Choosing a Custom Jazz Archtop Guitar

Do you play the jazz guitar? It is such a wonderful instrument! In fact, many would say there is something awesome about the sound of a jazz guitar, because it adds fullness and life to a piece of otherwise drab music. But if you have never given any thought to purchasing a custom jazz archtop guitar, and now find yourself considering it, what do you look for? Is the most expensive jazz archtop guitar the best one to purchase? Is one body style better than the other is?

Well, like many things, the answer to these questions is not a straightforward response. It depends much on what style of music you want to play, how much you can afford to invest and what your preferences are. So, if you are deciding what will be the best custom jazz archtop guitar is for you, then here are a few tips to keep in mind.

· The solid body - Ideally, you will want one with a solid body as this is the type of guitar used not only jazz guitarist like John Abercrombie, J. McLaughlin and Mike Stern, but it is also a very popular guitar for country, blues and rock music. A solid body guitar produces a very consistent tone, has a high volume output and is nearly 100% immune to feedback---a common occurrence in other types of guitars.

Competition or Collaboration

An interesting subject came up recently whereby some who is assisting with our band was disappointed by one of the bands she manages/assists deciding to go it alone. Her model is very simple and very artist focused. She has built a community of artists and supporters of live music. The artists want to play - she has the venues for them to perform, the supporters want to hear great live music and aren't necessarily fans of a particular band but fans of original live music.

Unlike most promoters she doesn't ask the bands to bring hoards of paying customers (but they are of course welcome to). So the bands and artists have the opportunity to play at some great venues with a crowd of 150 - 300 people. That's a great opportunity to build a fan base right there.

But it appears this band in question prefer to go it alone and it brought up the subject of whether it is better to compete or collaborate.

My own view is collaboration every time. Having run businesses before you have your own niche where you specialise. For example, the company I have right now builds large scale solar parks. We do not install domestic systems, but collaborate with those that do. It is of no issue to us to pass on referrals to people we know can do the job. It is also reciprocated as those same installers don't have the capacity nor knowledge to build utility scale parks. So they pass those to us and we utilise them in those projects.

Is Music The Most Important Thing When Going To See A Band?

The study was carried out with visitors to a web site being asked to judge the winners of a music contest with three options:

1. Listening and watching the video of the performance
2. Watching the performance without music
3. Listening to the music only

In case number 2 a very high percentage (more than 60%) guessed the winners correctly. In the other two samples the results were on a par with guessing (35% or less).

What does this prove?

It proves that audiences don't go to a concert or gig to listen to music, they go to be entertained. A show is exactly that - a show. If audiences want to just listen to music they would just listen to a CD. Do you hear people saying "I heard Bon Jovi at Wembley last week"? Or do they say

"I saw Bon Jovi at Wembley last week"?

Most likely the latter

And that's because of a simple statistic. 15% of what an audience experiences is what they hear, 65% is what they SEE! And 20% is down to emotion - what they feel.

And yet most bands focus on that 15% and forget about the rest. I've been to see many bands in my time and some have been technically brilliant but left me cold, some have been under par musically but had the audiences begging for more.

I was fortunate enough to meet Tom Jackson last year at a festival in Los Angeles. I was even more fortunate that he came to our rehearsal and gave me some advice on performance on two songs.

No Problems - Just Solutions Not Yet Found!

She called me her little problem solver, but I said to her, "There are no problems, just solutions we have not yet found".

This situation is very typical when most people come across difficult situations in their lives. They immediately refer to it as a "problem." Life in general is difficult and we are often faced with challenges that we either have no experience in dealing with or have trouble coming to terms with. So, why do we immediately want to call everything difficult in life a problem?

An optimist would say that there are no problems, just solutions not yet found.

Most people that refer to difficult situations as problems have probably not thought about the solutions to their problems. They are in a panicked state (like my friend was) and their first reaction is to think negatively about it. I will give you an example. Imagine you are walking along a footpath and you come across a brick wall. What are your thoughts?

If you are like most people you will see this as the end of the journey. However, if, like me, you think in terms of what the solution may be then you will see that you can do one of many things.

Now I'm not saying any of these solutions are easy and it all depends on the tools and facilities you have available to you at the time. Each one (including turning back) requires additional effort - but then no one said life was easy, did they? However, by expending that little bit more effort you achieve your goal.

Creating An Original Instrumental On Guitar

When I first set out to create a guitar instrumental, I really wasn't quite sure about how to go about this. I've always been fascinated with Jeff Beck and I would always wonder how he came up with his music. Well, I think that its very hard to get inside someones head, so to speak, to figure out the way that they do in fact create an instrumental on the guitar.

I believe that this is something that happens naturally as I sit with my guitar, and begin to play what is within me. And the most awesome thing about an instrumental is that each person who listens to it comes to develop they're own interpretation as to what the piece is about and how it can relate to something in they're own life.

When I set out to record another song, with vocals, I had the basic 12 Bar blues structure in mind with a particular feel to it that I was very fond of. I started to write the lyrics and they were very simple ones. The funny thing about this is that the song lyrics were about having a relationship with my guitar.

As I started to ad in a bridge and then onto a section that was to become the chorus, I found that something wasn't quite right. I really liked the chord progression that led in to the chorus, but I couldn't fit any actual lyrics into that particular section. So, I had this song that was going to be cool, but I just couldn't come up with a suitable chorus.

I then began to play some lead lines over the basic chords that were the verses, and I loved what I was able to come up with. It fit really well and the song was coming together nicely. That's when at this point in the song that I decided to drop the lyrics and make it an instrumental. It just seemed to flow in that direction. So its kinda funny how this whole instrumental thing came together.

Things You Need To Look For When You Download Rap Beats

If you want to go far in the hip hop industry, you will need high quality rap instrumentals. I'm not trying to downplay the importance of lyrics, but without an instrumental, nobody will want to listen to your music. You could of course rap a capella only, but there are few people who listen to a capella only.

I mean, think what it would have been like if Tupac rapped only a capella. You probably wouldn't have even heard of him. Now think of what it would have been if he didn't get production from Shock G, Dr. Dre and Johnny J. Tupac wouldn't have been as widely known as he is now. I think you are now beginning to understand the importance of the instrumental in rap music. The instrumental usually sets the mood for the entire song. Without it, your lyrics probably won't have the same impact. And if you don't have an impact on your listeners you won't be remembered.

While Tupac is a very talented rapper, and some even regard him as the best ever, his success is also due to the high quality production that backed him up. Now, if you take some of the beats that Tupac rapped on, it would be really hard to make a bad song with them, even if you put a bad rapper on them. In Tupac's particular case, his lyrics and the beats usually were in perfect harmony.

You will need an instrumental that matches the subject of your lyrics, no matter what are you rapping about. As a matter of fact, this is the most important thing you should look for when you look for beats to rap to, whether your lyrics fit the beat, or the beat fits the lyrics. I mean, think of what would have been if Tupac rapped "Only God Can Judge Me" to an instrumental like Lil Wayne's "Lollipop". The instrumental just doesn't fit the subject of Tupac's lyrics.

Suffering From Success

From the onset Khaled raises the bar for compilation albums by including the biggest star in the free world. Including Obama on an album already flush with stars tells the whole tale from track one "I'm suffering from success." With the presidential announcement out of the way the CD leads itself to constant claims of bravado and odes to spending on materialistic ventures. Though these claims have always been present in hip hop, they take a different turn here because Khaled, being the coach that he is, assembled an all star team worthy of those nineties NBA all star games, and their whole premise is ode to the Joe Budden's song: Never Broke Again.

Lyrically, for a compilation album, this seems to have some strong hip-hop quotables for this year, at least until the Rap God drops his new album. Songs by J Cole, Vado, and Lil Wayne respectively flip metaphors and dish simile's as if to say we know you guys miss the word play so lets serve up some idioms for your enjoyment. Elsewhere on the album the lyrics are not the brightest but do lead to some hilarious quotes that will have you reaching for the rewind button such as the 2 Chains boast: "We the best Khaled tried to told 'em, you the second best Kelly Roland." Now the best lyrical exercise comes from Vado on "Black Ghost", he rides the beat, back flips and summersaults through sentences to give you the thought that New York has not lost its touch on hip hop, while T.I gives a tutorial on following the script by using the names of various Tupac and Biggie songs to create a verse that is both comprehensive and tributary to the fallen greats. Not what we expected, but in today's market of throw away rhymes this is a welcome turn giving us all facets of the lyrical spectrum.

The mixture of thumping drums, hot lyrics, eerie instrumentation, and super guests makes this a good buy but will also lead to ear numbness. One would assume that there could be more, or less in some cases to make this album more cohesive and allow a person to enjoy from beginning to end time and time again. This is not the case, as soon you will tire of hearing Future yelling on tracks especially when you could have replaced him with a young decent upstart such as Kirko Bangs or an established vet such as Z-Ro.