So, you've decided to attend a summer music festival this year...

Congratulations! Between upcoming events like; the Mad Decent Block Party, Veld, OVO, Lollapalooza and Osheaga, we're sure you've made a good choice.

And after all that hard work, and saving or somehow justifying dropping hundreds of dollars on weekend passes, you're ready for hours of entertainment and live music. And once you arrive, surely there will be nothing standing between you and your favorite acts.

...That is unless of course you run into one of "THOSE" people.

Sure, they've probably paid the price of admission and have a similar taste in music, but that's where the similarities end...

Ladies and gentlemen, meet the four most annoying kinds of idiots at music festivals...

BOSS USA and Musician’s Friend organised this special Webinar event with the legendary Steve Vai to talk about pedal boards and the perfect pedal order. 

This event was recorded live but is available to watch below in two parts, the first part is just over 1 hour in length and the last part is just over 10 minutes.

Part 1:

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

Part 2:

Broadcast live streaming video on Ustream

'Riffstation Play' Makes It Easy To Play Along With YouTube Music Videos...

Attention lonely teenagers and the musically proficient adults they become: you can now learn to play tons of songs on YouTube using one of the simplest interfaces to launch in a while. It's called Riffstation Play, an online app by the makers of Riffstation that claims to give you the chords and notes for almost any song on the Internet.

Like Capo 3, the system is very simple. Complex tunes will probably be lost on the app but most rock and roll hits should work just fine. There is a search engine complete with pre-rendered chord patterns and, for the more advanced players, (Riffstation claims; this on an iPad could be a nice alternative to a Fake Book while on stage).

It also supports ukulele chords so you and your friends can start a quirky string band. They even did a shameless demo video to show off some of the basic features.


“Not only are we able to provide chords for any version of any song in the world, we also get to collect the data on what songs are most popular within the guitar player community,” said Dan Barry, co-founder of Riffstation. “Furthermore, the fact that our chord recognition is automatic, means that the size of our catalog is limitless. Our index already has over 10 million songs listed.”

The company also offers a “pro” version of the software that can analyze songs in more detail and slow things down so you can learn riffs, leads, and other git-fiddle frippery. However, as a chording platform, the free Play service is quite fun.

Today marks the release of my new eBook... "Blues Guitar Styles - Masterclass"

This eBook is the compilation of dozens of Blues Guitar topics that I cover in my daily in-class sessions with my local students here at Creative Guitar Studio. The material has been organized both around helping students to fully comprehend how the harmonies of the Blues progressions operate and to help players move toward better rhythm and improvisation skills.


In the eBook I begin by running through the chords that are important in the world of Blues Guitar. After all, if you haven't got your rhythm skills up to snuff, not too many bands will desire to have you as a lead player! So, in order to help students with developing their skills here, the popular blues guitar chords are not only notated as diagrams but there are plenty of study exercises to help with their application. This section is covered in two chapters divided into the open blues chord types and the coverage of moveable Blues chord types.

From there we move along to all of the popular Blues Harmonies. These include the eight, twelve, and the sixteen bar Blues progressions. The Blues progressions are discussed both within key signatures, as well as, using Harmonic Analysis notation. By employing both systems the student will fully comprehend how the harmonies of Blues are applied.

The following chapters move through Techniques such as; Hybrid Picking, Fingerstyle, Slide Guitar and the use of alternate tunings. This is extremely important when it comes to Blues, since the techniques are invaluable for getting the Blues sound from the instrument. And, I decided to include the topic of slide guitar, because the world of slide is such a popular concept for the Blues style that it simply cannot be taken for granted, or overlooked.





The eBook wraps up with chapters dedicated to the direction of performing within various Blues styles and creating improvisation within them. It goes without saying that Blues is literally the style of improvising. Therefore, developing this important skill is crucial for the Blues enthusiast. The eBook covers all of the popular pentatonic scales used by Blues musicians. And, as one would expect, there are plenty of guitar licks demonstrating the use of the scales. Other vital areas include Blues phrasing and chord tone targeting, as well as, popular feels used in the associated styles like; Soul, and R and B.

I hope that you'll consider supporting my online guitar lessons project with the purchase of my new eBook. Many hours of work went into designing the eBook and recording the twenty-seven MP3 audio tracks that detail each of the TAB examples found within it. Every purchase helps to support the website and to continue to expand the Creative Guitar Studio online project.

Thank you for your interest and your dedication so far!
- Andrew Wasson
  Creative Guitar Studio

A minor-league baseball team in South Carolina is hosting a mass destruction of Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus music and merchandise.

The Charleston RiverDogs are hosting an event billed as "Disco Demolition 2: You Better Belieb It" on Saturday after an evening game against the Augusta GreenJackets.

Fans that bring any merchandise linked to troubled Canadian pop prodigy Bieber or his provocative American counterpart will receive a $1 ticket.

A press release on the team's website touted that video montages would be played throughout the game to "pump up the fans prior to the dramatic post-game demolition."

Further, the RiverDogs — a single-A affiliate of the New York Yankees — are vowing to stop playing Bieber and Cyrus tunes at Joseph P. Riley, Jr. Park.

The title of the evening is a play on the infamous "Disco Demolition Night" at Chicago's Comiskey Park in July 1979, which sent disorderly fans into a frenzied lather.


They eventually stormed and damaged the field, forcing the White Sox to forfeit the game.

The RiverDogs' press release called that fiasco an "iconic event in music history and pop culture as a whole."

"Like so many, we have taken special exception to Justin Bieber and Miley Cyrus's music along with his numerous run-ins with the law and her controversial performances," RiverDogs GM Dave Echols said in a release.

"Disco Demolition 2 is dedicated to the eradication of their dread musical disease, like the original Disco Demolition attempted to do. We are going to take Bieber and Cyrus's merchandise and memorabilia, put it in a giant box, and blow it to smithereens."

"It's all in good fun and we guarantee there won't be a forfeit of the game."

Courtesy of GuitarWorld.com

As I have discussed in previous columns, I often use triadic arpeggio forms within my riffs and solos as a tool to create rich-sounding, poly-chordal sounds.

I’d like to continue in that vein in this month’s column by presenting different ways in which to move from one arpeggio form to another, using a series of specific triads that complement one another well.




Let’s start with the triads F# diminished and D major, as shown in FIGURES 1 and FIGURE 2, respectively. The F# diminished triad is built from the notes C, F# and A, and the D major triad is built from almost the same set of notes, D, F# and A. Both FIGURES 1 and 2 show these triads as played in fifth position for comparison.

If I wanted to get a bluesy vibe, I’d use the D major triad and combine it with the F# diminished triad, as demonstrated in FIGURE 3. Here, the C note is heard as the b7 (flat seventh) of D, implying a D dominant-seven tonality.

Now let’s try combining the F# diminished arpeggio with an A minor arpeggio—A C E—as shown in FIGURE 4. The combination of these two sets of notes gives an F#m7b5 arpeggio (F# A C E: see FIGURE 5). These licks work well over an Am chord, as the inclusion of the F# note, the major sixth of A, implies an Am6, A Dorian–mode type of sound.


As you probably have noticed, all of these arpeggios are played on the top three strings, and I often like to incorporate sweep picking when using arpeggios like this. FIGURE 6 illustrates a combination of an Em7 arpeggio—E G B D—and a Gmaj7 arpeggio—G B D F#. As denoted in the example, in order to sweep pick these arpeggio shapes properly, begin with an upstroke on the first note and then use a single down-stroke to rake across the top three strings to play the next three notes.

The form ends with another upstroke. I then slide up to 10th position and reverse the process, beginning with a down-stroke and then using a single upstroke to rake across the top three strings, moving from high to low. FIGURE 7 offers an example of applying this approach to the chord progression Em7 Am9 F#m7b5 Gmaj7.

This is the last installment of Wild Stringdom for now. I hope these columns have been useful to you and have served to broaden your knowledge of the guitar while building up your chops. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you out on the road!

The guitarist, who won Grammys for producing Muddy Waters and co-wrote "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo," was on tour in Europe at the time of his death...

Johnny Winter, the Texas blues guitarist who added his own unique current of electricity to songs like "Highway 61 Revisited," "Johnny B. Goode" and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" in the late Sixties and throughout the Seventies, died Wednesday in his hotel room in Zurich, according to his publicist. He had been on tour in Europe and most recently had played in Wiesen, Austria. Winter was 70.

"His wife, family and bandmates are all saddened by the loss of one of the world's finest guitarists," a representative for Winter said in a statement. "An official statement with more details shall be issued at the appropriate time."

Winter, along with his younger brother Edgar, rose to prominence in their early 20s and turned heads both for their musicianship and stark-white hair, a result of the musicians' albinism.

The guitarist was born in Beaumont, Texas in 1944 and rose to prominence in his early 20s after a Rolling Stone cover story on Texas music in December 1968. "If you can imagine a 130-pound, cross-eyed albino with long fleecy hair playing some of the gutsiest, fluid blues guitar you ever heard, then enter Johnny Winter," wrote Larry Sepulvado and John Burks in the issue.

"At 16, [Mike] Bloomfield called him the best white blues guitarist he ever heard.... No doubt about it, the first name that comes to mind when you ask emigrant Texans about the good musicians that stayed back home is Winter's." The guitarist, who had previously played in a band with his younger brother Edgar (who scored a Seventies hit with "Frankenstein"), was playing in a trio at the time. After the article came out, Winter was offered several deals and eventually signed a reported $600,000 contract with Columbia.


Although Winter had put out a debut LP in 1968, The Progressive Blues Experiment, which would reach Number 40 on the Top 200, his first release for Columbia in June of the following year, Johnny Winter, rose to Number 24 and featured Edgar on keyboards. He quickly released a follow-up in October, Second Winter. Both records featured a mix of originals and covers of songs by Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, B.B. King, Sonny Boy Williamson and more. Between those two albums' release, Winter played an hour-long noon set on the last day of Woodstock.

In his lifetime, the bluesman issued nearly 20 studio LPs. His most recent album, Roots, came out in 2011 and featured guests ranging from Warren Haynes to Edgar on songs by the likes of Elmore James and Jimmy Reed. A four-disc retrospective box set, True to the Blues: The Johnny Winter Story, was released in February 2014. Winter's final album, Step Back, which features appearances by Eric Clapton, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and Aerosmith's Joe Perry, among others, is scheduled to come out on September 2nd.

Outside of his own work, Winter co-produced the 1970 hit "Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo" for Rick Derringer, and produced three LPs for Muddy Waters in the late Seventies, earning three Grammys for his work with the blues legend.

"It's a living music," Winter once said of his chosen genre. "For me, blues is a necessity."