I just received the Gretsch Jim Dandy guitar as a Christmas gift. Here is my unboxing and demo so you can see and hear this amazing low cost instrument.
This thing plays GREAT and I love the vintage sound.
Faithful to the Gretsch® “Rex” parlor guitars of the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, the G9500 Jim Dandy Flat Top parlor-style model embodies everything that was great about those original models. The G9500 is crafted with select guitar woods and is fully lined and braced for warm and pleasing tone, with a 24″ scale for endless hours of playing comfort.
Here is a video of me practicing Alap for Raga Yaman.
As many of you already know, sitar is really hard to play!
Raga Yaman Alap is something I have been slowly learning over the years. For the past few months my teacher has been having me focus a lot of Gat and Taans. Then over the past few weeks we started spending more time during my lesson discussing and playing Alap.
Since I was traveling this week I figured I would shoot a video playing alap to document my current progress compared to the previous videos I have posted. You can see those in the links below. I hope I am getting better. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.
In this video I share some quick thoughts on learning the sitar and show footage of me practicing sitar after 1 month of lessons and then compare it to the same exercises almost 5 years later.
It’s been a long time since I googled “Sitar Lessons for Beginners.” 🙂
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A viewer recently asked how often I practice my Paltas so I wanted to make a video to show what that part of my practice is like. For those wondering, I always include Paltas as part of my warm up.
I am working to build up speed as my teacher wants me to play at my gat and taans at 250 beats per minute (BPM).
Tonight’s video really focuses on one fast sitar taan at 200bpm. I mixed in a few others as well. This practice was very hard and you can see that my endurance was starting to fade by the end. That said, I can’t believe that 200bpm is starting to become a reality.
A year ago I was maxed out at 150 and I didn’t think I could play much faster than 170. My teacher really motivated me to push myself harder. As a new dad it’s easy to find excuses and not practice. Making these videos has been a great motivator and I’ve seen a lot of improvement since I started this series.
I give all my my Taans nicknames. The one I am playing tonight I call, “Singing Woman #1.” I play, “Singing Woman #2” a few times toward the end as well.
I took my first sitar lesson on January 27th, 2012.
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Improving my sitar hand technique and endurance has been a long and difficult task.
As most of you know, I have been working to increase my speed, so while I can play this sitar taan really well at 150 beats per minute, my teacher has given me the goal of playing it at 200bpm. So far 170-175 has been my max speed for this one. Tonight I wanted to push myself so I set the electronic tabla at 180.
This was also a great test of endurance. After doing all of my normal practice, I then focused on this long Taan for about 30 minutes. My hands were exhausted by the end!
It’s been a busy week and sometimes life get’s in the way.
I needed to get in a decent sitar practice before my lesson so this video includes paltas, a gat and taans in raga yaman.
I am quickly approaching my 5 year anniversary of playing sitar and I’ve been struggling recently to find time to practice and it has slowed down my growth. It’s been frustrating. This isn’t some of my best playing, but I wanted to be honest about my progress and post the good with the bad.
For those new to this series, I am working to build up my speed. My teacher wants me to eventually play at 250 beats per minute (BPM). Let’s see how fast I can get today!
Electro Harmonix pedals (EHX) are some of the oldest and most respected effects for guitar and bass. Founder Mike Matthews is crazy in all the right ways and having come from a keyboard background he has a unique perspective on sound and music that normal guitarists might not think of.
Since EHX made their first release with the LPB-1 in 1969, they have continued to release distinct pedals with signature sounds.
So what’s the catch? EHX releases a LOT of pedals, and sometimes multiple versions with slight changes. I’ve done the work to sort through all that.
Below is my list of the MUST HAVE Electro Harmonix pedals.
These are my top “get ’em while their hot” pedals. This would make a killer pedal board too. Best of all, everything is designed and assembled in New York City. Amazingly, EHX pedals have some of the lowest prices for guitar effects making them an amazing deal.
EHX rewrote the rules when the Micro POG was released. This is the smaller and simplified version of the larger POG2 and the huge HOG, both a crazy pair of powerful guitar synths, the Micro POG creates beautiful glitch free octave down and octave up versions of your guitar tone. This allows you to expand your sound in a way that was previously not attainable. From church organs and celestial choirs to dark metal riffs that burn a hole in your amp, the Micro POG does it all. Users include everyone from Jack White to Josh Homme from Queens of the Stone Age.
EHX also makes the Nano POG, an even smaller and less expensive version.
This technology has also been used in the recent series of EHX pedals designed to make your guitar sound like dedicated organ or keyboard such as the:
Have you heard of the Klon Centaur? If not, the Klon was/is a guitar overdrive pedal that Bill Finnegan developed and hand built between 1990 and 1994. The Centaur is characterized as a “transparent” overdrive, meaning it adds gain without significantly altering the tone of the guitar. Oh… And they sell on E-Bay for THOUSANDS of dollars.
Hundreds of third party manufactures have tried to clone the original. You often see these “Klones” running $200-$300.
In Classic Mike Mathews fashion, EHX released there own version of this pedal and priced it less that $100.
Oh… and people LOVE it. Enough said. Done. Get one. Enjoy.
