RIP, Bo Diddley

Bo Diddley, Who Gave Rock His Beat, Dies at 79 – Obituary Obit – NYTimes.com

I was very saddened to hear of the passing of Bo Diddley. I think a lot of people are not even aware of how influential Bo was for many other players (from Hendrix to Billy Gibbons), and its so sad that he is gone now. I remember seeing a documentary on guitars as a kid, and he was in there, and I loved “Bo Diddley” and “Roadrunner” and of course “I’m A Man”, which is one of the most popular blues classics ever

A great player with a very distinctive style, a true artist, a great performer and one of the innovators of rock n roll… RIP, Bo, you will be missed! THank you for everything!

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bo_Diddley

Fail =)

I guess some of you will prolly have seen this on the web already, but for those of you who haven’t, I wanted to share this, it cracked me up. =)

Failed indeed =)

Norwegian Cowbell string-skipping

As I mentioned before in this blog, I have been listening to Paul Gilberts most recent album “Silence Followed By A Deafening Roar” a lot ever since I got it.
I really love those songs,both the melodies and the killer-playing. One of my favorites is “Norwegian Cowbell”. There is this cool string-skipping passage in the middle, utilizing some of Pauls trademark string-skipped arps. I tabbed out the first few bars of that, and will try to do the rest soon… its tough to find the time to do that.
I think I came pretty close here… I have used some of those “PG-arps” a lot ever since I learned them from “Intense Rock II”, and he uses them in a wonderful way. I am pretty sure that the F# min arp is played the way shown in bar 2. Its a pretty wide stretch, but I am sure he is sticking to the “arp patterns” he is using before, also keeping up the picking-pattern too. Also, he used pretty much the same shape this way in the “Anything For You” solo (from the first Mr. Big album).
I hope this is helpful to some of you, and if you havent checked out the album, maybe this will cause you to do so… its worth it! =)
I have no idea when Ill be able to tab out more, but maybe this will get you started and inspire you to figure out the rest yourself!
Enjoy! And if you wanna learn this, pay close attention to the picking-pattern… which notes are picked and where you use a hammer-on or pull off. And play this very slowly at first, a LOT, then speed up. Its not only a great chopbuilder, but fun to play, and I hope it inspires you to come up with your own licks using those arps, too!

click to enlarge

LOTW: Picking Exercise #5

Here is the fifth in the series of 6 essential picking exercises. You probably noticed that they don’t look very different on the first view, but each one should be worked on slowly at first, and then brought up to tempo… doing little exercises like these on a regular base will help a lot to get your picking up to speed, while maintaining accuracy…