Here are the classic Paul Gilbert exercises you've gotta know

Greetings and salutations to all in Shred Nation!

Hello and greetings all! I'm reporting to you from back in the LBC after a pretty stacked weekend of four shows and two countries between Friday and Sunday. Got to play Rogers Arena in Vancouver on Saturday with legendary Persian popstar Ebi. This is where the Canucks play if you're a hockey fan and if you remember the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies they used to roam these forests as well. Here's photo evidence:

Also catering was awesome. Only downside was that Air Canada had the audacity to put an airplane in the sky without fucking wifi. I assume this is what the Black Plague must have felt like. Anyway at least I got to type out an outline for today's newsletter:

Learn This Solo from the FIRST Guitar Hero Ever
Upgrade Your Rig (affordably) Without Touching Your Guitar
New Original Music and Shows
Classic Paul Gilbert Exercises You Must Know

Learn This Charlie Christian Transcription RN

Or “Charchrisption” as we in the biz like to call it. This is the first jazz guitar solo that I force -- I mean, bless my students with, and for good reason. It’s full of melodies that are easy to memorize, it’s not too fast that it’s impossible to play, and it’s a great starting point for analyzing licks against chord changes because it’s highly diatonic.

Charlie Christian is often regarded as the first guitar hero, the “genius” of the electric guitar, and was highly influential to players as far reaching as Wes Montgomery to Hendrix. His playing is always super melodic and he’s never hitting you with any bullshit. This stuff is old as fuck but it sounds like real music and his improvised solos are instantly singable, that’s something we could probably all learn from ME included. Read that back.

Anyway, the solo is great, I’m filming walkthrough videos for a couple of his solos this week so be sure to check him out and learn a little electric guitar history and you can start right here with his excellent playing on Benny Goodman's ROSE ROOM

#1 Super Underrated Rig Upgrade

We talk a lot about ways to customize our guitars and man you can pretty much just have my entire wallet if you’re making something shiny that goes on my guitar and might make it sound or play better, but that’s only part of the equation. Sure a lot us (myself included) are using amp sims/IR loaders but what about the few the proud still bothering neighbors and frustrating audio engineers with real human speakers? I feel like I always hear students talking about buying new guitars, buying new pedals, maybe buying a new amp, but they NEVER talk about upgrading their amp. It’s a totally viable thing to do and honestly it can be affordable and make a massive difference. There are two upgrades that I do to most of my amplifiers and they can take a cheap (and I mean fucking Extreme Coupon-ers cheap) amp and make it sound awesome. No shit.

THE SPEAKER

This is such a funny and strange one to me that it isn’t talked about more often. Consider this. If listening to music in your car really sounded like shit what would you do to remedy the situation? Would you buy a new car? Would you get a new radio console? You would probably immediately, instinctively say “I need to get new speakers in my car, these speakers suck.” Or your TV. TV’s are so cheap now and you can get this 42” flat screen in 4K and it sounds like a$$ when you’re trying to watch the Rock of Love Season 2 Reunion -- You can’t even understand Bret Michael’s middle school boner jokes and you’d probably immediately think “Man I gotta get me a soundbar ASAP.” It’s the fucking speakers dude. That’s like the last line of defense of bullshit from your guitar amp or anything else. Think about when you get nicer headphones.

You get the point, but do you see why it’s kinda weird this doesn’t happen more often? Depending on the size of your amp and the type/size of speaker(s) you replace it with, it can also be super affordable. I own a couple Fender Blues Jr.’s, I got them when I decided it probably wasn’t a good idea to keep bringing boutique amps to a place that was basically the fucking scene from Blues Brothers where the cowboys are throwing beer bottles at them.

Let’s be honest the Blues Jr. that I paid $125 for used doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as my fucking Matchless or Divided by 13. So we start shopping. You’ve heard of Celestion of course, and you’ve probably heard of Eminence. And maybe if you’ve looked around you’ve seen these speakers that Santana uses that has speaker cones made out of hemp and cost $225. Granted, they look rad which is important because, ya know, everyone sees the inside of the back of your amp.

After doing research I landed on WGS Warehouse Guitar Speakers and ordered a 10” Green Beret, sounded fucking awesome and was like $75 at the time (I think). Then I ordered their ET10 which has a totally different character but still great, and was a massive massive upgrade from the stock Fender. Now whenever I buy an amp that isn’t vintage or super boutique it gets the WGS upgrade. Did I mention that Brent Mason uses WGS? If it’s good enough for him and it’s affordable, made here in the good ol' U S and A, and even comes with a money back guarantee then what the fuck else is there to even say about it?
THE TUBES

This is more subtle but it can alter amount of gain/breakup, clarity, and overall tone shaping to some degree. The Tube Store and Tube Depot are both great resources and between those two you can usually find what you’re looking for in stock. I typically go with the Tube Store’s suggested sets (golden dragon) and they’ve always sounded great and are priced really well. I’ve used a lot of different brands in the past, I like JJ’s a lot, I haven’t liked Groove Tubes or EHX as much, Sovteks are fine, Mullards are really highly regarded for EL34 Marshall type amps. They have NOS shit that’s crazy expensive but unless you’re trying to impress your History of Rock teacher you can probably just get the good sounding affordable ones.

Again this is completely dependent on your amp; how many speakers you want to replace, their size, how many tubes your amp has and what type. But if I had to estimate on the low end you could be in like $125-150 for a 1x10 15 watt amplifier and go up to maybe $450ish if you wanted to replace everything in 100 watt head and 4x12 cabinet. You’d be hard pressed to find a new head and cab for $450 though AND keep in mind you don’t always need to replace every speaker in a 4x12 or even 2x12. If you’re playing venues where things are mic’d you are free to upgrade just the one mic’d speaker or upgrade 2 of 4 and have a blend. At the end of the day do whatever you want but check those recs. No one ever talks about that shit and you can make the stuff you already own BETTER so maybe try that before spending way more money on brand new stuff.

NEW MUSIC + LIVE SHOWS

Pretty damn excited to announce I’ve got some original shows coming up and new music out with The Gromble and Better Twin. The Gromble is the band I’ve fronted for the last 13 years or so. We have a full length album coming out soon that I’m h3114 st0k3D on and it will be our first working with South Bay super producer Jon Joseph. Better Twin is a brand new band featuring my cousin, my fiancee, and maybe even someone else from the Shreducation crew ?!?!?! We’re playing our FIRST show and releasing our FIRST single. My cousin Jared’s mom and my mom are identical twins, you get the math. Anyway as luck would have it we’re in the Santa Barbara area with terminal chiller Marella for his whole ass album release this coming week - Better Twin on Thursday and Gromble on Saturday - so if you’re in SB or the surrounding areas or know someone at UCSB that is a purveyor of fine rock and roll please spread the word.

In the meantime check the Gromble songs that are already out and learn all the words so you can sing along. 🫡

Classic Paul Gilbert Exercises

Man I can’t believe I’ve made it this many weeks without talking about Paul Gilbert. What the fuck is wrong with me? Not that it’s really like me to talk about his guitar playing, but I’m constantly talking about his songwriting on the second Mr. Big album Lean Into It, specifically the chorus of CDFF Lucky This Time. If you’ve got feathered bangs and are pining for the popular girls affection or whatever the fuck the guy is singing about, this song just kills. Anyway everybody that plays guitar should know Paul Gilbert and you all probably do, very famously guitar slinger in Racer X and Mr. Big (along with bass legend Billy Sheehan). Here’s a clip of them running for political office in Japan in 1991.

Anyway so Paul obviously is a nuts player but he’s also a great educator, and has some important classic videos out there called Intense Rock 1 and 2. I gotta say actually Paul is probably the earliest dude to throw out some pentatonic licks in front of a green screen so for that I truly owe him my life. Anyway, Paul’s a fucking G and here is a GREAT article by Guitar World to get you shredding in his style. Bonus cuz it has some of Troy Grady's picking analysis too this is a real shred guitar meta-analysis.

https://www.guitarworld.com/lessons/intense-rock-picking-a-brief-look-at-paul-gilberts-alternate-picking-technique

Housekeeping

It was brought to my attention that the BAXTY hyperlink last week didn’t work for some people. Just in case, here is him playing fast enough to make you shit your pants.
I want to give a fat FUCK YOU to Gruv Gear. The zipper on my $500 Kapsule Duo has broken for the 4th time. It’s covered by their warranty so they have to keep giving me new ones. I have cost them so much money at this point. Why do they make these fucked up cases? The world may never know. I switched over to Enki Cases and I love it so far. Was using the Gruv for local stuff cuz its got a lot of storage and wheels but man FUCK that shit.
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Ok that's all thanks for hanging again and I hope you've recognized the beautiful yin and yang of life with both Charlie Christian and Paul Gilbert licks today. Maybe next week we'll do Santana (no) vs. Kerry King.

Bye!