The Clinic

So I got to attend the two hour clinic that Petrucci held before the show. As John walked right by me to take the “stage” I immediately noticed that he’s built! He looks like he benches 300 lbs. In a rock world of drug-’n-alcohol-emaciated skank-males with wispy gangly limbs this is a welcome departure. John actually made several gym references and workout analogies during the clinic.

The next thing I noticed was that he really knew his music theory… (what did I expect?!) …which is what happens when you come out of Berklee and not your cousin’s garage. And he also spoke with authority, yet with a relaxed down-to-earth tone… like a police officer speaking at a school. It was great, and completely unexpected.

Needless to say the small performance illustrations he did during the clinic blew everyone away. This guy is insanely good. He is easily one of the top, top rock guitarists in the world. He covered a lot of ground in a short time, but here are some of them:

• Inversions - 1 note per string, 2 notes-per-string (with alternating finger assignments)
• Practicing - EVERY day… even if only for short periods, and getting in the habit of practicing through whole songs or sequences (as if playing live)
• Strength Exercises - 4 sets of 10 repetitions of tight, fast licks (just like working out)
• Endurance Exercises - Performing fretboard exercises like doing wind sprints (SPRINT JOG SPRINT JOG)
• Skill Exercises - Pure repetition of difficult phrases… over and over and over on top of one another
• Polish Exercises - Custom made repetition exercises to fine tune difficult phrases, hard to hit notes, and hard to form chord changes
• Sweep Picking - 2, 3, and 4-note sweeping (the right-hand tempo and consistency is the key)

And before I forget, Patty Womer needs to know that during the clinic he used the verb, “noodle”.

The Concert

This was my first concert at Albany’s Washington Avenue Armory… a cute little basketball arena that serves the purpose, I guess. We showed up in time to catch the last half of the third (and final) opening band (Opeth, who growled and gurgled a lot).

Once Dream Theater took the stage the place was electric. Despite the muddy sound mix (the low end really muddied both the vocals and the more treble-y moments) the band sounded other-worldly, each performing his craft to mind-numbing levels of accuracy and precision. At several points Petrucci has me just shaking my head… there was nothing else I could do but watch his effortless sweeps and runs (legato and alt-picked) up and down the neck. *sigh*

Here’s the setlist, compliments of Krazy Ken:

1. Constant Motion
2. Panic Attack
3. Strange Deja-Vu
4. Through My Words
5. Fatal Tragedy
6. Surrounded (extended)
7. The Dark Eternal Night
8. Take The Time
------------------------------------
9. Shmedley Wilcox:
      I.Trial Of Tears
      II. Finally Free
      III. Learning To Live
      IV. In The Name Of God
      V. Octavarium (Razor's Edge)

It was a great show. This was my first time seeing them. My only real complaint? They didn’t play Pull Me Under!? Holy smokes… how can you go to a Dream Theater show and not hear Pull Me Under? Oh well… just another reason to see them again.

As always, the show was a mind-blowing hard-rockin’ Christmas spectacular. Alex Skolnick and Chris Caffery were monsters on their guitars. Vocals, strings, keys, lights, lasers, smoke, fog, fire, flame… everything was as good as any other year I’ve seen these guys.

One amusing note - the previous two years Chris Caffery plugged TSO’s “upcoming” non-Christmas CD release called Night Castle. But the CD still hasn’t been released (much the chagrin of hungry TSO fans like myself). This year, Chris both plugged and joked about the Night Castle release in what would be the quote of the evening:

Albany, let me ask you a question. What will be more likely to see in our lifetimes: a McDonalds on Mars, or the release of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Night Castle album?

They put on a great show. I was glad to go for the fifth year in a row. Next year I will go again. In a few months I’ll start looking forward to it.

WHAT :: concert coffeehouse featuring electric guitar wizardry

WHEN :: Friday, February 2, 7:30pm

WHERE :: Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, Latham, NY - for directions go here or call 518.785.4595

WHY :: Because you love me and I play guitar in the band… and hey, free coffee and snacks!

WHAT :: Concert and CD release party for our new CD Blunder

WHEN :: Friday, November 3rd, 7:00pm

WHERE :: Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, ; Latham, NY - for directions go here or call 518.785.4595

WHY :: Because you love me and I play guitar in the band and write songs and you want to be part of the excitement and it’s the right thing to do and there’ll be free coffee and snacks.

HOW :: By all means possible!

This will be a great night of energetic music including originals, covers, and new arrangements of old favorites. I can guarantee you that we’ll rock, so don’t miss the show!

No, really… these past nine days have been a pungent combination of a full-time job (software engineer), various social functions and groups, and a slew of guitar activities and events. Last weekend (October 14 and 15) one of my bands, MCCLAINE TRIBE, played three times for the worship services at Grace Fellowship church. Then on Tuesday I played for a special Acts 29 Boot Camp event in Troy, NY. Then on Thursday another of my bands, Hundred Monkey Theory, played for an event at Russell Sage College (my wife’s alma mater) called Artists for Social Justice (never have I heard so many “positives” of communism). Then on Saturday both Hundred Monkey Theory and MCCLAINE TRIBE played for an event called Shine to benefit arts in the schools. Then Sunday (today) I played for the worship service at Terra Nova Church.

So, when I say I’ve been busy… I mean it. I’ll post something meaningful soon.

Release Party
7:30pm November 3, 2006
Grace Fellowship Coffehouse, Latham, NY
Free Admission - Free Coffee - Free Snacks

The music on the CD is sharp and heavily loop-based (perfect for casual listening), and Steve McClaine’s vocals are tight. We’ll be playing several live shows coming up (see my guitar dates on my homepage) but the date to remember most is November 3, the official release party. We’ll be playing a full two sets of music including almost all of the CD songs. Our live music is less electronic-based than the CD… it’s much more straight-ahead melodic rock (perfect for live shows).

If you’re anywhere near Albany, NY that day stop on in and say hey!

Usually these type of gigs are purely acoustic because of the smaller intimate settings, but this one will be electric, with myself on electric guitar and Dave, our drummer, on a full drum kit. If you come and check us out you’ll hear new originals, time-tested originals, and some familiar covers. I hope to see you locals there.

The band :: McClaine Tribe. The mission :: to boldly go where no 37-year-old-male-fronted band has gone before. No, I’m not 37, but Steve McClaine is, and his group of audio marauders now go by “McClaine Tribe”. And yes, I would be his crazy electric guitar player. Check out our website.

I do break away from my electric axe to tickle an acoustic guitar every now and then. Case in point, the video clip in this post is from our recent June 2 coffeehouse. The song is I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe. The crazy thing about us doing this song is that it was supposed to be just Steve singing to an accompaniment track, but he brought the wrong disc to the gig. When he found out he had no backing track he was going to scrap the song… until his trusty electric guitar player volunteered the fact that he knew the song on acoustic by heart. *pats self on back* Add an able and alert Zach Kenyon on djembe drums and we were all good.

Here’s the best part… since we only decided to go ahead with the song four minutes before we physically started the playing we had no time to rehearse and had never rehearsed it together prior. That’s right… what you see in the clip is the very first time we had ever played that song!

The show will be different from the Hundred Monkey Theory gigs you may have heard me play before at the coffee house. Steve McClaine’s style is heavier with electronic loop-based influences. We’ll be doing about half originals and half worship covers… but the covers will be vamped up to our intensity.

Today the term guitar solo is commonly taken to refer specifically to the idiom of rock music. Although solo passages for guitar are found in many musical genres, the ‘guitar solo’ has an almost iconic place in rock, and particularly in the subgenres called hard rock or heavy metal.

Although in principle any kind of guitar can be used in a rock guitar solo, and counter-examples abound, the characteristic solo sound is created using an electric guitar with the timbral effect known as distortion…

- Guitar solo, Wikipedia.org

All music undergoes various movements and shifts of energy and rhythm. There needs to be highs and lows, louds and softs for the piece to be able to accentuate the finer qualities of tonal and vocal communication.

The guitar solo helps the development of most rock and harder pop pieces by serving as a break from the main lyrical content and often offering opportunity to incorporate a new chord progression or rhythm breakdown. The guitar solo is like the month of March… it can come in like a lamb and go out like a lion, or vice versa, or be all lamb or all lion.

Probably most important, a good guitar solo will emote a significant and tangible message to a song. Great solos are extensions of the lyrical and musical intent of the song itself and are tailored to fit the overall composition. A given solo would not have the same effect if lifted out of one song and placed into another.

Here are just a very few of my favorite guitar solos that I think are nearly perfect examples of form, expression, and song fit. Keep in mind that this is just a tiny smattering of the list I could generate and that these are not necessarily my favorite songs… this is a list for the solos (guitarist — song — artists/group — album):

• Zakk Wylde — No More Tears — Ozzy Osbourne — No More Tears
• Marco Sfogli — Pretender — James LaBrie — Elements of Persuasion
• John Petrucci — Pull Me Under — Dream Theater — Images & Words
• Chris DeGarmo — Silent Lucidity — Queensryche — Empire
• Phil Collen — White Lightning — Def Leppard — Euphoria

In the story, the main character (said red violin) was the perfect creation of a master Italian craftsman named Nicolo Bussotti. However, every search I do for him only comes up with information on this movie. Is he a fictional character? I’m so ignorant… I just thought he was like Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri.

For my instrument, the modern guitar, there are no grand movies spanning centuries… nor could there be, unless to unfold an epic featuring an ancient lute or oud from Biblical times that gets smashed by… I dunno… a meteorite and is unknowingly rebuilt by a drunk luthier into a Fender Stratocaster. Weak… very weak. So instead, let’s just munch on a few guitar wallpapers for Wallpaper Wednesday. I have no idea where the one on the right came from (but it does tie in a Biblical reference to the guitar!)… but the one on the left is from guitare-nstructor.com.

I learned that bands of elves, half-lings, dwarves, wizards, rangers, and warriors aren’t just for Dungeons & Dragons (a role-playing game despised by Christians). Rather, my fellow faith-lings are quite fond of Mr. Tolkien’s mystical epic of magical creatures and mystical characters… and of Mr. Lewis, who wrote quite a fantasy tale of his own filled with much of the same. Of course, the magic and wizardry in their tales are very acceptable to my dear and righteous faith-lings. BUT… don’t you dare go see Harry Potter and his band of demonic Satan-worshiping ne’er-do-wells. For some reason a good dose of Rings or Narnia will deftly craft an allegory in a child’s mind to help shape their moral compass rightly… but a brush with Harry Potter will plunge them deep into the dark downward spiral of witchcraft, demon-possession, and premarital sex.

I also learned that it’s not a bad thing to enjoy some good pipe-weed or ale. Just about every good guy in Rings was either smoking or drinking (or both) at some point during the story. I already knew about the ale, but pipe-weed was always something I rather more enjoyed smelling than partaking of myself. But hey, if I ever get a hold of some Old Toby I just may see what all the fuss is about. You know you gotta love Tolkien… and Lewis… for they are master craftsmen true… and, should there be any chance of a kingdom to come, I’ll bet they’re tilting back ales right now laughing at all of us.

In place of a Dark Lord you shall have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn, treacherous as the sea, stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!
-Galadriel

I also learned that evil witch sorceresses are peculiarly enchanting! Check the wallpaper… it’s Galadriel when she was being tempted and freaking out. There’s something about a Dark Queen. Hmm… like the Ice Queen from Narnia…. icy, yet hot. It’s a paradox… the powerful and evil woman figure, who maintains an aura of femininity and grace.

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.
- Gandolf

I also learned that Gandolf knows more than anybody else. If anything… I should listen to him. When it was time to give an encouraging word he was right there. When it was time to mourn he was there. When it was time to lead he was there. When it was time to dress somebody down for their stupidity (even an ally) he was right there, and his rebukes had a wonderful sting. And most important… when it was time to kick a little arse… he always brought his own whoopin’ stick!

And I learned that the elves have some enchantingly spellbinding songs… filled with rich Celtic melodies and ethereal drones. I was inspired by the Fellowship extended version scene where Sam and Frodo lament the elves’ departure to the ships leaving Middle Earth. The elves in the scene had a simple, yet haunting song that I sought to imitate on the guitar… so I wrote an extended sequence of Celtic song with chords that layer over one another in a very elvish style. I have included a few of the cool chords I use below. Note the open A string throughout acting as the drone.

x o       x       x o       x       x o       x
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | | | | <9    | | | | | | <9    | | 1 | | | <5
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | 1 1 1 |       | | | | 1 |       | | | | | |
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | 3 | |
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | | | |       | | 2 3 | |       | | | | 4 |
-----------       -----------       -----------

   F/A               Dsus/A            G5/A

And, the last thing I learned… was how to properly bid people farewell.

I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.
- Bilbo Baggins

Now, there is actually quite a controversy as to whether or not smooth jazz is even jazz. Purists will state that it is an over-commercialized aberration more suited for an elevator. I think purists in general are idiotic, and this is no exception. Sure, smooth jazz tends to be evenly dynamic with mellow rythms… hence the label smoooootthhh. Have you ever tried setting a mood with some free jazz? Here’s part of Wikipedia’s definition:

Free jazz normally retains a general pulsation and often swings but without regular metre, and often with frequent accelerando and ritardando, giving an impression of the rhythm moving in waves. Often players in an ensemble adopt different tempi.

This is all a musical pet peeve of mine. Maybe it’s my engineering roots, or my military ones, but the whole thing with players adopting different tempos and doing their own chaotic thing has always been a cacophony to me… I never, EVER liked free jazz. I’ll walk out of Borders before listening to it for long.

You may also hear smooth jazz smeared as “white jazz”… an implication that it is de-souled “real” jazz made to be more palatable for the rhythmically-challenged middle-to-upper-class white suburbanites. This is just Chocolate City nonsense, as radio demographics reveal middle-to-upper-class blacks make up just as large a percentage of smooth jazz listeners. Of course, this makes perfect sense to me, as I’ve always believed that classy people enjoy classy music… and that skin color was NOT a factor in determining classiness.

Smooth jazz is just so classy and sets such an ambiance… you can’t help but slip into a setting feeling a bit of style. Ask a DJ and they’ll tell you that smooth jazz (and a few of its cousins) is some of the best music to play for banquets not requiring dancing… because the rock and dance-type music is too beat-y for conversation. Some people think classical music fits the bill for conversation-heavy get togethers… but they would be horribly wrong… because the huge dynamic range of most classical pieces produces music that is either way too soft or WAY TOO LOUD! The only classical exception is Baroque… but eating to that would feel too much like a Renaissance festival [insert wench joke here].

Enough talk… let’s create a little jazz on our own. Let’s take the cool chord from my post here, and combine it with a few other quasi-cool chords.

  x               x                 x
-----------       -----------       -----------
1 | 2 | | | <5    | 1 | 1 | 1 <5    | 1 | | | 1 <3
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | 3 4 4       | | | | 2 |       | | | 2 | |
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | | | |       | | 3 | | |       | | 3 | 4 |
-----------       -----------       -----------
| | | | | |       | | | | | |       | | | | | |
-----------       -----------       -----------

 A7(#5b9)             Dm7              Cmaj7

Now keep in mind all of these are “movable” chords, meaning you can play them anywhere on the neck. The only one we’ll be moving is the first one, which we’ll play as shown at fret 5, but also move down to fret 3 for a G7(#5b9). Are you ready? Okay… the progression is shown below. You can play this fast and rhythmic for some up-tempo jazz, or you can play it slower in a mellow arpeggio style for some (you guessed it) smooth jazz.

║:  Dm7  |  G7(#5b9)  |  Cmaj7  |  A7(#5b9)  :║

Kris over at ShutUpMilo.com (who is very talented behind a lens) snapped the shots of the gig you see below. You can see these and others in Kris’ gallery or in my gallery. I’d recommend meandering over to ShutUpMilo.com to check out all his galleries.

guitarsenal (gi-’tär-s&n-&l) n. - the selection of axes at one’s disposal when it comes time to throw down some sonic mayhem; typically does not possess a forseen upper limit in size.

While I’m on the topic (and since I just introduced everyone to a new word) I figured I might as well add some pictures of my personal weaponry to my gallery. They are also featured below for your clicking convenience.

This first one is my main axe right now… a Carvin DC400 with neck-through maple, mahogany sides, and a Wilkinson Tremolo. The fretboard is ebony with abalone inlays and stainless steel frets. It has an active/passive pickup system and the most gorgeous sunset burst finish on a quilted maple top that I have ever seen. The action is perfect… I’ve never played a better guitar (to include many an over-priced showroom model).

The next guitar has been a trusted friend for a long time. This is an Ibanez USA Custom RG-series model with rosewood fretboard, Floyd Rose bridge (with locking nut), and a beautifully deep red finish. The pickups are, from neck to bridge, Dimarzio PAF Pro, Joe Barden S Deluxe, and Dimarzio Tone Zone. For me, Dimarzio makes the best electric pickups… no question… and I just noticed that their entire website is done with Adobe Flash… how cool is that!

And finally, in the category of best performance without electricity, is my Taylor. Taylor guitars are just wonderful instruments with rich acoustic sound. My Taylor 410ce (circa 2002) is a wonderful sidekick that is just fun to pick up and strum. These are quality instruments and have a distinctive, gently aggressive sound.

Bad art is a great deal worse than no art at all.   -Oscar Wilde

I was in NYC recently and visited the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). They had some featured paintings by Jackson Pollock. Now it was cool to actually see this man’s work, and I’m not saying his stuff doesn’t have artistic merit… (I know I’m going to get flamed for this)… but I don’t really get it. Abstract impressionism is not art to me… especially when it’s just paint thrown, dripped, tossed, flung, dropped onto the canvas. And then I read about people who have dished out big bucks for paintings done by a chimp named Congo? (story link) They call his paintings abstract, too. Isn’t that funny? Just two abstract guys monkeying around drooping paint on the canvas. Maybe the monkey threw paint in lieu of poo?

The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.   -Thomas Wolfe

However, the most illustrative material at the MoMA were the paintings that were just one solid color! I wish I were kidding. There were at least four of these… and yes, one of them was completely white and another was completely black. Now, all in all I loved visiting the MoMA… so let me toss in here some pics of works that I really liked… work I found to have greater than subjective artistic merit. I’ll even include some demi-chaotic selections so you can see my differentiation between reasonable abstract impressionistic quality and canvas boogers.

Now addressing subjectivity from a musical angle… just last night I was engaged in some musician chat where I had instance to heartily decry Rolling Stone magazine for its travesty of a Top 100 Guitarists of All Time list. What a disgrace this list was. Seriously. They put Kurt Cobain (whose music is thusly rank by any name) at number twelve?! He should have never come near this list. And poor Eddie Van Halen was only listed at 70? And oh so excrutiating… the monsters of guitar themselves… Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, and John Petrucci (who together just released a way-cool DVD of their 2005 G3 Tour) did not even make the list?! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?

Musically, the above example is but a small morsel of the backward valuations some mindless conformists in popular culture have assigned to music. Now… you might say that Rolling Stone does not represent all of modern pop culture. I agree, but upon casual inspection pop culture is replete with examples. You may also say that some of these examples are from competitive market forces. I might agree, but the radio is a free market, and how many times have you turned on the radio to find nothing but garbage? How many top-selling albums feature not even one truly talented artist? How many of us know an instrumentalist or vocalist who is mind-alteringly skilled at their craft yet living on a paltry wage… while talentless figureheads rake in mad duckets (read big money) by mere and ridiculous chance? It’s enough to drive a Republican to listen to NPR.

Of course the music is a great difficulty. You see, if one plays good music, people don’t listen, and if one plays bad music people don’t talk.   -Oscar Wilde

You don’t have to walk the streets of NYC long to find local musicians and artists who are not featured in any galleries or music halls… but who are creating incredible music or paintings right in front of you on the sidewalks. I remember seeing a group of three dudes who looked like clean bums, with tattered military vet looking attire and scruffy features… and they were armed only with a couple jar lids, four or five cans of spray paint, a few small pieces of cardboard, and several blank pieces of paper that looked 17×14. Large crowds would gather and watch as one of these “bums” turned a piece of white paper into an exquisite and detailed landscape work featuring glowing moons or sunsets. The colors were vibrant and the overall work would have looked more-than-appropriate in a black contemporary-framed glass case sitting in an upscale wine bar.

So what does all of this mean? I dunno… it’s subjective, you see. But let me leave you with this…

Beauty is a harmonious relation between something in our nature and the quality of the object which delights us.   -Blaise Pascal

I’ll be playing with HMT this coming Friday night, February 3, at Grace Fellowship Church. It’s a coffeehouse so there’s no cover, starts at 7:30pm, and there’s plenty of free coffee and goodies so if you’re in the neighborhood stop by. And, yes, the rumor that we’ll be playing some cool chords is still true.

  x
-----------
1 | 2 | | | <5
-----------
| | | 3 4 4
-----------
| | | | | |
-----------
| | | | | |
-----------       

  A7(#5b9)

But so that no one feels deprived, here is a cool chord that I will NOT be playing this Friday night. As a movable chord shape it can already be played with any progression. But also as a very jazzy (and eccentric) chord it can be played within many different keys in a jazz context. As anoted here, at the 5th fret, it could be worked into many jazz keys.

Oh, and because I get asked constantly (for good reason) where HMT gets their name from, here is the explanation straight from Wikipedia on the origin of the Hundredth Monkey.

What puts this song right there? Classy guitar rhythms, the great orchestral accompaniment, some seriously driving lyrics, those time signature breaks, the cool non-diatonic piano intro, a message perfectly paralleling the story, the interlude into the outro, and that way-cool triplet riff on the way out!

Here’s an interesting wallpaper I came across on Musician’s Friend… and, yes, this is actually a real guitar… the stormtrooper has been skillfully painted on (including onto the pickups).

And let’s complete the hat trick with a couple cool chords to chew on. These can be found in many pop, folk, and celtic tunes, and even in some rock. The fingerings are similar and can sometimes be used together, especially in the keys of E, A, and B.

x o     o o          x o     o o
===========          ===========
| | | | | |          | | | | | |
-----------          -----------
| | 1 2 | |          | | | | | |
-----------          -----------
| | | | | |          | | | | | |
-----------          -----------
| | | | | |          | | 3 4 | |
-----------          -----------

     A2                 Bsus/A

As a note, the Bsus/A is also frequently fingered with the first and second fingers. It all depends on how you are moving through your voicings in the progression.