Mr. Satriani and the rest of the band, I would just like to say that your music is a true gift to the world. I am an avid listener of music (not a musician due to a dreadful lack of talent) and yours is able to reach deep into the heart of the listener and pluck the strings of the soul. Listening to you is a truly transcendental experience. Your songs are able to pull emotion from the listener, and take the mind and ear on a truly spiritual journey to new heights of musical joy.

I have found very few artists that are capable of this. There are plenty of good musicians in the world but you are truly masters of your art and set a bar so high that few may attain it.

I would like to thank you for your music and for being so down to earth as to communicate with your fans rather than viewing them as just the necessary component to fill your bank account. You are a true artist and everyone can learn from your example.

Ok, so I've been reading through everyone's posts since I joined and it has become obvious that not only does everyone love Joe and his work, but a great many of you also play the guitar or bass. So this seems like a perfect place to ask this question.

As I said in my first post I'm pretty well talentless as far as playing music goes. I haven't really played seriously since Jr. High and then I was playing the trumpet. Since then all I've played is simple beats on a small hand drum for drumming circles. Oh and the pan pipes but I'm so awful at that, that I shouldn't have mentioned it.

I would like to learn how to play the guitar but I'm not real sure where to get started. I have no intentions of playing with a band, it's something I would like to do simply for my own enjoyment and to try and build some dexterity up in my right hand after a surgery I had a few years ago that caused me to lose a lot of it. I figure playing the guitar would be great exercise for it.

So really I was going to see if any of you could maybe give me some advice on where I to start. What types of guitars would be best for my needs and general stuff like that. Thanks.

Thanks Ibenez and Stu. I guess I'll start looking. I had planned on going acoustic initially partially because I love the sound of acoustic guitars. Well when and if I find one I'll be sure to let ya'll know.

Wow lots of great info. Now another question, everyone seems to be talking about acoustic vs. electric, but what about steel guitars. I love the sound of those as well. Probably won't start in that area but it'd be cool to eventually get there.

Looking at the prices ya'll have quoted I'm probably going to have to go with a second hand which is fine. I just don't really have the money to go new. I'm in the process of starting a new business so that tends to suck up quite a bit of my disposable income. Five years at it so far and still not making any type of money... well that's a lie made four hundred in profit this year but that all goes right back in.

So I looked at used online and realized I need to figure out what size I need... so apparently it's first to a music store to see what size I need and then to look for a second hand.

Gotta do some early morning venting. I'm in the unenviable position of having too much on my plate right now. I'm sure most of you know the feeling. I have a bad habit of doing this to myself. Hopefully one of these days I'll figure out how to only take on as much as I can do.

To start with is the fact that I'm married and I have four kids, that's item number one. Then I work part time doing data entry for an insurance company, that's not really stressful just kind of tedious and annoying but at this rate at least I have my job. I'm also working on starting my own business. I mentioned that a few posts back. I've been working on it for five years and it's exceptionally slow going. The big problem is that it's not exactly what one would call a normal business, and so we can't really make money in a normal fashion. That's the big stress right now.

See I run a paranormal investigation group. We have finally made enough money to do the filing for non-profit status so I'm in the process of navigating that red tape and making sure we get everything done right. We're also in the process of editing our first documentary which will hopefully be finished sometime in October and ready for Sundance in January. My only worry with it is making sure we can get the music right since I can't pay anyone for it.

This summer we have two more documentaries to film, a few publicity events, and this spring we have a charity event that we've started organizing. I hate to say it but this will probably be our last year for the charity event because it's becoming too much of a pain and the organization that we do it for really doesn't help much at all.

Man I'm getting tired of this stuff. Sometimes I wish I didn't run my own group and could be someone that just gets told when and where to show up. I'm horrible at managing schedules, organization, and then of course finding the time to work on filling out paperwork for non-profit status and then making sure we use the money correctly so that we can keep the non-profit status.

SuperSwingDog, starting the group didn't involve any red tape. Becoming a business does. I've asked myself many times why exactly I want it to become a business. The truth is I want to be able to dedicate all of my time to the paranormal rather than just my out of day job hours. To do that I need to make money doing it so I can support my family. The investigators on my team have the same needs. However, I refuse to charge anyone that wants us to investigate for them. So the money has to come from other sources. The easiest way would be through donations, hence the non-profit thing. The hardest way is through entertainment venues.

Though to be sure it's only hard for me because I approach this with a high standard of integrity. So that makes selling documentaries, books, and lectures a little bit harder because it shows how boring this actually is. The investigative process is exceptionally boring and it's only exciting when you find something. Well we don't always find stuff. So we could fake like the groups with reality shows and some other famous paranormal people. Or we stay true to ourselves and go the hard road.

As for stories I've got a few that I can share. My favorite is from Fredericksberg Virginia. We went there a few years ago for a convention and got a chance to investigate the Civil War battle field. It was an intense experience. Inside of a house on the field I stood to the side of a doorway generally just watching everyone and got a sudden pain in my back like someone had hit me with a seldge hammer or something. I reached back to rub my back and my fingers rubbed against a bullet hole in the wall. I moved one of my other people in front of it without telling her anything and she had the same experience.

Outside on the battle site we could hear drum cadences, gun fire, and yelling. You could also smell smoke, and what I call death. A sickly sweet smell that is really rather nauseating.

We shouldn't have had any of these smells as it was pouring rain and there was no wind moving. All of that is what we would call a residual haunting. Just something that replays due to the intense emotions of the event.

Well it's raining outside and that about fits my mood really. One of those days where it feels like the world is riding on your shoulders and you just want to shrug them and let the pieces fall where they may. I'm slowly killing myself by taking on more projects than I can handle and the people I'm supposed to be working with aren't always helpful.

I shouldn't be surprised though, I have a habit of working with people that promise the moon then hand me some cheese. It just gets annoying feeling like you have to do everything yourself. I'm not even a perfectionist I just think if you tell someone you're going to do something you should make your best effort to do it.

Anyway you may now be asking yourself what exactly this post is about. Aside from my downcast mood at the moment it's about all these friggen projects I have to do. Analyzing evidence from my paranormal groups most recent investigation, navigating red tape to become an official organization, organizing a charity event for kids' cancer research, organizing fund raising events for my paranormal group, organizing the filming of a couple investigations of historical sites (sorry no details), organizing travel plans for my group, and outlining a book I'm going to write on the paranormal.

Then of course there is the editing, writing a voice over script, and trying to find music for the most recently filmed documentary so that we can hopefully have it finished up by October. Finally of course having to depend on everyone else involved to hold up their end of the bargain and get their jobs done. It's a huge pain.

I never realized how hard it could be to find music for a documentary at a reasonable price. I've tried the local music scene but haven't found anyone that impresses me. The music has to be just right to convey the right mood. Oh well, hopefully I'll find something soon... or strike it rich and be able to purchase the ability to use a few songs that I like.

Burly,

There are quite literally thousands of different paranormal groups of all types all around the country. Everything from your solo "psychic" to your large organizations. There are even a few spread nation wide, and then it increases even more when you start talking about the world.

Unfortunately not all of the groups out there are respectable. People within the paranormal community run the gammot from complete wackjobs to serious people doing serious scientific study and everything in between. Unfortunately the inbetween generally consists of various types of frauds with various motives, to charlatans that are just out to make a quick buck. That's where most of your groups on television fall. They just want the money associated with the paranormal.

In some ways it's very irritating to serious people like myself because they ultimately cause a bad image for us that we spend a lot of time trying to repair. That's the point of the documentaries that I'm working on, and a book that I have in the works. In this case though in the works means I'm still outlining it in my head to make sure I say everything I want to say.

That's about enough time on the soap box I guess. Though if anyone has any questions feel free to ask, I'll be more than happy to answer them.

SuperSwingDog, I don't actually recommend either show. Paranormal state are flat out frauds and in fact have been busted faking stuff. As for TAPS their methods are flawed. I won't go so far as to call them frauds as I believe when the show first started they had good intentions, unfortunately reality television isn't real and they do have to make sure they keep the show dramatic and exciting enough to keep viewers.

The reality of it is that what we do is actually boring a majority of the time. Not something that people would want to watch on a weekly basis. Sure there are times that we are in some pretty interesting locations and sometimes there are interesting things that happen, but for the most part an investigation is a few hours of pure boredom. Then you get into the analyzing of photos, video, voice recordings and the like which is many more hours of boredom with just a few minutes of excitement when you manage to find something. Then you have to analyze the anomaly that you have found which takes even more time and if your lucky you have something that isn't easily explained through normal means.

Usually though you find just regular stuff, dust particles, people talking in another room, light reflections and all of that good stuff. The few times that you actually do find something are what makes it worthwile and keeps us going. At the same time though we have to fight against groups such as TAPS and Paranormal State because they muck up the waters and actually negatively influence people's opinions of us and what we do.

On the subject of traveling outside of the country I've quite a few places I'd love to visit. I consider myself a bit of a historian and there are so many places with such great history that if I had the money I'd go visit them all. On the top of my list is Ireland, Scotland, and England. Then Vietnam and Germany. Vietnam and Germany would be for the military history. I'd like to visit the concentration camps in Germany and really all over Europe, and I'd like to see some of the tunnels that the NVA used in Vietnam.

From a paranormal standpoint those places are sure to be "haunted" maybe not actively but I'm sure that if you stand there you can get a sense of everything that went on there. I think that's something that everyone should experience at least once. Not for any morbid reason but it might hopefully make people a little more thoughtful and mindful of making sure history doesn't repeat itself.

Slanshroom, The Boleskine House sounds pretty interesting. There are plenty of places in Scotland, Ireland, and England that would be great for paranormal research purposes. Ireland and Scotland however would also be fun for me to trace my ancestral roots. I have traced my family on my father's side back to the 1500s and they were mostly centralized in Ireland with a few in Scotland.

I'd just like to go and walk where they walked and try to picture things as they may have been when my family lived there which at it's most recent was the early 1900's. Like I said I'm a bit of a history geek but history is so much more interesting when it involves people you are related to. I'd like to trace my mother's family back that far but it's been pretty rough so far. My dad's side was fairly ethnocentric, my mom's side has a big mix and it doesn't help almost everyone on my mom's side having large families. Oh well.

Wow I've been away for awhile. Stuffs been really busy here lately. Still trying to find a good local band to do the music for my paranormal group's documentary. Still haven't found one that impresses me and it doesn't help that I'm really just wanting instrumental not that interested in vocals.

Most local bands here do the Blues and that's not quite the way I'm wanting to go. Good thing I still have plenty of time since the music and voice overs are the last things we'll be editing into it.

I wish we had the financial resources to get Joe to do the music for us, that's the type of sound I'm wanting but so far nobody here has been able to pull it off. Oh well I get to keep looking. I've heard some good music though, some of these people do have talent just not the right sound.

Other than that I've been working on a book, and taking care of my cat after she got spayed. She's doing good now. Also trying to maintain sanity cause the kids are getting major cabin fever and the weather here can't quite decide if it wants to be spring or winter.

So that's what I've been doing. I am looking forward to Chickenfoot and hoping they come close to me while on tour.