Peavey introduces the Composer Parlor Acoustic guitar

So the old stuff is getting used again… oh yeah I think that is what people call vintage these days. Do you remember the Parlor guitars? Those guitars used around 1895 until the 1950s? Yeah, those smaller-bodied guitars used by many blues and folk guitarists… now you know what I am talking about! Well, you know the brand Peavey right? They have introduced a really cool new series for their catalogue, the Composer Parlor Acoustic guitars – not the most aesthetically looking guitars for some, but who cares about the look if the sound is alright?

If you are a blues or folk guy or gal you will love these guitars unless you have a Gibson Gretsch or Stella parlor from 1920s in pristine condition.

Peavey designed and made the Composer Parlor series “for guitarists who want the tone and craftsmanship of a full-sized guitar with the comfort and playability of a Parlor guitar.”

The Peavey Composer is designed to a 24 ¾” parlor scale with amenities that guitarists of all stripes will appreciate. With a spruce laminate top and offset sound hole, the Composer produces a surprising amount of volume for its size, as well as clear, full-bodied acoustic tone and the natural playing comfort of a satin finish. A wide body cutaway scoop to the fifteenth fret provides access to the upper registers of the instrument.

What are the features?

• Parlor style guitar
• Spruce top
• Rosewood bridge
• Rosewood fingerboard
• Eastern mahogany neck
• 14 degree angled headstock
• 24.75″ scale
• 18 frets
• Dovetail neck joint
• Natural or Sunburst finishes
• Weight packed: 6.61 lb (3kg)
• Width packed: 14.175″ (36.0045 cm)
• Height packed: 38.975″ (98.9965 cm)
• Depth packed: 5.71″ (14.5034 cm)

The Composer Parlor comes in two different flavors; a Natural wood finish and a Sunburst finish, which is not that bad, I kind of like it and they are under the $200 price range! So yeah, very cheap yet high sound and building quality. Again, who cares about the look?

Check out this video from nepugo90 Youtube user using his Peavey Parlor guitar, fascinating, it makes want one!

Luis Tovar

The Bright Side of Guitar History

Who doesn’t know David Gilmour? Very well known for being Pink Floyd frontman since 1968 and of course a Rock icon, great guitarist with a very peculiar voice.

Gilmour has one of those styles that can be recognized from miles away and of course, has never and will never be surpassed.

I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t like Gilmour’s style and I want to keep it this way as I consider myself a huge fan, I’ve loved Pink Floyd since I was a kid, thanks to my mum for introducing them to me; and I also having Gilmour’s solo albums – On an Island is amazing!

So what’s Gilmour’s magic forumla?

Emotion and Good gear = David Gilmour.

Gilmour’s guitar playing style is very strong, it’s the fusion of two big things that not many guitarists can achieve in a lifetime: emotion and perfect sound production. You can also tell the blues influence he has on his solos combined with hugely expressive bends and lots of sustain, how could he go wrong with that formula? Play all that on a Fender Strat and you get the purest perfection that only Gilmour can create!

Gilmour was rated the 14th greatest guitarist by Rolling Stone. In January 2007, Guitar World readers voted Gilmour’s solos in, “Comfortably Numb”, “Time” and “Money” into the top 100 Greatest Guitar Solos (4th,21st and 62nd respectively). – “100 Greatest Guitar Solos: 51–100″. Guitar World. Retrieved 9 August 2010.

If you consider yourself one more fan among the millions worldwide, you should visit Gilmourish.com to find out all about his gear, although reading all the gear that Gilmour has used in his life is like a history class it itself, but well worth it.

It is very hard to pick a song from Pink Floyd or Gilmour. You are probably expecting me to show you “Comfortably Numb” or “Money” which have epic guitar solos, but no! I want you to check out this great and different version of “Shine on you crazy diamond” where Gilmour is playing a Lap guitar at the beginning. It is an amazing performance not only by him but the entire band, check it out:

PS. If you feel like adding a couple of records to your collection, get “On an Island” or the “Live in Gdansk” DVD.
PSPS. Get gilmourish!

Luis Tovar

We have received many emails asking about how to improvise. First I have to say that improvisation is not an easy thing when you do not have the right weapons, that being basic knowledge of music theory the most essential element for a successful improvisation; call it knowing scales, major and minor chords, sixth chords, pentatonic scales, etc. The more theory and knowledge you have the easier everything will be, so in a few words, for being able to improvise you need to study a lot to get to a point where you feel really comfortable playing your guitar.

Wouldn’t it be great if you can go to a Jam session in a pub near you, grab a guitar and jam along with other musicians? That is all about improvisation, so yeah it is a challenge, a big one but once you get it you will feel so good… jammin and improvising are probably some of the most rewarding moments of music.

So if you think you would like to give it a go to improvise on something, a great thing to do would be to use some backing tracks or get a CD of drumbeats. If you have the Jamorama course, you can start improvising with the Jam Tracks we provide you, they are great to start with as you will know all the chords used and this will make it easier.

Now, the secret question, what to improvise? The answer is also secret, how are you feeling today? Emotions are always a great start for improvising and they will be reflected on what you are playing.

Another thing that is totally related with the knowledge of music, is being able to identify different rhythms. Identifying the rhythm will help you to get involved in the music piece easily. So keep in mind that knowing music styles will help you a lot to know what to play – is it a funk song, latin, rock, metal, blues, etc.

Mixing ideas from different songs are always a hit! Are you improvising with chords that are the same to another popular song you know? Well, mix that lick into the improvisation. If you are playing in front of a crowd, they will love to hear something they know played in a different version or beat.

Some very important things to keep in mind:

1. Make sure what you play sounds good for the piece you are playing. It is good to incorporate different styles of music when improvising but please make sure it fits with whatever the rest of the musicians are playing.
2. Use your emotions. Try not to think too much about what to play, simply et the feelings do the job.
3. Do not stop. Did you hit the wrong note or string, don’t worry. Do it again and everyone will think it was intentional. Remember that any dud note is only one fret away from being a good one. Move up or down one fret to resolve the tension you’ve just created.
4. Learn some basic licks or patterns to play. It could happen that nothing flows when it comes to improvise, so always have something to play. Create some cool sounding patterns or licks when practicing at home and take them with you all the time, this will be your arsenal or tool-box of tricks.
5. Simplicity is good. Speed doesn’t mean anything, shredding is not what is all about, unless you are only playing speed metal or something like that but most of the time a smooth and slow lick expresses much much more than thousands of notes per second.
6. Have fun. People love watching musicians having fun doing their thing. Relax and put that nervous energy into your playing.

I really hope some of these tips are good help to get you improvising. Let me know how are you getting on with that and what is causing you more trouble.

To help get you in an improvisational mood, here are some quotable quotes:

Improvisation: The art of thinking and performing music simultaneously. – Grove Dictionary of Music (1954)
Learn everything, then forget it all. – Charlie Parker
“Music is your own experience, your thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn(guitar).” – Charlie Parker
Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there. – Miles Davis
I’ll play it first and tell you what it’s called later. – Miles Davis
The idea of a mistake is beside the point, for once anything happens it authentically is. – John Cage

If you hit a wrong note, then make it right by what you play afterwards. – Joe Pass

Good luck with your improvisation and remember, HAVE FUN!!!

Luis Tovar

He is of course very well known on that side of the World, but he has also been doing his thing on stages in Europe and the U.S. He is an amazing guitarist – very jazz influenced with his natural latin flavour, plus a very clean and brilliant technique, they call him “the master of improvisation”.

If you are wondering what type of music he plays, in a word it would be Fusion. He got pushed by his father and stepfather to play the guitar; they were both musicians with different styles, that is why Luis was very influenced by all sorts of music, and the best thing is that he can play anything. He is basically a self-taught guitarist, and you won’t believe this, he bought his first guitar when he was 27 and he has being musically active since 1994.

He has a very extensive discography and of course a big shelf at home with 5 great prizes from the Argentinian music Industry winning “best jazz albums”.

I think Luis Salinas is a guitarist you have to give it a go, check out this track called “Latin Bebop” from his “Solo guitarra” album, it is almost 3 minutes of pure guitar beauty, well executed with great harmonies, nice melodies and some bossa nova influenced rhythm:

And you should also check his live performance of “Funky Tango” with a full band:

Luis Tovar

Washburn has always been around me, many guitarists I have played with, specially the ones who I started playing music with (a good number of years ago) were into Washburn guitars, not only for the build quality but for the many options in sound and price.

So I went to dig more into this New Washburn resonator series simply because I really want to get one for myself and here is what I found:

Washburn introduced the Resonator guitars last year within their Bluegrass guitar series. They introduced two different models, acoustic and acoustic-electric. If you listen to these guitars you will hear and see a great quality instrument which actually delivers the real feel and sound of a classic resonator guitar.

These guitars of course are perfect for blues and bluegrass styles, all Washburn resonators feature a spider-bridge and a single cone resonator design. The acoustic-electric models feature single coil pickups for bell like clarity and biting yet never brittle tone.

The R15S and R15R are the two acoustic models which features a Mahogany top, back, side and also neck, 19 frets and Rosewood fingerboard. The sound holes are in F.

On the acoustic-electric resonators they have the R15RC and R45RCE, with F soundhole, 20 frets a single coil neck pickup with 1 volume and 1 tone control.The R15RC has a Mahogany top, back and sides while the R45RCE has a flame maple top, back and sides.

From what I hear and see about this guitar, it seems to me that it’s top notch all the way!

I have done some research on ebay and amazon and these guitars are selling from $399.00 to $500.00 depending on which model you are after – brand new! So they are a must get if you are into the bluegrass and blues classic sound. I am pretty sure that once you hear it, you will want it!

Check it out:

You should also visit Washburn.com for more information.

Luis Tovar

Put it this way, you have to be able to play chords and change between them, so finger independence is a must have. You also have to strum with your other hand, and strumming is not an easy thing, not if you want to sound good. Then, you have to sing words which most of the time are following a different rhythmic pattern than the one you are strumming and most importantly, you have to sing in tune… hard eh?

How can you improve or start learning this ability? The first and easiest thing to do is to decide whether you wanna only be a guitarist or a guitarist who also sings. If you say YES, I WANNA SING! I WANNA ROCK! go grab your guitar, pick a VERY SIMPLE song with easy chords and very rhythmic and of course, a song that you know the lyrics to.

If you are having problems picking a song, go for what’s popular, a song that everyone knows or recognizes, it doesn’t matter if you hate it, you are doing this to learn to sing and play but the more familiar you are with the song, the easier the process will be, so keep this in mind.

If you want my advice on what songs could be easy to learn, some songs from Oasis or Nirvana could be a good start, also Johnny Cash has some pretty simple yet beautiful songs and of course The Beatles, but again, try to go with what’s familiar to you.

Once you have picked a song, start by learning to play the intro to familiarise yourself with the chords, the progression and the strumming pattern. Once this is mastered go on to the chorus and try to sing it. Simple and easy!

My advice is to try playing it section by section, DO NOT try to play it from beginning to end, go only for the chorus or the verses, then stop and start those sections all over again. Of course, try to do it slowly, especially if you are having problems with the chords or progression of them, basically take your time! Once you are comfortable with the verses, play it for 4 or 6 rounds and then try jumping into the chorus and repeat the process.

A good thing to do just to have a break is to stop singing it, so just keep playing the song with the guitar a couple of times and then start singing again, this will give you a better feeling of how, when and where to start singing it.

Something very important to be aware of is that you are basically studying a song, so you need to learn the lyrics and of course how the song goes on the guitar, so always stay focused and be patient.

Down the track when you’ve mastered a couple of songs, you should start thinking about a repertoire. There are many ways to do this, you can do it by choosing what people wanna hear, basically what is popular out there; you can also create your repertoire based on what you would like to play or what songs you like and of course another way to do it is by going with what’s easiest for you, which is not a bad choice if you are just starting to learn guitar and also to sing.

For those guitarists out there who are not sure whether to sing or not to sing, remember that singers are the star of the band; a drummer can be awesome as well as a guitarist or a bass player but let’s face it, they always get overshadowed by the singer. It’s sad but true. People always look at the singer, even if the singer sucks!

Look at Jimi Hendrix, he was a guitar master, he also sang but he wasn’t that good and he knew it. But he also knew that by doing it he was going to get a lot more recognition than he would’ve staying in the background simply doing guitar solos – good move Mr. Hendrix!

Keep all these things in mind and start having a go with singing and playing at the same time. If you already can do it, we would love to see you performing, so feel free to share any of your videos.

Luis Tovar

Acoustic guitar duo with Power, Rhythm and Speed!

I was very impressed when I first saw a video of this duo covering “Stairway to Heaven”, so impressed that I started digging around Youtube and found a very impressive Metallica cover of “Orion”, since then I simply fell in love with what these guys do! They are really a must seen!

Rodrigo y Gabriela, or Rod and Gab are a Mexican guitar duo that has become world famous in recent years. They are Rodrigo Sanchez (lead guitar) and Gabriela Quintero (rhythm guitar and percussion).

They have dedicated themselves to creating acoustic rock but his compositions are influenced by Latin music, flamenco and Middle Eastern music, while using rhythmic, harmonic and melodic resources from Hard rock and heavy metal, interesting isn’t it?

They started all in Mexico City where they played in a Thrash Metal band called Acid Earth. Apparently, neither Mexico nor the thrash metal band were giving them that “something” they were looking for, so they decided to make a small jump into Europe veins.

The duo established themselves in Dublin, Ireland after hearing that the city was particularly hospitable to foreign musicians and buskers. They began playing in some pubs and on the street to refine and improve their music. The leap on to the stage came when they supported Damien Rice performing at the Oxegen music festival. From that point they began touring in music festivals in the UK and all around Europe.

This powerful duo has 5 studio albums and three live recordings; the latest album was released last January, called Area 52, where a full band was implemented for the first time. And they also share mics on the studio with different musicians such as Anoushka Shankar, John Tempesta, Le Trio Joubran and many others.

I really want you to check out these guys, so have a listen and watch their performance of Metallica’s “Orion”:

And for the Classic Rockers out there, check out their version of “Stairway to Heaven” – Very impressive!

Luis Tovar

On the other hand, learning to play songs does break the routine of learning theory and practicing exercises. Learning to play songs you like is motivating and fun, although it could also be very frustrating if you choose a song that involves lots of techniques or difficult chords that you’re yet to learn.

So the question here is how can you find songs to learn?

First, you need to decide what type of music are you looking for. This is a huge task as there are many music styles available for us and finding TAB or music sheets from artists you don’t even know can be a bit expensive and of course time consuming.

So ask yourself: What artists or music styles do I like? Am I wanting to pay money to learn to play the songs? Am I ready to jump in and start learning to play songs? If you have these answers then let’s make the next move.

Where to go to find the song lessons? Getting a private tutor to teach them to you? No way, that will be too expensive… besides that, a tutor would be great to teach you technique and tricks, not song lessons. The INTERNET is the answer!

Have you searched for guitar tab websites? There are heaps of great options out there. One site that has been around for ages and keep their library always on top of things is Ultimate Guitar – It is excellent as it has a very comprehensive database of all major bands and music styles. This site contains enough TABs to keep you playing your guitar for your entire life.

Another good site is Songsterr.com which also has a very big song library divided by music genre, artists, songs, etc.

Both of these sites have a FREE and paid option, so there is something for everybody!

If you are looking for a more modern option, one-on-one video song lessons could be the way to go. If this sounds like you, pop on over and check out our friends at Songpond.com – they have around 60 video song lessons available + around 70 technique lessons with great audio and video quality.

And of course, the king of video on the web, Youtube, where quality and accuracy are never guaranteed, if you’re willing to take the time to search there are definitely some really high quality players and tutorials to be found.

Let us know what style of music you like more. What songs you would like to learn. We would love to know more about you.

Good luck with your lessons!

Luis Tovar

A Mini Maton, owned by Dan – member of the Jamorama team who might have some time later to review his guitar – and a Cort Earth Mini, both of these guitars have great tone. Perhaps the Maton could win the battle, but let’s talk about the Cort Earth mini first!

I heard that the Cort Earth mini is like a small acoustic jewel, it comes in the ¾ format, which basically means that they are ¾ of the normal guitar size; but what are these guitars good for?

I think they are good for carrying it with you anywhere you go, if you go out camping on the weekend, if you go to the beach at night, if you go to a mates place, even if you go to the toilet… yeah! Inspiration can come anywhere, you never know. And of course, they are great for kids, beginners or for small handed people.

Let’s see this particular Cort guitar. Cort is a well known brand worldwide and they do things good… they have a product for anyone’s budget, from their more simple and cheap series to their AS or EVL series.

This Cort Earth Mini comes well packed and it also comes with a gig bag (soft) which is great to keep this beauty always safe. It has a dovetail neck joint, body is ¾ sized with solid spruce top with mahogany back and sides. Neck is also Mahogany and the fretboard is rosewood as well as the bridge and the scale is 22 ¾”. Right! All good with the materials and specifications, what about the sound?

I am not an expert on mini guitars, however I can say that this guitar sounds good, I don’t think you’ll believe just how big a sound and how nice a sound that comes out of this mini. It has a great volume for its size, lacking of course of bass, but you were not expecting great low frequencies from a mini, were you?

The Cort Earth mini finishes are very minimalistic, it doesn’t have any designs or any particular finishes, it is more of a vintage looking acoustic guitar or as Cort’s people describe it: “vintage acoustics from the golden age of guitar building”.

What is cool about its finish is the feel of the wood, it does feel earthy, opened-pore, which is something that I really like on wood instruments, especially guitars. The fretboard is tiny and feels really really soft and nice, that is why this guitar could be a great guitar to start with for a beginner or a kid. A great thing this guitar has is black rubberized tuning pegs- not a must-have, but very comfortable if you think about it.

There are other brands making minis such as Martin, Taylor, Maton and many more, however the Cort Earth Mini is probably among the lowest priced in the market with great sound and good quality components, I would recommend it eyes closed – 100%! And it’s not like Cort is paying me for selling it.

Check this video and let me know what you think:

Luis Tovar

Weighing in at less than 10 pounds (just over 4.5kg) the ZT Lunchbox is definitely a portable amp. It boasts a 6 1/2 “ switchable speaker (115V/230V) which will make your guitar heard in the practice room or gig in any size space.

The ZT Lunchbox can handle really well any pedal effects you connect to it and of course it delivers a great sound with single-coil pickups as well as humbuckers.

If you are looking for a little amp to have at home and carry around get yourself a Lunchbox.

WARNING: small does not necessarily mean quiet.

The ZT Lunchbox features an ambience effect  which basically simulates an open back cabinet. It comes with Headphone and DI output, custom ultra-high performance 6.5” speaker, Aux input on ⅛” stereo jack and voltage switch 115V/230V.

What about its size?

The dimensions are: 7.5” x 9.8” x 4.4.” (192mm x 250 mm x 112mm). It weights around 4.3 Kg (9.5 lbs.) The peak output is 120 dB and it has the typical volume, gain and tone controls as well as ambience. It also has a separate control for line out and headphones volume.

How much does this little monster costs? The price range is from $250 to $400 (USD)

Check out the Youtube video from FreeGuitarVideos:

Posted by Luis