I’m a musician, writer, and comic artist. Welcome to my website.
Guitars are tools. They are tools designed to create music. Every good workman appreciates quality tools. They make the job easier and more enjoyable. But they are still tools, designed to do a job. A hammer drives nails. A guitar makes music. I think sometimes guitar players...
I’m starting to start a jazz band. Starting a band can be difficult. You have a vision in you head but no one else can read your mind. So you try to explain it using words. Unfortunately, words are mostly inadequate when it comes to explaining music. And then...
When you are young you tend to spend a lot of time looking forward. Dreaming of how your life may go, and then chasing those dreams. You may not think much about
Loopers have been around since the 1950s when Les Paul hid reel to reel tape decks off stage and controlled them using a box attached to his guitar. This allowed him to record and play back parts, and accompany himself live. He called the box the “Les Paulverizer” and it must have seem like magic to 1950s crowds. Nowadays, most of us
Picks come in lots of shapes, thicknesses, and materials. It can be difficult to find just the right one for your playing style and music. While conventional thought says flexible picks are better for strumming and rigid picks are better for fast single note picking and riffs, there are no rules. It is really a matter of preference.
George Benson is simply one of the greatest jazz guitar players of all time. And like many famous guitar players he has his own signature model guitars. The Ibanez GB300 and the GB10. The GB300 is a full size hollowbody and GB10 is smaller body hollowbody designed to be more comfortable to play and fight feedback. The problem for many working musicians or part time jazz players, however, is the price. At $5000 and $3500 they are out of reach for many players.
Learning songs by ear is a valuable skill that will make you a better musician. It is a great way to train your ear and make you less dependent on TABs or chord charts.
If you hang around guitar players or visit guitar discussion groups you will soon run into debates about using guitar effects and tone.
One side of the debate usually argues “tone comes from your fingers” and suggests that “all you need is a good tube amp and a guitar, then use the tone and volume controls.”
Many Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) songs are worth learning. John Fogerty has a real talent for writing catchy songs with cool guitar parts. New guitar players will find a lot to like in their songs. They typically featured relatively easy guitar rhythms and cool guitar riffs and solos.
A common question guitar instructors ask their students is “What kind of music do you like?” Being a guitar instructor I have asked this question myself knowing that the answer is usually going to be one particular style of music. It may be country, or classic rock, or blues, or metal. It doesn’t really matter. The point is
I never really understood why some guitar players only play acoustic or only play electric guitar. They are missing half the fun.
There is much historical debate on who coined the term "shred" as it relates to guitar. One explanation states that it was coined in the early 1980s by a guitar magazine writer
Thin Lizzy was an anomaly. An Irish hard rock band (often verging on metal) with two lead guitarists and a black singer/bass player who wrote engaging poetic lyrics about various characters and every day life. They were huge in the U.K. but only had a couple of hits in the U.S in the 70s. Their biggest hit over here was The Boys Are Back In Town. It is worth learning for several reasons.
I ordered a new drive pedal and it finally came. Excitedly I opened the box. It was empty. I got mad. Then I remembered it was a transparent drive. Silly me. So I fished around in the box and felt it. I took it out and tried it. Wow!
I have posted my latest recording for my "My Kind Of Jazz" song demo album. It is a jazz song called "Preston." I wrote it the morning of the day my grandson Preston was born so I named it after him. I hope you enjoy it. You can find it on the Media page.
As the use of effect pedals in music has grown increasingly popular, so has the popularity of pedalboards. Huge pedalboards with thousands of dollars worth of effects can be found in use by even occasional players. Collecting effects pedals seems to be a hobby unto itself. And there are YouTube channels devoted completely to setting up and using pedalboards and effects. But sometimes you only need a few effects to get the job done. This is the idea behind the Pedaltrain Nano+ pedalboard.
In 1962 The Beatles were a raw rock and roll band that nobody in the music industry wanted to produce. But George Martin, a young producer at EMI Studios with a classical music and novelty record background, heard a creative spark he thought he could nurture. And over the next eight years he guided the lads from Liverpool from a raw vocal guitar band into a musical phenomenon, and arguably the most popular and influential band of all times.
I buy picks by the dozens because they are inexpensive and I lose them frequently. I also give picks to students who forget to bring theirs to lessons. When my wife and I were on vacation last year in Santa Fe New Mexico, we were looking in the gift shops and kept seeing a lot of hand made pottery. That’s when the thought came to me that maybe I could find something hand made to keep picks in.
Some musicians can go by their first name only, like Cher or Elvis. That doesn't work for Mark. So I thought about changing my name to Reginaldo. But I don't look much like a Reginaldo, and people already know me as Mark. So then I thought about changing the spelling of my name to Reginaldo but still pronouncing it Mark.
Being a guitar teacher and in bands I play guitar a lot. I enjoy it, but there are certain expectations and requirements involved. So occasionally I like to play guitar just for the pure fun of it. No audience. No expectations. Just fun. One of my favorite ways to do that in the past few years is what I call the “Shuffle Jam.”
