A Guide to Playing Guitar in Bands and Band Equipment

Hello everybody I just arrived here a newbie, I only heard about the site today from an email this morning and I came right over and signed up. Really great to be here and big ups to you all here at hubpages.com!

I always wanted to share my music/band experiences from an insider perspective and here we are with my first capsule post with more to come later!

I particularly enjoy the new technical advances in the vast array of toys i.e. Guitars, Amps Stomp boxes, Foot pedals, Online music software Programmes Digital Recording programmes, PA equipment and Mixing Consoles we musos love (and get broke for) with a passion. Notwithstanding, Playing Music live itself and gigs!. (yeah)

Like a lot of areas, Technology has greatly altered the musical landscape dramatically. Dealing with these changes can be daunting, complex and expensive. It can also be seriously competitive. Being a Hendrix fan (age withheld ha!) I had big problems playing catchup to the Music Technology of today. So here is my story! and hopefully some helpful insights and- some serious tips about all the above, together with the music industry in general.

Playing the Blues: Traditonally, talking electric Blues a la Jimi Hendrix. BB King, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters etc... the stock equipment needed to play is: a Fender Stratocaster or Fender Telecaster guitar, and/or Gibson 355 Guitar, Gibson flying V, Gibson SG to name but a few.

The Amplifiers used are Fender Champ Amps, (combo) Fender Bassman Amps, Fender Black face Lux (twin reverb) Marshall 100 watt Stacks, (Hendrix) and Marshall Combo (Clapton). This set up was simple. Plug in and play. To get the nice blues tones and sustain these guys get, all you need do is crank up the volume and all the tone controls to full. The amp naturally overdrives, the compression kicks in and voila! wail to your hearts content. we are talking all valve amps and warm sweet melodic sounds here baby.

Playing like these guys is a totally different matter altogether. Singing? You also need to sing and play guitar simultaneously, which is no mean feat. The good news for aspiring musos, is that you don't need a great melodic singing voice for the Blues. Many exponents talk, or shout the Blues. (forerunner of rap... its all been done before)

If you weren't aware. Sadly, one of modern day Blues greats Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey was lost to cancer recently... heartfelt condolences... he will be sadly missed in the music industry. Greatly by me... personally, I loved his creative genius, his soul and I mess with his tunes and tones all the time. I use DR strings which are endorsed by Jeff Healey. He was extra special. Blinded from birth, he played his guitar on his lap... amazing check him out sometime if you haven't. Catch a video and see his incredible style!

His music rocks and lives on!

If you want more info on me and would like to listen to some of my blues licks and guitar playing:

http://www.soundclick.com/members/default.cfm?member=Stratplayer1

I notice this link does not work from in this forum so the only way to do it is click drag, highlight, copy the URL address and... click in your main browser at the top of your screen then right click and paste it will then load my page.

Thank you!

Hang on I just arrived back the link works fine! just wait 6 seconds when you get there for the song to play automatically. Cheers Stratplayer1