zemo.co.uk

Well I am currently working on a website which will be purely for music and guitar. I have been planning and working on ideas for the site for months now. I don’t know yet whether I will use this domain name for the site or not. I am currently working with two bands at the moment recording and also recording and writing for two new Guitar competitions including Guitar Idol 2010. The site I am planning will contain backing tracks recorded by me and my own tracks, it will basically be a pure guitar orientated site. I am also planning on doing gear reviews on the site ranging from amps and effects through to studio recording software. If the site takes off and gets quite a few viewers then I might start running guitar competitions. Watch this space!

Well my band is currently in the studio over the next few months to come up with new tracks, we are currently using studio time to just create tracks and write material, but we plan to start recording songs next month. Our website is complete and all promotion is ready for when we release our material… Watch this space!

Well a funny story really, started off with me placing a message on a Joe Satriani video saying how he is my favorite Guitarist. Some kid posts to tell me that Satriani is nowhere near as good as buckethead (yes I did fall off my chair in fits of laughter). I then went on to check out some videos of buckethead playing live, and my god it’s no wonder why he wears a bucket on his head. His playing is so not technical, every video I watched he was just doing major scale runs as fast as he could, on another video half the song he didn’t even pluck the strings, he just used a switch on his guitar which mutes the guitar for a second. What’s the big deal with this guy? I went onto the Gibson website and he has a signature Guitar out watched the video linked from the site and laughed so much… 4 finger tapping LOL which sounded like a spectrum computer loading, all his music is noise. All his live videos I have seen he’s not playing in tune, and his string bending is completely laughable!

Hey, well over the past few months I have put a bit more time into playing the Guitar and getting my playing up to scratch so to speak, I have been going through a load of theory and scales (which I already had good knowledge of). Currently starting up a band as I feel it’s a whole lot easier to work with other musicians than on own (playing to a metronome is pretty boring!). We are keeping everything quiet at the moment and are going to fully setup a website and everything and all publicity before announcing the band to everyone, I have links with Advance Promotions so hopefully we will see you soon on the scene at the Orange Box etc..

We know what styles we are going for and are sticking to 2 Genres ONLY, there seem to be a lot of ‘tribute bands’ around this area now who play loads of different genres of music, which being a proper fan of Metal / Rock and Live Music for the past 12 years or so I find to be a joke. If I see a band trying to cover every type of music – I know what they are in it for and what they are trying to do – so do most promotion companies. We don’t want to be sell-outs, we are all musicians and play for the thrill of playing and Music itself; whatever happens, happens. We are in the process of writing at the moment.

I am planning on creating a page on this website for Guitar riffs and exercises. I have worked through a lot of players exercises which have really helped (along with Joe Satriani, John Petrucci and Dave Weiner), if you have any riffs or good exercise techniques or tabs then please contact me!! I found that learning Blues has really gave me a good base for lead Guitar, just want to know really what other players started with and what practice techniques they use day to day.

Well I have been practicing a lot for the past few weeks, especially at weekends. This weekend I practiced for about 4 hours a day and have really seen changes in how I play and strength in my fingers. I have been following Dave Weiners (plays in Steve Vai’s band) lessons and his teaching style has really helped me. I am currently doing strengthening and speed techniques to try and build up my full technique of playing. I have some songs in mind that I want to record and will hopefully start recording soon!

Well I have finally managed to setup my own recording studio at home, now I can actually record properly with proper noise gates and AMP heads. I thought I would finally splash out and get recording some stuff seeings as though my Marshall amp was broke and I have never really tested my Guitar to the full. I have been playing through a lot more stuff since doing so and have started recording some things! All I need now is a Bass guitar, then I can start recording some songs! I am currently waiting for some Sennheiser headphones and am still looking at what speakers to get for playback.

I will prbably be selling two of my Guitars prety soon one of which is a Ibanez GRG170DX and the other being my Vintage MetalAxxe Razer. I will most probably be selling them on ebay.

Well I just got Guitar Pro 5 yesterday the full version with RSE (Realistic Sound Engine). It seems a lot better for playing along to than the midi version and Powertab. Most of the files which you download from ultimate guitar tho are guitar pro 3 files, but it still adds the effect of whatever guitar the user has input to the file. If anyone knows of any other pro tab software which is better than Guitar Pro then let me know!

Well recently I have been working on some stuff for Guitar Modes. I am thinking about doing some videos to place on YouTube. I’ve created some finger and picking exercises using each mode with a two string at a time exercise using the IONIAN (Major Scale) mode. Currently I am trying to spend as much time as I can playing the guitar, or at least going through a lot of scales and modes each day (at least an hour a day). I will hopefully be either adding a couple of videos or be placing some tabs on the site.