Dear Readers,

I’ve had a lot of fun over the last 10 months posting here at Guitarbalooga, but as I approach a 1-year anniversary, I’ve decided to suspend posts for a couple of months, if not indefinitely. The reason is simple really: I’ve got other fish to fry and not enough time to fry them. So, to my regular readers, I’d like to say thanks for hanging out in my neck of the woods for a while. Keep on rocking!

–Spence

Boy, you sure don’t hear enough about this sort of thing. Paul Rubenstein is an NYC-based elementary school teacher who teaches music to his students in a clever way. They make guitars together. Previous classes have constructed more-or-less standard guitars. No doubt loads of fun for kids. This year, however, he did something just a smidge cooler. He and his students made guitars with adjustable frets. This way, you can include only frets to play the right notes for a particular scale. Voila! No clams. (Although wrong notes are plenty of fun too.) Here’s what Paul has to say about it:

The advantage of movable frets is that we can set the frets so that all the available notes are in the scale we want (no wrong notes) and we have access to all the notes… not only the ones in the standard 12 tone even-tempered scale of contemporary Western music. We took the opportunity to explore scales from non-Western cultures, and purely experimental scales, including ones the kids came up with themselves.

Yes, Paul, I’m sure all the children loved to explore the music of other cultures, but, more fun to little ears, I would imagine, is that ability to play microtonally, which has all kinds of horrible noise-making potential.

Check out a performance by his students at the Urban Arts Festival, put on by his elementary school:

Neat stuff, no? Well played, Mr. Rubenstein. Well played.

I stumbled across this interesting guitar today. It’s controlled by frickin’ lasers. Here’s a demo of the basic functionality:

Pretty cool. I’d love to hear a real solo on that sucker.

From the creator, jeff-o:

The Prism is, quite simply, the best laser guitar on the Internet. At least I think so. I hope that you take these instructions and not only make your own, but improve on my design!

I suppose I should clarify what the Prism is: It’s a bit like a guitar with some synthesizer mashed in. It has aspects of a theremin and a laser harp thrown in to boot. In short, it’s not like anything else, and you can use it to make some really neat sounds. Anything from cold Sine and harsh square waves to heavily distorted noise.

At its heart the Prism features a VCO (Voltage Controlled Oscillator), based around the very shiny XR2206 monolithic function generator. The octave range is selected by blocking one of four laser “strings,” and the pitch is controlled by the position of the musician’s hand on the fretboard. The musician has the option of selecting a sine, triangle or square wave. The sine and triangle waves can be skewed using a separate Skew control.

It also has two other controllable oscillators, one acting as an LFO (Low Frequency Oscillator) and the other acting as a Sync generator.

I designed the Prism to plug into any regular guitar amp, with no computer required. In fact, there is no programming involved at all in this project! It is just as portable as a regular guitar, and meant to be used at gigs or wherever else an “alternative” instrument is needed!

(via instructables.com)

I’m just a passing fan of Dave Matthews and the Dave Matthews Band, but I enjoyed Steve Heisler’s blog entry defending the man and his band:

But the source of my shame is that DMB is reviled among music aficionados, and their reasons are numerous: Frat parties and cornhole-fueled cookouts pump “Ants Marching” and “Satellite” almost nonstop; the band allows fans to record live shows and trade them around, which means 150 zillion identical versions of “Jimi Thing” are floating around to annoy road-trip passengers; and any newbie guitar player looking to get laid will likely break out the first few wussy-sounding notes of “Crash Into Me” in a public setting. And I haven’t even gotten to the fact that in 2004, DMB’s tour-bus driver dumped gallons of urine and feces onto the porous Kinzie Street bridge—just as an architecture tour boat was rumbling by underneath.

So, it’s understandable why some people have a visceral reaction when the South African musician is merely mentioned, but it’s still somewhat of a mystery why people unfamiliar with his music claim to hate everything he and his band have done. Before using DMB as a qualifier for how lame you think something is, here are a few defensible moments in Dave Matthews’ career.

Hehe, I’d forgotten about that awful “gallons of urine and feces” incident. Yuck.

Cary, North Carolina artist Peter Geiger makes interesting guitar sculptures from car license plates. Peter was inspired to create his unique brand of art one day during a jam session when he thought his old license plates hanging on a wall might make for interesting guitar art.

He’s now taking custom orders, so if you’ve got a some plates that mean something to you, you might want to think about having him build a couple of guitars. He’ll even let you choose your own guitar style.

“Sometimes people say, ‘I live in Texas and I’m moving to Louisiana. Can you make a guitar with these?’” says Geiger, and he transforms them into a piece of visual art that has special meaning to the customer. “Others” he continues, “bring me their license plates and say, ‘Here, I don’t need them, you use them. Make something special.’”

Peter’s work has found its way into two North Carolina art galleries.

(via modernguitars.com)

Looks like Ozzy is replacing guitarist Zakk Wylde. This from FMQB:

Ozzy Osbourne has been working on his tenth studio album for quite some time, but now it looks like he is looking for a new guitarist to fill the shoes of Zakk Wylde. Apparently the Ozzman just wants to get some new, unique sounds on his CD, since he feels like Wylde’s work was sounding too much like his other band, Black Label Society. Ozzy has been auditioning several candidates, and one possibility is guitarist John 5 (ex-Marilyn Manson, currently with Rob Zombie).

“I’m getting a new guitar player as we speak,” Ozzy told Classic Rock magazine. “And everyone has been saying to me for a long time, ‘Get Johnny 5!’ I tried him at one time and I didn’t really give him a chance. We’ll see, I don’t know. I haven’t fallen out with Zakk, but Zakk’s got his own band, and I felt like my stuff was beginning to sound like Black Label Society. I just felt like I wanted a change.”

This is like a rare solar eclipse or comet sighting. Ozzy has had many band members over the years, but he’s only had a few long-term guitar replacements. Zakk Wylde replaced Jake E. Lee in 1987, and Jake E. Lee replaced the late-great Randy Rhoads in 1982. That’s basically it. Other guitarists have played with Ozzy over the years (Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick, Brad Gillis, Joe Holmes, Jerry Cantrell, and Bernie Tormé), but none have contributed to Ozzy’s studio albums like the big 3.

Wired.com has an interesting post on the patents behind the modern electric guitar pickup:

1937: Guy Hart, general manager of the Gibson guitar company, is awarded the first patent for an electric guitar pickup. The instrument that defines popular music in the second half of the 20th century is born.

Gibson’s electric guitar wasn’t not the first to market, but its pickup design was superior to competing models — especially after guitar-makers begin dropping them into their new, innovative designs over a decade later.

Guitarists have a reputation for coaxing as much volume as possible out of their instruments — whether it’s advisable or not. But guitarists playing in dance bands, larger combos and jazz orchestras in the early 1930s certainly needed the volume boost. They were often playing in situations where they were straining to be heard over the drums, brass and audience chatter.

The newest, loudest design of the era was the resonator guitar. Usually made of metal, it had a series of aluminum resonators built into the body. The resonators amplified the acoustic instrument and gave players an edge they couldn’t get out of the common acoustic guitar.

But of course, the ax-slingers were always asking for more volume, so inventors of the day were constantly experimenting with crude electronic-amplification systems.

The first viable electric guitar was designed by guitarist George Beauchamp, who began manufacturing them along with Swiss-born engineer Adolph Rickenbacker. The guitars made by Beauchamp and Rickenbacker were of the “lap steel” variety, which the player holds flat in the lap and slides a metal bar up and down the strings to play different notes.

Update: July 12, 2009

According to the Toronto Star, United Airlines has agreed to donate $3000 to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. Dave Carroll had insisted that any compensation he receive from United be donated to charity. Dave Carroll did a nice thing to drag United kicking and screaming back to the planet of human decency most of us live on.

I’m not sure why businesses do this time and time again. United Airlines could have corked this PR nightmare in a matter of minutes for a paltry sum of money (paltry by their standards, of course). Instead, they happily dug their own grave. Even if Dave Carroll is the only customer they lose over this (not likely), this idiocy has cost them thousands of dollars in future revenue.

Previously on Guitarbalooga:

Early last year, Dave Carroll and his Sons of Maxwell bandmates were sitting on an airplane at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, waiting to deplane, when a passenger shouted, “My God, they’re throwing guitars out there!”

Dave saw a United worker carelessly toss a bandmate’s bass guitar and realized that his $3500 Taylor must have been thrown before it. Needless to say, it ended up with a broken neck. Here’s Dave in his own words:

On March 31, 2008 Sons of Maxwell began our week-long-tour of Nebraska by flying United Airlines from Halifax to Omaha, by way of Chicago. On that first leg of the flight were seated at the rear of the aircraft and upon landing and waiting to deplane in order to make our connection a woman sitting behind me, not aware that we were musicians cried out: “My god they’re throwing guitars out there”. Our bass player Mike looked out the window in time to see his bass being heaved without regard by the United baggage handlers. My $3500 710 Taylor had been thrown before his.

I immediately tried to communicate this to the flight attendant who cut me off saying: “Don’t talk to me. Talk to the lead agent outside”. I found the person she pointed to and that lady was an “acting” lead agent but refused to talk to me and disappeared into the crowd saying “I’m not the lead agent”. I spoke to a third employee at the gate and when I told her the baggage handlers were throwing expensive instruments outside she dismissed me saying “but hun, that’s why we make you sign the waiver”. I explained that I didn’t sign a waiver and that no waiver would excuse what was happening outside. She said to take it up with the ground crew in Omaha.

It’s my favorite excuse and a running joke where I work: “I don’t know, I just work here.” A close second is the ever popular: “I’m on break.”

Well, 9 months went by and Dave still hadn’t been compensated for his broken guitar. United wouldn’t budge…until Dave wrote a song about it, and it went viral. Not surprisingly, United has suddenly found God and decided that Dave does deserve some compensation.

Here’s his tune, but I gotta be honest, the 80′s-style video may burn your eyes:

(via sfgate.com and blogs.suntimes.com)

Did you know that the first Sony Walkman debuted in Japan on July 1, 1979? The Sony Walkman is one of the few inventions that truly changed the way we listen to our music and deserves a place alongside radio, the phonograph (record player), CD, and MP3 compression.

According to Wikipedia, the device was designed in 1978 by audio division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara for Sony co-chairman Akio Morita, who wanted to listen to operas during his frequent plane trips. Morita hated the name “Walkman” and wanted to change it but was unable to because promotion of the device had already begun.

Believe it or not, Sony continues to sell cassette-tape based Walkmans to this day.

It ain’t easy being a guitar manufacturer these days. First it was Gibson, then Martin, and now Paul Reed Smith:

Paul Reed Smith Guitars said Wednesday it would lay off 30 employees and implement a 4-day manufacturing week as it grappled with the recession.

The Stevensville company is disbanding its nightly manufacturing operations, spokeswoman Rebecca Eaddy said in an interview.

Eaddy said the recession has impacted musical instrument sales overall and Paul Reed Smith, known for its stylish craftsmanship, is not immune.

The cuts will bring Paul Reed Smith’s work force to 250.

I love the look of this Telecaster built by the Fender Custom Shop’s Yuriy Shishkov for Keith Urban. Country Music Television blogger, Alison Bonaguro, managed to get a little info out of Yuriy about how he designed and built it:

• Urban’s favorite Fender Telecaster guitar was flown to Shishkov so he could duplicate the neck and measure all electronic components.

• Urban didn’t want small square mirrors, but rather he insisted on the shattered pattern.

• It took about three months to build the guitar, which has about 160 pieces of mirror on it. (But to make that many perfect pieces, Shishkov had to cut about 600 to allow for mistakes. He told me, “It was all cut by hand, but to cut exact curved lines that you have drawn on the glass is like trying to follow the curvy line on the ice when you are ice skating. If you’re slightly off, you’re already wrong. Glass is an unforgiving material.”)

• And, he said, the true enemy in the process was that the weight of the glass is heavy. So he had to use the thinnest but strongest mirrors that money could buy: 1/16 of an inch glass, which is about as thin as a nickel.

• The elliptical sphere surface top has a slight arch to further disperse the reflections of the mirrors. And the light ash wood for the body was milled to reduce the thickness and weight. “When the guitar’s body was ready for the glass work, it weighed under 2 pounds,” Shishkov said. “It was the lightest body I had ever held in my hands.”

• Shishkov told Fender execs, “If anyone will ask for another one like this, tell them it’s $100,000.”

The mighty shredder Buckethead (so named for his habit of wearing an inverted KFC bucket as a hat onstage and perhaps off as well) has posted a beautiful tribute to Michael Jackson on his home page named The Landing Beacon. The tune might also be named The Homing Beacon–if you believe the picture and not the file.

Rolling Stone caught up with great Yes/Asia guitarist, Steve Howe, who is now touring with Yes and Asia:

How did you decide to do this double tour?
I had this summer pretty much booked up [with Asia], and Yes were disappointed about not getting a chance to play this summer, so I put my thinking cap on. I feel strongly that Asia is going to be very good opening act for Yes and it is a very unusual situation that someone like me would be in both groups — I feel that in itself says quite a lot.

During the show, what can we really expect?
Well obviously we’re fortunate that a lot of our music from our albums is greatly enjoyed, like for Asia, “Sole Survivor” and “Wildest Dreams,” and of course “Only Time Will Tell” and “Heat Of the Moment.” And then with Yes we have our rich material from Close to the Edge, Fragile and those albums, and of course “Roundabout” is incredibly popular, and so is “Owner of a Lonely Heart,” and we put in a good selection from the early years.

This is great stuff. Here’s Guillaume Estace playing the Cantina Theme from Star Wars IV on a Chapman Stick.

I tried playing one of these things years ago at Berklee. It ain’t easy!

When Michael Jackson died, I wondered how it would affect the musicians in his employ, such as Orianthi Panagaris, his latest guitarist (a post previously held by guitar-great Jennifer Batten).

Turns out, Orianthi is as disturbed by the whole thing as the rest of us:

“Seeing how happy he was, excited, singing and dancing, it’s shocking. But I’m so grateful for the time I had working with him.”

For Orianthi, the chance to play with one of the world’s greatest entertainers was a major coup. “I’m a big fan,” she said.

“He had this wonderful aura about him, a beautiful spirit.

“It’s been a surreal time working with him and what’s happened is devastating.”

Orianthi had been rehearsing with Jackson six days a week for the past three months.

She said: “We knew the songs so well.”

Her mother Sue said her daughter was very upset but was trying to keep herself focused for Tuesday.

“She’s very sad at the moment,” she said.

Hopefully, the “guitar babe” (ugh, did they really write that?! ) has a bright future ahead of her. She’s really good: