How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

How to Become a Guitar Player From Hell by Jason Earls

2009-12-08T03:32:00.000-08:00

How to Become a Guitar Player From Hell by Jason Earls

Fantomas - Der Golem

2009-12-08T03:31:00.000-08:00

Beheaded by Jason Earls

2009-11-30T04:09:00.001-08:00

Beheaded by Jason Earls - Horror Story -

Stevie Ray Vaughan Jam

2009-11-30T04:05:00.000-08:00

Shred the Web II Revisited - Congrats to the Winner

2009-11-30T04:04:00.000-08:00

The Crow - Rooftop Solo - Eric Draven

2009-11-30T04:03:00.000-08:00

William S. Burroughs - Life is a Killer

2009-11-30T03:45:00.000-08:00

Underground Guitar Handbook Flyer

2009-10-10T03:50:00.000-07:00

Underground Guitar Handbook Flyer

You Really Got Me Jam - Van Halen

2009-10-10T03:49:00.000-07:00

Oriental Guitar Scale Improv

2009-10-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

Robot Guitar

2009-10-10T03:24:00.000-07:00

My Shred the Web 2 Entry

2009-08-28T03:57:00.000-07:00

Ozzy Osbourne - Iron Man Jam

2009-07-23T08:05:00.000-07:00

Can Brock Lesnar Beat Fedor Emelianenko?

2009-07-23T08:04:00.000-07:00

Smoke on the Water Jam - Deep Purple

2009-07-23T08:01:00.000-07:00

William Blake Tribute

2009-06-22T07:16:00.001-07:00

Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy

2009-04-18T02:03:00.001-07:00

Now available on Amazon.com, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, order your copy today!

Clyde and Theresa, living their shattered lives in a small town. Sad, desperate, lonely, heart broken. Working crappy jobs, having lascivious sexual encounters with perfect strangers, wandering through graveyards, drinking cough syrup in night clubs, playing with strange chemical compositions, praying in flophouses, and striving for the forbidden in every possible way. What else could they do? Not much. Lurking within this southern gothic antinovel is an entire universe of abnormality, with emotional contraptions situated between the text and reader for maximum sensory enhancement.

http://www.amazon.com/Heartless-Bastard-Ecstasy-Jason-Earls/dp/143573050X%3FSubscriptionId%3D1QZMGW0RRJC2PX87HDR2%26tag%3Dsalranexp-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3D143573050X

Blues with Arianny Celeste

2009-04-18T02:02:00.000-07:00

Leper Messiah Solo with 21 Frets - Metallica

2009-04-12T04:27:00.000-07:00

Richard Feynman and 1/243 - Math Bliss

2009-04-12T04:23:00.000-07:00

Yngwie's Easy Listening

2009-04-06T02:24:00.000-07:00

Guitar Solo after e.e. cummings Poem

2009-04-06T02:23:00.000-07:00

Mathematical Bliss

2009-03-26T03:18:00.000-07:00

New book by Jason Earls:

Mathematical Bliss
A collection of mathematical articles and short stories that feature math in some way. Brilliant numbers, squares, revrepfigits, palindromes, Google primes, mock-rational numbers, concrete primes and more are covered. This book represents approximately ten years of mathematical research.

Order your copy today!
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/mathematical-bliss/6542538

Derek Trucks Slide Solo

2009-03-12T03:37:00.000-07:00

The Monster Hunter

2009-03-12T03:27:00.000-07:00

The Monster Hunter
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, & How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

My partner and I burst into the restaurant. A hundred people were scattered around the place, all of them dead. Bodies on the floor, blood on the tables, body parts severed, hair clinging to walls, brain matter floating in drinking glasses, miscellaneous gore splattered over plates of unfinished food. Disgusting.

Almost directly above us, we knew someone was still alive. We heard him squealing and growling animal-like noises. We looked up and saw that he was completely naked, swinging from a golden chandelier. Most of his body was covered with blood and the other parts were streaked with long brown marks – obviously fecal matter. We knew he had to have been the killer by his aggressive behavior, not merely a survivor of the tragedy.

We both pulled our Colt .38’s and aimed them at him. He dropped twenty feet to the floor, stared at us and growled with his arms held out and head ducked down in attack mode. My partner and I both dove forward, flipped a table over in mid-air, and ducked behind it. The naked man started screaming, jumped onto a chair, then leaped from table to table, crashing over dinnerware, swinging his arms, debris flying around us, blood and shit flying off the man and hitting the already stained walls.

I leaned up, waiting for the nude man to stop running. When he did, I took aim directly at his throat and said, “I’ve got a good shot, I’m gonna put him down.”

My partner grabbed my arm, “No way! Hold off man, we aren’t supposed to kill him. We have to take him alive or just let him go.”

I scowled and looked into my partner’s face, “Are you totally insane! That fucker killed all these people in this restaurant. Over 100 citizens are now dead because of this sicko!”

My partner stared back in disbelief. “But don’t you know who that is?” his voice a little shaky. “That’s Roan McGuilicutty. The best monster hunter in the world. There aren’t any other types of men like him left anymore. Sure, he goes off the deep end occasionally and kills a large group of human beings, like we see here in this eating establishment, but fuck man, for the most part, this guy is the only individual who can still protect our world from murderous monsters and deadly aliens and other outlandish beings who occasionally attack us – and which we law enforcement individuals can’t even begin to get a handle on. We can’t simply shoot this guy in the neck. He’s the best monster hunter we’ve got. You kill him and we won’t have one single monster hunter left worth a shit on this entire planet earth!”

“Fuck that,” I said. “I don’t give a fuck what his occupation is. Look around, man. We just can’t sit back and let this nude asshole covered with shit murder a hundred people and walk away. That’s fucking nuts, man. Look at him! He’s running around growling like a wild animal full of rabies! He’s totally off his rocker!”

We peeked over the edge of the table and saw Roan McGuilicutty running around squealing and holding a severed head, slapping the cheeks of his own ass.

I aimed at him again again and said, “That degenerate bastard is going down, NOW!”

“NO! NO! YOU CAN’T DO IT!” my partner screamed. He grabbed my arm and I jerked his hand off me.

“We need him!” he said. “Roan has saved thousands of people over the course of his career. Sure, he’s killed a few hundred too, but he does that to blow off steam. He’s the greatest monster hunter the United States has ever produced. Remember the alien invasion back in the early 70s that the government tried to cover up? Roan is the one who saved our asses then! He killed them all. Every single alien. With his bare fucking hands. He didn’t even use a gun.”

“Bullshit. No way was he responsible for wiping out those aliens in the 70s. I heard they called in the Navy Seals and those guys handled it. Roan McGuilicutty could not have killed all those aliens singlehandedly. Those were the most bloodthirsty aliens that ever landed on earth.”

“I’m telling you he did. Roan McGuilicutty is not human. After he saved us from those aliens, he drank a large quantity of extraterrestrial beer he’d found on the alien’s spaceship, and he got so wasted that he killed about 80 people at Burger King. Still, Roan was awesome for saving the whole planet from the aliens. He just has a hard time cooling down when the battle’s over. But he’s still a fucking cyborg, man! Some people really believe Roan is actually the result of an experiment conducted by some foreign country. They think he’s really half animal and half computer!”

I stared down at a corpse closest to me, one of the people Roan had murdered earlier in the restaurant. She was an elderly woman, probably someone’s grandmother, she had a beehive hairdo and was wearing a crude floral-print dress, half her face had been blown away and there was a huge hole missing from her bloated stomach region where it appeared Roan had bit out a large chunk of lard and probably eaten it.

The sight of that poor dead elderly woman enraged me. “FUCK IT! THIS SONOVABITCH IS GONNA DIE!”

I jumped from behind the table and took aim at the insane naked man. He was tucked into a ball at this point, doing somersaults in the air. As soon as he came out of the last one and was soaring toward the chandelier again, his hands outstretched, I fired three shots.

The first hit his shoulder and threw him off balance. The second hit him in the left eye, which caused his eyeball to erupt with a stream of blood and gray matter still attached, while the third shot hit his dangling penis, severing it at the base.

Roan McGuilicutty fell to the floor in a bellybuster-like fashion, landing with a loud smack and emitting a deep pitiful groan. The shot in the eye had been the one to finish him off, but shortly after hitting the floor his severed penis rolled across the carpet and stopped near my boots.

I reached down and poked at it with the barrel of my gun. It didn’t move. I ground the barrel into the middle of the severed penis, cramming it onto the end, then lifted it up. I turned to my partner whose eyes were wide, obviously worried that we would soon be fired for killing the greatest monster hunter in history. I held my gun in front of my partner’s face with Roan’s penis swaying back and forth like a dog’s tail.

“I don’t care what kind of monster hunter that sicko was,” I told my partner. “He killed way too many innocent people for my taste, and he did not save us from that alien invasion, the Navy Seals did. My uncle was a Navy Seal and he was a total badass. He could have taken Roan McGuilicutty out in two seconds flat. My uncle would have never agreed with his gratuitous killing of innocent people for no reason. So you can tell our bosses that I did this for my uncle. Let them fire me. See if I care. I’ll quite this job before I let some naked dickweed covered in human shit kill a hundred people and just walk away. Fuck that noise. I don’t play that shit, homeboy. And you shouldn’t either.”

After my speech, I whipped my gun forward and slung Roan McGuilicutty’s severed penis into my partner’s face. He winced at the motion but the monster hunter’s schlong still slapped against his forehead and he staggered back.

Then I strolled out the door of the restaurant, headed to my car.

Another day’s dirty work done. Thank God.

(Author’s Note: What would I like to put in my stories? I want to put the spirit of the earth in them and the soul of America, I want human yearning in them along with light and ecstasy and tragedy and fire. I will inject my stories with plasma from the sun and dust from the stars and liquid from the moon. My stories will have love and hope and fortune and mysticism and splinters from a whittler and tools that a master carpenter uses every single day. I want to include gravitas and murder and blades of poetic grass with a little gore as well. I want the spirit of strangers whispering and grasping and holding each other in the dark. All of these things will go into my sentences and paragraphs and their essence will dissolve the readers’ hearts into fountains of ecstasy and wonderment and true bliss. My words and broken rules will drip and seep with love and an all-devouring honesty and a gut-wrenching intensity. That is what I would like to put into my stories. I will.)

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen (taught by Prof. Robert Siegle at Virginia Tech), If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Screaming Guitar

2009-03-06T05:01:00.000-08:00

Blow that Trumpet

2009-03-06T04:57:00.000-08:00

Blow that Trumpet
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, & How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Yes, Ian’s father did seem a little crazy, but he also had interesting stories to tell.

“Before I got into a band, I used to be a roadie,” said Ian’s father.

They were sitting on his dad’s roof, drinking grape fruit juice and staring down into the neighbor’s backyard. Dogs were barking at them. The neighbor’s dogs. They had two big pit bulls. One had a viciously loud bark that almost broke their ear drums, while the other had a soft quiet bark.

“And I drove a little truck around so I could haul the band’s equipment,” his father continued.

“Different bands would hire me to be their roadie. I would haul pianos, drums, amplifiers, guitars, PA systems. I could pack up a band’s equipment and have them in and out of five different clubs in one day.”

“I hope my band will be able to go on tour sometime,” said Ian. He took a sip of his grapefruit juice and inhaled the cool air, then spat a loogie at one of the dogs below.

“You will. It’s fun. Anyway, one band asked me to play the trumpet for them once. I always liked traditional brass instruments. I was interested in the saxophone and even the trombone. But those trumpets, man. No way. There’s just something about them. I could never get my lips around a trumpet for some reason... but I know if I would’ve ever been able to get a trumpet in my mouth, I could’ve played the fuck out of that thing.”

Ian stared at his father without saying a word.

“One time I went out on a small tour with a real successful band, they had a lot of equipment and I had to hire one of my buddies to help me. He rode with me in the cab of the truck and helped tune the instruments and sold the band merchandise like t-shirts and CDs and whatnot from a booth and he would help me set up the stage and the smoke machine and get the equipment ready. It was a small tour through the southern U.S. that lasted about five weeks. The band members rode in one big car and we followed them in the truck with all the gear. Well, my buddy was real bad about not taking a bath, his personal hygiene sucked. After nine days he was getting pretty damn ripe sitting in the cab of that truck. One night we checked into a motel on our day off. We didn’t have a gig that night and we all wanted to hit the bar and hang out and find some chicks. But my buddy said he was really tired and didn’t want to go with us, said he needed to catch up on some sleep instead. I told him, ‘Well, you better take a fucking bath before you get in that clean bed. You stink, man. I can barely stand riding with you.’

“So I went over to the bar for a couple hours, shot some pool, danced with a few lovely ladies, drank a few beers, had a couple shots of whiskey, clowned around for a little bit. I got sleepy and decided to head back to the motel and guess what? My buddy is laying in the bed all covered up with those fresh clean white blankets on him snoring away. Okay, no big deal, but then I go into the bathroom to take a shit, and I look in the bath tub.

“It’s bone dry.

“There ain’t even one drop of water to be found anywhere. I could tell the soap and towels hadn’t been used. Nothing. Goddamn I was pissed off. I wiped my ass and pulled up my pants and went out of the bathroom. I went over and jerked the blankets off that sonovabitch and screamed right in his face, ‘YOU GODDAMN FILTHY MOTHERFUCKER, GET OUT OF THAT BED AND GO TAKE A FUCKING BATH! YOU SMELL WORSE THAN A PILE OF SHIT YOU GODDAMN DIRTY DEGENERATE!’

“But he just layed there like a corpse and ignored me. So I went over and dug around in my duffle bag till I found my old bullwhip. I cracked it real loud a couple times and he leaned up to see what was going on. I flung it fast and hard and wrapped it around his neck and then jerked him over to me real hard. I yanked him till he was pressed up against my chest and I was staring right into his ugly face with my eyes all narrow and evil lookin’. I whispered real low: ‘Get in there and take a shower now, motherfucker. Or you’re not riding another fucking block with me in that truck outside, you got it? You smell like a bucket of rotten fish bait.’

“And boy he did smell like somethin’ out of a live bait shop, too. But after my bullwhip trick he went into the bathroom and finally took a shower.”

Ian stared at his father. His mouth was open listening to the story. He threw his cup of grapefruit juice down at one of the pit bulls. He realized he had finally heard an anecdote from his father that he’d never heard before. “Did you really wrap a bullwhip around his neck, Dad?”

“Goddamn right I did.”

“Why were you carrying a bullwhip around?”

“For hard times, man. Being a roadie wasn’t always fun, let me tell ya. I was glad I finally started playing guitar full-time though and stopped that roadie foolishness.”

His father pushed himself up and walked across the roof, carrying his glass of juice. He muttered and grunted a few times, obviously still thinking about the old days, and his false teeth clicked in his mouth. He scratched his head and sighed.

Ian felt sorry for him.

He didn’t know where all his stories came from, or whether they were true or not. He suspected the tales could be a result of him being lonely, sitting around having conversations with himself and making things up. But maybe not. Maybe they were all true.

His father turned and shuffled across the roof toward Ian. “One more thing. I almost forgot. A girl called for you the other day. She had a sweet voice. She left her name and this number and said for you to call her anytime after 6 PM.” He lifted a piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Ian.

But Ian did not recognize the girl’s name. He couldn’t remember her at all. Oh well.

Author’s Note to the Reader:

( Well the story is over and I hope you liked it. I wish I could have provided a few more shocking images – perhaps those would have been more entertaining – but I appear to be all out at the moment. Maybe you could suggest a few. I don’t really like to be shocked, myself. The minutes hours days weeks years & decades passing by at lightning speed are shocking enough for me. My life is almost over. Maybe yours is not. I wish the reader could speak. Tell me what’s on their mind today. We can do anything we want here in these pages with black marks on white backgrounds shining forth on brilliant computer screens. We are mature enough to do so, aren’t we? Tell me something about yourself, go ahead, write it in this space:

–
–
–
–
–
–

I would like to know what’s going on with you. Personally my life is like an amusement park packed with thrills and chills... But wait, I believe Bill Hicks already said it best:

“The world is like a ride in an amusement park. And when you choose to go on it you think it’s real because that’s how powerful our minds are. And the ride goes up and down and round and round. It has thrills and chills and it’s very brightly coloured and it’s very loud and it’s fun, for a while. Some people have been on the ride for a long time and they begin to question: ‘Is this real, or is this just a ride?’ And other people have remembered, and they come back to us, they say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’ And we kill those people.”
– Bill Hicks

Computer programmers planning riots in cyberspace. Grizzly bears attacking wild mountain men in the forest. Raging fires being started from too much lint collecting in dryers. Beautiful thin women who can’t keep their underwear from falling down whenever they walk around town. Scientists saying there are thousands of plants and animals living and growing upon our bodies right now; hiding, crawling, eating, and sneezing away. We can’t see them but they’re still there. I think we should hire a big robot to come fry them off us with his powerful laser beam. We would all enjoy that, I’m sure, along with a few altered states of consciousness. Everything keeps getting better all the time. I love you all. Goodbye.)

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen (taught by Prof. Robert Siegle at Virginia Tech), If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Eruption - Van Halen - How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

2009-03-02T05:16:00.000-08:00

Prank Phone Calls to Gorgeous Women

2009-03-02T05:12:00.001-08:00

Prank Phone Calls to Gorgeous Women
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, & Red Zen
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Knock.
Knock knock.
Ian heard the knocks. He knew it was his father. He got off his makeshift bed. Looked at the walls and ceiling, they were covered with beetles and spiders and centipedes, thousands of them. Goddamn, Ian thought, I’ve gotta get some insecticide down here, this place is fucking infested. He walked slowly up the broken cement stairs, pushed off the boards that covered the entrance. He went up and out. His father was standing there, smiling and wearing his old green army fatigues that were faded and torn in places, plus a navy hat that did not match his clothes. His lips were red and chapped, mist came from them due to the excessive cold – it was freezing outside. Ian didn’t even know what month it was.
“Hello, Dad,” Ian said. “What’s going on.”
“Nothing much. I brought you a wood stove. Sure got cold around here fast, eh? Figured you might need a wood stove in that cellar to keep you warm.”
Ian looked at his father’s little blue pickup. A black wood stove made from barrels was setting in the back. “Where did you get it?”
“At the gettin’ place. Come on.”
His father went over to the truck, Ian followed him, they climbed into the bed, pulled the stove to the edge, Ian hopped down and they carried it over to the cellar and down the steps. They set it against the wall.
“Thanks for bringing it. I’ll get it set up and working tomorrow.”
His father was staring at the Mijnan in the corner. Ian’s weird musical instrument that he’d invented and spent his entire life so far building and improving, and for which most of his friends and musical acquaintances had blackballed him for. His father went over and plucked a string and poked a key on the keyboard, then he fondled one of the brass valves and turned a tuning peg. He opened his mouth to speak but stopped and turned around; he saw copies of Jason Earls’ books stacked in one corner: Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, and How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell. His father went over and flipped through Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, Ian had obviously read it through several times, the cover was worn and even torn on one edge, he had underlined several passages throughout book in black pen. “You must really love this book,” his father said.
“Yeah, I do, everyone should own a copy of that novel. It changed my life. So what’s been going on with you lately, Dad? Any news I should know about?”
“Nothing much. I’ve just been making a few prank phone calls lately.”
“Wha-... what did you say?”
“I said I’ve been making prank phone calls. I got interested in telephone technology recently. I laid off the other inventions. Boy, a person can really get wrapped up in human body enhancement, remember when I was going to install that chip in my brain? Wow, let me tell ya, that shit is ultra-dangerous and the damage inflicted is permanent. Hey, I love technology, I love computers and I love imagining that I’m a cyborg, I like simple modes of communication too and I like secrecy, but ANONYMITY and telephones are my new thing.”
Ian went back up the stairs and inhaled some fresh air, his father followed him. “Prank phone
calls, huh? That sure is immature, Daddio. Who the hell have you been calling?”
“Gorgeous women that I like.”
“Who?”
“If I see any young women that I’m really attracted to around town, I find out their telephone numbers and give them a call and harrass them, or annoy them, or just make weird noises into the receiver, whatever I feel like doing really.”
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I know I can’t have them. You see, mainly I just call up and listen to their voices and record them talking – if they have a good voice. I have one of those in-line voice recorders from the radio shop and I keep all the tapes of the women’s voices and play them back at night whenever I feel lonely.”

Beelzebub interrupts and says,, listen to this,, look at the page,, pretend I am alive now,, in your face,, do you know I am here,, yes you do,, listen with every hair in both ear canals,, do you hear it,, I’m writing out of loneliness lust rebellion recalcitrance assinine terror in the face of sheer existence inside the turgid universe,, I need all your attention,, there is a stealth bomber breaking the metaphysical barriers of treason above that form immense clouds of stagnant smoke in a sociopath’s nightmare,, a midget in the computer code running this galaxy,, and we will all perish soon,, you and I,, every one of us,, on the back of an atomic bomb filled with pirhanas and rotten human teeth sunken in ravenous sucking mouths,, what can we do about it,, nothing,, maybe we should listen to the silence of John Cage for four minutes and thirty-three seconds,, or just ramble and mumble and rumble on with the deadly gangstas,, Beelzebub out...

Ian squinted. “Listening to unknown women’s voices at night, Dad? Alone? That you recorded? That’s fucking pathetic and creepy as hell. Does mom know about this?”
His father stuck his hands in his pockets, blew out some more cold white mist. He looked depressed. “Of course not. She’s a good woman. I don’t want to upset her with this crap. It’s just a passing phase. But I like telephones, I really do, and I love computers too, I’m going to get a new one soon and may put some sound files on my computer, I’ll store the women’s voices on my hard drive, that’s what I’ll do. I see beautiful women around town all the time, they’re everywhere. Gorgeous women with long legs and plump behinds and long black eyelashes and shiny hair and perfect bodies with huge boobs and erect nipples, their moist vaginas in those soft panties just waiting for me to get in there. I get up close to them and they smell so fucking good. I see them at the bank at the post office at cafes at the Tag office at city meetings at the grocery store and cable office and I am an old man now. I’m a really old man. And I’ll never have them, I’ll never enjoy the company of a young gorgeous female again, I mean REALLY ENJOY them in the way that I want to and the way that I fantasize about and THAT drives me crazy. I’m going nuts. I want one again. A gorgeous young woman. Just one. Or maybe two. But I’m old. They would laugh at me if I asked them out to dinner or for a drink or to see a movie, they would know I’m pathetic, most of them anyway, and it makes me angry. So fucking angry. To know I can’t get them or have them anymore. The way Ted Bundy must have felt, I imagine. So what I do is I find out their phone numbers and call them up and talk to them and try to seduce them or just give them a hard time and then I record their voices and the whole time I’m wondering what THEY think about when they are ALONE, what they CRAVE, what they really want next in LIFE, but it doesn’t really matter because when it is all over I still have their voices trapped on my recorder, and soon they’ll be inside my computer, living inside the motherboard and the CPU, I’ll trap a little piece of their soul in there and afterward they will be ALL MINE and never get that part of themselves back and they can think I am pathetic or old or weak or ugly or whatever they want but I will still have them TRAPPED and I’ll hold on to their electronic presence and enunciations for the rest of my life.”
“I think you’re really getting sick, Dad.” Ian said.
“No I’m not.” he staggered backward.

Beelzebub says,, write these words faster than the speed of a loud gong,, put all your heart and transcendental soul into them,, become a xenogenic bluesman from the great outer beyond,, rant away and become a green-death news junky inventing new forms of telepathy and psychocommunication while encompassing the reader’s body with cerebro-stimulants and hypnotic entities that have traveled past this uber-life,, send your transmissions out on a conveyor belt of shark skin,, make it past the guarding translyvanian wolfhound with one morass of somnambulance lodged in his outtake barrier,, smash their brick-teeth with soft energy squares of light & massive incisors in vortex clouds left behind by a soaring F-14 for edification,, never distraction with flesh contracts doomed to omit coma syndromes,, and by the way don’t ever call this number again,, do you hear me,, I don’t ever want to hear your voice again,, you got that? Okay Beelzebub out...

“You are, Dad. You’re getting ill.”
His father stumbled back again and grabbed his forehead.
“Sit down for a minute.”
His father sat down on a log. He was sweating. His eyes were shut, his mouth was open and he was breathing hard. “I haven’t been feeling too good lately, son. I feel like I’m losing it.”
“Just sit down and take it easy for awhile.”
“How long are you going to live in this cellar, son?”
“Just until I get famous with my Mijnan. Soon I will have lots of good musical opportunites. I’m sure plenty of cash will roll my way. I’ll get a house and become a normal person with a wife and kids instead of living in a cellar like a bum.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“Will you stop making these prank phone calls to gorgeous women and recording their voices?”
“I don’t know...”
“You’re going to get caught, Dad.”
“No... I won’t.”
“Yes, you will if you continue. I don’t know what they do to people who make harrassing phone calls, but whatever it is it can’t be good. Will you promise me you’ll quit calling these beautiful women you see around town?”
“All right. I guess I’ll quit.”
“Good. I’m proud of you.”

Beelzebub says,, I am not a writer now,, I quit,, I’m sick of words,, I hate them,, they are dead so completely dead,, except when the temptress rides black trolleys to Egypt,, lambasting pyramids with seduction,, I am so tired now,, I want to sleep and dream,, but the joker won’t let me,, he says he hates writers and that they deserve no rest,, once he asked if I was like Thomas Wolfe or Dostoevsky,, a born writer,, no way I said,, I am more like Sonny Sharrock with pencil and paper and a dull point,, but the joker was not satisfied with my answer,, he wanted to kill me,, I had to stop him,, he said he would bury me alive behind a crack house,, go inside and smoke crack until his eyes turned blue and he got higher than a stealth bomber on the edge of the stratosphere,, then he stared at me with his cold diligent face,, where will we go next,, to the place where maximum entropy and human emotion hides inside the Big Bang,, I quit,, no now I am a writer again,, no now I am a hypnotist,, no now I am a writer again no now I am a scribbler,, no now I am a ventriloquist no now I am a hack,, no now I am a masochist no now I am simply an unwelcome interloper so farewell,, Beelzebub out....

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Spanish Fly - Van Halen

2009-02-28T03:50:00.001-08:00

GHOST DIAMOND

2009-02-28T03:46:00.000-08:00

GHOST DIAMOND
by Jason Earls
author of Cocoon of Terror, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

The drummer, Neil, hit three cymbal crashes, choking each one by catching the edge of the cymbals, as Ian, the lead guitarist, hit three F power chords simultaneously, fast and sharp – part of the dynamics to the new song his band Hostile Effluvium was working on. Then the drummer stopped playing, stood up from his drum stool and announced, “Wait guys, I’ve got a good idea for a new song.”
Ian scoffed. “But we’ve got to learn this one first, Neil.”
The rehearsal wasn’t going well. Ian was in a bad mood. Worried about his girlfriend acting so crazy lately and maybe even cheating on him. He was also worried about what might happen at the upcoming Battle of the Bands contest they had entered, which was now only a couple of weeks away. Ian didn’t feel like listening to any new song ideas. The bass player, Bob, stayed silent in the corner; he was in a bad mood as well.
“But I’ve got to tell you guys about this new song before I forget the main idea,” said the drummer.
“All right,” said Ian. “Go ahead.” He frowned and took off his guitar, sat down on the floor and crossed his legs.
“I want to write a song about a woman whose husband dies relatively young. Say at 35. He dies of a heart attack. One day his heart just starts beating in his chest like a machine gun and won’t stop. But he keeps on smoking cigarettes and joints anyway and ignores the pain of his fast-beating heart. After 54 hours his heart explodes and all the veins in his head turn purple and burst like fireworks. His wife loses it. She sees him die in the living room while they’re watching a reality t.v. show. She goes crazy with grief as she pounds on his chest trying to get his heart beating again. Finally she takes him to the hospital and he’s pronounced dead on arrival. Her husband always told her he wanted to be cremated so she tells a funeral director about it and they comply and she asks what to do with his ashes after his corpse is burned to cinders. The nice funeral director gives her a few options and the last one involves a company that will make a diamond from the person’s cremated remains. The woman loves the idea and writes the director a check for $10,000 to handle all the details and have the diamond made for her. Six months goes by and the company finally sends her the diamond mounted as a ring and she absolutely adores it, seeing it as a wonderful memorial to her husband who died from an exploding heart at a young age. One night she sits in her favorite chair with the television on in the background, staring at the diamond for hours. She touches it and thinks of her husband. She loves the ring more than anything else because it reminds her of all the wonderful times she had had with her soul mate. And she knows his essence is right there in the ring with her; his mystical essence is inside the diamond; the stone made from the ashes of the man she loved more than anyone else in the world.
“About two months goes by.
“Strange things start happening.
“One night when she gets out of bed for a glass of water she sees an elderly woman wearing a tall white paper hat walking around her house. And the elderly lady doesn’t have normal arms, they’re all orange and gooey and alien-like. The old woman throws the paper hat at the woman one evening with her gooey arms and runs out the front door. The woman just thinks it’s a bad dream. But the next night she says the old woman again, running in and out of her house, carrying torches and thick chains and wearing long fur coats. Then she hears moaning noises and sees men at her window with long pointed noses and bug eyes. At first she doesn’t associate these happenings with the ring. But then the people start speaking to her. They say it wasn’t really a heart attack that killed her husband. They say he committed suicide to get away from his wife. That he actually hated her. They claim he wanted to kill her but he didn’t want to go to prison so he decided to just kill himself instead. They say he left a note in the house explaining everything. They said she should search for the note and read it. Finally the woman gets pissed off and screams at the visitors:
‘YOU LYING MOTHERFUCKERS GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE. FUCK YOU ALL. MY HUSBAND LOVED ME AND I LOVED HIM. HE DIDN’T WRITE A GODDAMN NOTE. HE DIED OF A HEART ATTACK. I SAW IT. HE DIDN’T COMMIT SUICIDE. THIS RING ON MY FINGER IS MADE FROM HIS ASHES. THAT’S HOW MUCH I LOVED HIM. I WANT HIM TO BE CLOSE TO ME AT ALL TIMES. DONT’ YOU UNDERSTAND THAT, CAN’T YOU GET THAT THROUGH YOUR STUPID SKULLS YOU SICK FUCKING GHOULS!’
“And the visitors all crowded around the irate woman. Six of them. White ghosts. They each held up a piece of paper. Each note was folded. She looked at them. Read only a few words. The notes were identical. Creased in the same places. But she couldn’t take the notes. She wouldn’t read them. Didn’t want to believe they were real. So she screamed:
‘GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, GET OUT OF HERE YOU CRUEL PIECES OF SHIT GO BACK TO FUCKING HELL WHERE YOU CAME FROM, YOU’RE NOTHING BUT ROTTEN DICK-SUCKING SECOND CLASS GHOSTS TRYING TO TRICK ME.’
“Then the woman’s finger began to hurt. She looked down at it, all yellow and throbbing. The diamond was glowing red and green. WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING, she thought. So she pulls the diamond ring off her finger, runs to the sink and throws it down the drain, flicks on the garbage disposal switch. The metal and the diamond grind to dust. She turns around. The ghosts had vanished. They were coming out of the diamond ring made from her husband’s ashes. So that’s the song idea I have guys, what do you think? Should we write it up?”
Ian sighed and slowly stood up fromn the floor where he’d been listening to the drummer’s long explanation. “Goddamn,” he said. “It’s a little long, don’t you think? That might make a good novel, but there’s no way we can dilute that down to three or four verses of song lyrics without eliminating most of the details.”
“Well, maybe we can have six or seven verses. Who says we have to limit a song to only three verses? Plus, it’s just an idea. Go ahead and work on it you guys. See where you can take it and what you can come up with. I’m easy to please. I’ve got a killer drum beat I can put to it. And I may have a main guitar riff too.” The drummer started playing a 3/4 drum beat. It had a good groove.
“It’s all right,” said Ian. “But we can’t work on it now. Let’s get back to the other song.”
“So you like it?” the drummer said.
“Sure. We can do something with it. Got a title for it?”
“Yeah, Ghost Diamond.”
“Right on. Now let’s get back to the other song.”
“All right.”

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

iwrestledabearonce - tastes like kevin bacon

2009-02-28T03:44:00.000-08:00

Play a Few One-Note Guitar Solos

2009-02-17T05:15:00.000-08:00

Play a Few One-Note Guitar Solos
By Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Occasionally you should consider playing a one-note solo on your electric guitar. I'm serious. You should play a solo consisting of only a single note treated in many different ways. Why? Because simplicity in music (and in life) is important and highly effective; and what could be simpler in musical improvisation than playing a solo consisting of only one note? Also, it was Einstein who said that things should be kept as simple as possible but no simpler, and they don't get much smarter than Einstein. Minimalism can be a nice effective idea when used moderately in music. Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great philosopher, was a minimalist and also a rather laconic speaker since he thought that whatever cannot be expressed clearly should be dismissed in silence; and he reasoned further that things in the world that can SHOW themselves, yet cannot be spoken about constitute what is “mystical." But I seem to have gotten away from talking about one-note solos, so I shall return to that subject:

You can have your single-note solo last for as long as you like. Four bars, eight bars, twelve bars, sixteen bars, or more; and the background chords and accompaniment can change behind you or underneath you as much as is necessary, plus you can insert plenty of dynamics into the note as well. I recommend that you experiment with other musicians in your band in having them change chord progressions or transpose the riffs into different keys behind your one-note solo, or direct them to do anything you want really, while you maintain playing that single note on your electric guitar and hold it throughout the entire solo.

Add vibrato. Pick the note repeatedly; fast or slow. Go in and out of time with the rhythm of the tune. Stop playing the note briefly. Add space and plenty of breathing room. Bend the note a little, but not too much (use microtonal bends - quarter steps or less, smears I believe they are called) because you never want to stray too far from the single tone you have chosen to express yourself with. Mainly you should concentrate on that one note while attempting to instill as much energy, emotion, spirituality, passion, yearning, tension, persuasion, release, and everything else you’ve got inside your heart and mind, pushing it into your one-note solo; execute it while incorporating whatever you have boiling inside of you.

And when choosing the note for your solo, make sure it is the absolute BEST NOTE that you can find. Actually, it must be the PERFECT note that fits (or goes against) the song you are playing, because it will be the MAIN note of the solo.

What could a single note solo be compared to in real life? Are there some comparisons we could make? Of course there are.

Sometimes people have an entire meal consisting of only one dish, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his autobiography how he moved to a new town when he was a young man and could afford only a loaf of bread for his single meal of the day; and a truck driver I once worked with went into a grocery store on his lunch break and purchased a single package of bologna and ate only that for his noon day meal; he had no bread, no mustard, no cheese, no mayonnaise, no pickles, no relish, no ketchup, and nothing to drink either - he only had the bologna which he took out of the package and folded in half and bit into with his sharp false teeth.

Are these things like single note solos? I guess they could considered similar, in a way. It just depends on how you observe the situation and analyze it. And your viewpoint of the world and the people around you.

Also many punk bands do not play electric guitar solos at all; so if you decide to play a one note solo, you can consider yourself to be a slightly more sophisticated musician than those in punk bands.

Another reason for playing a single-note solo is that it may help your ideas improve. Years ago (and even to this day) when I was first learning about improvisation, and practicing my guitar a lot, I would notice that whenever I would practice every day, playing for many hours, my ideas during improvisational solos would become noticeably stale and uninspired, as if I were merely playing the same ideas over and over. But if I did not practice much during any particular day, or even skipped a few days of playing altogether, even though my technique would decrease considerably and I would play rather sloppily, whenever it came time to improvise, my ideas would be fresh and exciting and exuberant and alive and it would seem like I was playing entirely new melodies that had never existed before. So when your improvisations start to go stale, remember to play a few one-note solos, and you may get some good improvisational ideas for the next songs you play.

Another thing that might be considered similar to one-note solos is the word 'abacot,' which is a word that exists in dictionaries but is not in fact a real word; it was simply a misprint that happened many years ago and lexicographers kept copying the same mistake over and over again. How could a one-note solo be considered similar to the word abacot? Well many musicians probably do not think a single note solo is a "real" solo, in a legitimate sense, because it isn't complicated or sophisticated or impressive enough, just as abacot is not considered a "real" word, although it is still listed in many dictionaries.

But one-note solos can be quite expressive if they are approached in the right way. Actually that is the challenge I am trying to convey to you here in this article. I want to encourage you to make your one-note solo interesting by adding other things to it: Phrasing, conviction, picking technique, fingering, incorporation of various attitudes, different methods of attack, manipulation of tone, stylistic subtleties used in as many different ways as possible to make the single note solo sound fresh and passionate and exciting. Good luck.

Source:

"On Soloing," How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007.

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this piece, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Ernest Hemingway Valentine Poem With Blues Guitar

2009-02-14T04:58:00.000-08:00

Flying Quadrunners

2009-02-14T04:23:00.000-08:00

Flying Quadrunners
By Jason Earls, author of Red Zen, Cocoon of Terror, & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

The quadrunner was not new. He’d bought it used for $1600 after the previous owner had wrecked it. The small headlights in the front were shattered, the plastic covering over the front tires had been broken and was hanging. The left rear tire was slightly bent and squeaked whenever the brakes were applied. But it didn’t take much effort for Frank to fix those things; and $1600 for a used four wheeler was a lot better than $7000 for a top-of-the-line model. Frank had borrowed the money from his uncle and had already paid him back over half the total amount.

Now, on a lonely Saturday afternoon, Frank was hanging out in his garage, playing some gutbucket blues on his battered Harmony acoustic guitar, and thinking about taking out his quadrunner with Blare, his best friend in the world. Frank’s wife, Sarah, had been excited when he’d first gotten the four-wheeler but now that the new had worn off she was jealous of the contraption and didn’t let him go riding very often. Frank played the intro to the song “Pretty Woman” on his Harmony acoustic while thinking about jumping hills out by the lake with his friend Blare riding behind him. He grinned and strummed a few chords as he imagined all the fun he could be having on his quadrunner at that precise moment instead of being bored hanging around his garage. Next, he played a little bit of ‘Ride of the Valkyries.’ Frank had worked out his own classical interpretation of the song and loved performing it on his acoustic. Mainly he was a gutbucket blues guitarist, but he had a nice fingering laid out for Ride of the Valkyries and could even play the backing chords and main melody simultaneously using the higher strings; it was almost his favorite song and he loved reading biographies of his hero Richard Wagner in his spare time. Frank smiled and played the main melody awhile longer before remembering how badly he wanted to take out his quadrunner.

“Screw it, I’m going in to tell her I’m going riding today,” Frank said.

He carried his guitar in the house, playing a little solo in the higher register of his fretboard as he walked. He had cut away a lower portion of the body near the fretboard so he could reach the higher frets with ease and practice his soloing ability.

Sarah was sitting on the couch, playing one of the video games that went with their cable television package when Frank came in.

“I’m taking my four wheeler out riding today with Blare,” Frank announced in a monotone voice. “I’m gonna go call him now.”

“No you’re not. I want you to stay here and watch the kids while I go shopping with my mother.”

Frank rolled his eyes and set his guitar against the wall. “No way, Sarah. I’m gonna go ride my four wheeler with Blare. You’ll have to find somebody else to watch the kids. I haven’t been riding for months now. I bought that quadrunner to use, not to just let set out in the garage and rust away.”

Sarah continued fingering the remote control, playing her game and not looking in Frank’s direction. “You ride that thing constantly. Just last weekend you stayed out with Blare all night long drinking beer and getting plastered. You didn’t even come home until six in the morning.”

“That wasn’t last weekend, I haven’t been riding in a month!”

“Oh, quit your whining, Frank. I’m sick of it. And I’m sick of hearing about that damn four wheeler.”

Frank picked up his guitar. He took a deep breath and exhaled, trying not to lose his temper. He picked a few notes, but soon his hands did not move and one of them was gripping the fretboard tightly in a death-grip. “What the hell did I buy that quadrunner for if you’re never going to let me ride it!”

“Just shutup, Frank. My mom will be here to pick me up in thirty minutes. So go out there and lock up the garage and get your ass back in here and be ready to watch the kids.”

Frank’s hands were squeezing his guitar tighter now and he was grinding his teeth. He turned around quickly and walked out the back door. He went through the yard past the old blue plastic swimming pool for the kids and the withering tomato plants. Frank wasn’t going to listen to her this time. He couldn’t let her keep controlling every aspect of his life. When he reached the garage, his temper finally got the best of him. He grabbed his guitar by the neck and hit it against the side of the doorway, the body shattering with wood flying in every direction. He hit it five times until he was holding nothing but the neck with four strings attached. Breathing heavily, he looked down at the fretboard of his guitar. Now he didn’t even have an instrument to entertain himself with on this boring Saturday afternoon. Plus, it had been the first guitar he had ever owned and now it was smashed to pieces.

He looked over at his quadrunner. It was setting in the center of the garage. What a beauty. Everything that had been broken on it when he’d purchased it was now fixed. It was gassed up and oiled and ready to go. But his wife wouldn’t let him ride. What a goddamn waste. Paying $1600 for something he couldn’t even use, half the amount still unpaid.

“To hell with this shit,” Frank said. He pulled his keys out of his pocket, went out to his truck, pulled it back toward the garage slowly without revving up the engine. Then he pulled the silver ramps down and loaded up the quadrunner and idled out of the driveway, coasting down the street. Once he was four blocks away, he floored it, racing toward Blare’s house, grinning and thinking about what a great time he was about to have riding his four wheeler.

* * *

Boom, boom, boom. Frank pounded on Blare’s front door, looking in the window screen. “Hey, Blare, I brought my four wheeler! Let’s go riding!”

Blare came running around the corner, his work boots falling heavy on the linoleum floor; he had a perplexed look on his haggard face (he was 26 years old but looked almost 40 for some unknown reason, probably bad genetics). “What’s going on out here? Frank, is that you?”

“Yeah. I snuck away from the wife and I’ve got my quadrunner loaded up. If we want to get in some riding time we’re gonna have to hurry, she could be here any minute looking for me and she’s gonna go apeshit if she sees my four wheeler in the back of my truck.”

Blare pushed open the door and stared at Frank’s four wheeler with a serious and somewhat disgruntled look on his face. And Frank didn’t take his eyes off Blare the whole time. Frank considered Blare to be his best friend in the whole world. He really looked up to him – for making more money than him, for having a good-looking nurturing wife who loved him, for having a more expensive quadrunner, for being three inches taller than him, for keeping his body weight at a constant 185 pounds of firm muscle and lean sinew, for having a full beard when Frank could only grow a small amount of peach fuzz on his chin, for knowing how to take his quadrunner apart and put it back together again in under two hours, for being able to make extra money installing remote control car-starters in vehicles. But he couldn’t play the acoustic guitar like Frank could. That was one thing he had on Blare. Almost nobody could play gutbucket blues like Frank could. Especially on his Harmony guitar. But that was busted to pieces now. Thanks to his wife. The bitch. Still, Frank would get another acoustic guitar from a pawn shop soon and he would remain the best gutbucket blues player in the area and also play Ride of the Valkyries occasionally since that was his favorite classical piece. Frank kept on staring at his friend, noticing that Blare had on his usual green coveralls and a fresh chew of Red Man in his mouth. He looked at some of the grains in Blare’s teeth.

“Come on in,” Blare said. “I just need to change into an older pair of boots. I can’t get mud on these work ones.”

After Blare got his other boots on they went out the back door and into the garage and started working to load up Blare’s quadrunner into his own truck. It was almost a brand new Yamaha four wheeler, much faster than Frank’s, but he didn’t care. He was just glad to have somebody to ride with. They went back in the house and grabbed some beer, barbecue corn chips, and a package of hot dogs and went out and got in their trucks and peeled out of the driveway. Frank couldn’t believe his wife hadn’t shown up yet.

It only took ten minutes to get to the lake. That was their usual riding spot. They rode on the dry banks and since the water level was really low there was plenty of space. The weather on this day was also perfect for riding. A little chilly but pretty sunny for early November. The sky was clear and light blue with only a few long white scattered clouds near the horizon. The lake was surrounded by red clay hills with white blocks of granite dotting the sides. An attractive landscape. But they only had a couple of hours of sunlight left.

Frank turned on his radio as he headed toward the lake and the Ride of the Valkyries theme was playing. He became excited and blasted the volume and screamed out the melody to the music as he drove, following behind his best pal Blare.

They arrived at the lake, parked their trucks, got out and stood looking around for a few minutes. Blare grabbed two beers from his cab and they guzzled them down. Then they got busy unloading their four wheelers. After Frank grabbed his red racing helmet with the big lightning bolt running down the center and Blare grabbed his pure black one, they fired up their quadrunners and revved them for a long time, just to let any people in the area know they were there. The engines were loud and Frank grinned at the powerful sounds as his ears popped. Then they took off riding over the sand, the tires gripping and throwing it around as they turned and swerved. They headed toward the far end of the lake, far away from their trucks. Even if Sarah drove out now and saw their pickups, she wouldn’t be able to see Frank if he was riding on the other side of the lake.

Frank felt slightly cold even though he was wearing his new camoflauge jacket he’d bought at the dollar store for only $15. Blare always wore insulated coveralls, so he never got cold. They chased each other around the lake, ramping little hills and yelling back and forth, challenging each other to do different stunts and revving up their engines and sliding around in the sand.

“Hey Blare, I bet you can’t do this!”

“Shutup, Frank. I’m the best at that.”

“Look at that little car tire, I’m going to flip it up on its end by riding over it.”

“No you won’t.”

“Hey, let’s start a fire and set up a ramp and jump it.”

“Nah, that’s too crazy for me.”

Just a few of the sentences they yelled as they rode around.

An hour and a half drifted away.

Frank forgot about his wife and her constant nagging and manipulative controlling behavior, he forgot about his problems at work and his stomach ulcers. He forgot about everything as he rode around with his best friend, Blare. He felt wonderful and free and happy and was having a blast.

But at one point he climbed a small hill that led to the highway and at the top he accidentally gunned the throttle and when he hit the pavement of the road his four-wheeler tipped back but the bar at the rear of his seat saved him from going all the way over on his back. He skidded across the highway, riding a wheelie, with sparks shooting up behind him from the bar scraping across the pavement. When he went off the other side of the road he quickly regained control and applied his brakes. He stopped with his front tire only about two feet from a 60 foot drop-off to sharp rocks below. Frank put his feet down to brace himself, his quadrunner lightly idling, and looked over the edge of the cliff. It scared the shit out of him, a rush of adrenaline flooded his veins. He had almost went over and killed himself. It was almost dark too. Daylight had drifted almost entirely away but he could still see most of the land because of the full moon shining. The danger at almost having died was still with him and one of the ulcers in his stomach pulsated and sent out a large quantity of burning acid. He rubbed his stomach and chest until the pain went away.

After almost soaring over the cliff and losing his life, Frank noticed Blare riding toward the edge of the lake below. His newer Yamaha quadrunner looked so cool shooting along the bank that he decided to join him. “I wonder if my quadrunner looks that cool,” Frank thought.

The lake had gotten even lower this year. You could barely swim in it anymore. The excessive summer heat had almost dried up the entire mass of water. Frank looked at the water level. “Goddamn global warming,” he said as he leaned over and raced toward Blare. A rush of fatigue suddenly swept over Frank, he could feel it start in the back of his neck and descend toward his feet, stopping briefly at his thighs which were beginning to develop serious cramps from riding. But when he hummed some of the Ride of the Valkyries theme he started to feel more energetic.

He caught up with Blare who was riding a wheelie and Frank popped one and they both rode side by side, holding their wheelies, and smiling at each other broadly. A strong bond developed between them at that moment. They landed successfully and started veering off toward the center of the lake.

Weeks earlier, a small mud ramp had naturally formed near the middle of the lake. Only a foot and a half tall and four feet wide, it was a mound of dry mud that was enough to send a fast quadrunner flying dangerously high into the air.

Blare was the first one to hit the mud ramp. He zoomed up and flew over twelve feet in the air. Then Frank hit the small ramp and started his high ascent. In mid air, they each left their quadrunners from the whipping centrifigal force and their bodies slammed together fast and hard. They were knocked unconscious and flipped around in the air with Frank landing head first down in the mud, while Blare landed flat on his stomach. The mud was still somewhat wet even though the edge of the low lake was still a long way from where they had landed, and most of the other surrounding mud was fully dried. Unfortunately, the mud that Blare and Frank had both landed in was a rare type of quicksand and when Frank hit head first he immediately began to sink. And so did Blare.

Down and down, deeper and deeper, a slow steady submersion of their bodies into the thick, stinking, algea-drenched mud took place. And their quadrunners sank too, although a little slower. The slurping, sucking sounds of the quicksand consuming the metal and plastic was loud and disturbing. When Blare awoke from being knocked out, he pointed his knees downward in an attempt to crawl out, but his legs were quickly captured by the devouring quicksand and down he started to go. Frank went even faster since when his head hit, his body was aimed like a slim projectile pointing down into the mud (before Frank’s body fully submerged, the last thing he heard was the Ride of the Valkyries theme playing in his mind as his soul floated off into the pleroma above). It didn’t take long for the powerful muddy quicksand to consume both of them and their quadrunners too, which they both dearly loved.

They were completely buried after only a few minutes and their four wheelers were totally out of sight as well; and the mystery of what happened to the two men would remain alive for many months since they had told none of their family members where they were going. Their riding trails quickly vanished as well since it rained a few hours after they had died slow agonizing deaths in the muddy quicksand. Only their trucks were visible.

But the next summer, when the lake had dried even more, an elderly gentleman was digging around quite deep into the lake with a small shovel, and he chanced upon Frank and Blare’s bodies fully petrified from the weird algea native to the area. The old man called 911 and a small bulldozer extracted Frank and Blare’s petrified corpses and both of their families consented to have them donated to the town museum, where they were put on full public display. Many researchers and scientists came from other states to view and study the specimens and take samples of the miraculous algea still clinging to their bodies that had helped fully preserve them and petrify their constitutions into a rock hard state.

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Death of the Ball Turret Gunner Poem With Guitar Solo

2009-02-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

What is Sack Posset?

2009-02-13T03:05:00.000-08:00

What Is Sack Posset?
By Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

In Bill Bryson’s book, Made In America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, he writes that Puritans were in the habit of imbibing an alcoholic concoction known as ‘sack posset.’ Bryson wrote that the drink was consumed in large quantities at social gatherings such as weddings, christenings, and funerals; and that the ingredients were an unappetizing mixture of curdled milk plus whatever type of intoxicant was at hand (mainly beer or wine), thus proving that Colonial Americans were quite adventuresome drinkers in the category of potent potables. Bryson went on to claim that almost no one drinks sack posset today.

However, through the magickal and fearsome powers of the internet, I googled ‘sack posset’ after reading about it in Bryson’s engaging book and found many traditional recipes for the “drink” popping up left and right. One typical recipe ran thus:

Two pints of cream; one pint of gooseberry wine; some “sack” which is a dry fortified wine with brandy such as Port or Sherry; eight egg yolks with only four whites; a few blades of mace; biscuit crumbs; and sugar. It goes on to list how the cream and mace are boiled together, then the wine heated as the eggs are beaten and whisked in, next cream is added and stirred until a thick
custard is produced, finally sugar is used to sweeten the entire mixture. (The source of this recipe is listed as the book, English Housewifry, published in 1764.)

Hence, the recipe above makes sack posset out to be more of a custard than an unappealing drink made from curdled milk and leftover booze. Shortly after finding this recipe on the internet, I then found a definition of sack posset that further confirmed the custard theory:

Sack posset: a custard made from wine and cream.
-Rare Receipts for Cookery (1654)

A little more searching and a different (more modern) variation of the sack posset recipe made it seem highly similar to a typical egg nog drink with brandy and sherry added.

Concerning Bill Bryson’s version of sack posset, when I consulted the online version of Webster’s 1828 English Dictionary, its definition for ‘posset’ was this:

POS’SET, noun, Latin: posca,
Milk curdled with wine or other liquor.

And in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary of 1913, one of the definitions for ‘sack’ lists it as a dry wine and goes on to say the word comes from the Latin, ‘siccus’ meaning dry or harsh.

So it appears Bryson did not investigate sack posset beyond merely looking up definitions for the two main words – that seemed to be plenty enough research for him.

But it seems he got it wrong since he’s so outnumbered by the numerous recipes for the custard version. Concerning custardlike recipes, a rhyming poem written by Sir Fleetwood Fletcher for making sack posset was printed in the New York Gazette in 1744, some lines of which are:

SACK-POSSET

“... O’er flaming coals together let them heat
Till the all-conquering sack dissolves the sweet.
O’er such another fire set eggs, twice ten,
New born from crowing cock and speckled hen;
[... many lines omitted here ...]
Then covered close, together let them dwell
Till Miss twice sings: You must not kiss and tell.
Each lad and lass snatch up their murdering spoon,
And fall on fiercely like a starved dragoon.”

Now there’s a poem. Murdering spoon. Crowing cocks. Starved dragoon. Wicked. What is a dragoon anyway. A foot-soldier who uses a horse for transportation. Cool. You can’t beat that. I bet those dragoons did get pretty hungry out there. Even hungry enough to eat a sack-posset custard. You betcha. I wonder what else they would eat in times of war. Who knows. Probably anything. Anything they could find. I’m rambling again. I better shut up.

When mentioning Bryson’s original “curdled milk + alcohol” definition of sack posset to a wise elderly gentleman who has resided in my hometown for nearly his entire life, he related to me the curious habit of certain men in our region of the south who would sit around on slow evenings consuming large quantities of cottage cheese while drinking copious amounts of strong beer. He thought this was quite similar to Bryson’s primitive recipe for sack posset and I must say I was compelled to agree with him. Actually, that combination sounds quite appetizing and I think I’ll have some of the ‘beer/cottage-cheese’ type of sack posset soon but also make the custard variety to see how they compare and I’ll write another article summarizing my results. Good idea. Wish me luck.

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.)

http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Stephen King Poem With Guitar Solos - IT

2009-01-14T05:05:00.000-08:00

BREAKING NEWS: Mimicker Device for Guitar

2009-01-14T05:03:00.000-08:00

New Mimicker Device for Electric Guitar Soon to be Released - Get more Information Technology

Ezra Pound Poem With Guitar Solos - In a Station of the Metro

2009-01-13T06:05:00.001-08:00

Diminished Scale Licks for Guitar by Jason Earls

2009-01-12T07:12:00.001-08:00

Diminished Scale Licks for Electric Guitar

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Music Culture scale diminished

Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy Trailer

2009-01-12T06:56:00.000-08:00

Guitar Style

2009-01-12T06:54:00.000-08:00

Developing Your Own Guitar Style by Jason Earls

The Eerie Voices of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

2009-01-11T02:37:00.000-08:00

New Mimicker Device for Electric Guitar Soon to Be Released

2009-01-10T04:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1376621/new_mimicker_device_for_electric_guitar.html?cat=15

Guitar Related Quotes

2009-01-09T02:32:00.000-08:00

Guitar Related Quotes
by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Quotes by famous guitar players, or quotes about playing the guitar itself, can occasionally be inspiring and fun to recite. During my early years of playing the guitar, when that was the only thing in the world that I lived for, sometimes I would lie in bed at night and ponder a particular phrase spoken by one of my favorite guitar heroes as I tried to fall asleep. Below are some of my favorite quotes by well-known guitarists, or quotes concerning playing the guitar itself. Maybe a couple of them will inspire you in some way.

“The guitar is a small orchestra. It is polyphonic. Every string is a different color, a different voice.”
– Andre Segovia

“You have to know a song so well, that while you are playing it, if someone were to blow your head off with a double-barrelled shotgun, your body would still finish the song.”
– Stefan Grossman (paraphrased)

“We didn't have any instruments, so I had to use my guitar.”
– Mother Maybelle Carter

“My guitar is not a thing. It is an extension of myself. It is who I am.”
– Joan Jett

“Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.”
– Johnny Depp (Depp was a guitarist in a moderately successful rock band before becoming an uber-successful movie star and sex symbol.)

“I was left with an urge to make the guitar sound like things it shouldn't be able to sound like.”
– Adrian Belew

“I can’t do anything but play guitar.”
– Tommy Bolin

“Lean your body forward slightly to support the guitar against your chest, for the poetry of the music should resound in your heart.”
– Andre Segovia

“My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.”
– Jimmy Page

“Any problem you can’t solve with a good guitar, is either unsolvable or it isn’t a problem.”
– Unknown

[Brief Commercial Break: Check out my guitar book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell on Amazon.com; if you know anyone who is a guitarist, they will definitely learn a lot from studying this book. Here is the description: Have you ever wanted to learn how to play the electric guitar? Have you ever wondered about arpeggios, modes, exotic scales, chords - (both simple and sophisticated), harmonics - (natural, artificial, plucked, tapped, and more?), how about “outside” playing or never-before published methods such as the “wah-wham” method or the “lizard down the throat” technique? Maybe you would simply like to have some tips for beginners. Whatever the case, the great instructional book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, covers nearly every guitar method used by modern day guitar virtuosos and explains them in simple terms anyone can understand; with extensive musical examples provided in tablature form. E-BOOK DOWNLOADS ONLY 5 DOLLARS - simply Google the title. From Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror and Red Zen comes the excellent instructional book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, now available at all online book stores. Now back to the Guitar Quotes.]

“Enthusiasm is everything. It must be taut and vibrating like a guitar string.”
– Pele (The Brazilian soccer player.)

“Passing the vodka bottle. And playing the guitar.”
- Keith Richards (His answer to how he stays in good physical shape.)

“Shut Up ‘n’ Play Yer Guitar”
- Frank Zappa (Title of one of his albums.)

“I don’t personally know Michael Angelo or his music, but regarding contests and who is faster or whatever, it doesn't interest me. Trying to determine who picks more notes per second is ridiculous. What is important is the quality of the music and how well it speaks to fans who love it.”
– Yngwie Malmsteen

“The time I burned my guitar it was like a sacrifice. You sacrifice the things you love. I love my guitar.”
– Jimi Hendrix

“I want every girl in the world to pick up a guitar and start screaming.”
-Courtney Love

“The hippest thing you can do is not play at all. Just listen.”
– Lennie Tristano

“I just hate to be in one corner. I hate to be put as only a guitar player, or either only as a songwriter, or only as a tap dancer. I like to move around.”
– Jimi Hendrix

“Except for a few guitar chords, everything I've learned in my life that is of any value I've learned from women.”
– Glenn Frey

“I'm glad there are a lot of guitar players pursuing technique as diligently as they possibly can, because it leaves this whole other area open to people like me.”
-Richard Thompson

“I took the guitar with me to the bathroom. Everywhere I went, I played it–”
-Chet Atkins

Source:

“Guitar Related Quotes,” How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Jason Earls, Pleroma Publications, 2007

(Thanks for reading. If you know of any magazines that would like to publish this article, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store. Thanks again.)

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Zombie Guitar - Undead Riffage & Solos

2009-01-09T01:42:00.001-08:00

Guitar Lesson: Become a Mystic on the Electric Guitar

2008-12-31T04:49:00.000-08:00

Become A Mystic on the Electric Guitar
by Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

(WARNING: This article contains somewhat bizarre or unusual exercises and commentary that some may consider “philosophical” or “spiritual” in nature; it’s basically an “outside-the-box” thinking lesson.)

A mystic can be defined in many ways. Perhaps the definition I would agree with most is, a person who intuitively experiences (or strives for) obscure types of knowledge through the practice of various “religious” methods such as meditation, praying, study of ancient texts, etc. Examples of mystical experiences could be 1) A feeling of “one-ness” with the infinite forces of the universe, 2) Having a sense of timelessness, 3) Seeing beyond normal modes of morality, 4) Witnessing various images of God, etc.

To explain mysticism a bit further using different words, and with the goal of being as objective as possible, we could say that the practice of mysticism consists of certain “religious-oriented” people seeking after divine attributes of God, with some claiming they experience various mystical states while doing so; and hence the people who engage in such activities can be called “mystics.”

Note that some philosophers and logicians (Wittgenstein, for example) have claimed that mysticism is really not so “special” or “extraordinary” after all. Instead, they view mysticism in the following way: certain objects or things exist in this world, yet simultaneously these things cannot be explained, or are inexpressible – i.e. they cannot be talked about in a way that makes sense, which alone constitutes them being “mystical” in relation to other things in the world.

Personally, I believe in mysticism only in this way: I realize man’s five senses are limited, thus there are things we cannot experience in any way as a result. Yet I also realize there are certain “sensitive” individuals in the world who experience things other people cannot because they possess a heightened sense of awareness, or are especially hyper-vigilant, or have other “extrasensory” perception(s); and these hyperaware individuals, if they focus enough of their energy or attention on striving for mystical experiences, may be able to attain something of the “divine” experiences they are seeking.

The skeptic usually denies the mystic’s claims and says that mystical states do not exist. But realize these doubts are only possible since mystical experiences cannot be put into words and because they defy logic, “common sense,” normal modes of reasoning, etc.

So what does mysticism have to do with music? What does it have to do with playing the guitar? Plenty.

Music is obviously an extremely powerful medium. Many people consider music to have certain “spiritual” properties. And almost every individual in the world likes some type of music. Remember also that certain logicians and philosophers have claimed that mysticism concerns itself primarily with what IS and IS NOT expressible. (To reiterare Wittgenstein’s opinion of mysticism: certain “things” in the world show themselves, yet they cannot be put into words, hence these are mystical things.) So what are the common denominators here? Silence and nonsilence (music); plus spirituality – where these themes overlap, we can hopefully extrapolate those qualities to make them more effective.

Because I want to state my overall purpose in this article as clearly as possible, I will write this sentence: By choosing to become a mystic on the electric guitar, you will strive to have “divine” mystical experiences as you perform; and if you achieve any, you will use your guitar to convey these experiences to others through the music you create with your guitar.

As you can probably guess, I cannot list an exact formula, or any specific exercises using guitar tablature, to allow you to convey the mystical experiences you might have (if any). This article is explaining an experimental, outside-the-box, guitar technique in which you’re pretty much on your own. Nevertheless, here is an outline of an algorithm you may want to attempt:

Strap on your guitar. Meditate or concentrate on the power inside yourself and the universe and try to align yourself with those forces – seek to have a mystical experience (ecstasies or visions or knowledge gained) while playing your guitar. Translate those feelings into your music. Share them with your audience. Make them feel the mystical states you experience. That is probably as far as you can go.

Most mystical experiences will be inexpressible. But perhaps music is the proper vehicle for them. Silence. Remember, there is no silence, which John Cage adequately proved.

At the risk of repeating myself, I will list a few more sentences and questions for you to contemplate, since the exact ideas in this chapter may be difficult to understand.

1. The mystical guitarist uses his dedication to esoteric spirituality to inspire himself and transcend the boundaries of what a more “normal” guitarist can achieve.

2. Inspiration to compose and perform music comes from states of the mind (and other areas) that are not fully understood by psychology or any other discipline. Perhaps it is possible for a musician to go into these and other realms of the mind that are inaccessible to others and be able to pull music out of them. Wouldn’t this be considered mystical?

3. The mystical guitarist’s main goal is to make powerful music so they can share their “divine” experiences with others and transport people’s consciousnesses to other planes more beautiful and more extraordinary.

4. Because many people indentify music as being spiritual in some way, and since music IMPACTS people’s emotions in a myriad of ways with no known method of describing exactly how the process works, is music not itself a case of the mystical?

5. The mystical guitarist nurtures every aspect of spirituality within them, continually focusing on it as they are playing and improvising, striving to feed their devotion to becoming one with the “metaphysical realm” since they know it will elevate them to greater levels on their instrument as well as helping to increase their mental health and spirituality.

6. If a mystic strives after union with the forces of the universe, and they are a virtuoso musician, and they do in fact have a genuine mystical experience, can the same religious or mystical qualities they feel be passed on to members of an audience through their playing? I realize the chances of someone being a mystic and a virtuoso musician simultaneously, then experiencing something “divine” as they are performing, are all very slim, but with six billion people in the world, surely someone somewhere at some point in history could do it, couldn’t they? Is it possible to have a divine experience while playing a musical instrument at the same time? Or would it take most of their concentration to simply play the music? Not if they’re a virtuoso.

If you have a mystical experience while playing your guitar and then share those feelings with members of your audience, I believe you will be the first musician to ever accomplish this feat.

One more thing: I believe it’s actually easier to become a “monk” on the electric guitar than a mystic. When I was 16 years old, many people would have probably considered my behavior similar to that of a monk’s living in a monastery. I would do nothing but practice my guitar for most of the day, usually around 9 or 10 hours. I had very few friends at the time, and I would read and study guitar magazines for hours, using them for both entertainment and learning purposes. I abstained from alcohol and tobacco and I lived on a diet of Coke, omelets, and egg rolls. I did not have a girlfriend and rarely attended parties or social gatherings. If I would have been a more spiritual or religious person at that time, I could have definitely been considered a genuine monk. The only thing that mattered to me during that period of my life was practicing my guitar as much as possible.

When I finally got a girlfriend a year or two later, she was jealous of the time I spent with my guitar, and once she stated, “You love your guitar more than me, don’t you?”

“No,” I lied.

After that, nearly all of my girlfriends have claimed that I prefered my guitar over them. Sometimes it was true and other times it was not.

Although I believe it’s easier to become a monk on the guitar, I think it’s much more important to strive to become a true mystic. Good luck with your attempts.

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you know of any magazines that would like to publish this article, please contact the author. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store. Thanks again.)
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Anna Kournikova Tribute

2008-12-29T02:21:00.000-08:00

bang bang improv - yeah yeah yeahs - karen o

2008-12-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

Scream Like You Mean It

2008-12-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Scream Like You Mean It
By Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

The music studio was dark and baleful; a few dim red lights, a lone yellow bulb in a far corner illuminating the abundance of electronic instrumentation and band equipment setting around the main recording room.

The recording session was over now. The producer, William Noxquist, who had been running the entire session sighed loudly and slammed his fist down on the mixing board in the engineer’s room. He mumbled a curse and cradled his forehead in one hand. It had been a horrible recording day. The lead singer, Roan Lombardy of the band Jet-Set Llama, had a major ego problem (typical L.S.D. – lead singer disease); and William had a naturally sarcastic personality, so of course the two didn’t mesh well which had caused arguments after almost every take. To make matters worse, the lead singer’s girlfriend, Samantha, entered the studio as soon as the session was over and began screaming incessantly and ordering everyone around. The band members all hated her and William did too. Bitchy Samantha, with her large fake boobs and her butt-cheek implants and her extensive facial surgery that gave her that off-putting Michael Jackson look.

“I hope you weren’t too hard on Roan today,” Samantha told William as she walked into the small engineer’s room. “You know how he treats me when he’s had a bad singing day. And you just love putting people through this recording torture chamber for hours, don’t you?”

William scowled and glared at her. “Well, little Missy,” he said sarcastically, “Roan’s out in the hallway waiting for you now. Why not go out there and check his mental status for yourself and not badger me about it. Go ahead and haul his dumb ass outta here because I’ve had more than enough of him for one day. You think you can do that for me, sweetie?”

“Why are you always so damn sarcastic, William?” Samantha said. “Why can’t you be nice for just one freakin’ day? Or act the least bit respectful towards me and the other band members of Jet-Set Llama.”

“Hey S-s-s (he almost said ‘slut’) Samantha, I’m dead tired so don’t start telling me how to behave! You’ve got no idea what I’ve been through today. Even before work I had a terrible day.”

She squinted and bunched up her huge tits with the top portion of her arms, then brushed back her new hairdo with a defiant gesture. Surprisingly, she plopped down in a chair beside William.

“Do you wanna know what happened?” he said. “I swear if you hear it, it’ll ruin your day too.”

“Go ahead. It won’t bother me.”

“All right, here goes... On my early morning jog at around 7 a.m., before coming to the studio, I decided to run by the park. I wanted to take a different route to help stave off the boredom of running and when I got near the basketball courts I noticed two little asshole teenagers pulling trash out of a garbage dumpster and stringing it through the trees and throwing it on the sidewalk. Of course that pissed me off since I work hard volunteering on the weekends to keep this town beautiful, and I knew the kids were nothing but little degenerate pricks since I’d seen them around town before and knew their family. So I ran in their direction to shoo them away. I started jogging faster and my face reddened with anger watching them litter up the park. They didn’t even notice me they were so busy vandalizing. Then I saw one of the punks go over to the concession stand, a small blue building, now closed for the winter, and one of them squatted down beside it. I ran closer and they still didn’t see or hear me and I watched that punk squatting by the little building and gradually realized what he was doing: TAKING A SHIT RIGHT BY THE CONCESSION STAND! RIGHT THERE IN PUBLIC! Finally they both heard me running toward them and the shitting one stood up and pulled on his pants, but not before dragging a white sheet of notebook paper up the crack of his ass to wipe it. I couldn’t believe one of these punks would just take a crap in the park in broad daylight. Taking a dump right by the concession stand where people sell food and other people eat it! Can you fucking believe that! Uncouth little retards! They both ran and the one struggled with his pants and I was so freakin’ pissed off I started shouting and they both got on their bikes and pedalled off as I ran on, out of breath screaming at them. I went over to the small covered area where the kid had crapped and saw numerous long winding brown turds scattered all over the cement. Jesus Christ, a tremendous amount of shit came out of that little scumbag’s ass and it smelled like a backed-up cesspool. I felt like calling the police and reporting the incident but I had to get to work and couldn’t fool with it. So I jogged home and took a shower and came to work. That’s the kind of morning I’ve had. Then I have to come to this depressing-assed recording studio and be forced to endure your boyfriend’s nasty prima donna attitude and your constant bitching. What a day... My life truly sucks...”

Samantha slapped the arms of her chair and pushed herself up. She ignored William’s story about the kid crapping in the park and focused instead on his degrading statements about Roan and herself: “You know what, William? You’re nothing but an asshole. Don’t ever talk that way about my man! You’re lucky to even be here recording Roan Lombardy’s incredible voice! He knew Axl Rose in Indianna when they were teenagers, they grew up together, and he even inspired Axl to become a singer and also secretly helped him write some of the songs that later showed up on Chinese Democracy. Roan is a major talent while you’re only a C-level producer! You don’t know jack squat about real talent! Yeah, I know he can barely remember the lyrics to the new songs and he sings off key quite a bit, but you’re still lucky to be able to work with him on this record which is going to sell through the roof and make me at least ten million bucks!”

William sneered at her and shook his head, “Fuck you, you stupid shallow bitch. Get outta here before I slap your fake face off. You didn’t listen to one goddamn word I said. Now leave and take Roan Lombardy the prick with you and go fuck yourselves. I’m just wasting my time talking to you. You’re not even supposed to be in this recording studio anyway!”

Samantha laughed and shook her head, then squeezed her lips together tightly. She stood up to leave but wanted to give William Noxquist one last thing to remember before she left the studio. So she raised her left leg high and stomped down on his foot with her pointed high heel, which penetrated William’s boot and entered the top part of his foot.

It took awhile to register, but the pain eventually traveled to his brain and it felt almost unbearable. William screamed, reached down and grabbed his foot, then growled and lunged at Samantha, taking hold of her throat. When he jumped at her, his arm accidentally pushed the record button. He started choking her and she started screaming – deranged squeals and bloodcurdling shrieks issuing from her luscious lips. He squeezed harder and shook her neck a little and Samantha’s shirt ripped in front from her struggling to free herself. Her shirt gradually ripped more and more until finally her large fake breasts were released.

William looked down at her tits. He gasped at the large dark aureolas and the erect half-inch nipples. They were beautiful. His eyes protruded and he felt his genital region pop a boner. But he continued choking her anyway and she kept on screaming maniacally. Then William leaned down and licked one of her gorgeous nipples. He moved a hand down and squeezed one of her fake tits, then sucked on both breasts some more.

High-pitched screams still erupted from Samantha’s throat and William finally stopped sucking, raised up and gritted his teech and choked her harder. The sounds coming from Samantha’s luscious mouth were shrill and disturbing unhinged caterwauls of insane noise and she sounded like she was near death. He listened to her screams and became worried if he would ever release her or if she’d die. He seemed powerless to stop the choke. He stared down at her fake boobs again, now covered with his own saliva. He felt his massive hard-on raging in his pants so much he suspected it might tear right through the fabric.

The recording button on the console was still glowing a brilliant red. William was still recording Samantha’s freakish screams of death without even realizing it. He listened again to the intriguing noises issuing from her mangled throat and was amazed.

Finally the lead singer of Jet-Set Llama, Roan Lombardy, heard the screams in the hall where he’d accidentally fallen asleep waiting for Samantha to pick him up in her BMW. Her loud disturbing screams had forced him to awake and he groggily rose from the couch in the hallway and ran into the recording studio to investigate.

Inside he saw William Noxquist, the producer he despised, with his hands wrapped tightly around his girlfriend’s neck. Her blouse was ripped and her large succulent breasts exposed as they glistened with a slimy coating. Roan saw William with a large tent in the front of his pants and the producer seemed in a deep daze or trance as he continued strangling the woman Roan loved with all his heart and soul. Her outlandish death shrieks continued unabated, and it seemed like Samantha would eventually run out of air, but she never did.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE?” Roan Lombardy yelled.

Roan always kept two weapons handy for emergencies such as this:

1) A pair of homemade “brass” knuckles that he’d made out of lead.

2) A small .22 pistol with pearl handles

Both weapons were tucked away deep inside Roan’s snakeskin boots since last summer he’d been robbed and almost beaten to death by a pimp in an alley and had decided to carry sufficient protection ever since.

He bent down and extracted the brass knuckles from his boot and slipped them on. He went into the engineer’s room, lurched back as far as possible and slammed William in the temple. The dazed producer flew and landed on the mixing console a few feet away. Roan then took off the brass knuckles and brought out the .22 pistol. He aimed right between William’s eyes and let fly with five slugs that shattered the producer’s skull into thousands of tiny fragments as brain tissue and blood flew everywhere. Roan wiped the gore from his face and aimed the pistol at William’s chest and put another slug in his heart just for the hell of it.

Samantha was now passed out on the floor. Roan went over to her. He pulled her shirt back over her fake breasts and tried to button it a little. Samantha was making gurgling noises in her throat and Roan looked at the bright red marks covering her neck. That son-of-a-bitch almost killed her, he thought.

“Wake up, Samantha!” he yelled. After slapping her cheeks lightly, she awoke groaning and drooling and he wiped her face with his thumb. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “I’ll get you out of here right away.”

Then he looked down and noticed the recording light still glowing red on the console below.

“What the hell is that doing on? Was William recording something in here?”

He went over and rewound the file and pressed the play button.

The horrific sounds of Samantha screaming while William choked her filled the recording studio at maximum volume.

Hot and cold chills traveled up and down Roan’s spine.

William Noxquist had captured every ghoulish shriek and eldritch squeal and freakish gasp that issued from Samantha’s throat as he tried to choke the life out of her and thus caused her body to feel excruciating pain.

Roan’s eyes opened wide with pure musical excitement. He couldn’t believe how awesome the screaming of someone near death sounded. A combination of “almost-lost” existence on a terror-filled planet with the bone-chilling fear of postmodern death lurking deep within her subconscious. “Gruesome,” he said. “I love it. I’ve got to use these sounds on our next album. Her screams sound incredible, I always knew she had a superb voice. Surely Samantha won’t mind if we use them as long as I give her credit on the album.”

Over the next few weeks, Jet-Set Llama worked on hiring a new producer for their next album which they decided to call, “Scream Like You Mean It.” Roam Lombardy was cleared of killing William Noxquist on a self-defense claim for his girlfriend, Samantha. And Roan also placed the sounds of Samantha screaming in the middle of their first single, “Blood On A Dog’s Dick” as special effects during the instrumental section; and he also positioned more of her vocal wailings at the very end of the album, which he thought acted as an eerie outro expressing even more harrowing music to be released from the band in the future. The single became an immediate hit and climbed the musical charts; and later that year, Jet-Set Llama won a Grammy for ‘best rock album’ and ‘most stunningly original use of special effects,’ all thanks to Samantha (and William Noxquist, one of the greatest music producers in the world who was tragically killed at the peak of his abilities.)

-end-

(Thanks for reading. If you know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact me.)

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Red Zen, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Spacing Out on Cocaine

2008-12-18T06:06:00.000-08:00

I like Obama, I voted for him. Here's a short story in which Obama makes an appearance. I'm not making fun of Obama, I don't know why I added him as a character to this story, it just formed that was as I was writing it. I hope you like it.

Spacing Out on Cocaine
by Jason Earls, author of Cocoon of Terror & Red Zen
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

“Where are you going?” Lars’ girlfriend asked.

“Be back in a minute,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit pensive and need to meditate in the bathroom before my last set.”

“But remember, you’ve got Cocaine coming up!” she yelled. “It’s your best song!”

“I know. I’ll be ready...” Lars said, heading toward the bathroom.

Jesus, give me some peace, bitch, he thought pushing open the bathroom door. His girlfriend was always on his back, bitching and moaning, pushing him to advance in his musical career so that he would make enough money to pay for the plastic surgery necessary to turn herself into a supermodel.

But now he was getting ready to play the last set of the night. Only 45 minutes of music left, then the gig would be over and Lars could go home and relax with a few cold beers. Lars was the lead guitarist in the band Diaphanous-Dolphin and one of his most popular cover songs, Cocaine by Eric Clapton, was next on the set list. Lars could solo over Cocaine all night long without ever running out of ideas: the simple E to D chord progression, the E minor pentatonic scale, and Lars’ naturally bluesy vocals were all he needed to set the crowd ablaze.

Lars had a ritual before the last set of every gig. A secret ritual. He liked to go into the bathroom to regroup and energize himself by snorting a couple of lines of cocaine. It helped him get through the nights when he didn’t feel like playing. Just two lines of coke would give him plenty of physical energy and open his mind to considerably expand his guitar phrasing. You see, while tripping out in the pentatonic box, a lot of guitarists have a tendency to repeat themselves; and Lars couldn’t stand playing any of the same phrases twice during the course of a gig. He always strived to unleash fresh stimulating melodies upon the crowd, thinking that he could improvise as well as saxaphone legend, Charlie Parker, even though as a musician Lars would not have even registered as a tiny pubic hair on the late great Charlie Parker’s buttocks.

Lars went into the bathroom stall and pulled a baggie from his front pocket, then he took out his wallet from his back pocket and sat down on the toilet. He noticed a Hunter S. Thompson book on the floor, reached down and grabbed it, placing it on his lap. He opened the baggie and poured out some of the cocaine. Next he took a credit card and a straw from his wallet, formed two lines of coke on the book, then snorted the cocaine up into both nostrils – first the right, then the left – with two powerful blasting inhalations.

Ahhh, whooo, that stuff really has some kick, Lars thought as he shook his head and squeezed the tip of his nose.

He put the drug paraphernalia away and threw the Hunter S. Thompson book on the floor. Then he felt something loosen in his lower stomach, so he leaned up and pulled down his pants and sat back down on the toilet. A good crap before the last set always helped him a lot too.

Lars sat there voiding his bowels, thinking about his present situation in life: Wow, I’m almost 40 years old and I’m still playing in a little rock band at these ridiculously small clubs. I can barely make enough money to even survive. I have no chance of ever recording an album, no chance of touring or getting a decent band manager. I play with guys who aren’t even creative enough to write one fucking original song. Not a damn song of their own, or who will allow me to play one of my own originals. I just perform other musician’s material every freakin’ night – promoting other people’s music, like a chumped-out loser working for free. I’ll never get anywhere with this crap. I’ll never do anything in music that’s worthwhile like the heroes that I grew up listening to: Metallica, Guns ‘N Roses, The Sex Pistols, Rick Springfield, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, AC/DC, Miles Davis, Slayer, Billy Squier, Cream, Led Zeppelin, Pantera, Ozzy, Megadeth, Aerosmith, The Swans, Van Halen, Black Flag, John Lee Hooker, Poison, Tone Loc, The Butthole Surfers, R.L. Burnside, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Black Sabbath, The Doors, The Beastie Boys, Junior Kimbrough, Nirvana... I’m just living a stupid wannabe rock star dream. You’d think I would have grown up by now. But no, not me. My day job at the nursing home is fucking horrible. I’m truly screwed, burnt out, wasted, dead, cynical, daunted, defeated, fucked over, jaded, destroyed, and pissed off. But you know what? I don’t care. Because I’m getting ready to go out there and play E.C.’s Cocaine after snorting some cocaine of my own and it’s going to be fantastic. I’ll lose myself in the music. I’ll trip out and fly away. Hell, I’ve played Cocaine a million times by now but I’m going to go out play it the best ever in just a few minutes. I’ll release every ounce of emotion and anger from my body and my mind and my transcendental soul to show everyone in the audience that I’m not a loser. I’m a damn good guitar player, I know that much. I’ll show everyone. Nope, I’m not going to sit here thinking about my shitty life and becoming more and more depressed. I’m going to go out there and kick ass on stage and then I’ll be a real man. No one will ever call me a pussy or a pansy ever again. Fuck it, I’m a man.

Lars grabbed some toilet paper and wiped his ass, then he stood up and pulled on his pants and fastened his belt with the large silver Guns ‘N Roses belt buckle. He went out of the stall and over to a mirror. Although Lars loved blues and classic rock the most, he affected a heavy metal look on stage: Faded jean jacket cut off at the sleeves to reveal his heavily-muscled arms; leather straps with long silver spikes wrapped around both wrists; a large silver chain with small golden guitars hanging around his neck; a big blue battleaxe tattooed across his whole throat; his hairy chest visible below showing his large pectoral muscles; long flowing black hair cut into a perfect mullet shape. “Looking good,” he said, smiling into the mirror.

He went out to the stage and grabbed his black Gretsch Electromatic solid body guitar and put it on. He turned to his drummer and counted off the tune and they started the E to D chord progression of Cocaine and the audience hooted and cheered. Lars took a brief solo at the beginning, bending some notes, adding a wide stinging vibrato ala Albert King. His guitar sound was that of a man mega-pissed off, on the brink of defeat, almost every ounce of life sucked from his haggard body, a person filled with almost homicidal despair and angst, and every person in the crowd could feel it, because each of them felt exactly the same way Lars did. He stepped over to the microphone, grimaced and puckered his lips, then started belting out the lyrics.

If you wanna hang out you’ve gotta take her out - cocaine... If you wanna get down, go down to the ground - cocaine... When your day is done and you wanna run on - cocaine. If you got bad news, you wanna kick them fuckin’ blues - cocaine... She don’t lie, she don’t lie, no baby she dont fuckin’ lie - COCAINE!

Lars sang the lyrics so intensely he started feeling searing pain in his vocal chords, but he kept on going, hoping he could make it to the solo section, where he could relax and forget about everything and trip out on his guitar with complete abandon and ferocity.

The solo section arrived and he began with some slow melodic phrases in the 7th position of the neck, bending and releasing and plucking the strings with his fingers, then he worked his way up to the 12th position and played some fast pentatonic quintuplets and transitioned into quick bursts of finger-tapping and trills. Then, for no reason at all, he moved up to the 22nd fret and bent the highest note on his fret board two full steps while leaning into the microphone and screaming “COCAINE!” in the highest falsetto voice he could manufacture; and as he did so, he felt something snap inside his brain – all of the cocaine he’d snorted earlier kicked in at that precise moment with complete force.

He blacked out for a fraction of a second, then awoke to see President-elect Barack Obama’s disembodied head floating before him in space. Obama’s head was surrounded by golden light coming through dark clouds with a few white feathers floating and descending. The music Lars had been playing earlier could still be heard faintly in the background, with him playing guitar somewhere down below.

“What’s going on?” Lars asked.

“I don’t know, what’s going on?” Barack Obama’s floating head responded.

“What are you doing here?”

“Nothing, what are you doing here?”

“What do you mean ‘nothing.’ You’re Barrack Obama and you’re floating here in front of me. I’m supposed to be playing a gig right now, but I’m somewhere in outer space. Let me go back down to where the music is.”

“I’m not holding you here. You’ve chosen to be talking to me. This is your fault, Lars... Don’t worry though, your gig is still going fine down below with you still playing guitar. You’re just having an out-of-body experience at the moment... By the way, I’m not Barrack Obama.”

Lars looked down at his fingers. He was still holding his guitar, a few white feathers fell on the fretboard, he could hear music faintly in his style of playing, but his fingers were not moving. “You are too Barrack Obama. I may be spaced out on cocaine right now, but I’m not crazy. Of course you’re Barrack, you look exactly like him.”

“Perhaps I do resemble him, but it’s only because our brains have been swapped. I’m really Eric Clapton.”

“What.”

“A doctor swapped our brains. My brain – Eric Clapton’s – was put inside Barack Obama’s skull, which you are seeing now, and Barack’s brain was put into my head. You’re actually talking to Eric Clapton right now, not Obama. Can’t you tell by my British accent?”

“I thought that was a little odd. Still, this is ridiculous. Way too confusing. I can’t talk to Eric Clapton when he looks like Obama. Aren’t you going to be our president soon?”

“I guess so. I’m the President-elect.”

“Do you know anything about politics?”

“Of course not, I’m Eric Clapton. I only know how to play blues guitar.”

“Wow, the United States is really going to be fucked up soon.”

“Yes it is, but I can’t help it... Let’s change the subject. I’m here to give you something.”

“What’s that?” Lars said.

“The essence of all music summed up in one melody.”

“Pardon?”

“I am going to give you a melody that will contain the essence of all music.”

“Yeah, sure. What would I do with that?”

Obama’s face fell into a scowl. “Don’t you realize how powerful that would be? The melody will contain the essence of every musical phrase in the universe, every prior one congealed into it. This melody will be an otherworldly divine phrase so mesmerizing when it’s played audiences will become hypnotized and fall in love with you and become your greatest fans for the rest of your life.”

“Uh huh, right,” Lars said sarcastically. He was now in a slight stupor, but could still hear himself playing electric guitar down below on Earth and he was losing interest in the conversation. He turned around and tried to see through the dark clouds to where the gig was taking place, but only blurry images of the people phasing in and out were visible. “I really need to get back down there. Is this almost over?”

Barrack Obama’s floating head continued, “If you record the melody on an album of your own, realize that it will instantly become the best-selling record of all time. And I mean OF ALL TIME.”

“I could certainly use that. But what happens when other musicians hear it, they’ll have the melody too.”

“No they won’t. I’ll make it so that no other musician will be allowed to play it because they’ll be blocked from fully hearing all the notes – one tone will automatically cancel out in their minds and they won’t be able to receive the full musical phrase.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No. It’s weird, but not impossible.”

Lars hung his head in thought for a few seconds. “All right, I believe you, Mr. Clapton. But I just want to get back to my gig now.”

“So you’re ready to receive the melody?” Obama’s head said.

“Yeah.”

The floating head began humming in a soft whisper but Lars couldn’t hear the entire melody before the whole world turned black, then surreal science fiction images appeared in his brain, pictures of quarks melting into gigantic noses, skinny nude supermodel-androids doing back flips on floating tramplines, gluons exploding into ferocious balls of fireworks, and Obama’s face transforming into a geometrical 24-dimensional crystal lattice representation of God – every one of the macabre images freezing inside of Lars’ mind. He looked down at his guitar and saw how quantum chromodynamics drove the inner workings of the electronics and he instantly understood every substance in the universe on a subatomic level; but he also received Clapton’s divine melody in the midst of all this outlandish information, without ever realizing it.

He awoke on stage in his own body, still soloing away on his guitar. He turned around and signaled the band to end the tune, then he hit a final E major chord with the drummer who pounded a loud crash on his cymbals.

But after finishing the song, everything that had happened was still too much for Lars to digest: him soloing too intensely, screaming Cocaine in a ludicrously high falsetto, talking to Eric Clapton’s brain inside of Obama’s skull, seeing the disturbing science fiction images, Lars could not take in all of this material, so he fell back on the stage and blacked out from total shock and exhaustion.

His girlfriend was watching out in the audience. She shrieked when she saw Lars hit the floor and slowly made her way through the crowd, the room was now filled with awkward silences and embarrassed looks, which she tried to ignore. She climbed the stairs and went over to Lars, unplugged his guitar so that he could keep it on, then hoisted him up, throwing his now lifeless body over her shoulder. She carried the poor unconscious bastard off the stage toward the dressing rooms.

Lars awoke while riding on his girlfriend’s back. He glanced around still in a deep daze. “Where is he?”

She didn’t put him down, but walked faster to the dressing room. “Where is who?”

“Obama’s head. Did he give it to me? Do I have it?”

“Have what? What are you talking about?”

“The melody! It’s really important, the greatest melody of all time. An instant best seller if ever recorded on an album.” Lars paused and looked around as he passed a few audience members who were staring at him with their mouths open.

“You’ve gone crazy, Lars,” his girlfriend said, stilling carrying him on her back through the club with her powerful legs. “You’ve been snorting cocaine again in the bathroom, haven’t you? Goddamn it I told you never to do coke before playing Cocaine again. The double whammy effect from it is way too dangerous. You know you can’t handle heavy drugs so you better knock it off. You’re going to fry your brain and never be able to play another song again.”

Lars looked over his girlfriend’s shoulder, he stared down at the ground, bouncing as she carried him back stage. He heard a faint melody begin somewhere deep in his brain. A nice slow phrase, hypnotic and ethereal, which gradually came to full fruition in his mind. It was the divine melody that Eric Clapton had given him from Obama’s head while he was spaced out on cocaine, the greatest melody of all time. It slowly gained in volume and intensity, the phrase picking up in tempo until the entire thing played out entirely in his addled mind. He started humming it a little as he rode on his girlfriend’s back, but he was careful to leave out a few notes so she wouldn’t hear the full thing. He felt now that the musical phrase contained the true secret of the universe and the meaning of life and was more powerful than a hundred nuclear explosions combined.

“THERE IT IS! I GOT IT! HE REALLY GAVE ME THE MELODY! ALL RIGHT! I KNOW IT’S GOING TO GIVE ME A MAJOR WORLD-WIDE HIT SOON! FUCKING A! SHIT YEAH! OH. MY. GOD. I’M GOING TO BE A TRUE ROCK STAR SOON.”

“Shut up and calm down!” his girlfriend said. “You can lie down in a minute.”

But Lars was not sick, he was only excited about the melody, although he knew better than to play it on his guitar that day, or even the next. He was going to save it. For better times and greater things to come. Soon he would be making millions of smackaroos, hypnotizing audiences, making ladies chase him through the streets, wrecking hotel rooms, raising hell on airplanes in mid-flight, receiving insane fan letters, breaking into casinos, swilling hard liquor and doing every drug known to man, yeah, soon Lars would have the whole fucking world by the balls.

His girlfriend set him down in the dressing room, he leaned back and fell onto a cool leather couch setting behind him. He still had his Gretsch Electromatic around his neck. He slid his hand up and down the fret board, trying to get the feel of his guitar again and pull himself out of the lingering cocaine daze. He played a few blues licks and strummed an E9 chord, then fingered an A7. Everything was quiet in the room, his girlfriend had left to get him a glass of cool water.

Lars heard movement outside in the hallway. Footsteps getting louder.

A man walked into his dressing room. It was President-elect, Barack Obama. Wearing a black suit with a red tie. Lars stared at him with his mouth open. Obama came closer, holding out his hand. Obama said, “Hello, Lars, how are you?”

Lars’ mouth fell open even wider and his fingers stopped moving on his guitar.

He noticed Obama was not speaking with an English accent now. But he still didn’t know whether it was Eric Clapton in there, or the President-elect.

“What are you doing here?” Lars said.

“Play me the melody you were given...”

-end-

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Neometropolis, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

New Title for Next Guitar Book

2008-12-18T06:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I received a comment on one of my guitar videos. I would guess that perhaps 90% of the comments I receive are positive, but this one was negative:

"I lost interest at 1m 26. Does your book cover how to play for the song? How to play the blues with a feel for the blues? Or just the mindless shredding on show here?"

I like technical guitar playing (Shawn Lane is my favorite technical guitarist), but I do appreciate tone, phrasing, and feel in a guitarist moreso than shredding ability. Nevertheless, the person who commented gave me an idea for the title of my next guitar book. I might call it:

How to Shred Mindlessly

Good idea?

Fast Finger-Tapping Pattern for Electric Guitar

2008-12-17T04:36:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

A finger-tapping pattern that allows one to produce a rapid succession of notes that sound exceedingly fast with only a modicum of finger effort is the following:

{ Tapped note, Middle note, High note, Middle note, Low note; Repeat ...}

What the pattern means is that although the exact frets involved may change, as long as the basic pattern of pitches above is retained, you will be able to produce a musical phrase that sounds incredibly fast, depending upon the natural movement and speed of your fingers, of course. There’s just something special and unique about this particular tapping pattern that generates an abundance of speed for some unknown reason.

As far as a guitar lick that follows the pattern, here is one example (all notes are either tapped, hammered-on, or pulled-off to):

-14t-11-12-11-9-14t-11-12-11-9--
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------

This lick is based on notes from the C# minor scale. I will normally play the lick more than twice, continuing it for maybe three or four bars. Another thing I should mention is that with this pattern you will sometimes be “cramming in” notes, i.e., you won’t be too worried if some of the pitches are actually played out of order occasionally, since your fingers will be moving as fast as possible. With this pattern you will primarily be concerned with obtaining a maximum amount of speed and you don’t want anything interfering with that goal.

Here is another lick that follows the main pattern:

-14t-8-10-8-7-14t-8-10-8-7---
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------

This one is based on notes from the B Phrygian mode), although other keys can also be interpreted. Notice that our original pattern is maintained {tap, middle, high, middle, low; repeat}, but that now we are simply using a different combination of notes.

Finally, here is an example using notes from the D minor scale:

-13t-10-12-10-8-13t-10-12-10-8--
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
------------------------------------

It’s interesting that when one taps notes that are closer together on the fretboard, i.e. tapping at the 13th fret while your highest fingered note is on the 12th fret as in the lick above, it seems to sound even faster.

I first ran across this tapping pattern in an Yngwie Malmsteen solo. He played it in the key of E minor using the last fingering combination, and he executed the lick so incredibly fast it sounded like angry bumblebees circling a potential victim.

Of course the thing to do with the main pattern is – (while still retaining the basic order of pitches) – experiment with different tapped notes and fingering combinations until you find something that suits your particular improvisation or the song you are playing. (You could even adapt the underlying pattern to a different fingering combination altogether if something else better fits the natural movement of your hands.) Also try the pattern on different strings.

Remember, the main thing to keep in mind with a tapping pattern of this nature is that if you’re ever in the middle of a solo and feel an emotion such as anger, passion, jealousy, or frustration, you can play this quick tapping lick to hopefully express those emotions. Also remember that 1) It can be adapted to fit any scale you like; 2) Don’t be overly concerned with hitting every note in the exact order, mainly focus on producing a lot of speed.

-end-

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Neometropolis, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Milan Kundera Tribute - Unbearable Lightness of Being

2008-12-16T05:55:00.000-08:00

The Wah-Wham Method: A New Technique for Lead Guitar

2008-12-15T04:01:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Have you been searching for an advanced, cutting-edge lead guitar technique to add to your arsenal, but would prefer one that hasn’t already been performed to death by every guitar player on the planet? Then look no further because I have the perfect technique to turn you into a full-fledged guitar hero: It’s called the Wah-Wham method.

No, it isn’t something that appeared on a TV game show back in the 80s, it’s a bona fide uber-technique for electric guitar soon to be right at home in all the rock and avant-garde guitar circles around the world. First, let’s break down the name.

Wah = wah wah pedal, as in the the classic Dunlop "Crybaby" wah pedal, or Vai’s Bad Horsie wah pedal made by Morley.

Wham = whammy bar, as in the Floyd Rose locking tremolo system, or the Kahler Double locking tremolo system.

The wah-wham method (which was first written about in the excellent instructional guitar book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, by yours truly) entails using both of the traditional guitar tools named above to simultaneously produce otherworldly sheets of bedlam and chaos, but in a controlled way. By using the wah-wham method, you could become a trailblazing avant-garde guitarist well-versed in the metaphysics of nonlinear improvisation – but remember that the goal is to always keep everything under control!

So how exactly do we perform this new technique? Well, there is no exactly. How you use the tools above is basically up to you, but we will be following a basic algorithm to help with the manipulations of the wah pedal and the tremolo bar, since any exact movements would be nearly impossible to transcribe. Here is the main algorithm:

1. Begin by playing a few common licks or phrases, anything at all, perhaps an improvisation using the minor pentatonic scale or the blues scale.
2. Engage your wah pedal and begin rocking it back and forth in a slow steady motion. It doesn’t matter how you manipulate it, just move the pedal back and forth slowly.
3. While executing the licks, grasp the end of your tremolo bar and hold it with your picking hand. Press it down at random intervals in your improvisation as you continue picking the notes. Work the bar around, manipulating it in different ways as you pick notes in whatever patterns you prefer – even random or haphazard manipulations will work.
4. Continue pressing your wah pedal down while also working the tremolo bar as you play various licks, melodies, and phrases. Eventually you should increase the tempo of both these activities as you incorporate more sophisticated licks into your playing, while keeping the wah pedal and tremolo bar going simultaneously.
5. Listen closely, concentrating on the perplexing beauty and transcendent chaos coming from your amplifier.

That’s all there is to it.

High gain or distortion will contribute to the unhinged sounds (but you don’t want them to be too atonal). Also remember to work your tremolo bar and wah pedal slowly at first, then gradually build momentum until you hit a crescendo of deafening sonic blitzkrieg. Picking the strings while holding your tremolo bar and manipulating it at the same time may not be something you are adept at initially, but with practice you will become more proficient.

So now that we know what it is, where did the wah-wham method come from? Well, I believe I invented it because I never witnessed another guitar player using it before me. However, I only employed the technique for a brief period of time one summer several years ago while rehearsing with a particularly "open-minded" band. The members of that band were quite tolerant of extreme music; and the drummer seemed especially impressed by my wah-wham technique; during breaks in one particular rehearsal he followed me around asking how I was making such intriguing sounds. I never actually used the wah-wham method during a live performance, since it produced such a chaotic-sounding swirl of Brobdingnagian tumult. But since the technique is new, I believe experimentation could take it down a few notches so that many legitimate musical phrases could be made with it. Sonny Sharrock, the free-jazz guitar player known for his loose and sometimes noisy playing style would have probably loved the wah-wham method – just imagine the types of sounds he could have generated with it.

Although there are not any explicit licks in this article, one of the best scales I have found to use with the wah-wham technique is the Hungarian Gypsy scale. To play it in the key of A, finger the 5th, 7th, and 8th frets on the low E string, then the 6th, 7th, and 8th frets on the A string, then the 5th, 7th, and 9th frets on the D string, next the 5th and 8th frets on the G string, then the 5th, 6th, and 8th frets on the B string, and lastly the 5th, 7th, and 8th frets on the high E string. Or, here is the guitar tablature:

-----------------------------5-7-8--
-----------------------5-6-8--------
-------------------5-8--------------
-------------5-7-9------------------
-------6-7-8------------------------
-5-7-8------------------------------

You may also want to record yourself playing the wah-wham technique and listen to it a day or two afterward to make sure you are not delving too deeply into pure chaos or noise during your improvisations. Your focus should always be on creating beautiful and sublime melodies at all times. Continually strive to generate compelling music no matter what techniques you use; and if you think you’ve created something extra-special, you may want to send it in to one of the popular guitar magazines and see if they will reward you with a free subscription.

With the wah-wham technique, I encourage you to engage in many different excursions and practice it frequently so you can refine your technique. Keep in mind that this method of playing is of an experimental nature and for only the most intrepid guitarist/explorer-improvisers. But feel free to use it however you like. Play around with it, modify it, use it in your solos to give them a translucent free-jazz sheen. Become a juggernaut of the primordial, but also make sure to use the wah-wham method sparingly since it can be quite disturbing to some listeners. There really is nothing like the wah-wham technique presently in the world and it’s quite ripe for further experimentation and exploration so enjoy and go forth and rock on.

-end-

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Neometropolis, Mathworld, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Diminished Scale Licks for Electric Guitar

2008-12-14T03:37:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell
http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/

The diminished scale is an incredible sounding musical pattern. In my opinion it can sound either mystical, evil, or enchanting, depending upon the context in which it is played. Due to its unusual intervals and constantly shifting fingering positions when played on the guitar, it can also function as a challenging finger exercise. Here is the diminished dominant scale in the key of A:

---------------------------------5-6-8-9--
---------------------------5-7-8----------
---------------------5-6-8----------------
---------------5-7-8----------------------
---------6-7-9----------------------------
-5-6-8-9----------------------------------

It’s easy to see the scale follows a ‘half step/full step’ progression as it ascends in pitch. Arab musicians are thought to have been the first people to “invent” the diminished scale, as written records indicate their use of it in the early 7th century. The Arabs used the phrase “Zer ef Kend,” to name the scale, which meant “string of pearls,” since the alternating wide and short intervals reminded them of larger and smaller pearls strung together.

The composer and piano virtuoso Franz List is thought to have been the first Western musician ever to use the diminished scale in his compositions. His piece, “Feux Follets” features it in a regularly recurring melody throughout the piece.

Even though the scale above is the full version of the diminished dominant, I usually prefer playing only partial intervals of the scale, like so:
~
----------------------8-11-14--
-------------------10----------
--------------8-11-------------
---------7-10------------------
-----6-9-----------------------
-5-8---------------------------

Of course we can also generate finger-tapping licks using the diminished scale. For the following lick, we will use the full diminished dominant scale, not just partials.

T T T T
-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
-------------------------------------
------------------10-6-7-9-10-6-7-9--
-9-5-6-8-9-5-6-8---------------------

T T T T
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
----------------------12-8-9-11-12-8-9-11--
-11-7-8-10-11-7-8-10-----------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------

T T T T
--------------------------15-11-12-14-15-11-12-14-15-
-14-10-11-13-14-10-11-13-----------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------

All notes above are either hammered-on, finger-tapped, or pulled-off to. You can repeat the phrases on each string for a longer duration of time before changing to the next string, if desired. The tapping above can be a little tricky due to the fact that when hammering-on with the pinky finger, you may have a tendency to hit the index finger you are using to tap with, since it will be in close proximity to your pinky. To solve this problem, you may need to tap a little closer to the actual fret while keeping your pinky finger pulled back a tad more than normal, so that your fingers will be sufficiently separated – if they hit against each other, it will throw off the flow and timing of the lick or simply slow you down.

Descending quadruplets also sound incredible when played in the diminished scale, as our last scary lick adequately demonstrates:

-14-11-8----11-8--------8---------------------
---------10------10-------10------10----------
--------------------11-------11-8----11-8-----
------------------------------------------10--
----------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
-11-8------8--------------------------
------10-7---10-7----10-7-----7-------
------------------9-------9-6---9-6---
------------------------------------8-
~
--------------
--------------
--------------
--------------
-9-6----------
-----8-5-6----

As you can see from the examples above, the diminished scale can be a potent weapon against the drudgery of similar sounding licks. Use it like a hand grenade to explode the musically sensitive neurons in the brains of the members of your audience.

-end-

http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Neometropolis, Mathworld, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, Thirteen, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Back In Black Improv - AC/DC - Acca Dacca

2008-12-13T03:28:00.000-08:00

Electric Guitar: Natural Harmonic Licks

2008-12-12T05:28:00.000-08:00

Occasionally it is hard to rate the difficulty of certain exercises in articles. Determining a lesson's level of playability can be based on a guitarist's personal level of proficiency on the instrument and also their individual taste for playing techniques. If a guitar player likes to play certain things, even if they are more difficult than other "topics," they will be more apt to practice them and won't consider them difficult, even if they are moreso than others, because the guitarist simply enjoys practicing them. Is it clear what I'm trying to say? Another point to remember is that gradually a guitarist's favorite topics will become easier to play as they are performed over the years, etc.

The following exercises could probably be dubbed 'beginner' or 'intermediate' level concerning their difficulty. This article, as you can see from the title, is about natural harmonics. These are different from artificial harmonics where the thumb of one's picking hand is used to attain high-pitched notes (more about the artificial kind of harmonics in another article). Natural harmonics are not fretted in the normal way and can only be played at certain locations.

Try this: To play a natural harmonic, pick your open G string after you have lightly touched the string directly above the 5th fret, without pushing the string all the way down against the fretboard. If a tone higher than your open G string rings out clearly, then you have just executed a natural harmonic and congratulations are in order. Most guitarists have probably played a few natural harmonics before reading this article, I'm sure, since they are quite common. For natural harmonics, basically you simply lay your finger over certain frets and pluck the string without pressing down. Easy enough.

Natural harmonics can be played across these frets, which are called "nodes" on the strings:

4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, 12th, 16th, 19th,

read more here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/798427/electric_guitar_natural_harmonic_licks.html?cat=33

Ernest Hemingway Tribute - Destroyed But Not Defeated

2008-12-11T04:56:00.000-08:00

Simple Rhythm Guitar Exercise

2008-12-10T05:29:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

All of my guitar related articles shouldn’t contain only finger exercises and licks related to soloing on the electric guitar, should they? (I don’t want them to). We could use a little rhythm guitar in here, couldn’t we? (Yes, we could). Grooving and jamming in the pocket with a good drummer, or at least strumming some chords along to a CD, can be a fantastic and wonderful experience and can also make you feel like a champion rhythm guitar player.

Rhythm guitar is of course highly important if you are playing in a band. And one of the most common mistakes beginning guitarists make is that they do not focus on practicing rhythm guitar enough in their initial learning stage, but instead spend too much time attempting to play advanced soloing techniques. (Yes, I was guilty of this mistake.) You don’t want to merely concentrate on solos during the first one or two years of playing the electric guitar, because you won’t be developed enough at that point and many people hearing you solo might think someone is strangling a cat somewhere. Play a few chords once in a while. It won’t hurt anything and it may even feel good. Give your fingers a rest and strum some chords, let the smaller muscles in your hands and digits recuperate, so they’ll grow stronger and bounce back faster when you start soloing again. And when you play rhythm, don’t just play power chords (root and fifth) all the time, throw in some more sophisticated voicings too, as in the examples below.

Here is a simple groove you can practice to help your fingers get used to changing positions and placing them into proper chords shapes quickly and efficiently. The focus here is more on playing the chords and getting your rhythm chops enhanced, rather than displaying any awesome musicality or compositional skills. So go ahead and try this exercise:

-7-7------7-7--------7-7------7-7-------
-8-8------8-8-------7-7------7-7-------
-7-7------7-7--------7-7------7-7------- [repeat]
-9-9------9-9-------6-6------6-6-------
-7-7------7-7--------7-7------7-7-------
------0-0-----0-0--------0-0-----0-0--

-5-5------5-5-------5-5------5-5--------
-6-6------6-6-------5-5------5-5--------
-5-5------5-5-------5-5------5-5-------- [repeat]
-7-7------7-7-------4-4------4-4--------
-5-5------5-5-------5-5------5-5--------
------0-0-----0-0-------0-0------0-0--

The chords above are Emin7, E9, Dmin7 and D9, with the open E played twice between them. You can mute the low E if you like. Here is another way the chords can be listed (but notice they are not in the same order as the tablature above):

- - (E9)- - - - - (Emin7) - - - - - (D9) - - - - - (Dmin7)- -
x 7 6 7 7 7 --- X 7 9 7 8 7 --- x 5 4 5 5 5 --- x 5 7 5 6 5

Notice that in the initial tablature, the chords are written as being played in straight 8th notes, but in real life I would never play them that way. You should spice up the rhythm by doing variations on the timing of the chords. Emphasize some chords longer than others, add some funk try to and groove around a little bit. Play the riff along with a rhythm track or a metronome and add some syncopated strumming and muting and give the chords some flair. (Hopefully you have a decent sense of natural rhythm; if you do not, spicing up the chord progression above while keeping it in proper time may be difficult.)

(If you’d like to see a video of me playing the rhythm figure above, visit my youtube channel at:
http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711 – please subscribe while you’re there!)

Also remember that when getting funky with various rhythms, it’s important to let the strumming movement come from your wrist. And you will have to become adept at muting all the strings at any time with both your fretting hand and your picking hand, while being able to quickly transition between the different chord shapes. For strumming practice, you can mute the strings with both hands and generate a rhythmic pattern of “scratching” by strumming all the muted strings at once. (Hopefully this brief strumming advice will help improve your funk level considerably on the electric guitar.)

Concerning rhythm guitar, personally I was guilty of not practicing it as much as I should have at the beginning of my guitar career. Actually, I still don’t focus on rhythm playing enough. But I do love jamming with good drummers. I use a lot of eye contact (nonverbal communication) to incorporate many dynamics and to stay as “tight” as possible with the drummer. Sometimes after spending a lot of time with a good drummer in a band, we have gotten so tight we can improvise using nonverbal cues and occasionally the communication has bordered on being telepathic.

-end-

Bio: Jason Earls is the author of the books Cocoon of Terror, Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Neometropolis, Mathworld, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, Thirteen, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Redneck - Lamb of God - Guitar Cover

2008-12-09T03:46:00.000-08:00

Practicing Vibrato

2008-12-09T03:40:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Red Zen

Guitarists usually don’t practice their vibrato enough. I mean playing wide, soulful vibrato that actually requires some technique to execute. Personally I have a bad habit of falling into using a fast, nervous, jittery type of vibrato that isn’t bluesy or soulful at all. Why? Because I’m usually too busy worrying about playing all the notes in a melody or a lick as precisely as possible, so that when vibrato time rolls around I simply forget about shaking the notes in a wide arc or making them sound emotional. So after I notice what I’m doing, I put on my thinking cap and concentrate on making my vibrato sound musical and interesting. Enough about my mistakes. Let me give you some tips on how you can practice your own vibrato.

First, what is a good definition of vibrato? Well, it’s when a tone wavers up and down in pitch so that a vocal-like quality is produced. A guitarist’s vibrato is very important to their overall style. With enough practice you can create a distinctive sound with your vibrato that can become instantly recognizeable.

Now it’s time to shake some notes. Remember that with good vibrato the majority of the movement should come from your wrist. With that in mind, take a note, say the 9th fret on the G string, and bend it up until it sounds like the pitch at the 10th fret. One half step. That is how far we are going to shake the note. So that it goes back and forth from the original note up one semitone. This will guarantee your vibrato is wide enough. Simply strike the note and bend it up and down trying to make it sound wide and soulful and concentrating on hitting the 10th fret pitch.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
–9(10)9(10)9(10)9(10)9(10)--
-------------------------------
-------------------------------
-------------------------------

The vibrato marks above are just to remind you that this is a note-shaking exercise, and not a trill, bend, or a hammer-on and pull-off exercise.

Once the half-step vibrato is under your belt, and if you feel up to it, you can try the same method except taking the note up ONE WHOLE STEP from the original note and releasing it for your vibrato. This is DIFFICULT to do with only your index finger, but with your middle and ring fingers it’s a lot easier as there are other digits behind them for reinforcement. Practice these types of vibrato on each of your strings and in the lower, middle, and upper registers of the neck. Also remember not to neglect your pinky finger either. (Warning: Performing whole step vibrato with certain digits can be dangerous, so be careful not to strain yourself and take it easy. Your pinky or index fingers could get overworked or become quite fatiqued, so give them regular breaks when attempting any monstrously wide vibrato.)

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.

Laetitia Casta Tribute - Blues Guitar

2008-12-08T06:18:00.000-08:00

Ascending Finger Exercises for Electric Guitar

2008-12-08T06:15:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

Finger exercises in which a guitarist works their fretting hand up the fretboard are personally very enjoyable for me. Many years ago I would frequently start every one of my solos down on the lower frets and then climb my way up the fretboard using some basic finger exercise pattern. I once naively vowed to start ALL OF MY SOLOS in this fashion so that hopefully it would become my “style.” But of course I quickly abandoned this strange and ridiculous notion.

First we will begin this article with a simple scalar/chromatic pattern. I usually start around the second fret and perform it upward until I hit the 15th fret or so.

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--2-3-2-3-5-3-2--3-4-3-4-6-4-3----
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--4-5-4-5-7-5-4--5-6-5-6-8-6-5-...-
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

So you can see this is a combination of a picking exercise and a fretting hand exercise that continues its way up the neck as far as you would like to take it. This finger exercise should increase your accuracy for playing quick picking patterns on single strings. Be sure to execute it on other strings as well. And even though the exercise above is technically chromatic since it moves up in half steps, it’s still fairly musical as a finger exercise. You could use it for transitioning between different positions of the neck if you wish.

Our next ascending exercise however, falls into the “harsh” or “ugly” sounding finger exercise category, and should be restricted to bedrooms, garages, woodsheds, and other secluded areas and definitely NOT incorporated into your solos.

------------------------------------
--1-4-1-2-3-2-1-2-5-2-3-4-3-2---
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
------------------------------------
------------------------------------

--------------------------------------
--3-6-3-4-5-4-3-4-7-4-5-6-5-4-...--
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------

See, I told you it doesn’t sound good. But it works for building dexterity and increasing precision in the fingers and for improving fretboard shifts.

Our last ascending finger exercise will be one that you can definitely use in your solos. Even though it is chromatic from its ascension in half steps, it is still musical enough to include in your single note excursions.

-5-8-5—--6-9-6---7-10-7-------
---------6-------7---------8-...--
----------------------------------
----------------------------------
----------------------------------
----------------------------------

This exercise is basically a simple 4-note pattern that climbs the neck chromatically, and ordinarily I would use pull-offs for the 8-5s, 9-6s, and 10-7s, etc. You may find using pull-offs in those portions of the exercise easier as well. Theory wise, I believe the notes of the ascending quadruplets above make up Minor Sharp 5th triads, but I’m not exactly positive. Move this lick quickly up the fretboard but keep the notes clean. While playing, your fretting hand should be in almost constant motion. This exercise, if inserted into a solo will build plenty of tension, which you can relieve at any point by stopping the ascension and going into any guitar lick of your choice.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.

Wicked C Major & E Phrygian Guitar Lick

2008-12-07T05:14:00.000-08:00

What is a Prepared Electric Guitar?

2008-12-07T05:13:00.000-08:00

By Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Cocoon of Terror

The experimental composer, John Cage, wrote many compositions for "prepared piano," which is when various objects such as bolts, screws, pins, plastic, pieces of weather-stripping, rulers, rubber, etc., are inserted between the strings of a piano. As you can imagine, the sound of the instrument is greatly altered when the strings are "prepared" in this way. Usually one attempts to place the objects inside the piano so the resulting notes and chords sound "good" or "musical" in some way when they piano is played. But "discordant" or "ugly" sounds are also permitted, since there are no rules in music.

Concerning the electric guitar, can we can extrapolate the idea of a prepared piano to that instrument? Of course we can. Fred Frith, an English guitarist, was probably the first person to prepare his guitar in the same manner as John Cage's piano. He would use metal, rubber, plastic, and other materials and place them between the guitar strings, then he would pluck, strike, rub, or scratch them with different objects, rather than use his fingers or a plectrum to execute the notes. Fred Frith also built his own guitar-like instruments for even more extensive exploration and experimentation with sound. For example, once he attached strings to a regular door and added electronics and pickups to make a very large electric guitar.

Perhaps you would like to prepare your guitar with various objects and experiment with the different sounds that can be produced. I have done it a few times in the past and I can assure you it is a lot of fun.

Because this article deals with an experimental method of guitar playing, there will be no exact licks provided. And there will be no precise algorithms to follow either. To play with a prepared guitar, all you will need is your imagination, a few household objects or materials you can find in your garage, and then it will be up to you how exactly to play the "notes" after you have inserted the objects between the strings of your guitar (or on other parts of your instrument.) Remember when playing a prepared electric guitar to be bold and strive to make good compelling music.

But hold on, I do have a few suggestions for you. I have found that effects pedals can help make things more interesting when working with a prepared electric guitar: distortion pedals, chorus pedals, echo, flanger, reverb, etc., they can all help you sound more interesting. Just a few weeks ago, I prepared one of my electric guitars using regular construction nails, clothespins, and a couple of cards (from a regular pack of playing cards used for Poker and other games), then I added some echo and distortion and succeeded in recording some highly intriguing sounds. Tremolo bars may also be interesting to use with prepared guitars, although personally I haven't tried that particular technique yet.

You may want to search for "Fred Frith" and "John Cage" on youtube.com and watch some of their videos to see if you like their music. Perhaps they will inspire you.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Texas with his wife, Christine.

Tush Improv - ZZ Top - (Chest-length Beard)

2008-12-05T05:00:00.000-08:00

Sweet Sweep Picking

2008-12-05T04:57:00.000-08:00

By Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

Sweep picking is one of the sweetest techniques you can perform on the electric guitar. It simply involves playing arpeggios by "sweeping" your pick up or down the strings in one continuous strumming motion. Usually when doing sweep picking guitarists will "sweep" across all six strings very quickly, but not quite as fast as performing a regular uncontrolled strum. The goal with sweep picking is to sound the INDIVIDUAL notes of a chord; that is, not allow them to bleed together. Also, more than one note can occur on a single string with the arpeggios played, but usually those are hammered-on or pulled-off to so as not to hinder the one-directional movement of the pick.

Concerning speed with sweep picking, some guitarists perform the technique too quickly. Be careful not to simply smear your pick over the notes so that it ends up sounding like an incoherent mess. You want to play quickly yet still be able to discern most of the pitches or overall tonality of the arpeggio. Don’t fall into the habit of making your arpeggios sound like a mish-mash of dead clicks (for more advice on sweep picking, along with a valuable personal anecdote, see my book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell). The tricky thing with sweep picking is to get your plectrum and fingers in perfect synchronization so the notes flow out quickly with complete accuracy and clarity.

Our first sweep picked arpeggio will be a simple one involving an A minor triad:

-----------12-15p12------------
-------13-----------13----------
-12h14-----------------14p12--
--------------------------------
--------------------------------
--------------------------------

Notice the hammer-on and pull-off between the G note and A note, and on the high E string the G and E notes, respectively. Practice this lick so the arpeggio flows up and back continuously and you could keep it going for hours if you were forced to.
Next we have an arpeggio spanning all six strings. This one is a real doozy. A C# minor barre chord:

----------------9-12p9----------------
--------------9--------9--------------
------------9------------9------------
---------11----------------11---------
------11----------------------11------
-9h12----------------------------12p9-

Very tricky to pull this one off cleanly. It takes good hand and plectrum synchronization to play it fast yet with each note articulated. Notice the hammers and pulls that allow the pick to ascend and descend in one fluid motion. With this arpeggio you will have to use a rolling motion with your fingers to grab the notes (mostly on the 11th and the higher 9th frets), applying and releasing tension with the fingertips so that the notes do not bleed together. Move this arpeggio around to get different keys, e.g., move it down to the 7th fret to have a B minor arpeggio.
Next is a lick that combines two arpeggios together. This one sounds quite pretty. The chords involved are D minor and C major, respectively, which both fit into the overall key of A minor. Usually I toss in this lick when I’m soloing in the A Aeolian mode (See my book How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell for a full explanation of modes and how they are used; okay, I’ll stop plugging my book now).
~
-17p13----------------------13-17p13-15--
-------15----------------15--------------
----------14----------14-----------------
-------------15----15--------------------
----------------17-----------------------
-----------------------------------------
~
-12-15p12---------------------12-15p12-13--
----------13---------------13--------------
-------------12---------12-----------------
----------------14---14--------------------
-------------------15----------------------
-------------------------------------------

Next is a fairly unusual arpeggio that uses a few half step intervals in its chord voicing. I don’t know the name of the chord this one is based on. It could be B major with a flatted 5th and a sharp 11th, but I’m not exactly sure. If you have the answer please email me – see my Bio at the end of this book for contact information. Anyway, I love this arpeggio because it’s very exotic sounding.

------------------------11-13h14p13p11--
---------------------12-----------------
---------------10s11--------------------
------------13--------------------------
-----8s9-14-----------------------------
-7/8------------------------------------

-------------------------
-12----------------------
----11-10----------------
----------13-------------
-------------14-8-9------
--------------------8-7--
Note that I use slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs when ascending, but on descending I pick every note. It’s easier for me that way, but you may be different and want to add slides and slurs on the descent. Feel free to do so.
Next is a lovely arpeggio that consists of notes from an A major chord but with an extension to notes in the same key further up the neck:

----------------9-12-9-----------------
-------------10--------10--------------
---------6-9--------------9-6----------
-------7----------------------7--------
-----7--------------------------7------
-5-9------------------------------9-5--

When you hit the 6th fret, you should slide your index finger up to the 9th fret and continue playing the rest of the notes. Move this arpeggio around to get different keys as well. I play it often with A and G root notes also.
And finally here is a basic A7 arpeggio:

-----------------5--------------
-------------5-8---8-5-—--------
-----------6-----------6--------
-------5-7---------------7------
-----7---------------------7----
-5-9-------------------------9--

So there you have a few of my favorite arpeggios. You can use them when practicing your sweep picking and also be sure to transpose them to different areas of the neck, depending upon the key you are in when soloing. The arpeggios above are all quite musical so you don’t have to worry about adding anything else to your "chromatic-lick" repertoire, which you should always avoid whenever possible.

One personal performance note: for some reason it is easier for me to sweep pick DESCENDING (going from the high E to the low E string) than it is to sweep ASCENDING. Just because of the natural movement of my hands and the way my nervous system is wired, I suppose. Hence I have to practice the ascending motion with more concentration than the descending motion. Pay attention to your own natural movements and figure out what you need to work on to improve.
A good suggestion for working on arpeggios and sweep picking is to get a good book on music theory, learn many chords from it, then practice laying out the notes on the fretboard comfortably for new arpeggios to add to your arsenal. Then practice sweep picking the bejeesus out of them and have fun doing so. Bon Voyage.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Red Zen, Heartless Bast*rd In Ecstasy, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld, Thirteen, Chiaroscuro, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Recreational and Educational Computing, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Important Announcement from the Pentagon

2008-12-04T03:11:00.000-08:00

The Mohammedan Scale

2008-12-04T03:06:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Red Zen

This will be a quick and easy article. We will only be dealing with only one scale, the Mohammedan Scale (which is almost a finger exercise in itself) along with a couple of additional finger exercises built from it.

As you can probably guess from the title, the Mohammedan Scale is used extensively in traditional Middle Eastern songs (of which I can’t say I’m familiar with even one), but I do love Eastern sounding scales, since most of them possess a particularly dark and somewhat eerie quality. Also they can be quite challenging to play since many of them have wide intervals interspersed with half steps. Here is the Mohammedan Scale in the key of A:

-----------------------------5-7-8-10--
-----------------------5-6-9-----------
-------------------5-7-----------------
-------------6-7-9---------------------
-------5-7-8---------------------------
-5-7-8---------------------------------

Listen to the overall dark tone of the scale. To me it seems very "emotional" sounding. Also notice the last four notes that occur on the high E string. If we assign one finger per note on that string, we can produce a nice, challenging finger exercise from that portion along. What I mean is, we can play the last four notes on the high E string using a 1-2-3-4 fingering combination (I’ll put the info below the tablature); and then to make the exercise cyclic we’ll use notes on the B string from the scale as well.

Try this making sure to pick every note:

(to see this article with tablature formatted correctly, go here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/8652244/The-Mohammedan-Scale )

-5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7-------------------
------------------5-6-9-10-9-6-5-6--
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
1 2 3 4 3 2 1 2 1 2 4 4 4 2 1 2

The fingering here can be pretty tricky. Notice the information listed below the TAB. Again, you should use all four fingers for the notes on the high E string; and then for those on the B use all fingers EXCEPT your ring finger. That is, the three 4s in a row mean you should fret with your pinky and then slide up (with your pinky) to get the note on the 10th fret, then slide back down again and continue.

The exercise above uses notes directly from the Mohammedan scale, but now let’s generate another exercise using the same four note high E pattern on the B as well, being concerned only with working our fingers:

--5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7--------------------
--------------------5-7-8-10-8-7-5-7--
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------
----------------------------------------

Now that’s a real finger stretcher, isn’t it? Note that if the stretch is a little too wide for your hands, you can move it up the neck to frets that are not spaced so far apart.
The exercises above should help build your picking speed, increase finger coordination, finger strength and flexibility while improving your accuracy. Just make sure that your hands are sufficiently warmed up before attempting any of the exercises. And remember to use a metronome as well.

-end-

Flying Humanoids - Instrumental

2008-12-03T04:29:00.000-08:00

Preface to Guitar Book – Why a Guitar Player from Hell?

2008-12-03T04:24:00.000-08:00

One Halloween night in the early 90s, my band at the time, Tainted Angel – (I know, the name is far from wonderful) – were playing at a small bar in the Midwest called Hoorahs and we ended up setting a record that night for number of people in attendance: 365. We also made more money than we ever had previously (the cover charge was only a dollar per person, so we didn’t get rich). It was our third gig together as a band and we were getting a great reaction from the crowd. A large group of college students were slam-dancing violently in the tiny dance area and causing quite a scene. They would applaud and yell after each song and it made us feel great and gave us plenty of energy since the physical conditions of the bar were pretty harsh.

The air was filled with too much tobacco smoke and the large crowd made the bar cramped and the temperature must have been well over 100 degrees. We also didn’t have a stage to play on – we had to set up our equipment in one corner of the small dance floor. Our singer was having coughing attacks between songs from the abundance of nicotine floating through the air and at one point he came over and said he could barely breathe and that his eyes were stinging. I handed him a towel from my guitar case and he quickly wiped the sweat and smoke from his face, then went back and grabbed his microphone.

Only fifteen minutes into our first set, my amplifier overheated and completely shut down. We asked one of the waitresses carrying drinks if she could bring us a fan. Any kind of fan. She searched in the supply room and found one, carried it back and we propped it up behind the head of my amplifier to keep it cool.

The people we hired to run their sound board for us, a very nice middle-aged couple, became quite worried about the slam-dancing students in the dance area. They thought they were going to damage their expensive monitors setting at the edge of the dance floor. So they decided to stand directly in front of us with their arms held out and hands clasped together, their large bodies forming a barrier as we played on doing our best not to laugh since they had such worried looks on their faces and their bodies with their arms sticking out seemed both sad and humorous.

By the third set, I had already played the Eric Johnson instrumental "Cliffs of Dover" about eight times since many of the college kids in the audience were requesting it (even though they never tipped me once). Then after the third set ended – we always played four, 45-minute sets – I felt exhausted and a little relieved that the gig was almost over and I began making my way toward the bar for a cold glass of water.

At the half way point in the thick drunken crowd, a hard-looking woman of about 40 came up and complimented me on my guitar playing. I said, "thank you very much, ma’am" and suddenly she raised her arms and tried to hug me while puckering her lips and moving forward to kiss me. She was obviously intoxicated and I placed my index and middle fingers on her forehead and gently pushed her lips away and continued walking toward the bar for my water.

Our bass player, Mike, was soon standing behind me at the bar and as I took a long drink of the cool refreshing water I heard one of his friends whom I had never met come up and begin talking to him. His first two sentences to Mike were, "You guys sound great tonight, man. And your guitar player is from hell."

It was the best compliment I had ever received.

That is the story behind the title of this book.

My main goal is that after you finish reading it, anyone who hears you play will also think you’re a guitar player from hell.

David Foster Wallace Tribute

2008-12-02T05:00:00.000-08:00

Using Your Front Pickup As Another Fret

2008-12-02T04:55:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

The front pickup of your electric guitar can be set up to function as another fret. Once you have tilted it the proper way, either forward or backward, you can simply reach up and press down on the strings until they "fret out" against the edge of the pickup, which will produce a somewhat normal sounding note, although the tone may not be as sharp and clear as regular notes played on the fret board. But if you use enough gain on your amplifier, it can create bright pitches in the range of a 30th to a 36th fret, depending upon the location of your pickups on the guitar.
Admittedly, using your pickup as another fret is a somewhat unusual technique, but it can be quite flashy when performed live, and also help to heighten tension in solos dramatically, while still retaining plenty of musicality.

The main obstacle with fretting on your pickup is getting enough access to the general area. Occasionally it will be troublesome for your hand to reach up far enough, depending upon how much your guitar body has been "cut away" near the end of the fret board. If your guitar is equipped with 24 frets, usually you will have enough access to slide your hand forward and fret on the rhythm pickup with ease.

But you’ll also need to make sure your pickup is set up correctly. Humbuckers (twin coil) are the easiest to fret on, instead of the slimmer single-coil pickups. I have single coils on my AXL Badwater guitar and fretting on it doesn’t work as well as using the humbuckers on my B.C. Rich Warlock. But I have seen other guitarists set up their single coils to be fretted on, so I know it is possible. To set up your humbucker properly, simply take a screwdriver and raise and lower the screws so that it’s tilted forward (or backward if you want an even higher-pitched fret) while making sure that 1) the pickup isn’t raised high enough to interfere with the strings, and 2) it makes a good cut off point so it will "fret out" properly when the strings are pressed against it. A pickup setting too flat won’t provide a tangible enough cut off point. Once you have your pickup tilted forward or backward, you’re all set to rock your bullocks off, big dog.

Keep in mind that changing the way your pickups are set up, raising and lowering them with a screwdriver, may change the tone of your guitar considerably if you regularly use it when playing rhythm or lead. If it does change your tone in a detrimental way, the choice is yours whether you want a good rhythm sound or whether you want to play high notes on your pickup.
All right, so what do we do now? Just start playing licks by pushing the strings down on the pickups and let your amplifier, distortion, effects pedals and other auditory enhancements take over from there. Easy enough. For a musical example, try this:

P P
-24-22-------32-22--------24-22-------32-22---------
-------24-22-------24-22--------24-22-------24-22---
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

A ‘P’ has been placed above the note to be executed on the pickup. (I only assume it will produce a note equivalent to a 32nd fret, yours may differ.) For fingering, I use my index and middle for all notes on the fret board and my third finger for the note on the pickup.

You can also try bending notes on the pickup too. It’s kind of tricky but it’s not impossible. I do it frequently. The hard part is getting your hand into a good power position to push up on the strings.

Ready for another lick? Try this one that is a tad more difficult:

1 2 1 2 1 2P 1 2P P P
-------22-24--------24-32---------22-24-------24-32--
-22-24-------24-32----------22-24-------24-32--------
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------

The strangest thing about this musical example is the fingering pattern I use (notice the fingering information above the tablature). For some inexplicable reason it’s easier for me to use only my index and middle fingers for all notes of this lick. After playing the first four notes, I shift my hand up to the 24th position and execute the next four notes with my index and middle fingers there, with my middle finger reaching up to grab the "32nd" note on the pickup. But this will require some experimentation since your hands probably function differently than mine. This second lick is fairly difficult, challenging to play with any real speed, but I think it has genuine musical value.

Playing on your front pickup is really more of a "flash" move than anything else, but decent musical passages can still be generated with this technique while also adding some cool "flash trash" to your playing (just kidding). Also, employing this "fretting on the pickup" move may be beneficial for breaking a guitarist out of any improvisational ruts they are stuck in. Good luck with it and God bless.

-end-

The Thrill Is Gone Improv - BB King - (Chopper Girls)

2008-12-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

Short Story: Bass Orifice by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

2008-12-01T05:25:00.000-08:00

"It’s easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself."
– J.S. Bach

My name is Ronald Jenkins, I’m a bass player. Recently I needed a new bass guitar. Well, I didn’t actually need one, I just loved browsing in pawn shops for second hand equipment whenever I got the chance. I actually preferred looking for good deals on gear instead of practicing my bass, even though I was fairly proficient on the instrument. Anyway, while browsing one morning in Elmer’s Pawn Shop (the best place for good deals), Elmer informed me of a beautiful bass guitar someone had recently traded him for a new refrigerator, and he knew I wouldn’t be able to pass it up. Hold on. Let me tell you the story from the beginning...

I went to Elmer’s Pawn Shop one bright August morning, not really expecting to find anything spectacular, even though I had found plenty of nice items there in the past. Elmer knows me well. I am one of his best customers. He’s a great person too. About 50, always cheerful, a great business man willing to spend a lot of time with each customer, never greedy, always eager to give you a great deal on something if he thinks you’ll really appreciate it. But Elmer’s personal appearance is a little strange. He keeps his head cleanly shaven except for a small cube of fuzz at the very top. I have no idea why he keeps it there, I’ve never asked him. I suspect he may have the cube because of his membership in a strange science fiction cult, but I mind my own business and don’t concern myself with anybody’s personal beliefs. Usually I visit Elmer’s shop about twice a week, scowering the place for any band related equipment and asking him what has arrived since my last visit.

"Has anything good come in lately, Elmer?" I asked on that nice August morning.

"You bet there has, Ronald. You’re gonna love this. I knew it was perfect for you the minute I saw it. Step right this way, son."

We went over to the north wall where numerous battered guitars, basses and even a few violins were hanging from long black hooks. Elmer lifted his hands and moved them around in a kind of showy "Price is Right" way, the thing models do when displaying products, and I looked up to see one of the most beautiful bass guitars I’d ever seen. A Yamaha RBX375 Bass guitar. Deep metallic blue with silver and orange lightning bolts cascading across the body in every direction. I fell in love with it instantly. It looked incredible and also seemed larger than normal with the top "horn" especially long and slender. It also had two big humbuckers and a huge tremolo system that I’d never seen on any other Yamaha RBX375. Many bass players don’t like whammy bars, but I’ve always enjoyed using them.

"Elmer, this is a freakin’ beauty." I said, reaching up to take it off the hook.

With my peripheral vision, I noticed Elmer grinning. He knew my taste well and it gave him great pleasure to satisfy his customers.

"Plug it in over here," he said. "I’ve already got a practice amp set up for you." He klopped over to a corner, picked up a cord, and I went over and plugged in the bass. After turning on the volume, I started slapping and popping out a funk-jazz rhythm. The feel of the bass was perfect in my hands, the neck was beyond comfortable and the tone fantastic with bright trebly pops and booming volcanic lows. I played on and went into a brief solo, manipulating the whammy bar a little. My God. It was the greatest bass I’d ever played in my life. I didn’t know basses could be so well made and comfortable and sound so spectacular.
I had to buy it.
Didn’t matter what the cost.
It would be my new number one instrument for gigs. Every other bass I owned would be "backup" only. I unplugged the Yamaha, held it up to examine the gorgeous body once more, looked at the pickups and the bridge, ran my fingers down the neck. "How much do you want for it, Elmer? I’ve got to have it immediately. Go ahead, name any price."
He chuckled. "Well, you know you’re my favorite customer, Ronald. But as you can see this is a very special bass. Worth quite a bit of money. The original owner obviously didn’t know what a great instrument he had. I’ll have to ask $500 for it."
"You’ve got a deal, Elmer. I can pay you $250 now and have the other $250 for you next Friday. How does that sound?"
"Perfect."
I shook Elmer’s hand and put the bass in its case, still in awe of my good fortune of finding such a perfect instrument. I payed Elmer and he wrote out a receipt and then I headed toward the door grinning.
Earlier, two small pieces of gold had fallen to the floor next to the practice amp. I didn’t see them at the time, and Elmer found them a couple of hours later. He was quite shocked since they seemed to be worth a lot of money. He didn’t know what had produced the gold nuggets, or if someone had simply lost them, but he put them in his safe, to hold for awhile to see if a customer might enquire about them.
Nobody knew exactly how the gold nuggets had been produced.
But I would soon find out.

* * *

I couldn’t stop playing my new bass. It felt so great, sounded so good.
I played it before work, on my lunch break, even while sitting on the shitter.
I knew I was going to be a Major Rager with the help of this Four-String Mother Freaker.
I even attempted to practice my bass while watching television, but my fat-ass demonic girlfriend would always start screaming that my scales were breaking her concentration, my pops and slaps pulling her out of the movie.
I loved it though, greatest instrument I’d ever played.
But then I noticed something strange.
One Saturday morning, I didn’t have any work to do or any errands to run, so I stayed home and played my bass all morning long. I had been practicing some new advanced techniques, soloing with staccato phrases, adding in natural harmonics in different positions of the neck, using the tremolo bar and wah pedal simultaneously with an abundance of distortion, and after playing part of Cliff Burton’s "Anesthesia" solo and a little bit of Eddie’s "Eruption," I noticed two diamond rings laying on the floor next to my feet.
"What the hell are those." I said out loud in a deadpan voice like a lunatic. "Diamond rings? Where did those come from? Did my girlfriend sneak out and buy those with my hard earned money. I can’t afford any fuckin’ diamond rings. Who the hell does she think she is, the Queen of Sheba or something."
I took off my bass and picked up the diamond rings. They shined and sparkled, seemed authentic and highly expensive. I dropped them in the front pocket of my faded Wrangler jeans, then started looking around the house for other luxury items she might have purchased behind my back. When I returned, my bass was leaning up against the amplifier, the back facing me.
That’s when I saw it.
A small mouth protruding below the plate that covered the electronics.
An orifice on the back of my bass.
I stared at it.
Squinting.
I realized that was the first time I had even looked at the back of my bass. I stayed a few feet away examining it, afraid to get too close. The orifice was about the size of a half dollar with two ridges of thick pink lips. That is, the mouth had 4 lips, and they were vibrating and moving in different directions independently. I stepped closer and saw tiny green dots on the lips with thick translucent slime hanging and big ugly orange coils encircling the mouth where the flesh segued into the wood. The orifice on my bass was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen.
Suddenly the mouth yawned and I looked deep inside to see maroon ridges and corrugated folds with long jagged teeth sticking out like a piranha. The teeth looked sharp and deadly and I felt they could extract every ounce of my plasma in milliseconds.
Jesus, I thought, here I am playing this bass with this deadly thing pressed against my body close to my genitals. This can’t be real.
I stared at it some more and the orifice seemed really old, almost ancient. Hundreds, no, perhaps thousands of years old. The mouth was smacking its four lips and they were still vibrating. A real live fleshy mouth embedded in my bass. I was examining it so intently I didn’t realize I had crept dangerously close. So close I could detect its horrible breath. A smell of rotting mackeral and moldy garlic with sweet peppermint on top. I backed away shaking my head.
"Hello?" I said, "Are you a real mouth? Can you speak? What are you doing on my bass guitar? Say something. Hello?"
But the orifice didn’t respond.
Then I realized the thing had no ears so of course it couldn’t hear me. It was only a mouth with no other body parts. Gross. I started feeling nauseous. What the fuck was I going to do now? How could I get rid of it? Should I try to cut it off? I didn’t want to ruin the best bass I’d ever owned, I couldn’t start altering the body. I was playing solos and bass lines too well. And the mouth hadn’t hurt me yet.
So I decided to simply leave it alone, although I’d definitely keep a close eye on it. Wait a minute. Did it release those diamonds earlier? Is that where they came from? Hell, I didn’t know.
I picked up the bass and played a little bit, being careful to keep the back from touching my body. It was a test to see what would happen with the orifice close to me. I didn’t want to get bitten by those sharp crooked teeth. I played some licks but didn’t put as much effort into them as I normally would, too distracted thinking about the nasty mouth back there. After fluffing my way through a few scales, not hitting every note cleanly, I tried to do some tapping phrases on my high G string and missed many of the notes. Next I noticed my guitar was out of tune, so I stopped playing and reached up for the tuners and I smelled something horrible. Looking down, I saw a small pile of dog turds curled up near my shoes, so I jumped back.
"What the fuck is that?" I screamed. "Dog shit? We don’t have a dog. Is it cat shit? Don’t tell me that bitch has a freaking cat in my house now. I hate cats. I’ll be getting rashes all over my body and scratching like a bastard if she’s got a cat in here. Where is that damn fur ball. I’ll choke that sonofabitch for shitting near my feet."
I took off my bass and searched the house but didn’t see a cat or any other animals. Hmm. Something strange was going on. Then I remembered the human-like orifice on my bass. I suspected the shit had something to do with that. I flipped the bass over and held it far away from me and examined the little mouth, but I didn’t see any signs of fecal matter on its four pink lips, although they were still moving around in different directions, and the tiny green dots and translucent slime and big ugly orange coils encircling the mouth were still there. God it was disgusting. I was going to have to watch this orifice closely from now on.
* * *
Despite the disturbing events that had already taken place with my bass, I was still determined to take it to my next scheduled rehearsal and show it off to my fellow band members. But I did decide to cover the orifice on the back so it would be hidden from view. Before I left the house I took a piece of duct tape and put it over the sickening hole. After pressing the tape down firmly, I heard a slight squeal and wondered if it might need water or food. Earlier in the day I had noticed its lips looking especially dry and a darker shade of pink than the day before. Was I supposed to be feeding this damn thing? Shit. I actually felt a little sympathy for this monstrous mouth taking up residence and partially ruining the greatest bass I’d ever owned. The instrument would have been perfect except for the dung-producing hole on the back, I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for it. I needed to cut it off. I mumbled a few curses and slid the bass in its case and left the house for band rehearsal.
I got in my pickup and placed the bass upright next to me with the orifice pointing toward the seat. Then I roared off to band rehearsal at the drummer’s house, about six miles away. It was late summer and I hated the weather. In Texas at this time of year the sun practically bakes your skin to a red cancerous pulp with its powerful carcinogenic rays. Hordes of lucusts can be heard in the trees, their loud clicking calls emanating out in waves. The heat was blasting through my pickup windows and seemed to settle deep in my chest, forcing out every breath of air in my lungs. Along the side of the road I noticed empty tequila and beer bottles strewn everywhere, along with numerous dead cats and possums. Some asshole had been getting his kicks lately by driving around shooting every animal he saw. What a waste.
Finally I pulled up in front of the drummer’s house and parked in front of the garage. The drummer had soundproofed his garage to make it into a rehearsal space. The other guy’s cars were already there. I grabbed my new bass and strolled in the door. The pink carpeting on the walls that absorbed our obnoxious sounds reminded me of the orifice’s four nasty lips.
"Hey Jimmy, hey Mike," I said.
Our band was a trio. Jimmy on guitar, Mike on drums. They were good friends of mine. I had known them for years. They didn’t greet me back or even look at me. They seemed to be in a bad mood, or were just too busy messing with their equipment.
"You’re late," Jimmy said.
"No I’m not."
"Yes you are," said Mike. "By ten goddamn minutes." His voice filled with anger.
"Ten minutes, Jesus, that’s nothing to get upset about." I took out my new bass and sort of held it up in the air hoping they would notice.
"But you’re always late," Jimmy said. "And ten minutes is ten minutes. I could have the best screw of my life in ten minutes. You need to show us some respect, dipshit."
"Chill, man, just chill," I said. "I’ll be on time from now on."
"Yeah, sure you will," Mike said, tightening up his snare drum with a small silver wrench. "I hope you fry in hell for being late so much, Ronald."
"What did you say, Mike? Damn, that’s a terrible statement to direct at your bass player. You hope I fry in hell? You don’t really mean that, do you?"
"No, not really, but you are wasting our lives by being late so freakin’ much."
"Forget about it already. I’ll be ten minutes early from now on. Hey, I’ve got something to show you guys."
"Not now," Jimmy said. "Let’s start playing. We’re already behind on our practice schedule."
Mike counted off the time and we went into Metallica’s "Master of Puppets." Then we played a couple of Slayer tunes, a Nuclear Assault tune, and a Megadeth tune. We were a thrash band. Had a pretty good reputation in the area, we even opened up for Striper once when they came through on tour. But Striper hated us and our music. Anyway, we got a fair number of gigs around the county and were doing fairly well for our style of music. But after the Megadeth tune, I heard a noise coming from the back of my bass guitar and I could feel the body vibrating. While playing I had totally forgotten about the orifice on the back. If the thing required air, it had to be getting sick from the duct tape covering its lips. Although no one could see it, I imagined the mouth back there shaking and struggling to uncover itself.
Then the orifice must have broken through the tape. Maybe the mouth spontaneously formed some kind of tongue, or it had one already that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Maybe it pooched out its lips to release the tape, I don’t know, but after the Megadeth song, I bent over to pick up a box of Jimmy’s picks that had fallen on the floor, and when the back of my bass came in direct line with the drummer’s head, I heard a deep wretching noise and the orifice released a thick stream of green vomit that bolted through the air at tremendous speed, hitting Mike smack in the face. The puke shot out for a long time, probably releasing more than a gallon. The vomit was thick with bright yellow chunks of corn and little red globs of weenies dotted all through it. Mike screamed and his face was totally covered with the stuff and he seemed to be in shock, moving off his drum stool in slow motion. The puke splashed off him and hit the floor and its consistency was so thick it sounded like vegetable stew clopping on the carpet. All over his face, in his hair, running down his clothes, saturating his drum kit. He was gagging and spitting out chunks of weenies and little pieces of corn.
So that’s where the diamond rings and the dog shit came from, I thought. The orifice was releasing things based on its opinion of whatever I had previously played. Either the orifice must have hated thrash music, or it couldn’t breathe with that duct tape over its mouth and got sick. But a lot of puke came out of it, I know that.
"Eeeaaccghghgh! Fuck! What was that!" Mike yelled, still in shock, wiping the vomit out of his eyes and spitting out another weenie.
I pulled my bass closer to me, not wanting them to see the orifice on the back or the tape hanging. "Man, I don’t know," I lied. "Wow, a huge stream of green shit appeared out of nowhere and flew all over you. What the hell was that?"
"It came from your direction," Jimmy said. "Did you throw a bucket full of something at him?"
"Hell no, I didn’t."
"My God, it smells awful," Mike yelled, the foul goo dripping off his eyelids and cheeks. "It feels like it’s scalding my skin. This puke is hotter than hell. Where did it come from?"
If I would’ve told them about the orifice on my bass I knew they would think I was totally insane. They might even report it to the police.
I noticed Jimmy smiling. He always gloated over people’s misfortune. Jimmy had a thin goatee and grinned arrogantly most of the time, his face making him look like more of an asshole than George W Bush. He also had tiny deformed ears but could still hear excellent with them, and when he walked he held his arms cocked out to the sides like he was a badass. I wondered what Jimmy was thinking as he smirked and watched Mike brush the vomit off his clothes. Then Jimmy spoke up: "Boy, Mike. You sure are smacking your lips a lot. What does that stuff taste like anyway?"
"Well, it has a lot of umami to it, I can tell you that. God you’re an asshole, Jimmy. This shit is sickening. It’s all over my clothes and everything."
Mike jiggled his legs and tried to brush off his pants. I tilted my bass forward attempting to see what the orifice on the back was doing. All I could see was the duct tape hanging and its four lips moving as it breathed heavily.
I felt kind of sorry for Mike, who was a much better person than Jimmy, who was basically a whitetrash scumbag. Mike was mild-mannered and quiet, very detail oriented and precise, which helped him with his drum playing. He always kept our rehearsal space clean and tidy, which I liked since I hated to clean anything. I wish the puke would have nailed Jimmy instead.
"Hey, you got a new bass," Jimmy said.
"Yeah, that’s what I wanted to show you guys earlier. I found this baby at Elmer’s Pawn Shop, can you believe it?"
"Looks pretty sweet."
"The action is incredible. The whammy bar stays perfectly in tune."
Mike was getting more pissed. "Goddamn it! Where did this puke come from! Did you puke on me, Ronald?"
"No way. I don’t look ill, do I? I can’t puke that much and from that far across the room. It’s physically impossible."
"Well, I’ve gotta go take a shower. When I get back I want some answers as to where that stream of vomit came from."
"Okay," I said.
I watched Jimmy light a cigarette and then strut over to a white plastic grocery bag in the corner. He rummaged around, pulled out a CD and carried it back to me. "Have you seen the new art work for our demo?"
"No. Let’s have a look."
He handed it over. The cover showed a dark cemetary with a huge owl-like creature flying above a dead tree. The creature had the head of a wolverine and leathery bat wings with a lizard’s tail and a long serpent’s tongue, blood was shooting from its eyes. The name of our band, Dead Bladder, was at the top of the CD and our three names were running down the left side. A small dwarf with a top hat was huddled near the bottom of the picture, spraying piss onto my name at the top, with urine dripping off the letters and running down onto the other names below.
"Hey, what’s with all the piss coming from that dwarf?" I said. "Is the artist trying to insult us or something? Why is he pissing on my name only?"
"It’s nothing personal against you. I think that part of the cover is hilarious."
"Yeah well, I’ve always wanted to recieve a golden shower – although not from a man – but I never could talk my girlfriend into giving me one, or any of those other floozies I was with before I met her."
"So the piss is a dream come true for you then," Jimmy said.
"Sure, whatever." I threw the CD back to him hard and he tossed it onto a nearby sofa that our friends used whenever we’d occasionally force them to listen to us.
"So check out my new bass man, you want to play it?" I said.
Jimmy blew three huge smoke rings and studied they way they dissipated into the air. "Nah, not really."
He was always in a bad mood, despite his constant smirk. He only got happy when there was women or a lot of dope or booze around. I went over and stood in front of him, stuck out my bass and played the riff to one of our original songs. "Come on, man. It’s really sweet. Check out these humbuckers. Look at the fine tremolo bar, it never goes out of tune. I’ve been playing a lot of solos and using my wah and whammy bar together lately. The action of the neck is so smooth with these frets man, my fingers circumnavigate the fretboard so fast it’s like they’ve been soaked in grease. You wanna play it?"
"I said no. I hate basses. Only six-stringers for me." He took a drag off his cig and sucked a barrage of smoke up both his nostrils like an expert.
"Well, how about I play you a little solo while Mike finishes washing all that vomit off himself?"
"All right. Hey where did all that puke come from, anyway?"
I still didn’t feel like revealing the gruesome mouth on the back of my bass. He wouldn’t understand and would probably wig out.
"Forget about the puke. Let me play a solo for you, Jimmy. You may get a few ideas for your own stuff after hearing it."
He groaned and rolled his eyes. "Go ahead, play your damn solo."
I started off with a new slap and pop groove that he hadn’t heard before, then went up to the 12th position and rolled off some nice arpeggios, plucking as fast as I could with the first three fingers of my picking hand. I executed them cleanly and was feeling quite proud of myself when I heard Jimmy yell above the intense volume of my amplifier:
"I ALREADY KNOW THAT STUFF, RONALD. I’VE SEEN IT A MILLION TIMES, PLAY SOMETHING I’VE NEVER HEARD BEFORE, LIKE YOU SAID YOU WOULD!"
All right, I thought, this prick is definitely gonna see something new now. I dropped down to the 7th position and went into a gruesome string skipping pattern I had never played outside of my bedroom. First I executed three wide interval notes on the low E, then jumped up to the D string for two notes, then back down to the E for four chromatic tones, up again to the high G for 6 diminished notes that ascended the neck, tremolo plucking the last one, jumped back down to the A string for four brief staccato notes, then added a long legato crescendo up the neck to the 22nd fret.
My phrasing had been perfect, my articulation precise, my fingering pristine. If the orifice on the back of my bass guitar was actually giving me rewards based on how good my playing was, I should definitely receive a fantastic and lucrative prize for how well I played the solo. I ended with a little A minor flourish down to the open E string and whammied the hell out of it with my tremolo bar. Then I turned my volume knob off.
I don’t think he would ever admit it, but I could tell from the look on Jimmy’s face he was quite impressed. Before he could comment, I noticed the chord to my bass was all tangled on the floor and I bent over to try and work out the kinks. When the back of my bass came in line with Jimmy’s chest, five black throwing stars shot from the orifice and hit different portions of his body.
When I stood up from untangling the cords, I saw Jimmy lying on the floor.
Dead.
One throwing star sticking out of his throat, one stuck in his cheek, one in his crotch area, another in his left eye, last one in his forehead. He was flat on his back on the floor, blood leaking from each place where the throwing stars had struck him.
The orifice has killed him, I thought. This thing really is deadly. The mouth must have sensed how much I despised Jimmy and that I’d had many desires to murder him in the past, so the orifice sent out five throwing stars to do the job. Now I’m going to be blamed for the murder. Soon I’ll be in prison.
I stared down at Jimmy and the throwing stars and the steadily growing puddles of blood. I examined the throwing stars more closely (I remembered they were called shurikens), black and menacing with 6 points in the shape of tiny daggers, they were made of pure stainless steel. Looked like ninja throwing stars, which I loved back when I was ten. Could the bass orifice have known that? I reached down and tried to take Jimmy’s pulse, but felt absolutely nothing. Then I noticed one throwing star had cut off Jimmy’s left hand, completely severing it at the wrist. So if he had managed to survive, he would have never been able to play his bass again. The orifice definitely had bad intentions, just like Mike Tyson. I took off my bass and placed it in the case. I was going to vacate the premises before somebody noticed he was dead.
But I knew I was screwed when I heard Mike coming down the stairs. I tried to make it out the door before he saw me, but I wasn’t fast enough.
"All right," Mike said, turning the corner. He was wearing a fresh change of clothes with his hair still wet from the shower. "Somebody needs to explain where that stream of vomit came from. Was it a fucking practical joke, or what?"
Standing at the door holding my bass with the deadly orifice uncovered on the back, I said, "Yeah, Mike, it was only a practical joke, so you can just forget about it now."
I turned and ran out the door and got in my truck. I jammed the accelerator and sped off.
Driving home, I envisioned Mike freaking out over Jimmy’s corpse with the numerous throwing stars sticking out of him. I imagined him calling the police. What was I going to do.
When I got home I vowed to keep the bass away from all other people. I would play it only for myself and never let another person see it or hear it from now on. I couldn’t trust it. I mean, the orifice, and I also couldn’t cut it off, since I was convinced doing that would destroy the sound.
There was one other thing: I couldn’t trust my own feelings about other people, which the bass might pick up on, then act out my subconscious intentions. The orifice might destroy based on what I thought of a particular person. And if the bass ever happened to kill another human, I promised I would burn it or throw it in the river – I knew I would have to destroy it in some fashion.
Actually, I wasn’t quite sure about that last part.
After all, it was the best bass guitar I’d ever played, even with the deadly orifice on the back.

-end-

Jason Earls is author of the books Red Zen, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, Cocoon of Terror, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); } and 0.136101521283645567... available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Scientia Magna, Wretched & Violent, Mathworld, Chiaroscuro, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Switchblade, Dogmatika, Neometropolis, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, AlienSkin, Escaping Elsewhere, Werewolf, Recreational and Educational Computing, Thirteen, Theatre of Decay, Nocturnal Ooze, Prime Curios, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens, Swallow’s Tail, and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.

Arthur Rimbaud Tribute - A Season In Hell

2008-11-30T05:05:00.000-08:00

Developing Finger Strength

2008-11-30T05:03:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

Strengthening your fingers will help you play the electric guitar with more precision, speed, and dexterity. Having stronger muscles in your hands and fingers and continuously working to build more power in your tendons will make a considerable difference in your overall playing ability. There are actually a couple of non-playing exercises you can do for strengthening your fretting hand, which I will tell you about below. When I reveal some of these exercises, you are probably going to think something similar to, "Oh, that is simple, anyone can do that; why is he giving us this exercise when it's so easy? That won't build much hand strength." But when you finally curl those digits around your well-worn fretboard and try the chordal set of exercises, you are going to realize they aren't nearly as easy as they seem, and you just might find yourself confessing: "Oh, now I see, this exercise is pretty difficult after all."

Before we begin the challenging stuff, so that we do not strain any muscles, we need to start off easy, so try this:

1. With your hand in the fifth position, place all four fingers on the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th frets of the neck.

2. While holding your third and fourth (ring and pinky) fingers down, raise the other two fingers off the fretboard, holding them for a count of two, then set them down again. Repeat this ten times.

3. Do the same with the opposite fingers. That is, while holding your first and second (index and middle) fingers down, raise the other two up off the fretboard and hold them for a two count, then set them down again. Repeat this variation ten times. You can think of this as trying to do hammer-ons and pull-offs if you want, with the fingers being set down with enough force to "hammer-on" and sound a note.

That is the easy warm-up. Now it will get more difficult. So get prepared. Basically we are going to be doing the same exercise as above, except now we will use opposite fingers.

Read the rest here:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/703427/electric_guitar_developing_finger_strength.html?cat=33

Eugene's Trick Bag by Jason Earls - Shred The Web Entry

2008-11-29T04:52:00.000-08:00

Invent New Hardware for the Electric Guitar

2008-11-29T04:13:00.000-08:00

by Jason Earls, author of Red Zen & How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell

This article is more of an outside-the-box thinking lesson than the other guitar articles I have written (see “A Fast Finger Tapping Pattern for Electric Guitar” and “The Wah-Wham Method,” among many others available on the Internet and in my guitar book, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell). This article involves hardware – the actual equipment you use when playing the electric guitar – instead of where and how to place your fingers on the neck. But what I'm about to tell you has genuine value with a down-to-earth “life lesson” involved, so hopefully you will benefit from it.

Here is the back-story: At a Thanksgiving family celebration last year, my uncle played me a John Fogerty song in his van and asked me to learn the chord progression and teach it to him. I learned the song in a matter of minutes, simple basic chords, and afterward I showed it to him, and we began discussing guitars and various equipment. I mentioned string winders at some point and he said that he would like to put a motor on one, to make it automatic, and I suggested that we build one and patent the idea and try to make some money.

That suggestion reminded him of his latest invention.

He said he wanted to make a self-tuning guitar, a guitar that tunes itself automatically at the press of a single button.

“Great idea,” I said. “How did you think of that? And how would it work?”

“Well,” he said, “My best friend Dudley and I were talking the other day in my shop and the idea occurred to me to make a plastic fold-around piece that fits onto the headstock surrounding the tuning pegs, with little motors running the tuners, and a device like a piano hammer striking each of the strings, then a computer chip would be embedded in the plastic wrap-around part which would determine the current tuning of the six strings; if the guitar is out of tune the motors will go to work on the tuning pegs, winding the strings, until they hit the correct pitches. We would need a programmer and an electrical engineer to help us put the whole thing together, but I could handle most of the design and construction myself. In the end we would have it rigged up so that we could just push a single button and the guitar would automatically tune itself."

“Sounds fantastic,” I said. “Perhaps we could patent that idea too and make a little cold hard cash.”

"I'm sure every guitarist could use one," he said. "If you help me build it, I’ll split the money with you."

"You got a deal," I said. "Of course I'll help. I know a guy with a few patents to his name. I could ask him about the patent application process and some other things. I wonder why nobody has ever thought of this before. Maybe they already have. I'll have to do some research on it."

"You'll have to do A LOT of research if you're going to help me build this self-tuning guitar."

"Right on," I said.

Then my uncle went back to talking about the actual design of the gadget. He mentioned input and output procedures, he talked of electrical signals and chromodynamics and megahertz and power generators and transformers, he spoke of ohms and conductors and watts and other technical electronic terminology that I didn't fully understand. But I listened anyway and was still enthusiastic. I wanted to help him build this new device and put it on the market to allow millions of guitarists to purchase it so they could keep their guitars perfectly in tune with absolute ease.

My uncle said he wanted the contraption to fit around the headstock, he wanted it to be portable and adaptable to most guitars, therefore we would have to make a few different models to fit the ‘three-tuners-per-side’ style, and another for the ‘all-tuners-on-one-side’ style of guitar. He said every guitarist in the world would want one of these and we would soon be rich and I totally agreed.

There we were, standing out in the cold, shivering, ready to eat a big Turkey dinner, with mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing and cranberry sauce, corn and tomatoes and yams, sweet and sour pickles cut into long thin slices, pumpkin and pecan pie, pistachio salad, homemade ice cream and cake, and I was huddled outside by the garage next to my uncle, who was grinning about this new invention that he’d come up with. We both thought we would soon be famous and have a real patent to our names and make a little money. Then I wondered aloud about licensing the self-tuning mechanism to major companies like Gibson and Fender and wondered whether we would need an agent of some sort. "But we still have to build the darn thing first," he said. “Right on,” I said.

Some time went by. Maybe a week. I was thinking about the self-tuning gadget. How to build it. How it might work. What all it would entail. I began to suspect that building it would be beyond our abilities. We also needed to find out how to patent the thing. I tried to think of everything it might involve. I prepared to do some research, see if it had already been done, and before I could even open a web browser, I noticed an email from a news site with the headline saying something like, “New Self-Tuning Guitar Now On the Market.”

What? Beat to the punchline again? I read the article. Then I went to the web site where I could learn about self-tuning guitars and the technology underlying them. There was a demonstration video there. I watched it and saw my uncle’s new invention. Except it was quite a bit different from his explanation. This one had motorized tuning pegs that turned by themselves, sensors in the bridge that could detect the current tuning, an extra knob beside the other volume and tone knobs, which you pushed in and then strummed the open strings and the motorized tuning pegs went to work retuning the guitar for you. The knob had green lights that flashed whenever it was properly in tune, you pushed it in when the tuning was finished and that bad boy was ready to play. You could even program it to cope with alternate tunings if you want, tunings other than the standard E-A-D-G-B-E. It looked like tremendous fun. This new self-tuning technology was developed by Chris Adams, a German engineer, at his company called Tronical in Hamburg.
So how much does this thing cost? I thought.

Then I read that it isn’t portable and adaptable to all guitars, you have to bring your guitar into the shop and they will modify it for you, install all the necessary technology and equipment onto your guitar. That’s cool. But it would cost $900. Not so cool. Too rich for my blood.
I realized that in some ways my uncles’ version of the self-tuner was better. But it would require more work from the guitarist at home to set it up properly and get it functioning smoothly. But the demo video on the company’s web site made their version look awesome as well. Simple and practical and a guaranteed perfect tuning with no extra equipment getting in the way. It would free up musicians to concentrate on their music and play without having to worry about keeping their guitars in tune all the time.

Now, did my uncle see this new guitar technology before I did, and pretend that the idea was his? I seriously wondered that. It seemed impossible that he would suggest inventing a self-tuning mechanism for the guitar and then later that week Gibson announces they have one on the market? But maybe he did actually think of it by himself – independently of the Gibson guitar company. Who knows. I didn’t ask him, of course. Later I did inform him that self-tuning guitars had already been invented; and I explained all the necessary technology to him. But he didn't seem too interested in my explanation. He was busy with other things at the time.
Do you see the lesson in this article? You should strive to make improvements to the functionality of your electric guitar. It could be anything. Hardware, or technique, or any other aspects or qualities. Anything to do with the instrument, try to see if it can be improved upon in some way. Anything can be made better in some manner or another. You may notice something that other people have overlooked for decades. Search for the thing that could be improved upon and design it for yourself and then build it from scratch and strive to patent the idea. Tell the world about it and make a million dollars for you and your loved ones. Strive to look at the guitar in ways that other people never have; and notice something that could be made better; then do it to the best of your ability. That is the basic lesson in this article. I hope you can use it in your life and your work. More info on Gibson’s self-tuning guitar:http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19462/page1/http://www.tronical.com/

-end-

Crazy Train Improv - Randy Rhoads - Ozzy Osbourne

2008-11-28T02:25:00.000-08:00

Guitar Article: Licks Inspired by Niccolo Paganini

2008-11-28T02:15:00.000-08:00

Background on the violinist Niccolo Paganini is provided, along with three guitar licks in tablature form that illustrate Paganini's style of playing adapted for the electric guitar.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/2237404/Guitar-Licks-Inspired-by-Niccolo-Paganini

Be sure to search for my other articles while you're there at Scribd.com