After my two guitar related experiences this year, both being able to meet Steve Vai in person and my visit to the grave of Randy Rhoads I guess you can say I’ve been more inspired than previously to continue learning the guitar. Both were life goals that actually were able to have a leveling effect on me mentally as to what I wanted to accomplish by playing the guitar and making me realize that it was more for personal satisfaction than to actually do something with it. This shift has helped a lot to relieve the sense of personal failure I used to have every time I picked up the guitar.

However, once I got leveled mentally, the physical world kicked in. Over the last few months I have had more than the average trouble with arthritis / tendonitis flare ups (a problem I’ve had since my mid-twenties), which have made it hard to even think about practicing. So I haven’t been able to do it as much as I had originally wanted to.

This aside though, I’m getting more pleasure out of it now than I used to and decided it was time to start taking snapshots of my progress as I learn new things. I can’t trust myself to keep backup tracks on the GNX4, as I keep doing new takes over the old ones, so I decided periodically to grab the files off of the GNX4 and create mp3’s out of them and put them somewhere.

Now the question is where to put them. I decided it might be a good thing just to throw them up here as a place outside the house where I know they will be backed up. Now, once I do that, I might as well make them visible, just for the hell of it.

So here is my latest project. Since the visit to the Rhoads grave site in May, I have basically been living on steady diet of the Ozzy Tribute album, which has also renewed my awe at the song Mr. Crowley, so I decided to start learning it.

I’m starting with the outtro solo, since that probably one of my all time favorite solos. I currently have the first 41 seconds down in a state suitable as a snapshot of where I am. I hope to do this periodically so that I can come back and listen to them as I progress.

Before you listen to it, let me just say that I know the first part isn’t right. I’ve talked before about how my speed just isn’t where it needs to be, so I took the liberty of modifying the first part into something I can actually play. Rather than the fast triplets on the album, I’m adding an extra note to the end of each phrase, so that I can actually play it.

So, here it is. My first public snapshot of where I’m at. Overall I don’t think it sounds too bad, and am actually quite proud of this one. It’s probably the first time in a long time that I can actually listen to something I’ve done and go “Hey, that’s me!”.

For the record, this was recorded using my Ibanez JEM on the GNX4, again sitting on my bedroom floor. I haven’t mastered the whole punching in / out thing, so this was all done in one take.

These are my axes. There are many like them, but these three are mine.

I’ve had a love / hate relationship with the guitar my whole life. I love playing it, but I hate how I sound and I’ve always had a hard time being disciplined enough to make progress in a way that actually makes me feel satisfied. Bottom line, I’ve always hated how I played.

One guitarist I always admired when I was younger was my younger brother Ed. He had an incredible love for the guitar from the time my Dad picked up our first “Hornsby’s special” $20.00 acoustic guitar for us when we were 10 and 12. He never put it down. I remember walking into our bedroom and seeing him sitting on the floor next to the bed working through Jimmy Pages solo from HeartBreaker on this little crappy accoustic guitar and actually sounding pretty good. I could never do that. I didn’t have the patience.

I still always loved the guitar though. When I was seventeen, I put an Ibanez on layaway and paid on it for months in order to get it. That’s it on the right hand side of the picture. Ed bought a red Ibanez later on. When Ed was around 15, he had a friend that had a 4 track studio complete with a PA and a drum machine and he and this friend locked themselves in this studio for weeks working on a song. This was really cool to watch, as I had no idea at the time what was involved and it seemed like Ed knew everything. He sat in that studio doubling guitar tracks, harmonizing leads and blowing me away with how much he intuitively knew about the process, at least from where I was standing.

That picture has always stuck in my head. It was so cool seeing my younger brother in a basement studio creating music. I was so proud of him, and to be honest, just admired him for how committed he was to the guitar and how well he was able to play. To this day, the solos for this song have stuck with me, though the tapes are long gone. I lost them.

In June, Jonna bought me an Ibanez JEM, a guitar I had wanted for a long time. Since she had made the investment, I figured I should at least attempt to start practicing again so that the JEM didn’t just sit there like the Ibanez (and later the Jackson Randy Rhoads Custom pictured on the left) had for so many years. I figured the best way to get back into the swing of things was to try to transcribe one of these solos that had stuck in my head forever as kind of a tribute to my favorite guitar player.

So here it is. My tribute to my favorite guitarist. This is the ‘outro’ solo to that song that I watched my brother write and record in that little home studio 20 some years ago. I have recreated it as best as I could given my memory and limited playing ability. I am playing all rhythm, lead, and bass guitars. I also doubled all lead guitars as I remember he did.

This was recorded sitting on the floor in my bedroom on my Digitech GNX4 8 track recorder.

It’s definitely not perfect, but it is what it is. A tribute. I hope you like it.   If not – he wrote it 🙂   Add to the formula.   He was about 15.

Addendum:   After that muted part at the end he did this weird arpeggio stuff that was supposed to be faded out.   It was amazing, but I have no idea how he did it, so its missing.