gtown 3Speak Podcast: Recent Episodes
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Listen and watch the latest videos from gtown. Hosted by 3Speak.tv. The free speech video platform on the HIVE blockchain.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/xbbnqexb
It arrived the other day in a beautiful cardboard box that not even covid could delay. My new (to me) Fender USA telecaster, olympic white, maple neck, brass saddles. So while it is technically straturday I'm going with my new baby. Can we call it #sateleurday ?
It's so nice to play. The neck is a C shape so the same as my strat which is what I was after. I'd tried some of the older "baseball bat" necks and I just didn't like the feel.
I've recently become a Patron of YouTuber Jack Ruch. He has some really good lessons mainly on playng through changes which is something I've been working on for way too long. It was the lesson for this solo he created a lesson for that made me sign up with him. It's hard for me to pass up on a good jazz blues solo and this is certainly one of those.
It took me a while to get it up to speed and hopefully I'm not too sick of it that I can try and pull it apart and maybe add some of the ideas to an improvisation one day maybe maybe...
Hope you're all good! Enjoy the solo and I'll try and enjoy the last 2 days of my Christmas break from work.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/zkvdhjnz
It's the end of another year already! Who'd have thought eh?
While things are still pretty messed up I've been playing guitar more that I did when I was in my 20s, or at least more constructively. A few years ago my wife gave me a voucher for some meditation classes. I really wanted to enjoy them, but in the silence all I could think about was all the things I could have been doing. Maybe some other time I'll try again.
In the meantime I find playing the guitar a distraction or form of meditation where my mind is completely occupied (yeah, yeah. Doesn't take much I heard you thinking). Particularly with ear training by working out songs. In my 20s I just bluffed my way through most of the solos when playing in bands. It's great to revisit those solos that I can hear in my head but not play, slow them down and work them out.
This track is one of those that I would have played some G major/E minor pentatonic blah over thinking it was awesome... but it wasn't... Hopefully this is a bit closer to the original.
Oh yeah. HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/akvoscqs
You don't need me to tell you this, but it's been a long year. A sometimes productive year but loooong. I've been pretty consistent with the guitar practice and uploading of my progress so maybe not making the nice or naughty lists but the consistent one.
We had Christmas lunch with the in laws at ours and then after a 10-minute lull, dinner with my family again at ours. It's like pulling off a band aid. Just rip the thing off. Yesterday (Boxing day) I was a broken man and not overly festive.
I did open a gift from the family which was not guitar related. I scored some battery tools. A hedge trimmer and drill. Got me thinking about doing some jobs around the house. Also got me thinking about a song to play. John Mayer! He's a tool as well!!
Don't get me wrong, brilliant guitarist! I got a hold of his live DVD where there are 3 different acts. The first is him and his acoustic, second is his blues band and third is the full band. The 2nd act (John Mayer Trio) has some of the best guitaring I have ever heard. The combo of John, Steve Jordan and Pino Palladino? Wow.
In between the 3 acts John does some talking, which he really shouldn't do. He seems to be a true knob, not a bad person, just incredibly egocentric and a bit of a tool.
Anyway, enough bad-mouthing. This is the song Gravity from his third album called Continuum. One of the greats, his early stuff is his best in my opinion.
Hope you all enjoy it and had a very merry Christmas!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/hgvuufcr
So Christmas is almost upon us and while some people are winding down for the holidays many more seem to be desperate to get things done before the western world resets, the calendar ticks over and everything is forgotten.
Working from home has been good in some way with not having to spend up to 2 hours a day driving. It does however blur the lines between work and home. I'm really trying to keep up the videos to keep me practicing rather than moving from the desk to the kitchen then to the couch.
I'm not sure where I found this track, most likely some random YouTube search results, but I really like it. I tried to work it out a couple of years ago and got as far as the first half where there are mostly single notes. After that it gets a bit chord melody which I'm not too flash at deciphering. For some reason YouTube again showed me a version of this track with a tutorial on the chord melody part I couldn't work out. Sweet!
There is no hope of finding a backing track for this one so went looking and I found another program that attempts to separate tracks at https://www.lalal.ai/. It's similar to other ones where it does a pretty good job with vocals but with guitar it tends to remove keyboard and bass bits. So it's a bit washy but does the job.
Anyway. Hope you enjoy the song and merry festive holiday whatever to all!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/uvgqbdhq
So I asked Mr @andrewmusic for a suggestion of a song or solo to play and he kindly suggested "Still got the Blues" by Gary Moore.
I hadn't heard this track for years but thought I'd give it a listen and a try. It didn't sound too difficult until I started to work it out. Man those bends and that vibrato. Slowing it down you can really feel every note. Needless to say that I decided to do the radio verion solo which goes for a huge total of about 30 seconds. It has the main bendy bit then a fast pentatonic run at the end which starts with a couple of bends on the 20th fret that tore the crap out of my fingers.
I learnt to things from this. Not to underestimate Gary Moore's playing and don't ask Andrew for suggestions.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/cnazvvmm
Most weeks I try and learn a new song or solo to play as a way of practicing, but last weekend I had some virus (not that one) and slept for almost 2 days straight. I bounced back pretty quickly but still felt a bit funky.
So funky infact I did an Earth, Wind and Fire song... I'll see myself out...
Back in the 90s I really got into Jamaquai for a brief period and I remember a guy I worked with said that he was just ripping off Earth, Wind and Fire. He may be right they are both pretty sweet. I haven't heard a heap of their music and if it weren't for Austin Powers Goldmember I probably wouldn't have heard this track. Great movie by the way, best of the Austin Powers movies.
As I usually do I found a stem and isolated the tracks and there was a bit more to this than I thought. The 2 guitar parts are really different and fill out the song.
Hope you enjoy and have a funky week!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/euhgtwsw
So here we go again. Things seem to be going back to normal-ish. Shops are open, people are again buying crap they don't really need. Oh, that reminds me, I could use a new guitar.
In a couple of weeks I'm hitting the new 30, which was the new 40, but is really the old 50. My family hates buying me presents, they say I'm hard to buy for. I've been umming and ahhing about a new actual telecaster for a few years now. Not that I don't like my artist telecaster, but I do have a hankering for a legit one.
Every time I get caught checking it out on my phone my wife rolls her eyes as if I've just been caught watching porn, and tells me to just buy the freaking thing.
Maybe I will.... maybe I will....
Until then it's straturday and I was looking for a Steve Vai Whitesnake song to work on but couldn't find a backing track. A lot of their material has synths in them and I've never been in a band that has keyboards so I've never really learn't one.
The solo is short and not too difficult apart from the run at the end. I used the program Transcribe! which has a cool speed up feature where you can slow down and loop something you're learing and incrementally speed it up every loop. So starting at say 75% every loop goes up by 1% until you get to a speed where your playing falls apart, you get to 100%, or a family member throws something at your head and tells you to shut the hell up.
Anyway! Here t'is. Hope you like it.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/arprmvrr
Life is a highway and mine's been pretty busy lately, not sure if there's been an accident or if they're doing roadworks up ahead. I've been asked to take some annual leave so I've pulled over to the side of the road for a week and a bit.
I'm not doing anything exciting, unless you classify cleaning your roof and building a retaining wall exciting. (I do a little bit, however I am a tad odd).
Saturday had long gone and my tele was looking a bit sad so I decided to jump into TeleTuesday with a mildly country sounding song that I know as one of the songs from the Pixar movie Cars. It was one of my son's favourites back in the day and for what it was, it was pretty entertaining.
He's in the middle of year 12 exams at the moment and watching any movie is out of the question for a couple of weeks. He is quite self motivated and has been studying pretty hard. I keep out of his way when he's doing good things so I did some study of my own in the form of a juicy little guitar solo at the end of this clip.
Hope you are all well and enjoy!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/yaxgacou
It's been a busy week. I missed last Straturday as we had stocktake where I work. It's always a bit of a stressful time with 2 different factors. One is the process, there is always something that goes wrong and that gets better every year. The other is the result which could go either way. The business always says what is needed is an accurate result. That is the purpose of a stocktake. However no one is popular announcing a loss.
This year we had very few issues with the process and ended with a positive result. Winner winner chicken dinner. I was knackered by the time we finished up.
This is another song we used to play in band many moons ago that again I never learnt the solo to. Just kind of fumbled through with something that kind of fit.
I learnt it best I could note for note. There are a couple of funny timing bits that were tricky to get down, but here it is!
Enjoy the solo and the rest of the weekend people!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/bfxkoamn
I've been playing around with this new software Ripx that pulls apart the tracks of a song allowing you to create your own backing tracks and while it works quite well... it kind of doesn't.
There always seems to be a lot of bleeding across tracks. Especially when there are two instruments playing similar notes. I find that particularly bad with rock tracks where the bass and guitar play similar riffs.
The other thing it seems to do with a vocal track is leave it kind of washy as if there is a phaser effect on it.
I thought I'd give this song a try. It's a late nighties tune from a UK band called Reef. They were mildly big over hear with this song but fizzled out after. The singer has a great rock voice. Kind of Credence Clear Water Revival - John Fogerty like.
The backing track turned out alright, but NQR... A lot of the keyboard parts bled into guitar track and o was removed in the backing track. I really like the song, so I ended up buying it from Karaoke Version for a couple of bucks.
No solos (certainly not a 'still got the blues' track that I'm supposed to be working on but am not...) just a few chords and some cool riffs.
Enjoy!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/cprrbhfh
I've loved this song ever since hearing it on YouTube a couple of years back in a live version that he did. Such a great SRV sound!
Since then I've been trying to find a backing track for it so I could attempt a cover, but was never able to find one. So as soon as I saw this software I had to give it a go!
The program is RipX and it was reviewed on one of my favourite YouTube channels David Wallimann here
Holy snapping duck cracks! How good does that look! No more downloading infected dodgy backing tracks from Russian sites (well that's not true...). But this is just incredible.
The track that David uses to demo how it works is one of his own because of copyright issues so it was clean with just a few instruments. It was so clean! You could hear each track.
There is a free 30 day trial that I almost jumped out of bed to install and gave it a try. It's good, I'm not gonna lie and for a schmo like me it works really well. It doesn't compare to stems you can download but geez it's good.
With this song the guitar is completly gone, and playing it solo all you can hear is the guitar. The issue is the tracks are a bit muffled or almost washy sounding. In the scheme of things this is such a first world problem and for $99 (if I end up buying it) you couldn't complain too much.
Any who! Enjoy the song! Check out the recorded version and RipX. Let me know if you do!
https://hitnmix.com/
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/blqwyobe
Killer weekend. Springtime has arrived down under and the weather is perfect! Sunny and 20 degrees. Dunno what that means in the US but here it means a beautiful day.
Also it's official that I'm getting old. Some people down the road threw out a couple of crappy looking outdoor chairs. Under the cover of darkness wearing black I picked them up and brought them home and I spent yesterday disassembling them, sanding the timber back, re-staining, and reassembling them. They look just like bought ones, and I'm happy with how they turned out. Very tiring, very satisfying.
Just enough energy to work out a pretty cool solo.
Growing up I was a pretty big queen fan. I had all their tapes. I say tapes because they came out as doubles for some reason on tape at the time.
Two for One! Bargain!!
Queen I and II were together, Day at the races and News of the world were another couple. Killer Queen is a great track and the solo is short and sweet. Lots of bendy pre-bends and harmonies.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend! I'm off to sit out in the garden in free recycled chair.
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/esysoymc
We're in lockdown again and this time it doesn't seem to be working that well. In the past they've been looking at the number of infections go down but with this new delta variant numbers still seem to climb. So while the weekends half way there our vaccination rate is not. Australia positioned itself well early on but I feel that this lead to vaccination complacency by both the community and government.
For a long time I’ve been a weekly trip to the shops away from being a hermit and to be honest I quite like it like that. My family does not agree and my son in particular who is doing year 12 wants to get back to school, not only for studying, but to be part of the celebrations of the end of his schooling.
Who knows, maybe someday soon vaccinations will allow things to get back to some kind of normal, whatever that is.
I’ve been practicing guitar quite a bit lately, but not any songs in particular and came across this backing track which again we used to play in a band with the guitar bits played very incorrectly which is a bit of a shame cause looking back, it’s not that hard. The solo is short and just a tricky chromatic at the end. And what’s not to like about late 80’s Bon Jovi eh?
Enjoy! Go enjoy the rest of the weekend, grow a mullet, and listen to Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet album!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/pjqmvhql
I'm a list kind of guy and on the weekends I go through the list of stuff I need to do as fast (and as well most of the time) as I can. Yesterday I vacuumed, mowed, built a small retaining wall took the dog for a 5 km walk, cooked a batch of soup for the week and a thai green chicken curry for dinner. As you can clearly see I live a very exciting life!
All this done left me with a relaxing Sunday, so I polished this one up and here it is.
I've seen Mateus Asato on YouTube quite a bit. His cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" by Crowded House on the guitar is stunning. When I saw his arrangement of Let it be I really wanted to learn it. It's been a couple of weeks getting it to where it is in the video, and so I'm ready to move on. Most of the songs I learn by the time I've finished working it all out and recording them I'm so sick of them I can't listen anymore, but this version of the song I love, and I'm not really a big Beatles fan.
Hope you all enjoy it and have a hunt for some of Mateus' other work to see how it's really done!
https://3speak.tv/watch?v=gtown/swzegalh
We've been watching a TV show at our house called Dr Death. It's a "true" story about an American spinal surgeon that was less than competent with just a few issues.
It has some big names in it: Joshua Jackson, Christian Slater and Alec Baldwin. Before I got in to IT many many years ago I worked in an operating suit at one of Victoria major trauma hospitals. Nothing important but I was in there. The TV show is really well done and keeps you watching, but I have to say it all seems a bit too much. There is a documentary about the real Dr. Christopher Duntsch which I'm looking forward to watching after.
So that's a pretty bad segway to the Jackson 5 song I want you back, but here we are....
Great song with more than I thought in there. There are 3 parts. One is an octave of Ab.... Aaalllll the way through. The second is a bass kind of guitar part that pretty much follows the base line. Part number 3 was seriously cool. In the recorded version it's hard to pick up apart from the first part of each 'round' with double stop thirds kind of thing. Listening to the isolated guitar separate guitar tracks is the best, you can hear all the little bits and pieces.
I know that Steve Lukather did a lot of Michael Jackson's guitar work, but this is really early on and just checking there were 3 parts and 3 guitarists (Louis Shelton, David T. Walker, Don Peake). Maybe it was done live, there was a lot of 'bleeding' between tracks. You could hear a lot of guitar in the drum tracks.
Hope you are all well and enjoy the track! Any feedback or suggestions welcome.