Game of Thrones is back! As you probably know the 3rd season kicked off last Sunday night. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the series – do yourself a favor and get with season 1. To help celebrate the return of the series we have found a really cool version of the Game of Thrones theme song done on an acoustic guitar. Check it out!
We never get tired of Jimmy Fallon’s musical sketches, including this one where he plays a Martin guitar with Selena Gomez for a rendition of “Mario Kart Love Song.”
You have never heard of Mario Kart Love Song? Well actually, neither had we (it’s an original composition) but we always like seeing a nice Martin guitar brought into the mix.
We think that it’s because of Fallon’s talent with his Martin that he’ll be succeeding Jay Leno on The Tonight Show.
We’re a big fan of the Tiny Desk Concerts that NPR posts on YouTube. And we’re even bigger fans now that NRP has posted a tiny desk concert featuring Lyle Lovett.
For those of you that aren’t familiar with the Tiny Desk Concerts, they are usually performed in what looks like the NPR offices for NPR staff and a very small group of people. In Lyle’s Tiny Desk Concert, he performed just 3 songs (pretty much par for the course for a a Tiny Desk Concert) and all pretty early songs from his catalogue: Cowboy Man, If You Were to Wake Up and Good Intentions. And as always, Lyle is playing a pretty nice Collings Guitar.
The “Big Three” guitar manufacturers Fender, Gibson and Martin are joining forces with Guitar Center and Eric Clapton to put together an amazing collection based on some EC’s most iconic guitars. Named the ”Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Collection”, it will consist of five limited-edition guitars that each signify important highlights in his career. Eric Clapton helped to spearhead the partnership and part of the proceeds of the sales will go towards the Crossroads Centre charity.
It’s a pretty big event for us here at Fretbase when a major guitar manufacturer like Taylor Guitars introduces a new shape of guitar. So you can imagine our excitement here at Fretbase when we learned about Taylor’s introduction of the Grand Orchestra guitar – its biggest body shape. We could tell you all about how Taylor decided to build a big bodied guitar with no pre-conceived notions, but it’s even better to let them tell you themselves.
We came across a live recording of the late great Mr. Stevie Ray Vaughan playing his ode to his wife Lenora. Lenora bought Stevie a 1965 Fender Stratocaster which he named “Lenny” after his wife and used it for the song. There’s a great backstory to the guitar and the purchase Lenora made for Stevie on his 26th birthday. This live recording from Tokyo in 1985 is a must-see for any guitar player…
Fender is updating it’s well regarded Fender Select Series with new set of guitars for 2013. Fender originally announced the new Fender Select series in January 2012 and they’re expanding the collection with 5 new guitars and a bass. Designed as “Select instruments for select individuals,” the Select series are true players’ instruments that put more than six decades of Fender experience and expertise into the guitars.
Judging by the amount of visitors we get here at Fretbase, we know that there are many, many guitar players out there. And if you are reading this, it seems highly likely that you have one on your gift list.
Since we have had it as our mission from Day 1 to bring happiness to guitar players the world over, we have prepared this list of gifts for guitar players that you still have enough time to order and get delivered before the holidays. (Well, at least, one set of holidays. Jewish guitar players will have to get their Hanukkah gifts late this year.)
Read on for five suggested gifts for guitar players that will keep your guitar player content through Valentine’s Day (at which point we’ll have more suggestions).
It has been a while since we have had our Bedroom Rockstar feature here on Fretbase, but this video of Josh Turner playing Sultans of Swing by Dire Straits inspired us to bring it back. We can’t confirm for sure that the video was shot in a bedroom but the laundry basket in the background gives us a high level of confidence.
Josh brings some of his own unique licks to the song and suggests in the comments that the trick to making a song your own is to *not* try to play the song along with the recording. He plays it here form memory and blows us away.
Needless to say, we’re suckers for Brazilian Rosewood here at Fretbase. We’re also suckers for a new video, for Tom Culbertson of Gryphon Stringed Instruments, for a 000-bodied guitar and also for anything that has anything to do with Eric Schoenberg. So you can imagine how much we enjoyed this video of Tom Culbertson from Gryphon Stringed Instruments playing a 2004 000-sized Schoenberg guitar with Brazilian Rosewood back and sides.
