Gibson factories in Memphis and Nashville raided

http://www.wmctv.com/story/15323207/authorities-raid-gibson-guitar-factory-in-downtown-memphis

Crazy - the proud Gibson company was raided today under suspicion of illegal importation of wood. Pretty sad if it's true.
Gibson responds: http://www.gibson.com/en-us/Lifestyle/News/gibson-0825-2011/

String bending and intonation

A couple of hours later, my fingers are still burning after working on this exercise for about 20 minutes. While I've preached the importance of in-tune string bending and regular bending practice to students, I've always favoured jazz and classical-style playing in my own practice regimen, such as it is. At a recent rock/blues trio gig I was disappointed at my intonation while executing whole-step bends. Thus my renewed quest to improve this aspect of my playing.

The author of the exercise claims that out-of-tune bending is a dead giveaway that a player is inexperienced. I admit that I judge other guitarists on the intonation of their bends, along with vibrato control and control of the portamento rate. I'm lapsing into synth talk here - in another life I owned a Yamaha DX7 and actually made a serious effort to learn how to program it. I never really succeeded in being able to program the thing but I did learn a lot about sound in the process. For example, a sliding pitch that moves smoothly from one point to another is called portamento. This term is often confused with glissando, which a quick movement through a portion of the chromatic scale. It's the difference between bending a string and sliding along the frets from point to point. I'd like to find or create another bending exercise that trains in bending at different, controllable time durations. I'd like to be able to choose different rates for expressive purposes the way someone like Eric Clapton does and did. After a little bit of YouTube searching here's a video that touches on bend durations. He gets into it at around the 10:30 mark, but it's really just more of an encourage to be aware that you can use different durations for different effects. He doesn't provide any exercises or even any attempt at classification, as he does earlier in the video for bend types.

Here's a less demanding version of the exercise by Justin Sandercoe. The search results for "guitar string bending lesson" indicate that this is a popular topic. If you have a favourite video on this topic, please let me know and I'll post it.

Alternating thumb - a country/blues crossover.

Practicing with fingerpicks and a thumbpick today, going through some books of folk and blues songs. Lately I've been consumed with writing songs for the upcoming Fraser Daley CD, and delving into some old-time guitar styles for ideas. I was playing along with this earlier:

I'm not sure that I'm convinced by the harmonica imitation, but a great record nonetheless. I love when country musicians play blues, and vice versa. Sam McGee (1894-1975) was an old-time country musician from Franklin, Tennessee. His style has been (rather anachronistically) called "Travis picking" after Merle Travis. But it's clearly much older than Travis, and seems to have been adapted to folk purposes from 19th century parlor guitar styles.


Parlor guitar wasn't far from 'classical' banjo of the late 19th century.


And all of this is not too far from prototypical blues guitar.

"One question....why a Squier?"

Dedicated GC readers may remember my tribulations a few months back regarding my substandard Fender Highway One Strat, bought in Strat-desperation for a Pink Floyd cover gig, with regret slowly creeping up thereafter.
It's gone.
I traded it down to a Squier Classic Vibe Strat, the 50s version. Looks like this and sells for $330 CDN plus tax at Canada's own version of Guitar Center, Long and McQuade.

 It was a bit of a journey to get here, and for now I'm very happy with this guitar. It wasn't long ago that I wouldn't even deign to touch a Chinese-made guitar; there was no point. Dull, weak tone, out-of-tune and cheap-feeling necks and a generally plastic feel top the list of reasons 'why not.' Yet here I am, a cheap Chinese Strat my main rock guitar and me proudly testifying on its behalf when asked the question at the top of this post.
It started with seeing Kevin Breit (see my email interview with Kevin here) playing one at the Orbit Room in Toronto and him commenting on its surprising excellence. From there it was to the online forums and finally to my local big box guitar dealer, where only the 60s version was to be found. Coveting a maple board Strat, I special-ordered the 50s guitar, something I've never done before. When it arrived it was perfectly set up, with an expensive-feeling neck and a nice clear Strat-y tone. I've heard and played better, certainly, but there's something psychologically gratifying for me about my guitar being easily replaceable; there's also something cool about not paying $4000 for what was designed to be the Model T of electric guitars, a populist plank. There's something just wrong about the idea of the Custom Shop for me, and relicing? I just can't get with it. So I strike a blow for the common man, and for offshore CNC machines, with my Squier scepter boldly in hand.
Nice two-colour sunburst, too.

Earning my "Badge"

Working today on some of Eric Clapton's music. I was only a casual Clapton fan up to about six months ago, when I bought the Complete Clapton set. I've been working out of the excellent transcriptions in the accompanying book Complete Clapton (Guitar Recorded Versions) from Hal Leonard. I've found Hal Leonard's guitar stuff to be of consistently high quality.  Unfortunately some of the eighties songs are reprints of transcriptions done back then, and they're not as nice. I guess that comes with the territory when you're dealing with a career retrospective.
I remember seeing published note-for-note Clapton transcriptions quite early in that 'movement,' probably the book (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3) that matched the boxed set. Incidentally, that boxed set, released in 1990, was one of the first really successful CD boxed sets as I remember.
So work continues on "Badge." I'll keep you posted.