Understanding Buddhist art, including the various mudras or postures in which images of the Buddha appear requires a little study. Buddhist art is rich in symbolism and reflects different stages of the Buddha’s life and how he communicated his teaching on how to liberate oneself from the tyranny of...
Jimi Hendrix took a standard Fender Stratocaster, flipped it, strung it in reverse and turned it into a sonic surfboard, a fierce assault weapon, an instrument of incomparable beauty - a shooting star chartered on a journey into unknown reaches of the musical cosmos. With blazing intensity and...
10 hot female guitar players, which may sound a little sexist, but I do find a woman who can command her ax pretty darn sexy. This is of course a very subjective list and there’s no expectation that others will agree. Also, the women on this list aren’t necessarily the most competent players in the...
Marcia Angell MD, in her book, The Truth about the Drug Companies, writes, “The combined profits for the top ten drug companies in the Fortune 500 ($35.9 billion) were more than the profits for all the other 490 businesses put together ($33.7 billion). Over the past two decades the pharmaceutical...
This article will help you learn the natural minor scale and will show you lead patterns to use as templates for solos. The natural minor is a fairly safe choice for soloing in a minor key and can produce more melodic and soulful solos than the pentatonic scale. There are many types of minor...
The Divine Life Society described Sri Anandamayi Ma as “the most perfect flower the Indian soil has ever produced.” Born in a small village in Bengal on April 30, 1896, her parents named her Nirmala Sundari Devi, which means ‘immaculate beauty’. She came to be recognized as a powerful expression of...
The diatonic scales are 7 note patterns that in a sense are extensions of the pentatonic patterns. They require a bit more work to learn than the pentatonic scales but are well worth the investment to avoid ‘pentamania’ where lead guitar starts sounding ‘samey’ and predictable.
At some point a guitar player usually becomes interested in learning scales after open chords and barre chords have been learned. Playing licks and improvising solos is no doubt one of the most exciting things that can be done on a guitar – for both the player and the audience. In this article I am...
In this article we will take a look at barre chords, also called moveable chords because the same form can be moved up and down the neck. At first barre chords can seem like real hard work, or plain impossible to fret but they are well worth learning if you really want to rock because they give you...
It’s important to recognize that even major players had to start with the beginner’s chords, or open chords. What led them to become famous guitar players (besides raw talent) was an intensely disciplined approach to practice, combined with a creative fire and passion to make music.
Aldous Huxley began writing ‘Island’ in 1959. It was published in 1962 and was to be his final book. It’s the story of Will Farnaby, a disenchanted journalist who finds himself shipwrecked on the island, Pala, where Eastern philosophical systems and western science work together to support a...
The Hmong are a fascinating hill tribe people of SE Asia who are famous for their silversmith skills that produce beautiful silver jewelry as well as wonderful embroidered tribal textiles.
Learn about the origins, roots, and histories of tattooing in the Egyptian, Japanese, Polynesian, Southeast Asian, and European traditions.
After living in Southeast Asia for a couple of years I began to take an interest in Asian antiques and the artistic traditions of Burma in particular. The Burmese have been fashioning objects of beauty for over 2,000 years and craftsmen have always been honoured by Burmese society and admired for...
A review of Gibson's best selling guitar of all time— the Gibson SG. In its first three years of production, over 6,000 SG’s a year were sold. The SG had established itself as a new thoroughbred in the Gibson stable. Advertisements by Gibson claimed it had, “the fastest neck in the world”.
The Fender Stratocaster, introduced in 1954, ranks as one of the most legendary guitars on the planet. With its sexy contoured body, ingenious vibrato unit and uniquely bright, quacky tone, it has come to be identified with a long list of guitar greats from Hendrix to John Frusciante. The recent...