All Too Familiar

The Guitar pick of the week, for some obvious reasons is ....

The Schecter C-1 Exotic

This Badass was chosen because it is chief among my collection. It comes in either an antique black stain (shown) or a honey satin finish. Set neck, solid flame top, Grover Tuners and Schecter Super Rock II humbuckers. The tone nob can be pulled up in order for "cut off" half of the pickups, emulating a single coil sound. More and more artists are showing off with their schecters, including the guitarists from Papa Roach, Seether, Smile Empty Soul, and Avenged Sevenfold. This monster has extra thick lows, and squealing pinch harmonics. When the single coil effect is activated, you might think someone was playing on a fender tele or strat, but when it is just stright humbucking this guitar will rock your world. When I figure out how to get my recordings from my computer to this blog this will be my main choice of electric guitar.

Independence Day

Well well, we were asked to find and chat a bit about a few independent record labels. I personally do not know a whole lot about the indepentdent record label world, so this is a perfect mission for me.

Silver Dragon Records
The first thing I have to say about this site is busy busy busy. There is a lot of small text that gets somewhat exhausting to search through. Silver Dragon Records is a rock record label, promoting alternative rock, agressive rock, and metal bands. You are able to purchase cd's of SDR's signed bands, download some free samples of songs, and find out a decent amount of information on the main bands. Like I said the print is small so you have to suffer through the reading but it is there. To be honest, this site looks all too familiar to that of a blog. Most of the Links on the side are the same as the links throughout the text, and there are a lot of them.

Victory Records

Victory Records, home to a few bands that are quite popular at the moment, such as Hawthorne Heights and Atreyu. Downside, a group i was formerly part of, was in the process of setting up shows with Four Letter Lie , who is signed with Victory, so I just had to blog them. Victory's website is far superior to that of SDR's. It is very easy to use, very clear on what to do in order to get what you want. You can do anything from watch video's, to buying cd's. The bands are readily available to find, all of which are accompanied by pictures, and decent biographies. They also have links to the band's own sites, which is great. Go Four Letter Lie!


Epitaph Records
So I asked my roommate, who is basically my guru of indie music, for what he thought was a good independent label to write about. The first thing that I see when I go to the website and look at the artists was. . . Atmosphere and Dropkick Murphy's. Now most of us here in MN know who Atmosphere is, and the Murph's, well enough said. Everything a label's website should be, just like Victory's. You can find just about everything you want, tour dates, cd info, artist info, watch videos, purchase cd's and merchandise. I am glad to have a roommate who previously worked for a cd warehouse.

Annotate This

The Luthiers Blog This blog was put together by a man named Bernie Lehmann, a luthier (guitar designer/craftsman), and an experienced one at that. He posts recent projects and techniques for the interest of other luthiers. This blog is just over one year old, and hasn't received too much attention yet. It is fairly basic and very easy to follow, it seems that Mr. Lehmann might be too consumed with his projects to update his blog further as he only puts up about one post every other month, but who can blame him? Check out his site www.lehmannstrings.com for a peak at his instruments.

Garage Spin This Blogger has done a great job setting up their blog. It is made for garage bands (unsigned bands), and deals with anything from recording equipment, recording software, random videos, and even album cover art. I found some excellent links on this site, all very interesting. This seemed like it was aimed more at the recording or studio engineers than anything, so it really grabbed my attention.

Music Thing As I search further and further into the blog world I find more and more that hits home. This blog is definitely my favorite yet for many reasons. It touches broadly on the musicians world. All types of recording devices are analyzed, different guitar rigs are shown, and innovation is huge. See it for yourself, someone interfaced a Kaoss pad into the body of a Les Paul, that takes the words right out of my mouth.

Earvolution Earvolution is mainly about signed musicians/groups and their albums. The gossip is either when the album is to come out, what to expect, or when to possibly catch said artist at a live show. This is not as exciting to me because it is more fact and news than opinion. I would rather here about things you wouldn't be able to find at the artists website or on MTV.

Online Music Blog This blog is somewhat similar to Earvolution, just less said. Not very well developed and just another music "news" site for the most part. They also seem to be promoting various music companies for an unknown reason which is somewhat odd to me. No video links nor photos to keep short attention span folk like myself interested enough to read the few sentences under each post.

Stereo Gum Live music is a big part of this blog. The first post I see was that of Joyn Mayer or J-May as Stereo Gum refers to him as. The creators actually post their own personal photos from being at live shows. I applaud the effort and the opinions for the content, not an easy task to accomplish. They did a great job by creating links to finish reading articles eslewhere so that one long article doesn't take up the whole post area.

Guitar Guitar Guitar This blog suprised me when I was under the impression that guitars would be the main focus. It turns out that it is more about celebrities and well known musicians and their guitars than the guitars themselves. I found more detail on the performers than the instruments. So the title threw me off and I was ultimately dissapointed.

Guitar Blog If you haven't figured it out yet I am a big fan of the guitar world. This blog has a video embedded of Pat Metheny playing a 42 stringed guitar! It turns out that it sounds closer to that of a harp, but it is still amazing. The other content was all guitar talk which made me a very happy camper.

Calder Guitar and Violin Case Design A very interesting craft it is, and very important to anyone with a high priced instrument. The designer tends to produce things that look closer to that of a rifle case than that of a musical instrument. This blog takes you inside a craft world that is rarely seen.

Guitar Dreamz A good place to go to become more interested in the guitar playing world. It contains such things as lessons, tips, and tricks. It is aimed more at a beginner but it contains some vital information that one needs to help them do anything from buying a guitar, to tuning.

Drake

Cheers to Mr. Smith. This is a Paul Reed Smith (PRS) double cut Dragon model guitar. This is a very limited edition which PRS previously put out a different model each year.



Then the question arises...
Would you even play on such a thing of beauty?