Fret Filings - (Anne's Blog)

Monday, February 11, 2008

HOCKEY DAY GUITAR
Topic: Guitar

Over the weekend, "Hockey Night In Canada" did its annual "Hockey Day In Canada" broadcast. It's a once a year event which features a triple-header broadcast, usually featuring all the Canadian-based teams in action. They base the show in a small-ish town (Winkler, Manitoba this year) and fill the space between games with features about hockey being part of the Canadian cultural fabric, players talking about influential coaches growing up, etc.

A couple of weeks ago on "Hockey Night", they came back from commercial for the regular Ron and Don wrap-up after the early game, and Don Cherry was holding a Gibson guitar. Turned out it was an auction being done in relation to "Hockey Day". Gibson had done a custom guitar for them. Interested, I looked for more info on the Net. This isn't a guitar I would buy or bid on, but I was just interested in getting a better look at it, and reading a bit about it.

It's a 2008 Les Paul Studio, with "Hockey Night" themed art work that features a picture of Ron & Don, kids playing hockey, snow flakes, and a stylized maple leaf. On the side, along the top, is printed "Hockey Day In Canada 2008". The artist is Ray Bishop, who has done art work for the masks of various pro goalies (Belfour and Hasek, among others).

The auction is closed now. The guitar drew 81 bids, and had a closing price of $6,120.

The auction page for it (with pictures) is here: http://auction.nhl.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=90845762&prmenbr=12717464&aunbr=91192472

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:11 AM EST
Updated: Monday, February 11, 2008 2:24 AM EST
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Friday, February 8, 2008

DOKKEN
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

I was starting to think I was never going to get going on the next tab. It seems something was putting it off every night. Part of the problem is that all the shows are back into their seasons now that we're well past the holidays. (I think I even heard today that the TV writers' strike is over.) I only watch three dramas regularly ("Lost", "Heroes", "Sarah Connor Chronicles"), but then I'll find myself losing time to watching "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" and stuff like that.

Still, I finally made a good start on a tab tonight, getting a song done all the way up to the solo so far. But for today's riff, it's 1980's power ballad time again. The song is from Dokken's Tooth And Nail (1984) album. The Intro features some nice George Lynch acoustic arpeggio playing.

DOKKEN - "Alone Again" (D. Dokken, J. Pilson)

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

Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1LWnSfpON0

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:26 AM EST
Updated: Friday, February 8, 2008 2:27 AM EST
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Sunday, February 3, 2008

JANUARY 2008 REVIEW
Topic: Website

Most-viewed tabs for the month of January 2008 (w/ view numbers):

8 - A Foot In Coldwater - (Make Me Do) Anything You Want
6 - April Wine - Say Hello
6 - Toronto - Even the Score
5 - Doobie Brothers - China Grove
5 - Harlequin - Sweet Things In Life
5 - Harlequin - Thinking Of You
5 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
5 - Helix - Deep Cuts the Knife
5 - Kim Mitchell - All We Are
5 - Toronto - Lookin' For Trouble
5 - Toronto - Your Daddy Don't Know
5 - Trooper - Raise A Little Hell

Total tab views for January: 139 (By section: Girlschool-8, Canadian-107, Various-24)

Most-viewed tabs overall (stats date from Oct. 3/07 to Jan. 31/08):

23 - Headpins - Don't It Make Ya Feel
12 - Trooper - Two For the Show
11 - Girlschool - Race With the Devil (guitar)
9 - Max Webster - High Class In Borrowed Shoes
8 - A Foot In Coldwater - (Make Me Do) Anything You Want
8 - April Wine - Cum Hear the Band
8 - Bad Company - Shooting Star
8 - Max Webster - Battle Scar
8 - Kim Mitchell - All We Are
8 - Toronto - Your Daddy Don't Know
8 - Trooper - Raise A Little Hell

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

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:46 AM EST
Updated: Sunday, February 3, 2008 2:48 AM EST
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Saturday, February 2, 2008

DAY OF DECISION
Topic: General

Okay, Willie, what's the verdict? Early Spring or more Winter? After yesterday's heavy snowfall, I think we can take a pretty good guess. Will you agree with your cousin Phil in Punxatawney, or will the groundhogs be at odds? Oh, the suspense!

Happy Groundhog Day!

Wiarton Willie (Wiarton, Ontario)

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:02 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, February 2, 2008 2:09 AM EST
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Friday, February 1, 2008

LADY FROM THE MOUNTAINS
Topic: Website

New tab posted today. By request, "Sorcerer" by Stevie Nicks with Sheryl Crow. This song is from 2001, but I had never heard it until I picked up Stevie Nicks' most recent greatest hits package (Crystal Visions) last June. When I first heard it on that CD I thought it was a great song. I didn't realize at the time just how far back that song goes for her...pre-Fleetwood Mac. The Buckingham - Nicks days. You can hear earlier versions of it at YouTube. I have to say, though, that I like this more recent version better.

When "Sorcerer" by Stevie Nicks and Sheryl Crow was suggested to me recently as a tab request, I was a bit surprised. Not by the request. But I had no idea that Sheryl Crow did the song with her. Obviously, I hadn't read the CD liner notes, and I hadn't gotten around to watching the DVD from that "best of" package or I would have known that. Sheryl Crow features quite prominently in the video for that song. I think she was involved in five or six songs from Stevie Nicks' Trouble In Shangri-La CD, as producer.

The video, however, is an edited version of the song. The Intro has been shortened, the first Bridge has been shortened. Just something to be aware of if anyone uses the version of the song from the video with the tab. The video has been put on the Video page, right on the page, not just linked. The Queen video I had there wasn't available anymore, so I just replaced it with the Stevie Nicks video.

The tab: https://www.angelfire.com/planet/zerofret/vartab/nicksstevie-sorcerer.txt

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:58 AM EST
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

1ST ANNIVERSARY!!
Topic: Website

We here at Anne's Guitar Tab Archive ("we" being me and all of you good people) are celebrating our 1st Anniversary today! Hurray! Have a piece of cake!

A year ago on this day I was putting in the website's introductory text and starting to add the tabs. The website was all on one page then. As I learned more about HTML and setting up a site, I divided it into pages and made the site a bit bigger. Near the end of the summer I started up the blog to add a little more dimension to the site. The past year of running the site has been a lot of fun and a learning experience.

The content is the most important thing, of course, so I hope people have been finding some tabs they're interested in, and I also hope you've been happy with the quality of them.

I'd like to thank all of you who have visited and supported the site over the past year, from those who were there from the beginning offering encouragement as the site was being built, right through to those who have found the site more recently. You make working on it worthwhile, and I hope all of you continue to visit over the next year, as well!

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:38 AM EST
Updated: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 2:47 AM EST
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Saturday, January 26, 2008

TORONTO
Topic: Riff-In-A-Jiff

The riff for today comes from Toronto's debut album Lookin' For Trouble (1980), an album that's full of great guitar parts. This is the band's rawest sounding record, straight-ahead rock, with some punk-ish and early New Wave overtones. Like so many of the best riffs, this one is simple, easy to play, and sounds cool.

TORONTO - "Delirious" (B. Allen)

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

There's an audio sample of the song on this page. I think the riff repeats a few times in this clip, but just to clarify, right after the opening line "Bet you're dying to catch me" is where the riff starts. In this sample, it sounds like mostly piano is carrying the riff, but in the Intro and Verses, it's the guitar:

http://www.amazon.com/Lookin-For-Trouble/dp/B000S580EU

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:19 AM EST
Updated: Saturday, January 26, 2008 2:20 AM EST
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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

MINOR CHANGES
Topic: Website

I just made a couple of small adjustments to the "China Grove" tab I posted earlier today. The changes are in bars 11 and 14 of the guitar solo. The notes are still exactly the same, I just moved a few notes to different strings so that the fingering falls more naturally.

Posted by planet/zerofret at 5:38 PM EST
Updated: Tuesday, January 22, 2008 5:43 PM EST
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IN"DOOBIE"TABLY
Topic: Website

New tab posted today. "China Grove" by The Doobie Brothers. It can be found on the Home Page or on the Various Tabs page. Add mine to the pile of "China Grove" tabs that are already out there.

I'm opting for a live video version to link to the site. It's a good live version, and it helped me out in figuring out some of the parts.

But since the tab is of the studio version of the song, I'll put a link to the studio version here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcfEmG3TrMg

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:44 AM EST
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Monday, January 21, 2008

ROBO-AXE
Topic: Guitar

A few days ago, a friend of mine showed me some info about this new Robot Guitar from Gibson. I actually hadn't heard about it, although (having checked since) I see it's all over the Internet.

But is this cool or what? A guitar that tunes itself. The worst part of playing just taken right off your hands and taken care of by the guitar itself. You can just give it a strum and say, "You tune up and I'll be with you in a minute."

What I really like, though, and what not a lot of people seem to be commenting on on the blog pages, is the Intonation Mode. The LEDs indicate how many turns the bridge screws require, and which way to turn them. So you can tweak your intonation a bit yourself, with the guitar telling you exactly what to do. ("A little more to the left...ooo, yeah, that's nice."

)

Here are Gibson's official promo pages about it: http://www.gibson.com/robotguitar/

And for anyone who might be wondering what the in-action pros and cons of the guitar might be, I found a couple of test drive, hands-on reviews:

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/document/gibson/robot_guitar?doc_id=103152

http://www.switched.com/2007/12/06/switched-reviews-the-gibson-robot-guitar/

And if you'd like to see the guitar in action some more, there's plenty of video of it on You Tube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=gibson+robot+guitar&search=Search

When my friend checked his local dealer, they told him they had received five of the guitars, and they were sold out. But I'm sure there'll be a second run of these Robos if the first run is selling this fast. So if your music store is sold out of Robot Guitars, just tell 'em, "I'll be back."

Posted by planet/zerofret at 2:24 AM EST
Updated: Monday, January 21, 2008 2:29 AM EST
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