This Page
I am going to put a variety of different things on this page. I may include a few tracks of me improvising over backing tracks, a few original songs, and maybe a few of my own versions of some covers. I won't be putting much stuff up yet because I need to buy some mics to record with but I am buying some soon. I hope that you will enjoy my music. Please leave a comment telling me what you liked or didn't like. I am really looking to improve, not so much to showcase. Also, I'm not going to spend a lot of time (althrough I will spend some time) updating this page (besides from music) in terms of pictures, friends, and things like that. I want the focus to be directed more so towards the music that I am posting here. However, if you leave a comment that gives me advice I will try to reply.
Me As A Guitarist
Here is a basic summary of my guitar "career" if care to read it... I have been playing guitar about four years. I took lessons for the first two years of that time period then skipped a year and now have been taking lessons for about the past year. I have come a long way in my taste with guitar and music in general. When I first started to play, I wanted to play mostly Alternetive Heavy Rock. Now I like many different genres and styles. Some artists that I listen to a lot right now are Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Grateful Dead, Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble, Allman Brothers Band. Other artists that I like but am not listening to right now or used to like but still admire include Aerosmith, Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Megadeath, Machine Head, Avenged Sevenfold, 311. This is not an all-inclusive list so if something is not here it does not mean that I don't like it.
As for acutal guitar playing I would not say that I am an extremely unique player. I do what I do and I try to do it well. If you like it, then thats great. If you don't, then that's okay too. However, I would say that I am well learned (for a teenage rock guitarist) in music theory. I know many different scales (pentatonic -duh!, modes, melodic minor-not so duh). I know my arpeggios as well. I also know many chords, in fact if you tell me a chord to play chances are I already know it or can easily figure out how to play it (knowing the modes/arpeggios helps with this a lot). I also can read music. As for speed and "chops" I would not say that I am the best. As I said, I do what I do. Right now I don't feel a "need for speed". Now, I feel more of a need for playing things that are musical and sound good to me.
One of the things that I feel I need to work on now is repetitiveness. I will tend to play similar licks/phrases over and over again and just rotate them. You will notice this when I post some clips of myself soloing over a blues. I guess I just need to listen to more music and learn more licks. If you have any other suggestions, please leave a comment.
My Band
I am also in a band that plays mostly rock. We also play Metal and grunge/punk rock. Some of the covers that we do best are Foxey Lady (Hendrix) and Killing in the Name (Rage). The name of my band is H-Man's Calvary. We actually get a fair amount of gigs. The drummer in my band is Aaron Harel. You can see his MySpace Music page here: www.myspace.com/aaronharel. He's quite the drummer. Our band might make a MySpace of our own so we can record some of our songs. Also there will be more information about The Calvary there. Right now we mostly do covers but we have a couple of originals and are looking to write some more soon.
Gear
In case you're curious the gear I use:
Amp: Crate Palomino 30W Class A Tube Amp (This amp sounds really really good for its price and size and just really good in general. A little finnicky but I would reccomend it to anyone who plays something like rock or blues.)
Guitars: Epiphone Les Paul Classic Goldtop (this is my main guitar that I use for shows), Danelectro '59 Dano Pro (I tune this to open E and mainly use it for slide), Aria Nylon String Acoustic (I usually have this in an open D tuning for either slide or different sounding acoustic stuff), Ibanez AEG20E Flamed Sycamore Steel String Acoustic-Electric (this is my main acoustic guitar)
Effects: Crybaby Wah (the original), Ibanez Tubescreamer (perfect for my amp), Boss Metal Core (the richest and crunchiest metal distortion I've ever heard), Korg Toneworks MultiEffects (has pretty much every effect. i use this when I have to use an effect that I don't already have), Boss OD20 (pretty much every Boss distortion pedal ever made all in one box. i use this the same as the korg).
I also have a drumset that my drummer gave me and a keyboard because I can play piano too.
I do not want you to think that I am spoiled because I have so much gear. I am not going to tell you exactly how much I got everything for but I will tell that the nylon string is my mom's which I took from the basement and the Danelectro I got for free from a friend. The drum set was a gift from a friend and the rest of the stuff I bought with money that I earned from shoveling driveways in the winter and doing other jobs.
Improvisation over a Reggae Groove
A video of me improvising over a reggae-ish backing track. I know that this looks fake...probably a combination of the bad video quality and the fact that the video and audio are out of sync.
Also, this is not supposed to have some sort of form or be good in any way. It is basically just me noodling around. I hope you like it. Please leave comments if you have any suggestions.
I may post a new version with better camera quality and form. I hope you like this one though!
