Flick your Bic for quick licks, or click their YouTube playlist. These are all my guitar videos, often palate-cleansers between other projects. Song selections lean vintage because that’s the era I began learning the instrument and cared to do it note-for-note, whether from sheet music or by ear with a lot of needle-dropping and tape rewinding.
The first one is unlike those that follow, being 13 years ago and recorded on a webcam (that’s slow-shutter blur, not finger speed) and using a POD XT pedalboard. Still virtual amp models, but on the floor instead of within Pro Tools. Steve Vai’s “Ladies Night in Buffalo” was the most impressive thing I could almost play at the time (“Big Trouble” from the same album being a close second, but I only knew its first half).
Volumes II and III were recorded direct into Logic Pro through a Universal Audio Apollo, with amp models and effects applied afterward, and more care designing their tones to emulate the originals. No solo clips have cuts. My playing hasn’t improved in obvious ways as an adult; it’s subtle sideways moves, becoming more versatile and precise, using my right-hand fingers more, and getting better tones that inspire playing.
With the wheedily-wheedily wankery now out of our system, time for some chunka-chunka with a side of brown-chicken-brown-cow. Talking about gnarly riffs, which I posted in the nine-year gap between Solos Vol II and III. All sounds are from a Headrush pedalboard whose patches I designed because I needed to switch tones and effects in real time, which I compromised to minimize footwork, plus an occasional looper. Not individually difficult, but challenging to perform as a medley since the order was worked out in advance, so each section was shot twice from different angles and assembled.
Finally, here’s a bonus clip I recorded in 2019 while trying to distract myself from an evening of tornado warnings. I had recently heard Jeff Beck’s “Nessun Dorma,” the Puccini aria from Turandot made famous by Pavarotti. My challenge was to mimic his vocal vibrato, which requires a floating tremolo to travel above and below pitch evenly. I combined that with finger vibrato, trying blend the two seamlessly. My timing is off because I learned it at a different tempo before sourcing a higher-quality video, but the take was too good to risk another.
