The Practice Room

Tap Your Guitar With Jared Meeker

A self-admitted "tapaholic", rock guitarist Jared Meeker shows you what can be done with one-finger tapping, a guitar technique popularized by Eddie Van Halen. Add sweep picking to it, and you have two techniques that create distinct sounds. Learn how to use these techniques to construct phrases that help you build your improvisational vocabulary.

Downloads aren't the problem

Ken Fisher has an interesting article in Ars Technica about a study published in the Journal of Political Economy. The study claims that illegal music downloads “have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.”

The study tracked the effects of 1.75 million songs downloads on 680 different albums sold during the last four months of 2002. It estimated that peer-to-peer downloads affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

"Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample," the study reports. "Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero."

[TJH]

The Blues Foundation’s 2007 Blues Music Awards

From The Blues Foundation:

2007 Blues Music Awards Nominees, Tickets and Voting:
Online Voting Opens for Blues Foundation Members. Tickets on Sale Now; will be mailed in April.

In a year that has already witnessed the passing of past Blues Music Awards recipients Ruth Brown, Jessie Mae Hemphill, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Sam Myers and Snooky Pryor, the nominee list for The Blues Foundation’s 2007 Blues Music Awards offers a mix of the genre’s pillars and prospects, and just about everything in between.

The 2007 Blues Music Awards ballot features timeless nominees like harpist Charlie Musselwhite, who garnered five nominations on the strength of his Delta Hardware release; drum legends and perennial fan favorites, Sam Carr, Sam Lay and Willie “Big Eyes” Smith; and "old school" names Big George Brock and Guitar Shorty, who have experienced a rejuvenation in recent years.

The ballot features triple nominees Lil’ Ed & the Blues Imperials, Janiva Magness and Michael Powers, as well as Nick Moss and his band the Flip Tops, with four nominations. Other artists with three nods represent a range of Blues stylings: from the Piedmont style of Cephas & Wiggins’ Shoulder to Shoulder to the Delta shadings of Guy Davis’ Skunkmello to the soul of Irma Thomas’ post-Katrina After the Rain.

But the most amazing story of 2007...

Good news?

For some reason, music producer Bob Ezrin (The Wall, Alice Cooper, David Bowie, KISS, etc.) was speaking to a standing-room-only crowd of music industry types in Halifax, Nova Scotia. (Sounds like “A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar in Uzbekistan…”, but no.) According to Andrea Nemetz, Entertainment Reporter for The Chronicle Herald of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Ezrin said that we shouldn’t worry about the coming demise of the music industry, because it has already happened. “In the next couple of weeks, maybe months, there will be a bloodbath at the major record companies. We’re not at the tipping point, we’re on the other side.”

Ezrin sees live music as the place to be. ""People are not going to the record store and are not paying for downloads," he said. “The days of hit records are over… You’ve got to play. What no one can steal is your direct relationship with the audience. You can’t duplicate that love affair… Stop thinking about how to have a hit record and think about new ways to grow the audience and get paid to do something we love.”

And, perhaps anticipating my disrespectful aside about Halifax, he said, “Finger-for-finger you probably have better players here per capita than they have in other places.”

Ezrin should know what he’s talking about, having been around the business for 35 years. In addition to his producing credits, he’s a co-founder of Music Rising and a board member of The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation and MusiCan.

[TJH]

Chris Kuffner

Just received this note from Chris Kuffner, a delightfully inventive bassist and one of WorkshopLive's top bass instructors:

Greetings all.  hope you're all having fun doing whatever you're doing.  I certinly am.  In fact, I'm having so much fun that I'm inviting you to come hang with me and join in said fun.  It lasts all weekend long.  aww yeah.

I know this message is beng sent a little late but nevertheless, there will still be lots of fun tonight (FEB 15th in case you weren't looking)....

8:00 PM
JENNY OWEN YOUNGS
Mo Pitkins
34 Avenue A
Manhattan

then 2 blocks away at 11:00
Ben Godwin CD Release Party
The Sidewalk Cafe
6th Street and Avenue A
Manhattan

TOMORROW (feb 16th) 8:00
Von Robinson
Arlene's Grocery
95 Stanton Street
NYC

SOLO BASS SATURDAY (feb16 plus 1 day)
Also a Set by the lovely Bess Rogers at 10:00 PM
Drama Cafe
341 5th Avenue
Park Slope BROOKLYN!!

Hot stuff

From Billboard Magazine:

Ex-Vice President Al Gore and a host of celebrities gathered today (Feb 15) in Los Angeles to reveal plans for Live Earth -- the Concert for a Climate in Crisis, a series of seven concerts set to take place across the globe July 7. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bon Jovi, John Mayer, Fall Out Boy and Faith Hill and Tim McGraw lead the first 25 confirmed performers, with 75 more to be announced.

The shows will be held in Brazil, Shanghai, Johannesburg, London, Sydney, Japan and an East Coast U.S. city to be announced. They will be broadcast across the world to approximately 2 billion viewers via TV, radio and the Internet.

Foo Fighters, Snoop Dogg, Lenny Kravitz, Duran Duran, Snow Patrol, John Legend, the Black Eyed Keas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Mana, Keane, Kelly Clarkson, Korn, AFI, Paolo Nutini, Bloc Party, Damien Rice, Corinne Bailey Rae and Melissa Etheridge have also signed on to perform.

The initiative is part of the Save Our Selves (SOS) campaign, designed to raise awareness of global climate control. Kevin Wall, CEO of Control Room, a provider of live digital entertainment, is producing Live Earth. Wall, who also won an Emmy as the worldwide the executive producer of Live 8, said "this is a launch event to move the planet forward ...the media campaign we're going to launch is unprecedented."

Wall added that Live Earth venues should be announced within the next month, and that ticket on-sales should begin in mid-March. Among the broadcast partners is MSN, who is also a major event sponsor. "You're going to see the biggest party on Earth," said Pharrell, who was joined onstage by actress Cameron Diaz.

For more information, visit LiveEarth.MSN.com.

[TJH]

Derek Trucks

I came across this article written by an music fan from India, living in New York, attending his first Derek Trucks concert. Trucks is pushing the definition of what's possible on electric slide guitar way past what anyone else has ever done. One source of inspiration for him has been the Hindustsani music of Ali Akbar Khan, and the article's author makes the point that he sounds like the real thing. If the article piques your interest, go out and find the Derek Trucks Band's Songlines CD. 

[TJH]

More Grammy carping

Almost unnoticed at the Grammys among the Macys Parade hot-air balloons that filled the stage were a few awards given to people from the world of bluegrass, most of who can actually play their instruments extremely well despite having bad hair:

Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder won Best Bluegrass Album, for their most recent work, Instrumentals.

Best Country Instrumental Performance went to Bryan Sutton and Doc Watson for “Whiskey Before Breakfast,” from Bryan’s latest CD, Not Too Far From The Tree. This puzzled me, since there are plenty of other cuts on this CD that are, to my ears, better than this one, like the duets with Russ Barenberg and Jerry Douglas.

Bela Fleck & The Flecktones’s CD The Hidden Land brought them Best Contemporary Jazz Album.

Vince Gill won for Best Male Country Vocal Performance for his song “The Reason Why,” another example of a cut that as far as I can tell is not the best on the album getting the nod. OK, he’s not strictly bluegrass, but he’s good enough at it that he can always fall back on it if the country thing doesn’t pan out.

[TJH]

Touralouraloura

No news yet on tour dates for Van Halen. I guess we’ve waited long enough; we can wait a little longer.

In the meantime, the Bonnaroo schedule is out:

“The sixth annual four-day camping and music festival will be held on June 14-17, 2007, on the same 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tennessee, 60 miles south of Nashville. With over 100 bands and 20 comedians performing on 13 stages during the 4 day weekend, the mind-blowing Bonnaroo '07 line up promises to rock the Volunteer State like never before. A wildly diverse list of confirmed acts follows, with more to be announced in the weeks ahead.

Music Rising

News from Gibson and Epiphone...

Epiphone and Music Rising have announced the sale of ten Epiphone Music Rising guitars signed by U2’s The Edge. All proceeds will benefit Music Rising (www.musicrising.org) which has recently launched the second phase of the campaign which grants musical instrument assistance to churches and schools of the Gulf Coast region.

The ten exclusive guitars will sell for $10,000 each and are available through Musician’s Friend (www.musiciansfriend.com/musicrising) until they are gone, with all proceeds benefiting the charity directly. There will be no others offered with the legendary artist’s autograph and each have been signed by him on the front portion of the guitar. A photo of him signing the guitar will accompany each guitar as documentation.

Music Rising, a campaign originally launched in November 2005 to replace musical instruments lost or destroyed in the Gulf Region was formed by U2’s The Edge, legendary producer Bob Ezrin and Gibson Guitar Chairman and CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. Administered by the Gibson Foundation and partnering with Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation and All Congregations Together, Music Rising has provided instruments and/or gear to over 2,400 professional musicians, 5,500 parishioners and nearly 2,000 students.

Many people from the ravaged region are still living in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers or are without a permanent residence. Those musicians who have depended on the local music industry for their livelihood have been supported by Music Rising through the replacement of lost instruments and equipment.

For more information or to make a donation to Music Rising go to www.musicrising.org or www.gibsonfoundation.org. Questions or inquiries can be emailed to [email protected].

[TJH]