I Wasn't a Metal Guy. Then I Heard This Riff.

[00:00:00]Hey YouTube people. What's going on out there? It's been a minute since I've checked in. I thought I'd just play this today. This is my old 53 Telecaster.

[00:00:10]It's been a little lonely and uh had a good weekend. Well, first we did a live live stream with Turn of the Burner on Friday. That's on uh on our YouTube channel. That went pretty good. We It came together so fast.

[00:00:23]Sometimes we we pull these things off by the skin of our teeth. Uh Ryan, my buddy, who zaps into our computer via uh Team Viewer, got everything set, get he does sound from us from afar and, you know, works the cameras and such. And I do have a foot switch that goes between the cameras, but he'll, you know, do it as we're playing and so on and so forth.

[00:00:46]Anyways, he couldn't chime in until about 10 minutes before we went live.

[00:00:49]And we hadn't set up in a while, so it was uh we we were by the skin of our teeth and we hadn't played with Turner in a couple of months. And uh but that being said, it still went great. We still had fun. And uh that's the fun thing about, you know, when you're in live performance, ladies and gentlemen, you have a tendency to think, oh, there was that miscue there, and you know, you went to the wrong note there, and oh, this happened there. and they seem like such glaring signposts in your in your mind like, "Oh, yeah, that that was kind of ass," you know, and and then you listen back and those things are so they go by so fast and the vast majority of people don't hear them. I mean, that's no excuse why you shouldn't aim for trying to play it correctly every time.

[00:01:30]Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to justify what I like to call assand. Um, that sounded weird, but you know what I'm talking about. Uh but by the same token it's like don't get really down about you know things that happen and because the vast majority if the attitude is right and the feel is right and all that kind of stuff a few miscues that's just like secret sauce in the end. So uh when I listened back I was like that's not really that bad at all.

[00:01:56]So uh good clean fun in that. And then Saturday we played a party. Um we hadn't played it in about 5 years. But we had been playing this lake party for these guys that I grew up with that we've all maintained friends with since grade school. And uh we started playing there I think in 1990. But we hadn't been able to play there in about 5 years cuz we were always on the road. So this year it worked out that we were going to be in town and uh so we played there because we're all turning 60 this this summer.

[00:02:23]So we had a good time and for the hell of it I brought out I don't know if you can see it back there. One right behind me. See that little Marshall right there. Boom. Uh SV20 uh little like a miniature of 20 watt plexi with I do I have a head and 212 cabinet uh one in red tolex that was a Wildwood special that they did. Uh, and then there's a regular Marshall Tox one. And I brought them both out and I used those two and man, they sounded good and they weren't deafening and they looked awesome. But it was kind of funny cuz I turned them up in such a way where the amp was kind of given without without even needing too much from the pedal board. So, I just kind of used the clean boost on the uh Gristle King to get a little bit heat a little extra heat for solos and whatnot. And then the only time I actually hear hit the gristle king uh was when I was doing slide stuff when I wanted just a little bit more poi as I like to say. Poi, that's a technical term for uh musical uh grit and senue to be made manifest by engaging your foot on the device. Uh I'm talking about my cockess monster supreme pedal that Jam makes for me.

[00:03:46]It's pretty pasty little tone. It's not very loud. Now, I'm going into my uh Tone King Royalist. I kept this set up after the live stream uh and I didn't want to bring it to the lake party because we did our workshop yesterday that we did for two hours on the improvisation manifesto workshop. Man, that turned out great. Thanks for everybody who showed up. We had a bunch of people who turned out. Uh the first time we did it based on the manifesto was back in December, and it's it's basically a 12-point manifesto, and it's more about philosophical thinking about improvising, talking about, you know, ways of thinking about it. So, I went through that, but then I also include musical examples. So, I put a bunch of stuff in a Dropbox link and for those who participated, they could they got the a PDF of the uh of the manifesto and then they got actual examples and I wrote out a lot of examples. I had little snippets from uh some of my books that were uh pertinent to what I was talking about. And uh man, I think it really went well. I got through the whole manifesto on all the things I wanted to cover and then I had time to open up for questions and it was just a blast. Everyone seemed to really have a good time. So, we'll we'll probably do that a bit more because I haven't been doing private lessons just because I haven't had time to do it. And so, these group workshop things are a way to to kind of uh do that instructional thing and reach as many people as possible, which is good, clean fun. Uh anyways, one of the questions I had uh during the um uh the question segment at the end of the uh workshop was what do I practice when I get up every day? And it it changes. I mean, there's all kinds of different things that I'll uh I'll do. Sometimes I'll tighten up little things of mine that I haven't worked on a while, like an old riff of mine.

[00:05:41]That's just a good warm-up because it's you got to keep that baseline. It's a tune of mine called Hey Godzilla. Or it's actually there's a thing of it that uh I I fused it with an old tune of mine called Them's the Brakes. And there's a video that's got quite a few hits that I did with my old group, The Tone Controls. That's on my YouTube channel where we do a song called Them's the Brakes. Uh and uh that riff is in there that we reference. We've kind of fused the two together. But the original riff cames from a tune called Hey Godzilla.

[00:06:07]And what's cool about it's a G, but I I bar at the first fret there to get that F, which is the seventh, and then the the C, which is the fourth, to get that suspended.

[00:06:22]And I keep that baseline going.

[00:06:35]The original was pretty fast. Like it kind of grooves better slower.

[00:06:58]The big the hardest part about that thing is keeping that baseline going.

[00:07:02]Because I' I've posted this thing before. It's kind of gone, I don't know, quasi viral because it's it's cool riff if I may be so bold. Uh, and people will post themselves doing it and they always leave out this, which is the hardest part is to keep that going.

[00:07:24]You don't have to be doesn't have to be perfect, but it's got to chug.

[00:07:38]Then it goes to the four chord.

[00:07:41]And I just love this chord. It's just basically C, G, open G, and then you got the C there. Then I'll go It gets a little trickier.

[00:08:40]have a cool Steve Morris. I just let you know I instinctively just always do tra um alternate pick or alternate picking uh hybrid picking.

[00:08:59]Let's do that again.

[00:09:22]That's the other thing I might do. Like this morning I woke up and I I don't know. I've been going through this Richie Black. I I go down the rabbit hole here and there. I'm a I'm always like and I I I did not grow up listening to a bunch of Richie Blackmore. Uh I was more of a Zeppelin man than a than a than a Deep Purpleman if I'm honest. Not that they have to be mutually exclusive, but uh I really didn't go down I mean I had Machine Head when I was a kid and listened to it a bunch. Uh but I never like when I was learning guitar and getting into guitar, it wasn't something I sat down and learned that stuff. uh until uh of course this is all relative. I mean by the time I was in late high school of course I was just immersed in guitar up to that point so it seemed like it was a long period of time. Uh but Deep Purple re the Mach 2 version with Ian Gillan and Richie and Ian Pace and John Lord and Roger Glover they got back together again. They had that record Perfect Strangers and I love that record. I thought it was great. I was like, man, this this [ __ ] rocks.

[00:10:20]Especially at that point in time when so much of the hair metal had a particular attitude and vibe to it. And then the OG dudes come out with a record like, "Hey, guess what?" And so I was really into it. Had those songs knocking on your back door. Uh, and then the other one, uh, Perfect Stranger.

[00:10:50]Oh, something like that. Thank you. Uh, I screwed that up. But anyways, that's cool, too.

[00:11:01]kind of reminds Ian Gillan was Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ Superstar back in the day which uh had some banger tunes out of truly uh a rock opera. Uh there's some really good tunes out there. Anyway, uh so I've been kind of going down a Richie Blackmore u rabbit hole as of late. Now, when we when we play live, a lot of times when we uh if we do we do a version of um uh a song by Johnny Guitar Watson called It's a Real Mother and it's got this like the original is like and I do I Richie Blackmore I like So the outro solo I might do like then it might be like then I'll go that Richie Blackmore So this morning I I well I'll get to what I did this morning but I uh I started just listen for some reason some things came up on YouTube suggested things like Richie Blackmore talking about this old interview with Richie this concert comes out um uh of old rainbow stuff cuz I never really listen to the rainbow stuff other than when MTV first came out there was that uh you know how many riffs can he write in G like that? It's like, but they're also, of course, there's a million of them. Um, anyway, so I started going down a Richard Blackmore rabbit hole then and then I went down a Ronnie James Dio thing because I was not a metal guy in high school. I I Ron James deal to me was like kind of a joke u not to be a knob but at that time I was just like really u and now in retrospect it's like I kind of dig him and when we were on the road with um Paul Gilbert he did an instrumental version of a do song and I was like that [ __ ] song rocks. So I've been going down now I'm I'm I'm kind of on a do kick anyway. So, um, and one of the tunes I always thought was kind of Spinal Tapish, but yet really cool was this tune, Gates of Babylon, off the, uh, one of the Rainbow Records. Um, I remember listening to it. I was always thought the lyrics were hysterical. I was like, YOU CAN SEE, BUT YOU'RE BLIND.

[00:14:24]SOMEONE'S turn the sun around.

[00:14:28]Someone's turned the sun around. I think that's called night. But hey, I don't want to judge. But you can see, but you're blind.

[00:14:38]Like, what's the other line? A MAGIC CARPET RIDE, A GENIE, maybe more. Like, they're sitting around. Let's see. It's a magic carpet ride. What might I find if I go through the gates of Babylon?

[00:14:48]Magic carpet ride, a genie, maybe more.

[00:14:52]So many activities available through the GATES OF BABYLON. THANKS, RONNIE JAMES.

[00:14:56]ANYWAY, so it's just kind of kind of humorous, but yet epic. And so I was like, you know, I never figured out that song. Uh because it's just kind of it's got one of those tricky, you know, through composed lines.

[00:15:18]It's kind of cool. It's it's basically a uh it's an A harmonic minor uh being played with E as the root, right? So it's that it's that uh mode of the harmonic minor where you start on the fifth, right? Uh, so it's and then what's what's obnoxious is is that it starts off with that and that's the only time it does just that. The next time it goes, you know, But it's a cool riff. And I was thinking, what if we funk if I like Heat. Heat.

[00:17:11]Heat. Heat.

[00:17:21]Oh yeah.

[00:17:24]Anyways, just kind of fun. So, I was messing around with that today. So, so my practicing is sometimes I'll bone up on stuff of my own that I want to keep apprised of. Sometimes I'll just learn something new like that for the fun of it and think, well, what can I do with this? What what kind of fun things? So, I'm trying to think about a way that with the KMT we can slide that savagery into something because it'd be fun to try to solve that.

[00:18:15]So, what's cool about is you can do that harmonic minor, but you can put the flat fifth in there as So instead of just being, you can go.

[00:18:36]And then you can do take that uh the major 7 or the Yeah, the major do a a diminished strat.

[00:18:59]or I could think uh like uh B flat Lydian dominant kind of the same things I was doing over uh you That's kind of cool. It's a Mike Stern lick.

[00:19:35]Heat.

[00:19:48]Heat.

[00:19:57]Heat.

[00:20:04]Heat.

[00:20:29]Oh, no.

[00:20:37]Who knows how he's actually doing it.

[00:20:39]That's what I'm doing. Uh, so when you see us next time, we may have a few more Richie Blackmores in the fold for the hell of it. Um, and I actually watched this Ronnie James Dio documentary and uh, uh, seemed like really quite the cool guy, but man, that's it's just such a I was so not in that world. Uh, and now looking back on it, it's like there's there's humor, but there's also rock. And uh some of the humor is unintentional, but some of the humor is intentional. And uh but you know what I'm saying? Crazy. Crazy. BUT YOU CAN SEE, BUT YOU'RE BLIND.

[00:21:19]WHAT? FRIENDS, someone's turned the sun around. All right, we'll see you guys soon. I hope you're doing good. Bye for now.