POST # 109 Les Paul on Stevie Ray Vaughan

I did meet Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was great! I talked to him twice here in New York. I didn't know him when I first met him, but he talked about us playing together. We didn't though, but if we had I'm afraid I would have been in big trouble. He was a hell of a fine player! – Les Paul

( Stevie Ray Vaughan playing with one of his main influences and blues great Albert King...plus Les Paul in a beer commercial! - Ed)

POST # 108 Les Paul on Guitar Collection

And I don't know of a guitar player that has only one guitar. They're never happy with one. I'm never happy with just one of them. I woke up and ended up with six, even if you can only play one at a time! And, of course, the competition between the wife and the guitar is pretty heavy! - Les Paul

( True...and True... Ed)

POST # 107 Joe Pass on Solo Guitar

Guitarists should be able to pick up the guitar and play music on it for an hour, without a rhythm section or anything. - Joe Pass

( Who needs a whole band when you can play solo guitar like Joe Pass! Joe tells a funny story before going into a solo blues number. On a related note Bireli doing the solo guitar thing from a more Gyspy Jazz background with some creative uses of the tuning pegs. - Ed )

POST # 106 Bireli Lagrene on Playing the Changes

I know what kind of chord I’d expect to come when it is my turn to play a solo, so I can kind of figure it out. At the very moment, I think about the general chord. But you don’t think of it, because, once you know the tune, you don’t think about what is going to come. It’s a sort of automatisme. - Bireli Lagrene

( I think jazz standards are a little more complicated to internalize then other genre because of all the chord changes..but if you can do it with a 12 bar blues there is no reason you can't do the same with a standard, most standards are really only 16 bars (not counting the repeats! AABA) Bireli and company does the bop standard Donna Lee - Ed)

MJ RIP

POST # 105 David Grissom on Tone

I think almost all your tone is in your hands. Sometimes when I do a clinic, I’ll walk around playing my guitar acoustically to let people hear what it sounds like. It’s pretty eye opening for people to hear acoustically a lot of the things they’re used to hearing when I’m playing through an amp. - David Grissom

( The old saying that tone is in your hands! It's an easy trap to fall into thinking a new guitar purchase will make you sound a certain way when really its the player that makes the difference. But...still... I am hanging on to my Gibsons :P - Ed)

POST # 104 Eric Clapton on the Gibson Les Paul

“I would hit a note, hold it, and give it some vibrato with my fingers, until it sustained, and then the distortion would turn into feedback. It was all of these things, plus the distortion, that created what I suppose you could call my sound.” - Eric Clapton

( The classic sound of a Gibson LP through Marshall in this vintage Clapton clip from the bluesbreaker period. - Ed)

POST # 103 Juan Manuel Canizares on Technique part II

Technique is very important, but once you have it, you go to a second level. Technique has to serve the music. For this reason it is very important to work very hard with technique when you are young, so that you will have it later when you wish to compose. – Juan Manuel Canizares

(Some nice relaxing jamming here. - Ed)

POST # 102 Juan Manuel Canizares on Technique

My principal advice is to know where you want to go, because if you do not have a direction, you are wasting your time. Also I tell my students that until you achieve mastery of the instrument, it is very important to think that your first, middle, and last names are Technique, Technique, and Technique – because if you don’t have technique on your instrument, how are you going to express your ideas? - – Juan Manuel Canizares

( I love the sound of the Flamenco, no need to worry about getting an amp, dialing a sound on the electric etc....just pickup and play! Plus the various rhythmic things they do very passionately. - Ed)

POST # 101 David Grissom on Delay effect

A lot of people think that delay moves your sound to the background, but that’s not necessarily true – it can also help separate your sound if a bunch of keyboards are going on or there’s another guitar player. – David Grissom

(David Grissom talks about a few of his effect settings in the following video. - Ed)