The biggest, most anticipated and unrivalled guitar event of the year, the London Guitar Show launches on the 11th June at ExCeL London.  It features four days of seminars and clinics, master classes and other activities including a careers fair, guest speakers, instrument demos and workshops.

Featured in the world class lineup is the Master Guitar Virtuoso himself, Steve Vai, who is to bring his Alien Guitar Secrets master class, discussing music theory, guitar techniques, the music business, and most importantly, techniques on how to discover and unlock personal musical identity.

Other confirmed items include:

• Albert Lee
• The Swans
• Jan Akkerman
• Phil Hilborne featuring Iron Maiden’s Nicko McBrain
• Nick DeVirgilio (drummer for Spocks Beard / Tears for Fears)
• Cora Coleman-Dunham (drummer for Prince)
• Drummer Derrick McKenzie and percussionist Sola Akingbola(Jamiroquai)
• Steve Smith
• Pete Lockett
• Editors from the UK’s top selling guitar magazines Mick Taylor (Guitarist), Neville Marten and Jason Sidwell ( Guitar Techniques), Stephen Lawson ( Total Guitar ).
• more to be confirmed

Additionally, they will be staging staging the final Guitar Idol, the world’s biggest online talent search to find the hottest undiscovered guitarists on the planet. Following 2008’s spectacular final where the winner flew in from Brazil, this final is the chance to live the dream after many of the finalists from 2008 attracted recording, endorsement and lucrative tour deals.

via London International Music Show ’09.

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Hybrid guitars seem to be all the rage these days. The benefits are obvious – being able to obtain electric and acoustic guitar sounds at the flick of a switch without changing your guitar. Imagine going from a loud, rocking opening song to a quiet, intimate acoustic ballad without having to change guitars. The reality however, is that these guitars tend to favour one sound over the other, and the final product is really a compromise of sorts between an electric or acoustic sound.

The rage with hybrid guitars probably started with the Taylor T5 (I used to own one!). Touted as a semi-hollowbody electric guitar, it offered a combination of electric and acoustic guitar tones in one package. Taylor was not the first to pioneer this idea. Piezo bridges have been around for years and guitars like the Parker Fly and even Slash’s Les Paul have this option. However, Taylor’s incredibly potent marketing machine has single-handedly driven the hybrid guitar to prominence and since then, many other companies have introduced their own takes on the hybrid. Today we will review the Crafter SA which, at a glance, looks almost like a Taylor T5.

First up, a big ‘Thank you’ to Crafter for the loan of the guitar to test! Now on with the review…

…click here to read more

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I popped into an Apple store on the weekend and was intrigued to see a MacBook Pro setup, connected to a guitar with a built in USB interface.  I unsuccessfully tried to get it working in-store with GarageBand, but to satisfy my curiosity, I Googled it and found that it was none other than the Behringer iAXE393 USB guitar.  This $100 Stratocaster copy comes with a software pack from Native Instruments, with multi-track recording and editing, and amp simulations.

For those after a more conventional approach, Ben from Fyngyrz writes about using his Mac as a guitar workstation, which involves a laptop, stereo amp, a couple of speakers and an additional outlay of around $160 for the USB interface and software.  This consists of the M-Audio JAMLAB USB guitar interface, and the Flying Haggis software from DB Audioware, for stompbox, amplifier and speaker cabinet emulations.  Says Ben:

I am deliriously happy with this setup. I play jazz, blues, rock, metal, classical and folk; everything I want is right at my fingertips. Perfect. I just drag my laptop, a stereo amp, and a couple speakers out, and I’m good. Aside from the Mac, amp and speakers, the outlay is about $160 in total, which is a screaming bargain for what you get. I highly, totally, ultimately and without quibbling recommend this setup. If it weren’t for the copy protection, I’d rate it stone perfect.

Anyway, these are just a couple of ways in which you can integrate a Mac into your guitar setup.  In case you’ve missed it, we’ve also previously featured a Macworld article on recording acoustic and electric guitar into your Mac.

Popularity: 38% [?]

The Octavius Squeezer Analog Bass Synth Pedal, from Godlyke Distribution, has been announced and will be available starting mid-summer 2008.  The bass effects pedal features a true analog reconfigurable signal path technology, true bypass switching and digital switching system between the 96 user-editable presets.  

Octavius Squeezer includes a dedicated filter circuit bred in our Agent 00Funk and Agent 00Funk Mark II envelope filters. It also includes the fuzz circuit from our Brown Dog gated bass fuzz. A multi-range digital pitch tracking stage tracks the notes you play right down to the bottom of your instrument’s range and drives an analog synthesizer which can produce various waveforms at either the same pitch as your input, one octave down, one octave up or two octaves up. All of this can be patched, mixed and configured in a variety of ways to give an enormous array of available effects. 

The Octavius Squeezer will be priced at $599 – and also features two user-assignable footswitches, and an onboard SD card reader for saving and loading presets, and updating the onboard firmware.

[via]

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Canada’s current affairs magazine, Maclean’s, poses the question – in the eyes of today’s bands and pop music, is the guitar solo effectively dead?  A number of so-called rock musicians and guitarists are alleging that if you play one in a rock song right now, it’s almost laughable and taboo – very different to the rock anthems of the 80′s and 90′s when the guitar solo was almost what “made” the song.

The reasons for this are manifold, ranging from musicians focusing to lyrics and singability, to reluctance in putting in time and efforts to learn and produce solos, to lack of appreciation of solos and the thought of their wasting “airtime” in a song.  Says Julien Kasper, a professional guitarist and associate professor of guitar at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Mass.:

 

Over-the-top “hair bands” of the ’80s turned people off solos when they became more about showing off than about adding an interlude that really fit with the song. It was a stark contrast to the more “singable” and blues-influenced solos of legends like Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, and Eric Clapton. Lyrically focused mega-hits from hip-hop producers, divas, and boy bands (now soloists) have been the go-to popular music from the mid-’90s to today.

“When a lot of pop tunes on the radio stopped having guitar solos, probably the powers-that-be at the labels realized, ‘Hey, guitar solos aren’t necessary, it just wastes time,’ ” says Kasper. “You weren’t just losing guitar solos, you were losing everything to samples and beats.”

 

What do you think about this?  Is the guitar solo really dead?  I know that in the contemporary christian praise and worship music that I play every week, guitar solos are certainly present, but they usually consist of a short instrumental interlude which is used to build up the song to a crescendo before heading into the bridge.  I for one, not only cherish but look forward to a good solo, so long as it contributes towards the overall song and is not just a platform for the lead guitarist to strut his stuff…

Popularity: 35% [?]

I often ask myself – if there was ever a fire in my house (touch wood), what would I take?  My usual answer would always be: a file containing important documents in one hand, and my emotional side would say irreplaceable photo albums in the other hand.  Ok, maybe a few hands, with the number of albums I have, but you get my drift.

Well the San Jose Mercury News interviewed four people who had to answer that very question for real, with the fires that raged through North Carolina this summer.  The last person, Luke MacLelan, answered, “his grandfather’s guitar”.

The 1958 Martin guitar belonged to his late grandfather, Dave Stogner, who played the country-western circuit and is in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

With the swirling ash blowing in, Luke ran upstairs and opened the closet. He pushed aside the clothes and pulled out the sturdy black case.

“It hasn’t been played in years and years and it held the tune perfectly,” Luke said.

He has no plans to return it to his parents’ house, which was spared. “I’m keeping it here,” he said. “It’s the only thing I have from him.”

What about you?  Are your instruments precious enough to you that you’d brave ash and embers to save them from a fire?  Maybe you might get lucky and your axes might survive the blaze…

Popularity: 33% [?]

I’m always on the lookout for new music to inspire my guitar playing.  It’s also nice to hear something fresh now and again, but how do you sort out the wheat from the chaff – especially when services such as iTunes puts millions of songs at your fingertips?

Enter StumbleAudio, a streaming service designed to help listeners discover new music, rather than find their old favorites.  The concept is simple – you choose a song or band that you already like, and it comes up with a playlist of song suggestions.  The songs play in their entirety and you can rate them with thumbs up or thumbs down buttons, allowing them to come up with more recommendations based on your preferences.  At any time you can also skip or “stumble” on to the next song.

From their about page:

Our catalog has over 2,000,000 tracks by over 120,000 artists ready to be played in full length, high quality, free of charge.StumbleAudio started to build its recommendation engine by importing massive anonymous data of saved favorites, music preferences and buying patterns from several online download and actual music CD stores. As you use StumbleAudio the system learns from your “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” and constantly adjusts the music offered to your liking.

I gave it a go, putting in “Hillsong” in the search box and it came up with 87 albums that “sound like” it.  The album recommendations themselves looked pretty good, but I must admit that I had to “stumble” my way through six or seven “weird” sounding songs before I found one that I liked.  I suppose though that the longer you use it, the better it should get with its suggestions.  I also liked how when it brings up a song, there are buttons to cycle through the songs on the same album – so you can decide whether it was a one hit wonder or if the artist or album is actually worth checking out.

If you find a song or album that you absolutely must have – there are links to purchase the music from iTunes, Amazon and various other music services.  Another nice thing is that artists do get paid when their songs are played on StumbleAudio – not sure how much, but kudos anyway for thinking of the people who actually work for their money.

For more information, visit www.stumbleaudio.com.

Popularity: 35% [?]

As reported by Modern Guitars Magazine, Gibson Guitar will announce six new additions to the Gibson Custom line of “Inspired By” guitars, honouring Steve Jones, Mick Jones, Alex Lifeson, lee Ritenour, Johnny Winter and Joe Bonamassa.  The lineup of custom reissues includes:

• Mick Jones Les Paul Custom
• Alex Lifeson ES-355
• Steve Jones Les Paul Custom
• Lee Ritenour ES-335
• Johnny Winter Firebird
• Joe Bonamassa Aged Les Paul Goldtop

For more information, head over to their site for the lowdown, or visit www.gibson.com.

Popularity: 41% [?]

Only one guitar has the infamous claim of being the first guitar burnt onstage by legend Jimi Hendrix.  The 1965 Fender Stratocaster was doused with lighter fuel and set alight during a performance at London’s Finsbury Astoria in March 1967 – and Hendrix himself was rushed to hospital with minor burns to his hands.  It was seemingly lost until last year – all this time stashed away in a garage by Herdrix’s press officer.

The fabled guitar will now be auctioned off by rock film and memorabilia auctioneers The Fame Bureau, in London on September 4.  According to Ted Owen from Fame Bureau:

“When Hendrix set this guitar alight it marked a watershed in live performance – he raised the bar of what could be expected and paved the way for a series of imitations and pastiche that exist to this day.

“We can only find evidence of Hendrix definitively burning two guitars, and because this piece is a one-off original; I feel that this is the most important Hendrix guitar ever to be offered for sale – even eclipsing the Woodstock Stratocaster which eventually sold for $1.8 million.”

The Telegraph newspaper is estimating it to fetch £500,000 when it goes under the hammer.

Popularity: 35% [?]

We’ve featured the paid version of Riffworks from Sonoma WireWorks previously, and they’ve just announced a free version of their Riffworks guitar recording and collaboration software.  One of the benefits of Riffworks T4 is that it:

allows up to four musicians to collaborate on a song and chat simultaneously. Loop-based recording allows collaboration without latency or distance issues. As a track is recorded, it streams to other players and is perfectly in sync with the drums. All contributions are saved on RiffWorld.com and can be opened later in RiffWorks to continue recording. An unlimited number of musicians may contribute to a song (4 at a time). Mac and PC musicians worldwide are creating songs together online no matter how far apart they live.

The free Riffworks T4 version is limited to 4 simultaneous recordings that can contribute to a song at one time, but includes features such as:

• Automatic track creation and loop recording with 4 layers plus drum loops
• 7 effects (Wah, Multi-band Compression & Distortion, Modulation, Delay, Reverb, Compression, and British Style EQ)
• InstantDrummer with adjustable intensity and variation
• Online music collaboration
• RiffWorld.com song posting and collaboration community
• IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube(R) Duo LE guitar amp and effects plug-in
• Gallo Engineering’s Studio Devil BVC amp model plug-in

Get more information on Riffworks T4 from Sonoma WireWorks at their website.

Popularity: 36% [?]