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What would popular music sound like today had it not been for Les Paul?

Two men, Les Paul and Bob Moog, stand above all others as creators of the musical environment in which our brains are all now marinated. Moog, who died in 2005, stepped into the nascent field of digital music and devised an interface that took pure sound synthesis across the bridge from engineers to practicing musicians. Paul, who died of pneumonia yesterday at the age of 94, is less recognized as a digital innovator. But maybe he should be. Underlying many of his incredible inventions was an abstract notion that demanded, almost as an afterthought, radical changes to the hardware of...

They came from Ohio, from Colorado, from Alabama, from Illinois, from Kalamazoo, and they came hauling black guitar cases bearing the iconic Heritage Guitar logo. On Friday, nearly 60 proud Heritage Guitar owners from across the country crammed into the company's small Parsons Street factory for the second annual Parson Street Pilgrimage. Later they planned to head to a farm in Plainwell for a Heritage-only jam-session. Started through an Internet forum for Heritage owners, 23 people came to the first Pilgrimage last year, said Jim Wallace, a forum member who helped start the yearly visit to the Kalamazoo guitar factory....

Workers at C.F Martin & Co. are putting finishing touches on the solid-wood 1 Series model, so named for its simplicity. It lacks inlay, as did the company's stripped-down 1930s model, and is expected to sell for less than $1,000, breaking a key price point and far less than its $100,000 limited-edition guitars made of Brazilian rosewood. More popular Martins generally sell for $2,000 to $3,000. Initial reaction is promising. The company, which had sales of $93 million last year, introduced the 1 Series in April and promptly sold out its first year's output of 8,000 guitars. "We needed something...

I'd like to hear from all the FReeper guitarists out there!

Rambling through youtube ... guess what I stumbled upon?

YouTube....Funky Girl

can only post a link to story:

Not everyone's drinking the Kool-Aid these days. Larry Carlton, a guitar player's guitar player, happened to be doing a series of shows in Chelsea this weekend, at the Blue Note.He played masterfully for an hour and a half, with a pick-up bassist (can't recall his name) and drummer (Billy Kilson, "one of the world's best," according to Mr. Carlton) . It was a rather smoothy-jazzy affair, without the ass-kicking solo work I'd hoped to hear, but after all it was a Sunday night, 8pm show (for those unfamiliar with Larry Carlton, he's the ace that played the great solo on...

ELKHORN, Wis. - When Tallan "T-Man" Latz was 5, he saw Joe Satriani playing guitar on TV. "I turned around to my dad and said, 'That's exactly what I want to do.'" Three years and countless hours of practicing later, 8-year-old Tallan is a blues guitar prodigy. He's played in bars and clubs, including the House of Blues in Chicago, and even jammed with Les Paul and Jackson Browne. He has a summer of festivals scheduled and has drawn interest from venues worldwide.

The 25 Most Rockin' Guitar Riffs Posted Thu May 29 11:17am PDT by Rob O'Connor in List Of The Day I'm told that the good folks over at Rolling Stone.com have launched a list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs as a feature at their site to coincide with their Guitar Gods Issue that--like most great things in this world--is FOR SALE.Click here to check it out.As I write this, I haven't seen it, but I'm sure it's going to include a few listings that make me think "Oops, I left that one out." Because that's what this list business...

Per popular demand, after the very successful "Who Is Your Favorite Drummer?" thread, here we have a new posting to determine who is your favorite guitarist of all time.

Bon Jovi star Richie Sambora has offered English soccer ace David Beckham free guitar lessons. The guitarist is a big fan of the LA Galaxy star and has urged him to give call him if he ever feels like learning the instrument. He says: "Beckham is a good guy. He's done so much for soccer in the US. He's such a big name and brought soccer to a different level and its now played in schools. It's just a pity that he doesn't get to play more as he's been injured. "David should come and see me. I'd gladly give...

And The Winners Are....

Heck, no reason. Enjoy! Flamenco Guitar by Jason REAL Flamenco (not Hollywood) dancing

Blind guitar wizard Jeff Healey of Toronto died Sunday of cancer. He was 41. Norman Jeffrey Healey was one of Canada's premier blues and jazz musicians who is perhaps best known for his 1988 album See The Light, which included the hit single Angel Eyes. He was also nominated for a Grammy for the song Hideaway and in 1990, was awarded a Juno in the Entertainer of the Year category. Other Healey hits have included How Long Can a Man Be Strong and a cover of The Beatles' While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Healey lost his vision as a baby...

NEXT WEEK'S reunion of Led Zeppelin is among the most anticipated in rock history. And with good reason. In the 1970s, the British band was mesmerizing.But beyond unforgettable songs and legendary live shows, Led Zeppelin broadcast a powerful message to fans who tuned in to the right frequency. Bring the soul of the West and Islam together, Led Zeppelin told us, and you can produce a musical force powerful enough to break through the barricade dividing the two civilizations. In its way, this message is far more subversive than the Satanic themes the band was accused of "backmasking" into "Stairway...

Musicians of the world are getting a new kind of artistic freedom with technology that eliminates the challenging chore of tuning. Robotics technology developed by German company Tronical Gmbh in partnership with Gibson Guitar Corp. enables Gibson's newest Les Paul model to tune itself in about two seconds. For users who purchase the add-on technology, the guitar recognizes pitch. Then, its processor directs motors on its six tuning pegs to tighten or loosen the strings accordingly. Tronical has offered its "Powertune System" online and through retailers in Germany since March, according to the company's Web site. The Gibson Les Paul...

An Oakdale music store owner was arrested Monday for selling fake versions of the legendary Gibson guitar at his Montauk Highway shop, the Suffolk police said. Investigators seized 15 fake Gibsons from the store, the police said. Bernard Musumeci, 44, of 2 Domino Way, Centereach, surrendered to the police Monday night, and was charged with trademark counterfeiting. After he was released, Musumeci turned over another 18 guitars from his home, and Gibson Guitar Corp. experts will determine whether they're authentic. The arrest came after a two-month investigation by Fifth Squad detectives, working in conjunction with the Nashville-based Gibson company. After...

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter smiles as he holds a Spanish classical guitar in a factory in Esquivias, central Madrid, August 13, 2007. The guitar, donated by Guitarras Manuel Rodriguez e Hiijos, will be auctioned by the Carter Foundation next February to raise funds for humanitarian aid. REUTERS/Sergio Perez (SPAIN)

Bob Weir, Founding Member of the Grateful Dead Both my natural and adopted fathers were military men. My adopted dad attended Annapolis for seven years and came out with the military equivalent of a doctorate in Engineering. When they gave him his first commission and put him out to sea he was seasick from the time he left port to the time he got back. It was so bad they had to put him in the hospital. Then he tried it again right at the beginning of World War II. He wanted nothing more than to serve his country but...

My wife made a mistake. For my birthday in February, she bought me a calendar from the Fender Custom Shop. I hung it on the wall directly behind my desk, right in my range of vision, and I have been gazing longingly ever since at beautiful guitars. My longing stayed within reason until I turned the page to April, and saw the Engraved Thinline Telecaster in flame maple. The clumsy copy below the calendar proper says "both nice to look at and a dream to play." "A dream to play" has been ringing in my head ever since, the way...

Click here for streaming video of 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival!

Alas, Justin Timberlake didn't expose anyone's nipple this year. But, Super Bowl XL did offer a fries-with-that K-Fed, a surprising Letterman-Oprah cuddle, and - our personal favorite - an unsubtle allusion to what Prince usually hides behind his guitar (for the full effect, check out this YouTube clip.) And without any further foreplay, here are Usmagazine.com's Super Bowl celebrity highlights: It's one thing to pay celebrities to pimp your products, it's another to get celebrities to whore themselves out shamelessly for you! That's what GM did in this brilliant ad showing a demure and gorgeous Mary J. Bligeand others singing...

I am somewhat new to the Guitar. However, I have learned a lot about chord structure scales etc. I know a load of chords etc and can pick up some things from the radio. I play the acoustic. My question is how to put it all together if any of you guitar gods know. I have been playing for 4 months. Thanks

As a beginning guitar player, I'm trying to learn basic chords by learning some familiar songs. There are two songs I'd like to learn. One is the theme song from the old Robert Mitchum movie, "Thunder Road." I can find the lyrics but not the chords. The other song is Rod Stewart's "Lost In You." Again, I can find the lyrics, but not the chords. Thanx in advance.

DE QUEEN, Ark. - The guitar-shaped bulge in Morgan Conatser's clothing tipped off a music store owner that there might be a crime in progress. Clifton Lovell, owner of Guitars and Cadillacs on U.S. Highway 71 in De Queen, was talking with a customer last week when he saw Conatser, 29, walking out of the store. "I saw him walking out to his pickup truck and the bulges in his leather jacket. I said, 'Hey what have you got there,'" Clifton Lovell said. He said Conatser, 29, replied, "Nothing." Lovell pointed toward the unnatural shapes in Conatser's jacket and pants...

LONDON (AFP) - As the guitar power in the legendary British rock band Queen, Brian May conquered most of the planet -- and now he has his sights set on mastering the universe. The star musician, who wrote hits like "We Will Rock You", "The Show Must Go On" and "Flash", has switched his plectrum for a pen and co-authored a book with two leading British astronomers, telling the story of the big bang and how the universe has evolved since. Brian May addresses the media during a photocall to launch a book entitled "Bang! The Complete History of the...

October 12, 2006 In pursuit of a stamp of approval for C.F. Martin By Kurt Blumenau Of The Morning Call If Elvis Presley, Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams can appear on U.S. postage stamps, then why not the man who founded the company that made their guitars? That's the sentiment at C.F. Martin & Co., the venerable Upper Nazareth Township guitar maker. The company began appealing to Martin owners and fans about a month ago, urging them to take part in a letter-writing drive aimed at getting company founder C.F. Martin Sr. onto a postage stamp.

Click the link to hear this modern guitar version of Canon in D

Music publishers are taking action against guitar fan websites which they say infringe songwriters' copyrights. Publishers have started to use copyright lawsuits to shut down sites which share notations to help musicians to play songs at home. Called guitar tablature, or tab, the notations indicate where players should put their fingers. Books filled with tab are available in shops, but a number of websites make tab notations available for free. Now trade bodies are taking action against those sites. The New York Times reports that the Music Publishers' Association (MPA) and the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) have shut down...

TOKYO -- The hand-aged Gibson Les Paul Special is a replica of the 1960 original, but an American master craftsman made it exactly the way the guitar would look today, complete with aging cracked paint and tiny dents from scuffs and scratches. What's unique, the instrument isn't sold anywhere else but in guitar-loving Japan, where the entire limited edition of the electric guitars is sold out, underlining the nation's never-ending affair with American guitars.

Early in the second hour of the Red Hot Chili Peppers' mammoth new double album, the guy who once yelped, "I want to party on your pussy!" whisper-sings a gentler, though not unrelated, proposition: "All I want is for you to be happy/And take this woman and make you my family." The delicate "Hard to Concentrate" is the most vulnerable Peppers tune ever -- a full-on marriage proposal from Anthony Kiedis, with Flea's muted bass and John Frusciante's layered guitars slow-dancing over Afrobeat hand drums. The twenty-eight-song, box-set-length Stadium Arcadium isn't a middle-aged concept album about trading in your tube...

A TEENAGER bounced off his bed and out of a third-floor window to his death during a wild impression of a rock guitarist. Excited Li Xiao Meng was jumping around with his guitar in the bedroom of a Singapore students' hostel when he made the fatal mistake. The 16-year-old business student, from China, was "hyped up with exhilaration" when he rebounded off the bed and out of the window, coroner Tan Boon Heng told the Straits Times newspaper. “He was jumping up and down on the bed placed against an open window while imitating a rock guitarist,” Mr Tan said....

Guitarist Jimmy Page of the band Led Zeppelin has been voted the top guitar soloist of all time for the song Stairway to heaven. According to contactmusic.com, Page's performance topped the survey held by the website aboutguitars.com and beat out the likes of Eddie Van Halen for the track Eruption. The third place was occupied by the dual guitar solo by Allen Collins and Gary Rossington on Lynyrd Skynyrd's Freebird. The top 10 guitar solos are: 1. Stairway to heaven - Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin) 2. Eruption - Eddie Van Halen (Van Halen) 3. Freebird - Allen Collins and Gary...

Just would like to start a thread and let Freepers list their guitar related equipment, gear they long for or gear they have recently tried....or just anything guitar related.

Appellate Court Awards Victory to Paul Reed Smith Guitars (PRS) Over Gibson In a long-pending trademark dispute between PRS Guitars and Gibson Guitars Corp., the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit today reversed a lower court decision and ordered the dismissal of Gibson's suit against PRS. The decision also immediately vacates the injunction prohibiting the sale and production of PRS’s award winning Singlecut Guitar. Paul Reed Smith Guitars announced today that it will immediately resume production of its Singlecut guitars. Paul Smith, the founder of PRS, stated “We are delighted that the appellate court affirmed what we...

Shameless vanity that ask the musical question: What guitar did you get?

In Interview, He Gives His Perspective on the Liturgy VATICAN CITY, NOV. 16, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The Mass is a moment of reflection and encounter with God, rather than a form of entertainment, says Cardinal Francis Arinze. In an interview with Inside the Vatican magazine, the prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments made a comprehensive assessment of the recent Synod of Bishops on the Eucharist and of developments in liturgical practice 40 years after the Second Vatican Council. Regarding "music in the liturgy, we should start by saying that Gregorian music is the Church's precious heritage," he...

Guitar gods and demi-gods I need freeper advice. A small to medium sized amp is needed to allow proper practice of a vintage tele and new Gibson LP. I have a budget of $1000 'cause the wife says so. So I am soliciting advice. Tube or SS? Modelling or bare bones (I have stomp boxes)? New or vintage? Thanks, doodad

Guys and electric guitars go together BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published on July 26, 1998.) I got a call from a guy I know named Carl. It was a cry for help. Carl is a successful man in his 40s, but sometimes even successful people, when they are in need, have to reach out to their friends, and I am proud to consider Carl a friend, even though for my 50th birthday he gave me some kind of reptile egg, which thank God never hatched. It took some effort for Carl to overcome his...

Sample music cuts here: http://www.artistdirect.com/nad/music/artist/listenwatch/0,,2844717,00.html#artist_name Label here: http://stores.musictoday.com/store/product.asp?dept_id=1316&pf_id=FDCD54&band_id=482&sfid=2

Here's the story:I came into what appears to be a pretty good deal. It is a Marshall speaker cabinet holding four 12" speakers. It is a top (slanted) cabinet. The tag on the front lists it as a JCM800 Lead Series. The tolex has a few tears and there is a small tear in the speaker grille. It looks like it has seen some life on the road but it is solid.I purchased this cabinet for $200. I do not currently possess a head with which to play it through. Not out here in Florida anyways.Now here is where I...

Digital technology long ago seems to have worked its way into just about every aspect of music production. Electronic keyboards are nearly ubiquitous. Digital samplers have become standard in just about any pop recording. When a singer is off-key, his or her pitch can be corrected electronically. And many guitar sounds are tweaked with electronic effects to make them fuller, richer, or weirder. But the electric guitar itself has remained largely untouched by the digital revolution. For the most part, guitars use the same analog technology that the original electrics did seven decades ago. Now, a Windham (N.H.) company called...

ATLANTA - He entered the rock 'n' roll pantheon as a joker, a smoker and a midnight toker. But sitting in a gray business suit in front of 400 corporate executives, Steve Miller's message had more to do with knowing how to take the money and run. "I love playing, but you can't get to the good stuff unless you keep an eye on the business," Miller said after speaking at a conference put on by a corporate research and advisory firm. Miller's speech underlies a truth that's been around for decades, but become more obvious recently - rock 'n'...

Monday May 16, 2005 AKRON, Ohio (AP) Electric guitar pioneer Les Paul was one of 14 people inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame during the weekend. Paul, 89, invented the solid body electric guitar in 1946. His Gibson Guitar Corp. model is one of the best-selling instruments in the industry and he also is widely renowned for his recording techniques. Paul, a native of Waukesha, Wis., also has won five Grammy Awards. Five other living inventors also were inducted Saturday into the Akron-based hall, including Dr. Alec Jeffreys, who invented genetic fingerprinting, and Robert Gundlach, who has earned...

101 Greatest Moments in Guitar History A moment in time. A split second where everything freezes, and your mind takes a snapshot of an event you'll always keep with you - an event that forever divides your life into two groups: stuff that happened before this moment, and the stuff that will happen after. Great moments change you. The greatest ones change everything. Most GP readers have their own list of life-changing moments, and many of those moments involve the guitar: The first guitar you ever played, the best solo you ever heard, the most transcendent tone that caressed your...

1. Jimi Hendrix 2. Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band 3. B.B. King 4. Eric Clapton 5. Robert Johnson 6. Chuck Berry 7. Stevie Ray Vaughan 8. Ry Cooder 9. Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin 10. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones

ORANGE PARK, Florida (AP) -- Legendary country, rock and jazz guitarist Hank Garland, who performed with Elvis Presley, the Everly Brothers, Roy Orbison, Patsy Cline, Charlie Parker and many others, has died at the age of 74. Garland died of a staph infection Monday at Orange Park Medical Center, said his brother, Billy Garland. In the 1950s and '60s, Walter "Hank" Garland was the talk of Nashville, known for musical riffs that could take a recording from humdrum to dazzling, as he did on Elvis hits like "Little Sister" and "Big Hunk of Love." He had his first million-selling hit...

A classic Gibson guitar used by George Harrison on the Beatles' "Revolver" album and by John Lennon on the "White Album" sold Friday to an anonymous bidder for $567,500, Christie's auction house announced.