My social media policy

I’ve seen a few sites do this recently, so I thought I should do one too. So here’s my deal with social media.

Twitter
I mostly use Twitter, and you can find me there at www.twitter.com/iheartguitar. I tweet about guitar-related stuff as well as random stuff here and there. I like to use Twitter for more than just alerting people to when a new post is up - sometimes I might post from gigs, or to see if anyone has a question for an upcoming interview, a progress report about a review I'm working on, or just whatever I'm doing that day. I don’t automatically follow back everyone who follows me on Twitter (otherwise it’d be too hard to keep track of everything), and I don’t really expect everyone I follow to follow me back either. If you’d like me to follow you, just @iheartguitar me and I’ll follow you back. And let me know if you think you should be included on one of my Twitter lists. I’m still getting the whole list thing together so if you’re not there yet and you think you should be, it’s because I haven’t had much time to make the lists yet, not because I don’t want to put you on there!

By the way, if I retweet one of your messages, don't feel obliged to send me a thank-you message. While I appreciate it, I won't be offended if you don't!

Myspace
I have a Myspace www.myspace.com/peterhodgson but I don’t keep up with it like I should. To be honest I find myspace too clunky and I have a hard time getting it to load on any computer except the dedicated iPhone app. But you can find a few songs of mine on there if you’re interested – noodly instrumental prog metal stuff, mostly, but a few other things too. I’ve also reserved www.myspace.com/iheartguitarblog but I haven’t really started to do anything with it yet. I will eventually, but not until I can devote more time to it. Feel free to send a friend request to that one now though in preparation for when I actually get it going.

Facebook
I have a Facebook account but I mainly use it to keep up with people I went to school with, former workmates, etc. Please don’t be offended if you send a Facebook friend request and I turn it down. I just prefer to use it for keeping up with people I already know but don't get to see much any more. To be honest I don’t really like Facebook all that much.

Email
If you ever want to contact me you can email me at iheartguitarblog AT gmail.com and I’ll try to reply as soon as possible, but sometimes if I don’t get a chance to reply to an email straight away for whatever reason, I tend to sorta forget, so if it’s been about 2 days and I haven’t replied, just send me a gentle reminder.

NEWS: My guest post on jasonshadrick.com

Hey! Head over to Jason Shadrick's blog to see my guest post, a lesson on the crafty art of syncopation. Hope you dig it. Make sure you check out the rest of Jason's site, including his excellent Twitter directory and the '7 Questions' series including Greg Koch, Steve Vai, Alex Skolnick (I especially dig Alex's Hunter S Thompson quote), Stu Hamm, Paul Gilbert and many more.

Jason is director of marketing and artist relations for The National Guitar Workshop. Follow him on Twitter!

NEWS: ESP and LTD release James Hetfield Truckster in black

Thanks to Sjusovaren on Twitter for pointing out that the ESP and LTD James Hetfield Truckster is soon to be made available in black. I think this is a great move because as much as I like the Truckster, in my mind it's kinda associated with Metallica's St Anger era, which is... not my favourite. So for me this new colour scheme gives the guitar a new lease on life and links it more with Death Magnetic (which, despite the controversial mastering debacle, is still a far superior record to anything else they've done over the last - gulp - 20 years or so). James has already been using this guitar on tour so it's cool to see it being made available for everyone.

From the ESP website:

AVAILABLE FALL 2009:
The new James Hetfield Truckster... now in black!
You ever notice that anything thatʼs cool is often made even cooler by making it more black? So, it should be no surprise that the James Hetfield Truckster is now for the first time being offered in a finish other than aged primer gray. And what color would that be? Black, of course!

Other than its new, even more menacing look, the new black Truckster offers the same high-performance feel and sound as was specified by James himself. Available in both ESP and LTD versions, the Truckster offers a set-neck design with a single-cutaway body at a comfortable 24.75” scale. The guitar has a mahogany body with maple top, a mahogany neck with rosewood fingerboard, and a 42mm bone nut on its thin u shaped neck. You get 22 XJ frets, satin chrome hardware, Sperzel locking tuners, Tonepros locking TOM and Tail, and EMG 81 (bridge) and 60 (neck) active pickups. The ESP version of the Truckster also includes Schaller straplocks.

You also get the same distressed finish that gives the guitar a look and feel like itʼs been worked in over years of playing. And, like we may have mentioned earlier, it looks even cooler with a bad-ass black finish. Check out the new black Truckster at your ESP/LTD dealer in Fall 2009!

NEWS: New DiMarzio Billy Sheehan videos

Here are a couple of great new DiMarzio videos featuring Billy Sheehan.

In this one he talks about discovering hammer-ons from under the shadow of Billy Gibbons' cowboy hat.



And here he shares a secret trick about his unusual picking technique.This one's pretty freaking amazing.



CLICK HERE to buy Billy's new CD, Holy Cow, from Amazon.com.

CLICK HERE to follow Billy on Twitter.

CLICK HERE to follow DiMarzio on Twitter.

NEWS: John Mayer’s prototype relic-relic Fender Strat

If you’re not into the whole relicing thing, you might wanna skip this story and read something else. Might I suggest this?

Check out this Fender prototype of the new John Mayer relic Stratocaster, which is based on – get this – John’s Fender Custom Shop Relic ’61 Strat. Yeah, it’s not vintage like a lot of people naturally assume. So this is a relic of a relic.




John posted this photo today on Twitter, not long after posting “Meeting with Fender and incase to look at prototypes of the new "Black 1" guitar and case.”

That’s the original on the bottom, and the copy on top.

Of course this isn’t the first signature Strat Fender has made for John Mayer. When I worked at World of Music in Brighton East here in Melbourne, I had the opportunity to play a several production model John Mayer Stratocasters and one of them in particular was probably the nicest non-Custom Shop Strat I’ve ever played.

If you can't wait for the Relic, here are a couple of standard Fender John Mayer Stratocasters available from Music123:

Fender Artist Series John Mayer Stratocaster Electric Guitar Olympic White

Fender Artist Series John Mayer Stratocaster Electric Guitar 3-Tone Sunburst

CLICK HERE to see Fender Stratocasters on eBay.

NEWS: Mike Keneally wraps up Scambot Volume 1

Hot off the presses (well, Myspace actually), Mike Keneally says he’s finishing work on the first disc of his multi-album mega-project, Scambot, at this very minute.

Here’s an excerpt from Mike’s Myspace blog posting:

I'm finishing Scambot today

volume one of it, anyway...I'm posting regular updates from the studio on my Facebook and Twitter pages if you want to check out that action. Right now we're bouncing down the final mixes of each song from the album in sequence.

SPOILER ALERT! Here's the names of the songs on the album:

Big Screen Boboli
Ophunji's Theme
Hallmark
Chee
Tomorrow
Cat Bran Sammich Part 1
You Named Me
Cat Bran Sammich Part 2
Saturate
M
Cold Hands
We Are The Quiet Children
Foam
The Brink
Life's Too Small
Behind The Door
Gita
DaDunDa

You can follow real-time Scambot updates on Twitter.

Also, here are the dates for Mike Keneally and Bryan Beller's Taylor tour:

Monday, May 11, 2009 Buddy Roger's Music 7647 Beechmont Avenue Cincinnati, OH 45255 7:00 p.m. Admission $5 Info: 513-232-0777

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 Guitarworks 996 South State Road Greenwood, IN 46143 7:00 p.m. Admission $5 Info: 317-885-1510

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 Tumbleweed Trading Post & Guitars 7831 Airport Highway Holland, OH 43528 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 419-861-3512

Thursday, May 14, 2009 Firehouse Music 3125 28th Street SW Grandville, MI 49418 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 616-532-3473

Friday, May 15, 2009 Midlothian Music 15645 South 94th Avenue Orland Park, IL 60462 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 708-389-4041

Monday, May 18, 2009 Music Makers 3611 W. Willow Knolls Drive Peoria, IL, 61614 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 309-692-9000

Wednesday, May 20, 2009 Heid Music 2201 South Oneida Street Green Bay, WI 54304 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 920-498-2228

Thursday, May 21, 2009 Cascio Interstate Music 13819 West National Avenue New Berlin, WI 53151 7:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 262-789-7600

Friday, May 22, 2009Steilberg String Instruments 4029 Bardstown Road Louisville, KY 40218 7:30 p.m. Admission $5 Info: 502-491-2337

Monday, May 25, 2009 Martin Music 1659 Poplar Avenue Memphis, TN 38104 6:00 p.m. Admission Free! Info: 901-757-9020

NEWS: Parker Vernon Reid Dragon Fly

If you're following Living Colour's Vernon Reid on Twitter you have probably already seen this. If not, here's prototype #1 of the Parker Vernon Reid Dragon Fly.

A few points of particular interest:

* New body shape

* Floyd Rose bridge, instead of Parker's usual model

* Synth pickup

* New headstock shape

Looks like it's shaping up to be a very versatile and innovative guitar. Can't wait for further updates!

REVIEW: Krank Rev SST

After seeing my Krank Revolution Plus review one of my Twitter buddies, Brendan, asked if I had played the Krank Rev SST amp head, and how it compares to the Revolution Plus. As luck would have it I've reviewed them both for Mixdown, so here's my review. If you look close you can see the Rev SST in the background of my Bogner Alchemist demo video. So here's the review.

Krank Rev SST

Recently I reviewed the Krank Revolution Plus, a great amp geared towards more open, midrangy tones than the similarly-appointed Krankenstein Dimebag Darrell signature model. The Rev SST takes a version of the tube preamp section from the Revolution and pairs it with a 200 watt solid state mosfet power amp.

CLICK HERE to see Krank gear on eBay.

REV REV REV
The Revolution has two channels, ‘Krank’ and ‘Kleen.’ Krank has a 3 band EQ (treble, midrange and bass), two footswitchable master volumes and a parametric sweep control which swings between treble/bass emphasis and midrange emphasis. The Kleen channel has a similar 3 band EQ and a volume control. Around the back is an active effects loop with level control and on/off switch, a footswitch jack, two 4 ohm speaker jacks, and a world voltage selector. It’s also worth noting that because the power section is solid state – using the same technology you find in car stereo power amps (think about that next time you’re stopped at the lights next to some dude cranking his stereo up to 11 and rattling your teeth, and you’ll get an idea of the clean power of this amp), the Rev SST is a lot lighter than its tube-driven older brother. Anyone who’s had to heft a heavy tube amp out of the car and up a few flights of stairs will know that this is a good, good thing.

SOMEBODY’S KRANKY
While the Revolution Plus has a lot of punch and power amp grind courtesy of its 6550 power amp tubes, the Rev SST shifts the emphasis towards smooth, warm compression. I plugged in my Ibanez RG7420 with a Dimarzio Tone Zone humbucker in the bridge, selected the Krank channel, and set everything to 5 as a starting point. With a little tweaking of the sweep control, the sound reminded me of Dream Theater’s ‘Images And Words’ album or Faith No More’s ‘Album Of The Year’ – that smooth, warm distortion which translates complex chords well and evens out the dynamics which, let’s face it, allows you to cheat a little bit and be slightly more relaxed with your picking because the tone is not reliant on the push of power tubes. Winding the sweep control one way emphasised the highs and lows while shifting focus away from the mids, and I couldn’t resist blasting a few Strapping Young Lad riffs. Twisting the Sweep control the other way emphasises the mids while rounding off the treble and softening the bass, which makes it great for Satriani style lead tones, especially when you throw some chorus and delay in the effects loop.

The Kleen channel is extremely polite, with no way of driving it to overdrive. This makes it perfect for those clean Metallica or Slayer tones, and it’s also a great platform for using effect pedals because the amp reproduces them faithfully, without colouring them with its own gain. I tried my Boss DS-1 distortion and my MXR Custom Audio Electronics Boost/OD. The rattiness of the Boss and the smoothness of the MXR were both there in abundance. Clean effects such as my MXR EVH Phase 90 were very clear, almost hi-fi.

THE BOTTOM LINE
The tube-driven Revolution is a great amp but may not be for extreme metal players because its power amp grind makes it more of a rock or old-school metal weapon, yet its preamp sounds great at lower levels before power amp distortion kicks in. The solid state Revolution SST taps into that sound while allowing you to crank it without colouring it, and I can see it gaining a lot of fans in the metal and prog communities.

CLICK HERE to buy Krank Rev SST 200W Hybrid Guitar Amp Head from Musician's Friend for $899.

CLICK HERE for the matching 4x12 Guitar Extension Cabinet Straight for $649.

NEWS: I Heart Guitar mentioned in Premier Guitar Magazine

The May 2009 edition of Premier Guitar is out now (you can see it online here) and I Heart Guitar and Guitar Noize both scored mentions in an article about Twitter on page 42.

Follow I Heart Guitar on Twitter! For more on Twitter, check out this great article on Jason Shadrick's guitar blog, another Twitterer mentioned in the Premier Guitar story.

As many of you probably know I write for a few magazines here in Australia – Mixdown (where I also have an instructional column called Unleash Your Inner Rock God), Australian Guitar, and Australian Musician Magazine – but this is the first time I’ve seen my name in an American magazine, unless you count the time Guitar Player printed my letter about a million years ago, hehe. So I’m hella excited. Thanks Premier Guitar!

Premier Guitar’s email newsletter sums up the new issue perfectly, so here’s what they said:

Welcome to the May issue of Premier Guitar! We’re bringing you a genuine ‘plexi fest’ this month with our exploration of that classic Marshall JTM45 tone via an original (1965!), a reissue and five boutique brands that pay tribute in their own way. We also have interviews with Thin Lizzy’s Scott Gorham and jazz maestro Martin Taylor. The issue is also packed with a tone-dripping array of reviews—Louder & More, Genz Benz, Michael Tobias Designs and Xotic, to name a few. Plus, some of you have asked us to throw a little more of the less expensive gear into the mix so we're responding with reviews of an Atomic Guitar Works STD1 ($895), a Danelectro Dead On '67 ($399), an Eastwood Airline Tuxedo ($849) and Fender's Road Worn Series ($949).

NEWS: Nine Inch Nails iPhone app goes live

NIN Access, the highly-anticipated Apple iPhone application, has gone live, although it seems to be crashing my phone so far... not sure what's going on there. Some other users on Twitter are reporting the same thing but it's working fine for others.

UPDATE: I was able to get around the crashing problem by changing my time zone to Los Angeles. Weird! There will be an update of the app next week so I'm sure they'll address this problem soon. I guess it confused the app that Australia is 16 hours or so ahead, and they haven't quite developed the technology to beam software into the future.

There's an interesting article about the app at Wired and you can download the app by going to access.nin.com/download.

CLICK HERE to see Apple iPhones on eBay.

REVIEW: Hagstrom F-200p

I originally wrote this review for Mixdown magazine in 2006, and a little discussion with Lewis from the Me And Mace: Japan Guitar Journeys blog on Twitter today reminded me of how cool this guitar is, so I've decided to post the review here.

Sweden’s Hagstrom began making electric guitars in 1958, transferring glitzy features like sparkly and pearloid celluloid finishes over from their successful line of accordions to create a very successful line of guitars. The resulting solid and hollow body axes and a series of basses, including an extremely cool eight string version played by Jimi Hendrix, became instant collector’s items the second the company ceased production in 1983, but even before then the guitars found their way into the hands of a diverse range of artists including Elvis Presley in his 68 comeback special, Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe, Dusty Hill and the Reverend Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top, Pat Smear from Nirvana and Foo Fighters, and the legendary Frank Zappa, who posed with a Viking acoustic and a H12 electric 12-strings for Hagstrom advertisements in the 60s. David Bowie even used one on “Space Oddity.” Today Nicholas McCarthy from Franz Ferdinand plays a vintage 1959 sparkle red P46 Sweetone. And if that’s not enough for ya, ABBA used them too.

CLICK HERE to see Hagstrom guitars on eBay.

Flash forward to 2004, and the Hagstrom brand is revived, with manufacturing sourced worldwide. The new wave of Hagstroms tap into the same retro flash as the prime vintage guitars, but a number of technological improvements bring the designs into the future. All Hagstrom guitars feature the H-Expander truss rod, which uses a lightweight alloy rod mated to a unique solid channel to provide tension at either end and along the entire length of the neck. All fretboards are made from a homogenous wood composite called Resinator which the company claims does away with the inconsistencies of solid wood while mimicking the tonal characteristics of ebony.

I reviewed the F-200p, a funky little guitar that comes across as a marriage of all the fun bits of a Gibson Les Paul Jr, SG, Fender Strat and even ESP Viper. The body shape is vaguely SG or Viper-like, with similarly pointy horns and classy bevelling on the front and back of the body. The mahogany body’s thickness and weight are more like a Les Paul Jr, as is the twin soapbar pickup configuration. The pickups, Hagstrom’s own Alnico 5 magnet H-90 soapbars, have an aged cream colour which complements the crisp crème of the body and the back of the set nato neck, and is matched by similarly aged volume and tone pots. The oversized tortoise shell pickguard is immaculately cut, and the rear cavity cover features clever triangle cut-outs to give access to the trem spring screws without having to remove the plate. The headstock features the classic Hagstrom shape (something like an industrial Gumby), set off with classy but understated pearloid binding, logo and decorative inlay. It actually looks like the whole headstock face is covered in a two ply overlay of pearloid material then painted over with some kind of stencil to mark out the pearloid features, which is more than likely at this price point, as full inlay work would jack up the price. The headstock features Hagstrom-branded tuners with extremely cool art deco style buttons which look similar to those found on some versions of megabuck D’Angelico New Yorker jazz boxes.

But the coolest feature as far as I’m concerned is the Full Contact trem system. A simple push-in bar with a Strat-style white plastic tip is tension adjustable, and the bridge is anchored to the body via four screws which, like all vintage-style trems, can be adjusted to provide more play, or screwed down tight to get closer to a fixed bridge vibe if whammy isn’t your thing. The bridge saddles are a design I’ve never seen before, with the strings sitting on a screw-in section which rises about 5mm higher than the top of the saddle bases, keeping the strings at a Les Paul-like break angle for better sustain and tonal transfer while providing the playability of a Strat. In operation, the bridge stood up to some pretty wild whammy bar abuse and just wouldn’t go out of tune no matter what I dished out, from divebombs to EVH-style dips and scoops to race car and piggy noises. Yet due to the subtle float of the review model’s bridge and the snugness of the bar in the socket, I was also able to get dead-accurate shimmery Bigsby sounds, which blossomed to full life with a few carefully chosen open strings and the added influence of those soapbars.

I’ve always found soapbar-style pickups to be extra sensitive to changes in picking dynamics, and these were no exception. The bridge pickup is set pretty much as far back as it could possibly go, emphasising the snappiness characteristic of the bridge position to gloriously grungy effect. The larger than average distance between the bridge and neck pickups makes the contrast between the two tones even more pronounced, and the middle setting jangles like a hardcore Telecaster. Within ten minutes of plugging the F-200p in, I’d already written two new riffs, inspired by the glassy shimmer of the soapbars. I’m a firm believer that every guitar has a new song or two lurking within it, and to find them within the first ten minutes is pretty inspiring. Delving deeper though, I was able to conjure up great Stonesy tones, some pretty awesome slide guitar sounds, and, when rolling off the tone knob and switching to the neck pickup through high gain, a dangerously close approximation of Randy Bachman’s “American Woman” tone. Huge variations in tone were possible by varying pick attack or switching from pick to fingers, and particularly country chicken pickin’ licks sounded great.

The Hagstrom F-200p would be a great studio guitar due to its sheer versatility, and its cool retro styling make it a great indie axe. It’s more suited to jangly chords and ringing single note lines rather than fleet-fingered shred-fests, but with those sweet sounding soapbar pickups you wouldn’t want to get too noodly anyway because you’d miss all the tonal nuances. But if, for some bizarre reason, soapbars aren’t your thing, other versions feature humbuckers, single coils, or combinations of the two.

NEWS: Chickenfoot play first live show

Whoa, photos are starting to appear on Twitter following the live debut of Chickenfoot, the supergroup featuring Joe Satriani, Mike Anthony, Sammy Hagar and Chad Smith. I’m sure more info will come to hand, and I’ll try to stay on top of it, but from THIS PHOTO it appears that Sammy Hagar occasionally plays guitar in the band too: note his amps either side of the drum kit.

Follow I Heart Guitar on Twitter by clicking here.

NEWS: Faith No More tour may come to Australia

Woohoo!!! Aussies, rejoice! Faith No More bass player Billy Gould (username MRGOULD on Twitter) just tweeted this:

"In answer to your questions of shows outside the EU, especially from Brazil and Australia, yes, we are thinking of coming there."

Sa-weet!!!

If you're not already following me on Twitter, here I am. I use my Twitter feed to publish links to each new blog story, but I also use it to discuss music-related stuff, link to stories from around the web, and sometimes to ask for question submissions when I'm interviewing someone. And of course I also use it for the same random observations as everyone else.

COOL ACCESSORY ALERT: Bullet Cables

I recently started following the updates of Bullet Cables on Twitter, and this morning I checked out their website. I’ve seen a few of their cords in guitar magazines, and I know Paul Gilbert’s a fan, but check out some of these cool products.









And of course there are these awesome coil cables. I still have my ancient curly cord from when I started playing electric guitar at age 12, and I have a curly cord of a different brand, but I’m seriously tempted by these. They seem very tough, and if they’re good enough for Gilbert, they’re more than good enough for me!

A modern improvement on the classic "telephone cord cables" loved by rock legends, Bullet Cable Coil Cables feature oversized kink-free coils and polyethylene-potted .44 mag bullet connectors that won't pull loose during active sessions. With advanced audio technology that includes 99.99% oxygen-free copper conductors and spiral shielding in a coaxial design for clear tone, and corrosion-resistant 24K gold-plated connector tips to preserve signal strength, Coil Cables display excellent bass weight, hit hard in the mids, and caress high notes.

Custom-voiced for basses and guitars. Can be used with keyboards.

NEWS: Satch demos new JSX 50 amp

Check out this cool video at MusicRadar of Joe Satriani demoing his new JSX 50 amp. The videos' a little goofy and is a perfect example of how Satch gets 'in-the-zone' when talking about gear-related matters. 

This is the amp Satch mentioned when I interviewed him last year: 

Peter: One song I really enjoyed was ‘Come On Baby.’ It reminded me a lot of your self-titled album, that kind of open, almost dry guitar sound. Are we hearing single coils on that song?

Satriani: It’s funny you should ask that because I’ve done a lot of interviews and no-one really asked me about that particular technical aspect, but I was just using my usual JS1000 with the coil split feature, just lifting up the tone control. You can hear me shifting pickups during the solo. I swear, you can even hear the switch as I go between, not only the single coil, but I’ve also got the high pass filter engaged by lifting up the volume control. So I’m playing with starving the amplifier, which is set up to give me a ‘classic rock’ level of gain, but I’m starving it of information. I’m using the single coil, which lowers the output and gives it a less midrangy sound, and by using the high pass filter in there I’m stealing more low end from it, so the amp isn’t really breaking up that much and I get a smoother tone. And that’s all I was using. It’s funny, I did the first clean guitar in the left channel, one pass, then on the second pass I did the right channel, then I went back on the left and put the gains up a little more, then I did guitar number 4, then I did a guitar for the middle, and I didn’t really change much, I was just playing around with the volume control and the high pass filter.

Peter: It’s such a lost art, I think people get so bogged down with all these effects and things, that you forget you have these controls on your guitar which do these amazing things.

Satriani: Yeah. I was playing through a prototype amp which an older style, with 6V6 tubes in it, so it’s a vintage style smaller head. Those things are basically Class A designs, and they really react to what’s coming to the input. In other words, what you’re sending into that input jack, which means, as you said, playing with the volume control really changes the nature of the amp, and you can get hundreds of tones just by playing with the volume control.

Here are the specs of the JSX 50.

Features:
Two independent channels, Clean and Crunch
2 x 6550 power amp tubes (can also use EL34)
5 x 12AX7 preamp tubes
Global Presence and Master Volume controls
Global Master Volume Boost with switch and level control
Six-way attack control on Crunch channel
Pre-gain Boost switch on Crunch channel
Built-in MSDI™ microphone-simulated direct XLR output
Line out with level control
Active effects loop with send and return level control
Rear-panel impedance selector (16, 8 or 4 ohms)
Tube bias adjustments on back panel
Four-button footswitch included
Made in the U.S.A.
U.S. MSRP $1499.99

The amp will be available in the third quarter of 2009.

Cheers to Jon from Guitar Noize for posting this video on Twitter.

NEWS: Top 10 Guitar Related Twitter Users (Shadrick Guitar Blog)

So this morning I noticed I was getting a whole lot more Twitter follower notifications than usual. I was wondering why, before finally realising that the Shadrick Guitar Blog (the blog of Jason Shadrick from National Guitar Workshop) had posted a great article entitled Top 10 Guitar Related Twitter Users. Among the names were yours truly, as well as my buddies Guitar Noize and Mad Stratter, not to mention Living Colour's Vernon Reid.

Head over to the article for the rest of the names and all of the Twitter IDs, and CLICK HERE to follow me on Twitter. I have a feed set up to publish my headlines and story links automatically, but I also post random things such as what articles I'm working on at the time, and stuff like that. Recently I called for readers to submit questions for my forthcoming interview with Dimarzio pickup designer Steve Blucher (There's still time to submit questions, I might add).

NEWS: Eno & Schmidt's Oblique Strategies on Twitter

Many years ago I read about David Bowie using Brian Eno's 'Oblique Strategies' concept during the recording of 1.Outside
(probably still my favourite Bowie album). The system consists of a stack of cards with sentences designed to randomly provoke a creative response.

Now Twitter users can sign up to recieve a different oblique strategy every hour. Recent examples include:

First work alone, then work in unusual pairs.

Pay attention to distractions

How would someone else do it?

Left channel, right channel, centre channel

Look at the order in which you do things

The fifth physical incarnation of Oblique Strategies is now available from Brian Eno's webshop.

I Heart Guitar is on Twitter too. I've set up a feed to automatically publish headlines and links from the blog, and I also use it for the same random jottings most other Twitter members use theirs for.

NEWS: I Heart Guitar on Twitter

I'm still messing around with it, but I recently set up an I Heart Guitar account on Twitter. I've been reading some articles on how to best utilise Twitter with blogging (here's a good one for you bloggers: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html) and hopefully I can figure out how to make it all work. Bear with me as I no doubt make dumbass mistakes for a few days.

The address is http://twitter.com/iheartguitar