Mukund’s adventures

Touch my body has hit #1 this week on the Billboard 100. She has all of my 99 cents. The song is a tune and it seems we’re the demographic (you’ll have to watch the video for that).

What the heck is 802.11n? You don’t want me to compile your kernel?

After reading an article on the greatest guitar solos which contains November Rain in the top 10, it becomes necessary to compile your own. Not that November Rain doesn’t have reasonable solos, but there are far better solos in other GN’R songs like Double Talkin’ Jive, Ain’t it fun, Civil War and their covers like Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and the Godfather theme. November Rain makes the list sound like a marketing list. Here are my favourites in no particular order.. they are from my experience and YMMV. I’ve skipped a lot of good ones among artists like Pink Floyd. Hendrix, Page and Satriani make up my list of greatest guitarists.

Top:

• Ballerina - Steve Vai
• Black Magic Woman - Santana (Fleetwood Mac cover)
• Eruption - Eddie Van Halen
• Black Star - Yngwie Malmsteen
• Spanish Castle Magic - Spin Doctors (Hendrix cover)
• Manhattan - Eric Johnson
• Voodoo Chile - Jimi Hendrix
• Red House - Jimi Hendrix
• Cool No. 9 - Joe Satriani
• Summer Song - Joe Satriani
• Love Thing - Joe Satriani
• Tears in the Rain - Joe Satriani
• Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin
• Hotel California (electric and acoustic versions) - The Eagles
• Dengue Woman Blues - Jimmie Vaughan

Mentions of other worthy guitar songs:

• Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
• Plush (acoustic version) - Stone Temple Pilots
• Sultans of Swing - Dire Straits
• Why Worry - Dire Straits
• Mic Check - Rage Against The Machine
• Sad But True - Metallica
• Going to California - Led Zeppelin
• Stormbringer (lots of organ solos) - Deep purple
• Light My Fire - Doors
• Ready or Not - Europe
• What’s the Frequency Kenneth - REM
• Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chili Peppers

What are your favourite solos?

Hello. I haven’t written anything for sometime now. I am still alive. A tad busy with work and some stuff which seemed to take away my mind from work. I don’t know how to fix some things. I have decided to stop trying.

Every guitarist knows what a pain the instrument is when it comes to perfect tune. Due to its harmonic structure, various chord shapes always end up sounding quite a bit out of tune and annoying even when the instrument itself is carefully tuned. “Strange” sounding.. annoying. A few guitarists these days use the Buzz Feiten tuning system, which involves adjusting the nut a few thousandths of an inch closer to the bridge and then tuning the guitar with pitch offsets, usually a few cents +/- from the standard pitch. It requires a special tuner like models from Korg which allow setting offsets, or you tune relatively i.e., tune the E string, then tune the E on the B string, then tune the E on the G string and so on. This “mod” is very expensive to install on the guitar, and there is no guarantee that a luthier will even do it properly. It is patented and everyone regards it as such a closely guarded secret that I couldn’t find any resources on how this thing worked. This was getting stupid, cause the mod is really basic physics, with the string tension and resultant frequency of the string’s vibration. There is just *one* shop in all of UK, and two shops in all of Europe which are “certified” to perform this mod, and there are no guarantees the guitar would actually sound better. Since this is a patented method, they would have submitted the contents of the patent to the USPTO. A quick check there and I came across the entire method described with much detail. I don’t understand what the big deal is if people tell other people how some thing works. It’s not like there are many shops in Europe which do this mod anyway. Looking for other alternatives, I came across Earvana, which changes the shape of the nut itself instead of moving it, changing the resultant open string lengths. This is very good as it doesn’t involve any permanent physical modifications to the instrument. Plus any regular tuner can be used, although the Buzz Feiten tuning offsets may not have anything to do with the distance of the nut from the bridge. I have to check it up.

I also came across Steinberger’s gearless tuners which seem to be cool! Since there aren’t any gears like conventional tuners, they offer a better ratio, and a straight pull and clamp design which means there’s no string winding crap. Whoosh.. how I *wish* I had this stuff when I started learning the instrument! Incredible new advances in every aspect of anything cutting-edge. The other day at CeBIT, there was a person playing a MIDI guitar with a Roland effects processor, and the guitar sounded like a grand piano.. and then it sounded like a flute, and so on as he switched banks.. it was so wonderful. Five years ago, it wouldn’t have sounded even close to real, and there this was… so cool standing there.

Can hear birds chiming outside.

Ok, I’m your uber l33t lead guitarist, and I always thought I was yet to find a piece I couldn’t play. Yesterday, I learned to play Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses. I had most of the solos worked out, and could improvise on the rest, but there was one particular part which I couldn’t break. That was the very start of the intro riff! I had it figured initially, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t reproduce it. The first bar of the riff goes like this:

|-----------------15---------14-------|
|-----15------------------------------|
|---------14--12------14-----------14-|
|--12---------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------|
|-------------------------------------|

That second note, played on the ‘B’ string in the 15th fret, produces a higher octave ‘D’ than the first note played on the 12th fret. This note was what had sounded right a few minutes ago! And the same sounded as a higher octave note now, as it should.

In the actual intro, the two notes sound as the same low octave note. I tried playing the first 12 twice, instead of the 12 and 15, but that didn’t sound right either. I thought about it. What the heck. Then I got that sound again! When the first two notes are played at a certain speed, one after the other, their vibrations overlap, in phase, and it makes the 15 sound as if it’s continuing the initial 12. Phew. There are so many noise making techniques I work out and discover, but this is so out of the blue. I never thought of playing with wavelengths, and even harmonics. A whole bunch of new techniques have arrived. Now when I started expecting that, the whole riff sounded right. The timing was right, and the notes sounded as expected. This is one good lesson why I always tell my students to follow their ears and mind, rather than the notes in a score book.

Heh I was just going through some leftovers from Woodstock ‘99 and found this. This is cool. Check this clip of the Red Hot Chili Peppers just before they kick off Me and my friends.