Aarren - thanks again fro your time and advice!! Checked out the updated version of your tune!! Do you know yet if it is going to be purely instrumental or whether it will have lyrics?

Slave to sound - I always find when im in a rut like you sound to be in at the moment, learning new material helps me back out. Pick an artist and learn some of their stuff even if its just part of it!! see if that helps!

Plabin - If your E always breaks easily, check where the string lies down by the bridge, sometimes a bit of worn metal or grit can be under the string causing easy breakage. it might just need smoothing down

Sammy Andrews - thanks for the kind words - Good luck with your playing and let me know when you have something recorded so I can check it out!

Ovation1 - thanks for checking and thanks for the kind words!! I think I have a lot of improving to go before I can truley make Joe proud - lol - thanks again!!!

Hi Haven't popsted here for ages (not that anyone would notice). Hi Joe - come to UK soooon. Pretty please.

About the DS1. I modified my own but there is the "Seeing Eye" mod. This improves the sound immensely. I think Vai uses it too.

I you're interested - http://www.robertkeeley.com/ is the site.

Regards to all

OME - I used 2 guitars on Blowout. A Fender Strat for the intro and a Washburn Chicago Series (heavily modified) for the rhythm. The drums come from a virtual instrument called LM-7 which comes with Cubase SX which I painstakingly had to program.

Ovation - Ive never really written anything in this style before so its really a challenge for me. What im trying to do is let the track go where it wants to and then i can decide if i want to change/delete/keep the sections. Ive never written this way either as I normally decide if I like what ive done once ive recorded each bit so im quite curious to see what will come from it.

Olly - No probs mate. I havent received that midi file yet. As for Blowout, im hoping that it will turn out to be an instrumental but if you read what I said to Ovation above then you will see that I am just letting the track go where it wants to then I will decide if I like it so I havent got a clue if it will end up with lyrics.

Aarren

R6rocker - Welcome back....its been a while. How are you settling in? Incase you havent read, ive started work on a new tune called Blowout and you can hear it on my iuma (click link above). There are 2 versions, the second one is a more up-to-date one. It isnt finished yet but i hope to get it done within a month. Have a listen and let me know what you think of it.

Hi Austin, my seat will be anywhere in middle of sector A, but unfortunately not in the very front. It's a handycap to buy tickets via Ticketmaster (second choice!). I saw Joe in Berlin last jear. I stood at max. two meters from Joe away. What an opportunity to study Joe's fingerwork!!!

Joe, My grandson, Derek Drye, has tickets to see you at the Millenium Center in Winston-Salem October 28 along with Steve and Yngwie.

He is such a fan of yours and the others as well. He would love to have a chrome guitar like yours--I've looked on Ed Roman guitars but have not found out a price as yet.

Please! He would love to see you backstage! He is planning a career in music, has played guitar 3 years, starting at the age of 14 as you did. He attended a National Guitar Workshop last year in Connecticut; I was hoping he would go to Los Angeles to see you, but at last he can on October 28.

I am Derek's grandmother; he would not tell you this, but he is a great guitar player. One of his teachers said he was a musical genius.

Again, please, as a surprise to Derek, allow him to come backstage. This would be such an answer to prayers for him.

If you know someone, who needs a lead guitar, please let us know!

I am become moved, shatterer of leases lol

Mowlie Thanks bro', yeah we are settling in okay, same old familiar place that I've gone back to makes it easier, just a garage stacked from front to back, top to bottom with crap to deal with - lmao. The 'studio' is set up in about half the space that I had at the old place, I'm thinking of calling it the 'Harmony Hovel' ;-) I really just want to take a few steps back with my playing now, you know, iron out all the bad crap and fire the metronome up - heh heh, we'll see. I checked your track out man, great opening riff with a cool lead into the drums, crying out for a lead line. The main riff comes across like a Sabbath / Slayer hybrid, with a cleaner distortion sound, lots of room for creative melody lines in there too. I'm looking forward to hearing the finished track. btw I like the 'nasty' distortion sound on the opening riff as well, high quality as always ;-)

Ovation, good stuff there. LOL! Funny as hell man!

R6R, fiiiiinally!! Congrats on the move. Hope everything went well and things go smoothly from now on.

Ovation: Thanks again man. And the more I think about it, Paul Gilbert couldn't sound that awful if he was falling down drunk lol. It's all about the groove though man, forever groove lol

tapper5: As far as I know you can't use one of the smart media readers to write anything to the cards, unless there are some type of read/write units that I haven't seen. To put any kind of file onto the GNX3 unit, you'll have to be cabled up in some fashion. And also, thanks for checking out a few of the tunes, I don't take myself very seriously and just like to play along. I just do what I like to do and sometimes I like to make it a little goofy. And yeah, IUMA is free, not always reliable or all that great for support, but you get what you pay for. I like it better than mp3.com because listeners don't have to register and all of that.

ollyno1uk: Great version of Ceremony man, it really rocks, awesome job. I'll check out some more of your stuff as time permits.

mowlie2000: Nice new workable groove you have there, and nice new approach to writing. I've never tried it like that before so let me know how it works out. All of my tunes are solid takes front to back, but none of my tunes sound as cool as yours so there ya go lol.

Yayogakk: Grassy Knoll Technique! That's awesome man. LMAO.

Fusion5000: Congrats on the V man, hope you like it. Sure looks sweet.

Alexandre: I will man, and from what I remember Danger Danger was pretty cool. I have a soft spot for all the old hairbangers myself. Actually, I just cut off all of my hair last week. Security doesn't follow me around the stores anymore lol.

death cube K: Band rehearsal eh? That sounds good. Were you able to record that one project you had mentioned to me yet, or has that happened yet?

JS Clone: Wow, now that's going into the archives a bit! I didn't realize Gilbert was that young when he was starting to get a little bit of recognition.

Ethn: Pudding rocks man, you're just jaded because of your lack of proper tools lol. Especially butterscotch.

r6rocker: LOL man, shatterer of wallets! Congrats on the move man, was wondering about there. As far as the cd, things are getting so very close. Won't be long now at all. As far as my playing, I have this mental hangup that I can't go on to the next idea until I complete the one I'm working on. So I completely folded up the current idea and did an awful solo on a song called Lost Expedition that you can check out here. But now my head is clear again, and the ideas are flowing, and the fingers for a change too.

Quote of the day: Opportunities multiply as they are seized" Lao-Tsu

tapper5 - by 'posting' do you mean putting up the MP3 or posting the scores?

Here's the answer to both:

no the MP3 won't get posted as the accoustic guitar quartet is a track off of the album and I'd be cutting my own throat by giving this stuff away - in fact the throat cutting would most likely be a joint effort by PRMAN [who has a large stake in the album in many ways] and my wife who has put up with so much grief and neglect for so long as I try to get this done..
note that what takes a pro 6 months to produce takes me 4 times as long - 'cos it's not me day job...

posting the scores - now that's not a bad idea.. when the CD is ready for launch, the official band web site will open.. PRMAN is the webmaster for it [amongst many other things he does for this project].. I'll find out if there is a way I can print the score for the quartet and get it up on the site.

The name of the accoustic quartet piece is:

Virtus Juxit Mors non Separabit

and it is very very pretty indeed..

the backing track is all done - wooohoooooo!!!!!!!!!!!

I did try 'Sloth' [the Washburn accoustic] for the 2nd movement of the Raft but it didn't fit as nicely as a clean electric.. I think that this was due to the sudden dynamic shifts from calm to murder and back again.. the dynamic difference seemed to me to be a little to wide..
In the end I used 'Envy' [RG7470] on the neck pickup [Blaze] with compression, chorus and a pile of reverb..
the piano and clean guitar make for an interesting mix.. the 'verse' sections are in unison and during the bridge sections they each go their own way and harmonise making for a nice contrast..
now it's the fun part - solo time... I am so looking forward to this.. before I start I think I'll take 'Wrath' appart, do a little house work on her and sling on some new strings...
I just can't wait......
I have a mission... and there will be casualties.. lol

It's a nice tune...

X of the Y = two songs and one movement... lol

While My Nose Gently Bleeds - Addam Fox lmao

one more thing

I have (2) tickets to Toronto show for sale that I cannot make, they are in section RCF row H, seats 40 to 41, the total price I paid was 130.50 canadian, I will sell for same. If anyone is interested, please email me at: jclemente@getworknow.com

r6rocker - thanks for checking out my tune and its slowly getting there...........slowly..........

trutina - i will let u know how it turns out. Call me stupid if you like, but what does Trutina mean?????

Hey Guys!

Beezer - what format do you want it in? Midi or MP3???