Guitar Musings

I’m a “how’s that work” or “Let’s see the guts” type of guy when I see new gadgets.  This now includes the Gibson “Robot Guitar” and it’s self tuning mechanism.  I have heard about this new gadget and haven’t looked into it too much until news.com had an interesting pictorial with descriptions on “Taking apart the robot guitar.”   I’ve seen similar contraptions that can be installed on existing guitar but it’s nothing like the robot and requires some serious routing.   It was pretty cool to see how Gibson hid the electronics to keep the guitar looking authentic.   The machine heads are pretty bulky in the back and looks like you will need a bit of training on how to use it. Pretty cool but seems like a gadget that I can do without.

I’ve seen on twitter and other forums that guitarist (including myself) lament over [ad#125-125-floatright] the fact that they don’t have their guitar with them.  Well, your lonely days are over!  All you need is buy an iPhone and jailbreak it.  Below, is a video of someone doing their best to play us a Beatles medley with their new guitarpod and I’m sure that you can see that our steal and nylon stringed companions won’t have to worry about getting replaced by this “Guitar Hero” for the iPhone.  Anyway,  I could see someone eventually getting pretty good at playing the iGuitar and will have a nice little gimmick in an act or at parties.  I also see a nice little tool that could help you work out a melody that was stuck in your head or working on chords.  Will this be enough for me to hack my iPhone? I think not.  My iTouch….. well…..  Nah.  I’ll just stick to playing the real thing.

Been working on Tommy Emmanuel stuff lately and thought I would share some of the available tab that I have tried.  Some of these are pretty accurate and are almost the same as the stuff in my TE Note for Note book.   Anyway, hope this helps in your quest to learn Tommy’s music.

• Freight Train/Trambone:  Pretty good transcription from, what seems to me, the “Up Close” DVD.  Very similar to the “Note for Note” transcription which was based off of that DVD as well.  Choose the acoustic power link and you will need Power Tab to read it.
• Dixie McGuire:  Another transcription that is close to the “Note for Note” one.  I used the Power Tab version from the Ultimate Guitar Archive.  It is worth noting that the “Note for Note” version was a great help filling in a couple of fingering holes that the other missed. The same goes for Blue Moon.
• Those Who Wait:  Great transcription and pretty accurate to the “Only” CD version.  I then used that to adapt it to the “Live One” CD and the PBS Sierra Nevada version.  He really never does it the same way twice, it seems.  Anyway, choose the Ultimate Guitar Archive link and the Guitar Pro and Power Tab versions are both good versions.
• Borsalino:  Currently working on this myself an it’s  the best version I can find and is accurate enough.  A few of the fingerings are wrong and the transcription is incomplete but if you have a video version of Tommy playing this live, you’ll be able to figure it out.  Used the the Guitar Pro version from the Ultimate Guitar Archive.
• Angelina:  My first Tommy E. that I learned.  I didn’t use this tab myself, I used the transcription that was in December 2005 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine, which is the best Angelina transcprition out there.    I would use the Guitar Pro tab but there is a high rated ASCII version of the tab but I’m not a big fan of that kind of transcription. Hint: If your trying to figure it out yourself, it’s in drop D tuning with the capo on the 2nd fret.
• Blue Moon:  Once again this is very similar to the “Note for Note” songbook. I used the Guitar Pro transcription that could be found at Ultimate Guitar Archive.  Still struggling with this song, got the notes down but the feel is lacking.

That’s a short list on the Tommy E songs I have been working on.  Of those, I could probably perform Dixie, Angelina and Those Who Wait without too much trouble.  I would still say they need some polishing.  So if you need to Tommy E songs to work on, I hope this helps.  If you can afford it, I would strongly recommend getting the “Note for Note.”  Not only for the great transcriptions but there is some useful information on Tommy’s playing and his influences.  Like it says in the book, you need to learn about what influenced him if you really want to play like him.  Anyway, I hope this helps and if you find any good transcriptions, please leave a comment.

Keep Playin’

My Daughter is taking guitar lessons and she was assigned to write a little song and write it out in standard notation.  I knew that I could get staff paper from the Internet in PDF or gif/jpg format but I stumbled upon a site that gave me even more options.

The site that I found is www.blanksheetmusic.net.  There, you can customize your staves to fit your needs.  First, you start with a blank sheet and go from there.  There are options to add more staves and connect them for piano or ensemble pieces and to add add tab to your project.  One feature that I liked, in particular, was the ability to adjust the size of my staves.  In my case, I needed to enlarge it to make it easier for her to write her piece.  Once you are finished with the customization, they give you the option to save it for future use (requires registration).  If you don’t need/want to customize, they have pre-configured staff paper available for you to use as well.  It’s as easy as customize and print.  I great resource for any songwriter.

Some of you may have noticed my Twitter update component on the right side of the blog.  Some of my friends and family have asked me, “what the heck is Twitter?”  I tried to explain it and they got the basic idea but still had that confused look on  their face.  So check out the YouTube video below which explains Twitter in “plain English” and much better than I ever could.  Then give Twitter a try and maybe sign up and check out my updates.