Most viewed tabs for the month of December 2007:

6 - Girlschool - Race With the Devil (guitar)
5 - Girlschool - Yeah Right (guitar)
4 - Trooper - Two For the Show
3 - FM - Phasors On Stun
3 - Max Webster - Battle Scar
3 - Steve Miller Band - Fly Like An Eagle
2 - April Wine - Cum Hear the Band
2 - Girlschool - C'mon Let's Go
2 - Girlschool - Future Flash
2 - Girlschool - Wildlife
2 - The Guess Who - Albert Flasher
2 - Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes
2 - Max Webster - Hangover

Total tab views for December: 67   (Girlschool-29, Canadian-27, Various-11)

Most viewed tabs overall (stats date from Oct.3/07 to Dec.31/07):

18 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
10 - Girlschool - Race With the Devil (guitar)
10 - Trooper - Two For the Show
8 - Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes
7 - Girlschool - Burning In the Heat
6 - Bad Company - Shooting Star
6 - FM - Phasors On Stun
5 - Girlschool - Wild At Heart
5 - Girlschool - Yeah Right (guitar)
5 - Max Webster - Battle Scar

*Only tab views made by people (excluding my own views) are counted here. Webcrawler/bot views are excluded.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!! 

I hope everybody had a great night last night bringing in the New Year, and also a good New Year's Day today. 

I spent the better part of the afternoon watching the Winter Classic NHL game, the outdoor game in Buffalo between the Sabres and the Penguins. I was watching on TV, but it looks like it would have been fun to be at. I loved that it snowed through much of the game, that was great! And Sid the Kid scoring the winning goal in a shootout, I'm sure the league loved that...to have the NHL's current golden boy be the deciding factor in a game broadcast all over the world.

So did anybody do a Polar Bear swim today?  

Not me, but I think I'm going to go out for a walk right now, take in some of that fresh New Year's air and enjoy the outdoor lights, which most people will be taking down soon.

Here's to a 2008 full of good jammin', guitarin', tabbin', and such.

And I wish a great 2008 to all of you!

No, it's not a flock of sheep, it's today's riff. The band is Crowbar (the Canadian band Crowbar, that is), and this is probably their most well known song. It comes from the 1971 album Bad Manors (a name also later given to their Greatest Hits album).

The chord progression/riff here is only a measure or two long, but you can play your way through the whole song with it. The partial F chord at the end of each measure is sometimes played once, and sometimes twice. There's no particular pattern to when to play it once or twice, so just wing it, and mix both ways in there, as you please.

CROWBAR - "Oh What A Feeling"      (K.Jay Fordham/R.Greenway)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

I couldn't find a full version of the song on YouTube or MySpace, but there's an audio clip of it on this page. It has a bit of the Intro and part of the first Chorus:

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Manors-Golden-Hits-Vol/dp/B000001CWO

Wishing a very MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!!

I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

Well, fellow six-stringers, the tab that was posted yesterday -- Steve Miller Band's "Fly Like An Eagle" -- will probably be the last tab of the year. It's not very likely I'll have time to do much in the way of tabbing between now and Christmas. I'll work on one in the week after Christmas so I can hopefully have one posted early in the New Year. I've worked a bit on the Intro of one already. In the meantime, in the week between Boxing Day and New Year's Day, I'll try to get a riff posted on the blog page.

You might have noticed some minor design changes that took place on the site yesterday. I moved all the page links up to the top of each page. The idea was to make it easier to navigate around within the site. Having the page links at the bottom of each page, a person wouldn't even know they were there unless they scrolled all the way to the bottom of the page. With those links at the top of the page, site visitors can immediately see that every page on the site has a link to every other page on the site.

Today, a little Doobie Bro rock'n'roll. The song is from the band's second album Toulouse Street (1972), and this one rocks out pretty good. Since the guitar part for the Intro is fairly short, I've included the 1st Verse, as well.

For the verse, I've only put in very basic chords. I like to be as accurate as possible, but I ended up spending a lot of time second guessing the chords, the exact variations being played. (On the record, it doesn't sound like a simple D Major in the verse, in the live version below it does). So eventually I decided, it's a riff section anyhow, and I've got the riff, so I won't worry much about the chords, and I just put in the basic changes. Close enough for rock & roll.

THE DOOBIE BROTHERS - "Jesus Is Just Alright"     (A. Reynolds)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/varriffs.txt

There's some live footage of the song here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ClBlp9crA

Today we riff on the first single (and first hit) of Winnipeg band Harlequin. The song is from their debut record Victim Of A Song (1979). The Intro tabbed here features the kind of guitar and keyboard harmonies that were (and probably still are) a trademark of the band's sound. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come up with an audio clip of the song. While searching for one, though, I did come across an interesting fact or two about the band, things I didn't know before. Like the fact that Denton Young (former lead vocalist for Zon) played drums in one of the later Harlequin lineups.

I've seen Harlequin live twice, several years ago in each case. Both times they were the opener for another band, and both times they were better than the headliner.

HARLEQUIN - "Survive"     (no writing credit available)

https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/annesblog/canriffs.txt

Yesterday I posted a tab of The Guess Who song "Albert Flasher" on the site. So for today's blog entry, I'll post the story of where the song's title came from, as told by Randy Bachman. It's from an interview done in 2003.

Do you need just a little something extra for that guitarist on your Christmas list? Here's an idea: an all-in-one peg winder/string clipper/bridge pin puller made by Planet Waves. These have been around for awhile, of course, they're not new on the market. But I love these little gizmos. I bought one earlier this year, and they are the very definition of convenient.

I ordered mine from L.A. Music in Toronto, and the ones they sell look like this:
http://www.lamusic.ca/default.asp?szNav=Product&PID=10872

But I think Planet Waves may have updated and changed the design a bit, because on most U.S. music sites they look like this:
http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/Planet-Waves-Pro-String-WinderCutter?sku=360253

But both are called Planet Waves Pro Winder Cutter DP0002, so essentially they're the same thing.

Obviously, it's the built-in string clipper that sets this model apart. Afterall, all peg winders will wind string and have a bridge pin puller. But clipping the strings was always the inconvenient part for me. To change your strings, you need to have something around which can clip wire...and I didn't always. Sometimes I'd use scissors, which works okay on the unwound strings, but becomes more of a problem with the wound strings. Or often, after winding the string, I'd remove the excess string at the top just by bending a spot on the string back and forth until the string broke. It works, but it's a bit time consuming. To be able to just grab one tool and do the whole job with it -- wind the string, flip the winder around, clip the string -- is great.

The winder part of it has a nice snug, but not damaging, fit. The clipper makes a nice clean cut, and does it easily. I imagine the clipper probably gets a bit dull after a lot of use, but I haven't run into that problem yet. I haven't used the bridge pin puller, so I can't comment on it. (There are lots of buyer reviews of this item on the Musician's Friend page linked to above.) I know I probably sound like a commercial for Planet Waves, but I really do think these things are great...like a Swiss Army knife for changing strings!