Guitar Licks and Tips


You are here: Home / Archives for My Experiences

I’m off to make musical history I hope

by

Well today is the day that I, along with a few buddies, will be heading off to Yonge Dundas Square in Toronto to hopefully join the Guinness World Record of the largest guitar ensemble!

This is all part of the Toronto’s Luminato Festival of Arts and Creativity.

We, 1803 or more participants, will be collectively playing Neil Young’s Helpless for all to hear. We’ve all got a good night’s sleep, tuned up our guitars and practiced this one to death!

I hope you wish us all luck! Let’s also pray that the guitar god’s will be smilin’ down at us favorably.

Keep on Jammin’ at Yonge and Dundas Square!





Electric Guitar Pick ups

by

Today I want to tell the talk about the basics of guitar pick ups. There are basically 2 types are (1) single coil and (2) Humbucker.

The pick up is essentially made up of magnets, that are placed perpendicular to the strings, that have wires wrapped around them. The signals, the guitar strings vibrations, then travel through them, out through the guitar and then into a amplifier.

I could go into more detail but, I realize that all of my readers are not guitar players so I’ll save them the boredom of it all … maybe not next time though!

Pickups are essentially magnets. Your strings are made of magnetic metals; usually electric guitar strings have a steel core wrapped in nickel, or are just plain steel. Your pickup creates a magnetic field that when the strings move, disturb. This disturbance is transferred to an electrical signal by your pickup, effected by all your guitar’s electronics and eventually reaches your amp and is turned into vibrations which you hear as your guitar.http://www.ultimate-guitar.com

I have a number of classic guitars in my collection and each one has a unique sound quality to them. My 1959 Fender Duo Sonic has 2 lovely single coil pick ups. Using both pick ups together, the pick up selector in the middle position, gives it a Humbucker effect to it, somebody was certainly thinking way back then.

I also have another Fender guitar. It’s my 1980 Fender Lead II. They produced this baby between 1979-1982.This one has a single coil pick up but, when you listen very closely to this one beside my 1959 Fender, there are subtle differences for sure! The pick up in this is called a X-1.

The last one that i have in my possession is my pride and joy, the 1989 Gibson RD-Artist! This one has Humbucker pick ups. Also incorporated into this is some real neat active electronics. The pick ups in the RD-Artist was developed by none other then the creator of Moog keyboards!

So all those out there that have an electric, what type of pick ups do you have in them?

Keep on Jammin’

Finally the Beatles reunite once again

by

Finally the surviving Beatles, Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, got to play together one more time live on stage!

The remaining Beatles performed at New York’s famous Radio City Music Hall in support of the David Lynch Foundation. This foundation focuses on Consciousness-Based Education and World Peace for students throughout the world to use.

Mr. McCartney said, “At this point we would like to introduce somebody to you who you know, you’ve heard his name. He’s going to come out here and play you a little song this joyful night. Ladies and gentlemen: Billy Shears!” The New York Times

The press conference that they held was definitely intriguing. Just watching them both together on the stage made my nerve endings tingle, like a little kid just before Christmas morning.

My wife and I had the honour of seeing Sir Paul a couple of years ago at Toronto’s Skydome. They had the dome set up in it’s concert tent format and it was not all that bad acoustically speaking. I don’t know if just seeing Mr McCartney and his now deceased wife Linda playing on stage together that night that may have made me oblivious of the sound quality or not. They performed some massive blasts from the past that evening, I more then sure it made most patrons of the show have goose bumps all over!

The first song they played was together at the Change Begins Within show was With a Little Help from My Friends. That’s definitely one of my favorites to play on my acoustic at any campfire.

The encore section showcased Starr playing on his familiar small kit. They perfectly executed an epic version of “Cosmically Conscious,” that was followed by the crowd-pleasing “I Saw Her Standing There.” Now that’s a show worth the price of admission!

I’ve been having problems with my site right now, so I’ll keep this short and sweet. Did anyone here go a witness this unforgettable show? If so, what was it like? If you didn’t attend the event, have you seen any of these musical giants on stage on their own?

Keep on Jammin’

Meta

Pages