My Birthday and New Guitar!!!

So today it was my 20th birthday and after a fantastic night out on Friday, including finally getting with the girl I'd had my eye on for ages ;) I woke up to find some birthday cards with cheques in them, my parents knew I'd wanted an acoustic guitar and have always supported my playing and were nice and generous. So that morning I headed down to my local guitar shop conveniently thirty seconds down the road and got straight down to business.

I had never really played acoustic guitar and didn't have any models in mind so just tried out as many as possible. Most of the acoustics in the shop were Cort's and I'd heard good things about them so I picked up a L100F. The guitar looked fantastic and was very comfortable with it's small body however it sounded a little tinny with a distinct lack of bass. With the benchmark set I tried a cheaper dreadnought style guitar which although had a lot more bass was a lot harder to play, I was a little confused though. In my opinion a better sounding guitar was considerable cheaper than the other, this was apparently down to the simpler shape and less expensive electronics.

With none of the guitars really blowing me away and after talking to the guys in the shop was about to walk away, as they were putting back the last guitar I spotted a really pretty dreadnought guitar but with a cutaway and a price tag similar to the smaller guitar. I asked to try that one and the second my hand touched the strings I knew that this guitar was the one. It's a Cort MR700F

It felt so easy to play and sounded magnificent, I must of been playing it for half an hour and loved every minute of it. It was a Cort MR700F electro-acoustic with a solid spruce top which will only sound better with age. I'd finally found the guitar I'd been looking for and picked it up with a decent case for £350 with a free setup booked for a couple of weeks time. I got it home and started playing it for an hour or so, I then had the idea of using it with my Boss RC-2 Loop Station and plugged it right in.

The electronics on the guitar were fantastic and made it sound even better than before, it was equipped with a Fishman Classic 4t which includes a built in tuner. After playing with this I got a really cool and chilled out version of Sweet Child of Mine going with a loop doing the rhythm and percussion while I improvised the vocal melody on top, I just couldn't believe how great the sound was and how easy it was to get these great tones. Once I've figured out the whole song I'll upload a video :)

So that's my new guitar and if anyone of you is thinking of buying a guitar (weather you're a beginner or expert) then I urge you to try as many as possible until you find one you truly love to play. Once you find that guitar then I can guarantee that you will have a blast with it and your playing will improve before you even know it. Remember that the right guitar is out there waiting for you, no two guitars are the same and it's up to find the right one. (sort of like women I guess, or men lol)

Speaking of the right guitar I finally got to see a real JEM7Vwh today, it looked fantastic. If I had an extra £2000 this would certainly be one of the guitars I'd consider, if you've never heard about this check it and Steve Vai out.

Finally I want so say a huge thank you to an incredible friend of mine who was literally in a shop about to buy me an acoustic guitar, if I hadn't given him a text about my new guitar then he'd of spent far too much money on me. As they say it's the thought that counts and it doesn't stop there he is very in to classical guitar and ended up getting me a music book with the sheet music for Preludio Español (Leyenda) by Albeniz which I'll post below. Inside the book he wrote "Happy Birthday and keep your fingers running on the guitar!" I can't believe how thoughtful he was and can't even begin to thank him enough for it.    

Pokemon Theme Guitar Cover

So I thought I'd talk a little about my cover of the Pokemon theme on youtube. I have always loved this song and the series in general (even if I havent played a game since ruby). I've had a lot of messages on youtube asking for the tab or a tutorial on how to play it so I thought I'd put one up on here.

If you haven't watched the video please do, I originally did this to test my line 6 toneport GX (which I'll review later)  however it turned out to be a lot of fun and I made it into a video.

So I've made a tab which I will put below since ultimate guitar rejected it (assholes) but before that I'm just gonna talk about the recording. I tried a trick normally done on vocals which is to record the lead guitar twice twice which lead to a bigger, fatter sound which was definitely worth doing after the Pokemon theme needed the most epic sound possible.

Throughout the song I use a lot of pinch harmonics and while keeping the notes true to the original I tried to have it in different octaves as much as possible to keep the sound fresh and to allow each section to progress and sound different. The solos I kept true to the original just playing them over the backing track. (which I 'borrowed' from this video) All in all I used five tracks to record this, one for the backing, one for the rhythm guitar, two for the doubled lead and one to play a part an octave up on the 'you teach me' part.

This was ALOT of fun to figure out and play and I'm glad I did. Just before I give you the tab I wanna show you a render of my favorite Pokemon Raichu I made just for practice on Photoshop. Raichu is the s**t cause he's like Pikachu but better cause he's got paws instead of fingers. Enjoy and let me know what you think :)

      

First Post!!

Hi everyone, I'd like to first thank you for checking out my blog and hope your looking forward to seeing what it has to offer!

This is my first blog so I'm still finding my way around and learning new things all the time so stay with me :P Once I get going I'll be posting about literally anything guitar related that comes into my head weather it be reviews of gear or concerts, info about my favorite gear and sounds and even some stuff on how to play some of my songs from my youtube channel and my thoughts on them.

I've always loved the idea of blogging and it gives me the power to communicate and spread any ideas or thoughts with people around the world. My favorite part of this is that you guys can comment and make this page a two way discussion which could lead anywhere and should hopefully fill this blog with colour. So please if you have any questions, praise, criticism or advice let me know and I'm sure I'll get back to you shortly.   

So a big thank you for stopping by, I really hope you stay tuned and I greatly appreciate it if you chose to follow me :)