glance, all the circles have this green dot in the center of them. This indicates that you WILL NOT be hitting ANY of these strings.

Right beside this, you will see letters and they represent the strings that you will hit. To the right of these letters, you will see circles with NO green dots in the middle. Click on the ones that YOU WILL BE USING!

Now you get to the part of the program where you tell it exactly WHERE you wish to put your fingers on the fretboard. The yellow section represents your fretboard. The numbers that you see directly above it represents the FRETS. Now you just move your mouse over the individual string and fret you will use and click it. A green dot will appear in the middle of the circle and represents your finger positioning.

With all this complete, you then hit the Go button and wait for the name of your chord to appear!

The chord namer generates many other chords names here, but for the general player just use the first chord at the top of the list. I pretty much only use this function on the site, but there are many more hidden treasures on here if you are a little more adventurous.

So give it a whirl, if your in trouble trying to find the name of a chord and get back to us at what you think of it. We’re all waiting for your results!

Keep on Jammin’

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