Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
No, it’s not selling your soul to the Devil. That used to be number one until now. We’ve found an album called “The Greatest Blues Licks Ever Made
Amazon has the deal at $8.99 for DRM-free MP3 but if iTunes is your thing then you can get the same album for $9.99 - still a good deal by any stretch.
Amazon MP3 Store - The Greatest Blues Licks Ever Made - $8.99
Apple iTunes Store - The Greatest Blues Licks Ever Made - $9.99
Monday, December 1st, 2008
On “Black Friday”, November 28th, Fender’s Custom Shop released the Fender Yngwie Malmsteen Tribute Stratocaster guitar. It’s an exact replica of Yngwie’s original Olympic White 1971 “Play Loud” Fender Stratocaster. “Play Loud” refers to a sticker on the upper horn of the Strat and if you’re wondering the tribute guitar has it too, along with every other scratch, dent and bite mark on the guitar.
Yngwie bought his original Strat in 1978 and performed the delicate “scalloping” of the neck himself. Scalloping refers to routing out the fret board between the frets to help facilitate string bending and other virtuoso guitar playing techniques like finger-tapping.
Sunday, November 30th, 2008
We’ve posted before on the question of whether Guitar Hero and Rock Band helps to promote people playing the guitar or detracts from it. It looks like some research has been done on this very question.
Guitar Center, MTV Games (Rock Band) and Activision (Guitar Hero) have collaborated on a national survey of 7,000 respondents to see how the players of Rock Band and Guitar Hero felt about playing an actual guitar.
Thursday, November 27th, 2008
Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at Fretbase! Here’s Adam Sandler singing the Happy Thanksgiving Song.
Tuesday, November 25th, 2008
Ignoring it’s prime directive, a robot out of Cyth Systems overtook it’s human masters and proceeded to absolutely destroy it on Guitar Hero, achieving 98% accuracy on Expert level playing Cult of Personality.
The robot remarked afterward that it could have achieved 100% accuracy if not for a programming error by it’s flawed human creators.
Wednesday, November 19th, 2008
We’re writing to let you know about some big improvements on Fretbase.
In the beginning, we wanted to build a website and community for guitarists built on a database of important guitar-related info. In fact, the “base” in our name refers to that database. (And “Fret” refers to the frets in a guitar – not what our families have been doing since we started this venture.)
Today we launched the Fretbase database along with a number of other useful features. We’re fired up to tell you about them.
Most importantly, we want Fretbase to be useful for all guitarists. If you have feedback, we’re eager to get it. Just post in our comments.
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008
The Gibson Dark Fire!! (cue the stage pyrotechnics)
Gibson has extended the Robot series with a new generation of technological advances brought to bear on the classic Les Paul. If you’re not up-to-speed on the Robot series, Gibson introduced the Robot guitar in December 2007 with self-tuning features. Gibson has upgraded this line with the Gibson Dark Fire.
The Dark Fire features 3 pickups - a Burstbucker 3 that’s a throw back to the classic PAF tone we all lust after. At the neck position they’ve included their classic P-90h soapbar and they’ve added a Piezo bridge pickup for capturing acoustic sounds. The Piezo can also be blended into the other two pickups for some crazy electic/acoustic blending.
The other half of this axe is the Chameleon Tone Technology. This software upgrades the original self-tuning software and creates a fully digital guitar that puts together “infinite tonal possibilities”.
In reality I don’t understand any of the above. Maybe I’m a Luddite when it comes to new technology on an instrument that I think may have been perfected 50 years ago. As far as I can tell Gibson hasn’t released any sound clips or people playing the guitar so no way to tell how this latest Les Paul sounds. I could be wrong and this could be as innovative as something like the Moog Guitar.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
Eddie Adcock is banjo player who began his professional career back in 1953. He’s played with some of the greatest names in bluegrass including Bill Monroe. He’s also served on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Banjo Institute and now plays in a band with his wife Martha.
Adcock underwent radical surgery this past August after his hand tremors failed to respond to medication. The hand tremors affected his ability to play banjo and Adcock agreed to the surgery in hopes of finding a solution.
From the article:
As the doctors probed his brain and Adcock played, eventually his notes became jumbled and the doctors then stimulated that part of the brain that effected his playing with electrodes.
Eddie Adcock has made a full recovery and he’s back on stage playing. Incredible story.
Thursday, October 23rd, 2008
Fender has announced a new Telecaster called the JA-90. The “JA” stands for Jim Adkins, as in the Jimmy Eat World Jim Adkins. Admittedly I’m not a big Jimmy Eat World fan, but I do like his new Fender guitar. It’s a great combination of some classic Gibson elements mixed with the great Fender Tele. I dig the P-90’s and the Tune-O-Matic bridge. The JA-90 also sports those classic Fender Tele Custom knobs - the one’s that look like they’ve been pulled off an old Fender amp. The guitar was based on the Fender TC-90 which is no longer in production.
