Guitar Jam

Review: 'The Mystery' by Tommy Emmanuel

By Ken Volpe
Last week I received Tommy Emmanuel’s latest offering, The Mystery. The disc contains 12 extraordinary tracks consisting mainly of solo performances on acoustic steel-string guitar. Tommy performs these tunes in many styles including Folk, Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, and others.

As a fan of Tommy’s music for the last decade, I am always amazed by his consistent creative output.  I mean, the guy is always performing, composing, and recording. This almost super human energy could only be fueled by a tremendous passion to create. It’s as if someone with Tommy’s extremely rare talents has no other choice but to create.

The disc starts with “Cantina Senese,” a short piece featuring a blend of Spanish, Gaelic, and Gypsy influence.  Strong rhythms and mandolin-like runs drive the song. Next, you are hit with “GameShow Rag.”  Definitely the most technically outstanding tune on the CD. I loved this song. There are parts that remind me of Steve Howe’s, “The Clap”, but with greater complexity and at a much more challenging tempo!! The song features some fabulous percussive bass lines, Travis picking, ragtime piano like comping, and some serious single-note blistering runs. 

A little further on I listened to “Lewis and Clark”, which is a great change of pace song. It starts with a quiet intro leading into a “giddy-up” folk feel. The two things that really struck me about this piece were the beautiful legato melody and the rich tone and natural string balance from his guitar. It really did make me think about Lewis and Clark.

Throughout the CD Tommy utilizes just about every right and left hand technique available. On “Antonella’s Birthday,” he employs a barrage of harmonics in an effective rhythmic manner. 

The tune “And So It Goes” really spoke to me. It always astounds me when an instrumentalist can utilize melody in an effective manner even more so than if it was a vocal tune. 

On the other side of the coin, Track 5 “Walls,” is a rare vocal duet. The lyrics speak of a valuable and truthful message. It is about our fragile human qualities and the hope that abounds from that. The liner notes contain a message along those same lines. One last thing, Tommy pulls out his Telecaster to embellish this song with some harmonic swells. 

The title cut “The Mystery,” is one of my favorite compositions. The melody shifts from I dare say, “haunting to happy” and will grab you the moment you hear it. The colorful bass lines provide a unique harmonic compliment to the melody.

Each of the remaining tunes has its own unique voice. As I alluded to earlier, Mr. Emmanuel utilizes multiple guitar techniques, timeless melodies along with impeccable timing. None of his songs are ever too long, most in the 3-4 minute range. The quality of the recording is perfect. Not too punchy or drenched in reverb like many other recordings of this style.  Even the order of the songs is wonderful. They flow into each other in a seamless fashion. There is no repetition or fluff here, I mean none.  As a fellow guitarist I really appreciate his chops and his tone. But what really moves me are his compositions.  He always seems to make the right note choices and surprises you at the same time.  A lot of instrumental composers seem to create individual song parts that are glued together.  But Tommy’s compositions have an organic continuity that is always refreshing and truly musical.

Lastly, the thing that really amazes me is that Tommy Emmanuel takes chances in his music. In baring his soul, the vulnerability is captivating. Do yourself a favor, go buy this CD today. It will inspire you as a musician, as a listener, and as a person.

Guitar Adventures: Getting Ready for the Road and Everything Else

By Ronny North
It’s always an adventure when you have to get ready for some out of town shows, so I thought I’d share some of mine with you.

You can’t go anywhere without road cases that function correctly so my first priority was to fix my guitar rack. We managed to break the wheel base on my Jan-Al guitar rack shockmount case recently - if the wheel’s don’t work correctly it’s very difficult to move the case around. You definitely want everything to be running smoothly when you’re out on the road and making your tech’s life hell is not the way to go. I contacted Willie at Jan-Al and he told me to come in so they could check out the damage. Even though I have never met anyone at Jan-Al before, they were really great and had my case fixed in no time. They also gave me the grand tour and showed me some cases they were doing for Lenny Kravitz and Barbara Streisand.

Next up, I had to make sure that all the gear was working correctly. After I ran through everything with no problems, I changed my Pedalsnake custom audio snake out to a new longer one that the company sent me. The new one is 40ft long and much cooler. I had to wire everything up and label all the connections for my tech for easy quick hook ups. Of course in the middle of everything I got a 1000 phone calls about everything (I definitely need a T-Mobil Endorsement).

The next day we had to get all of my travel arrangements all confirmed. Thank God for my assistant Karen because she handled everything and had all squared away in no time flat. While she was doing that, I decided to do some more tracking on my new EP. Well, I did a couple passes and got some tracks down in no time at all (more on that later).

Now back to getting ready for my shows….I then tried my luck and went into the garage to get my luggage down. Well, it was an adventure but I survived my garage. After all of this, I  got a call and found out I was going to Vegas for the weekend for my girlfriend’s B-Day. On the plus side I had the luggage already to go.

My assistant Karen, my girlfriend Arlene and I went to Vegas and had a  blast. We celebrated Arlene’s Birthday at the Hard Rock Café Restaurant and even got everyone to sing her Happy B-Day while she stood on top of her chair. The next day in Vegas I managed to break away for a bit while the girls checked out the games at Circus Circus to go see my friend Ed Roman at Ed Roman Guitars. If you ever get to Vegas and you’re a Guitar player you have to see Ed’s store, it is possibly the greatest guitar store ever!!!!! I never miss a chance to pop in. It was great to hang with Ed and to see a few of my other Vegas friends while we were in town. It was an awesome trip.

After we got home it was time to get back to business. While I was in Vegas, I received an e-mail from Minarik guitars that my new Minarik Lotus was ready. I decided to try to take care of a few things all at once while I was out in the area of Eric’s Guitars where all the Minarik endorser guitars are dialed in. Since I needed to get my passport figured out for my out of country shows, I decided to hit up the Federal building in Westwood Village on the way to get my guitar. It was a real adventure to make my 8am appointment but I got my passport with a minimum of fuss (It was a long adventure to get there though).

With my passport taken care of, I was off to get my guitar. When I arrived at Eric’s Guitars, I hung for a bit and talked with Eric. He always does such a great set up on my Minariks and is a very cool guy to boot. It’s no wonder he works on so many of the “Big Name” players guitars and he does mine too. Well, after hanging at the shop for a while and checking out my newly set up Minarik Lotus (it’s perfect), I was off to my next destination.

I needed a new tweeter for one of my Alesis studio monitors so I decided to pop by Audio Designs in Burbank to see my old  friend Norik. It was great to see him and we talked forever about everything. He also managed to find me a new tweeter - what a guy! After that I was hungry and it was lunch time so I decided to have lunch with my assistant Karen at the In & Out on Sunset in Hollywood. The truth is that there really is nothing like an In & Out Burger and it’s always very interesting checking out the wide variety of people in the restaurant on any given day - it’s an on going show.

After our lunch, I got to experience some of the legendary LA traffic (good times). In traffic I took care of a bunch of business on the phone and even booked a new show.

Before going home I had to make one more stop at Guitar Center to get a few small things, and as always they hooked me up. The guys at GC Cerritos always rule. Finally at 5pm I was finally home. Of course when I got home I had a ton of e-mails to attend too.It never ends.

Next week we’ll dive into taking guitars on planes and getting guitars ready to go on the road.

Artist Interview: Andreas Kapsalis on the Jamcast - Session 2

Andreas Kapsalis is quickly building a reputation as the most important torch bearer in the tradition of the one-man guitar army since Michael Hedges left his legacy with the music world, he's also raising the bar for the 21st century film score; a composer who uses his idiosyncratic style to create an impressionable perspective on the silver screen.

In part two of this three part interview, Ken and Andreas discuss the philosophical aspect of Andreas’s music, composition, alternate tunings and practice routine.

In case you missed part one, Ken and Andreas discussed the challenges he faced to overcome the hand injury which ultimately led to his unique two-handed technique and how this technique relates with his compositions - and so much more.

Listen to Andreas on the Jamcast >

Daily News Picks

Rock Act Has Gear Stolen in NYC (AngryApe)

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Gibson Creates BJA Signature Guitar (Sonic State)

A Fan’s Notes

By Chip Lovitt
My name is Chip and I am a concerta-holic. I’ve been addicted to live music since I was 15, and while many of my 50-something contemporaries have given up on live music, I just can’t seem to stop handing my money over to various music venues and on-line ticket sellers.

A major highlight of my summer concert season was the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers show at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Two plus hours of great tunes, great musicianship, lots of guitars, and some fine Petty-Stevie Nicks duets. The crowd loved the show as much as I did, and thousands showed their appreciation at the end by holding up their cell phones, screens alight.

The sight got me thinking about how concert going has changed since I attended my first concerts as a teenager in the late ‘60s. I go back so far, I can still remember the pre-Bic era when people held up lit matches to call for an encore. (I also recall the 1960s Fillmore East policy where lighting a match for any reason, got you a flashlight beam in the face. (It was fire prevention policy more than anything else. The place, after all, was old.)

Speaking of the Fillmore East, I was also reminded how ticket prices have changed. The first rock concert tickets I bought were for the Schaefer Music Festival in New York’s City Wollman Rink. Perched in a beautiful corner of Central Park, the place attracted top acts for the now unbelievable prices of $1.50 for the bleachers and 2.50 for floor seats.  Graduating to the Fillmore 1968-71, I paid $3-5 for tickets, although Bill Graham would soon add fifty cents to those prices. That now seemingly tiny sum often bought three top acts a night (Neil Young/Steve Miller/Miles Davis; Chuck Berry/Albert King/ the Who; the Allman Brothers, opening for the Dead and Love, led by the late great Arthur Lee, to name just three shows I caught.) For the same price in 1969, lucky fans like me could spend New Year’s Eve, 1969 with Jimi Hendrix.

One amazing thing about that era was that, quite often, even big-name shows took weeks to sell out. CSNY’s June 2-7, 1970 stand at the Fillmore East was the first show I recall that sold out in just a matter of a few hours. (A high school “friend” scalped me a $5.50 ticket for ten bucks. Needless to say, once I got the ticket, that little piece of extortion ended our friendship. But maybe my former friend was just ahead of his time.)

Anyone remember standing on lines for hours at Ticketron waiting for that 10 AM ticket sale start time? No such thing as on-line ticketing in those days. How about wristbands that gained you the privilege of coming back later to stand in line to actually buy tickets. I have to admit, on-line ticket sales are a big improvement and quite convenient. Of course you pay for that in the form of  the cleverly named premium known as the convenience charge.

Back in my distant youth, too, there also was no such thing as annoying corporate sponsorship for a concert tour. I mean what’s next? Pre-show commercials? If those already exist, please don’t tell me, okay?

Ticket prices remained reasonably priced for a long time, but many big shows now can easily strain your budget to the tune of $150 or more. I’m not immune, either, having shelled out more than that to see recent shows by Cream and CSNY. Luckily, there are still plenty of shows one can catch in the $25 to $50 range.

Why do I do it? Plain and simple, there really is nothing like hearing live music. Seeing a terrific performer deliver a set of great music in front of the faithful can be a wonderfully exhilarating experience one remembers for life. I’ll never forget still the time I saw the original Allmans blow the roof off the Fillmore in 1969, seeing the Who perform Tommy from the Fillmore’s fourth row, or how Bob Marley practically levitated Madison Square Garden  at a show during the 1970s.

One thing has not changed and that is the power of live music when it’s presented with talent, taste, style, and flair. I got all four of those things at a recent Chris Isaak concert at NY’s beacon theater. Great tunes, a great band that’d been together for decades, and plenty of showmanship, and great guitars. (Are we seeing a trend here or what?).

I have a musician friend who says it’s great that I support and sustain live music. He’s got it wrong. It really supports and sustains me.

From The Drum Throne: Drum Sounds 101

By Keith Augeri
The advent of affordable home studio recording gear has given many guitar players (particularly those with enough room or space) the option to contemplate having their own “house drum set”. There are many obvious advantages to owning a “house drum set”. Although there are many ways to obtain drum sounds, I’ve found that a good sounding kit can be a great addition to any practice space.

O.k. so which drums to buy? Tackle a few other issues first and you’ll have a better chance of making a truly “sound” investment.

The first question is what style of music you will be playing? Although most styles of music can be performed on any kit, certain drums may be more appropriate to certain musical genres. If you think about what you generally track when recording drum parts the snare drum, bass drum, and hi-hat are the most important sounds; ride, toms, and crash sounds are usually secondary.

I have been asked in the past to help select drums to outfit a rehearsal or recording studio and here is my general observation: I have found that a smaller set of higher quality “tubs” and cymbals is more advantageous than say, that octa-plus set that your uncle has had kicking around in his garage for the past several decades and has offered to donate to you.

A five-piece kit is probably the most drums that you will need but if it’s a question of a really high quality 4-piece or a mediocre 5-piece, go with the smaller kit. An ideal set-up would consist of a 20” or 22” bass drum, a 10” or 12” rack tom(s) and a 14” or 16” floor tom; with a 5 x 14 snare.

The budget will always be an issue, especially if the instrument is one which the buyer (a non-drummer) may not even play. Budget priced kits usually have (if the kit is a 5-piece) tom-toms in the following dimensions: 12, 13 and 16 inches, which has always mystified me. The two “rack tom” dimensions offered are only one inch apart, which really limits the tuning or interval possibilities. This is not what you want (I won’t get into the proper tuning of drums here, as this is beyond the scope of this article).

If the style of music is not be-bop or straight ahead jazz, then that 18” bass drum probably won’t work out. That said you don’t need over-sized drums to get a big drum sound. I own a 20” bass drum which has worked out in virtually any situation I’ve been called for (the only exception being light jazz gigs, and for that I’ve made a bass drum out of a 16” floor tom). If the drummer in your band is more comfortable with a 22” or 24” bass drum, then you should consider that in your purchase (22” bass drums are generally the standard dimension).

Snare drums that I’ve found to be most versatile are in the 5” – 6” (depth) range, and I recommend a 14” diameter. I’ve found that this dimension is better suited to obtaining good rim-click sounds, and that you can vary the sounds that this size drum can get with the choice of heads (another topic that that deserves more space than we have right now). The piccolo and specialty snare drums can end up sounding pretty one-dimensional.

The tom sizes I prefer are 10,12,14 and 16 inches. In most cases a 14” floor tom can sound as fat as you need it to be, with the proper tuning and head combination. The 2 inch interval in diameter size seems to allow for each of the drums to be tuned to its’ optimum spot, while having a distinct voice and separation.

I’m partial to the warmth of maple drums; birch drums tend to have a brighter sound (great for snare drums). The sharpness or flatness of the bevel edge (where the drum head makes contact with the shell) greatly affects the tone that any drum will get. To give a example that most of us can relate to; Ringo’s sound was vintage Ludwig drums, with a rather blunt (opposed to sharp) bevel edge cut resulting in a less resonant, rounder sound. In contrast, Jimi Hendrix’s Mitch Mitchell used Gretsch drums with thinner shells and a more precise bevel edge cut resulting in a more resonant and ringing tonality.

At this point a word about the types of heads may be useful: I’m really fond of Evans’ double-ply models for all my toms. I have always favored a coated Remo Ambassador for my snare; it just seems to always work for me. Bass drum heads with built-in muffling are all the rage at the moment, and I’ve found them to really work well.

Any discussion of a drum set purchase must at least include some mention about cymbals. There are now several options with respect to cymbals; my experience has only been with Zildjian or Paiste. A good set of hi-hats, one ride cymbal, and one crash cymbal is a good starting point. I’d recommend 14” hi-hats – again a standard size, with a 16” crash, and a 20” ride.

If you currently have any drummers that can vet the drum set you’ve found, or will assist in the acquisition enlist them, but if you can articulate what you are looking for you should have no problem finding the right set for your purposes. There are a host of variables to consider, and it can be overwhelming to try to keep up with all the new products; hopefully this column hasn’t added to the confusion.

Contact Keith - [email protected]

Daily News Picks - August 31

Photo Gallery: Mackie Announces "Bad Sound" Winners (Mackie)

Moore Joins The Fight on Tab Takedowns (contactmusic)

Walsh's Guitar Magic Back With James Gang (DFW.com)

Line 6 Guitar Port Now Shipping (HC)

Tommy Emmanuel Returns For Major Fall Tour To Support New Releases

Press Release
Guitar virtuoso and Grammy Award nominee Tommy Emmanuel gives fans a double dose of his distinguished guitar styling this summer with his new DVD and CD. First his DVD release, Live at Her Majesty's Theatre, hit the market on July 11, followed by his sixth U.S. album, The Mystery, released on August 22. Both are on the Favored Nations Acoustic label, which is co-owned by renowned guitarist Steve Vai. Fans will also be treated to his guitar work as he performs live as part of an extensive '06/ '07 tour to support the DVD and CD.

A finger style guitarist inspired by the legendary Chet Atkins (who became one of Emmanuel’s biggest fans, called him “one of the greatest players on the planet”, and gave him the title c.g.p.—certified guitar player), he can simultaneously play multiple parts, much like a pianist does with his left and right hands. But his astounding technique isn’t just for show; Emmanuel uses it to organically blend folk, country, jazz, and other influences in his highly personal, emotive compositions.

He’s no stranger to awards and high accolades. Emmanuel recorded with Chet Atkins on 1997’s Grammy-nominated album The Day The Finger Pickers Took Over The World, and has had the honor of performing alongside such other living legends as Eric Clapton, Joe Walsh, Stevie Wonder, and Les Paul. Tommy has also garnered 2 ARIA Awards (Australia’s version of the Grammy Awards) for “Best Adult Contemporary Album,” earned four Platinum and Gold albums in his homeland, been called one of the “Top 3 Guitarists of All Time” according to a reader’s poll in Acoustic Guitar magazine and in 2005, received the “Album of the Year” and “Thumb Picker of the Year” awards as well as an induction into the Thumb Pickers Hall Of Fame in Kentucky.

Tommy's upcoming tour dates >

Editor's Note: Check back later this week as Guitar Jam will feature a full review of "The Mystery"

Guitar Wizard "Funtwo" Uncovered

The young guitar wizard who first appeared on a YouTube video eight months ago ripping up Pachelbel’s Canon has been uncovered at last. His masterful rendition of the wedding band favorite lasted 5 minutes and 20 seconds, demonstrating extremely fluid sweep picking techniques and some very tasty riffs.

Funtwo ranks as one of YouTubes most watched videos, coming in with over 7.35 million served – McDonalds should serve so many heart stoppers. Not only did it rank on the site’s top-10 list watch list, but also was one of the most discussed videos, generating a flood of praise, criticism, anger and awe.

The 22-year-old Korean guitarist is named Jeong-Hyun Lim and is from Soul Korea. He picked up the guitar only six years ago and is self-taught. Lim was inspired to play the piece by another famous Pachelbel picker JerryC. Lim studied JerryC’s rock version of the song on his website, playing along to the backing track and studying the tab, then went for it.

On the video, Lim blocks out his face so his listeners will focus on his playing rather than his looks. It’s an act of anti-showmanship that is lost on most players who have the bone a fide chops of Jeong-Hyun Lim.

Watch the video >

Daily News Picks - August 30

Guitar Giant Lee Ritenour Going Strong (OCRegister)

Kustom Introduces Limited Edition Amps (HC)

Ratdog Remembers Jerry Garcia (Jambase)

1985 Interview With Stevie Ray Vaughn (Modern Guitars)