Spark Your Creativity

1. Read Not a Box, by Antoinette Portis

A rabbit sits in a cardboard box and uses his imagination to transform it into a race car, a mountain, a robot. The lesson? "Anything can be anything," Anna says.

2. Go outside

Nature informs most of Anna's designs: "A pinecone, a caterpillar, some gnarled gourds from a pumpkin patch—the natural world is full of bizarre, beautiful stuff."




3. Start a collection

Curating your own little exhibit of similar objects makes you more attuned to what's special about each one. "Try to figure out why the designers made the choices they did, and you'll get a peek into their creative process," Anna says. "I collect toothbrushes. They have to do something very specific—and it's not a very exciting something—but their simplicity is an opportunity for imaginative design."

7 Ways to Spark Your Creativity4. Touch stuff

Everywhere Anna goes, she picks up objects she sees. "I get acquainted with a thing's thing-ness. I experience it with my hands, not just my eyes."

5. Travel solo

"Once in a while, go somewhere alone," says Anna. "It's much easier to experience everything around you and to cover lots of ground. I decided to be a designer at the top of the Antoni Gaudí cathedral in Barcelona, because I was so moved by the architecture." But you don't necessarily have to cross an ocean. "You can get inspired by traveling practically anywhere, as long as you're open to what you see."

6. Go analog

"Don't check your e-mail when you're creating," Anna says. "Nothing earth-shattering is going to happen in an hour or two."

7. Grab every opportunity

Hosting a group of friends? Make party favors. Received a gift? Write a handwritten note. "If you're having dinner at home tonight," Anna says, "why not make something you never made before?"




Show Us Your Creativity! Get out your camera and sketch pad and share your imaginative output.

Groovy Goodies

First I'd like to thank the many folks who already listed in this blog. Meanwhile, I just got off the phone yesterday with a dude who bought one of our products. Funny story... I'll tell you in a sec.

...As well as to Blue Star Music Camp, which gives children a once-in-a-lifetime musical experience. It's a really neat thing we get to do each year around Christmas time.

To make it worth you're while to dig out your card, I've put together some killer guitar lessons, including videos, chord charts, tabs...

from Google

It's fun to learn, and you can even impress your friends and family. Regardless of whether you choose to participate or not, I'll still be serving up groovy goodies on my blog every day.

Let's get the party started!

If you didn't already grab this, check out the new course. Please take a few minutes to do it RIGHT NOW while it's hot in your mind..

But go easy on the eggnog! - :-)

Gypsy Jazz Lesson

I'd like to share a lesson with you today that you can learn in a few minutes.

First, thanks if you already ordered Acoustic Enlightenment.

Here's another sample... This is the gypsy jazz style. Waayyy different from what most people think of as "jazz".

If anything, it's more gypsy. lol...

Its a preview from Jimmy's course and I think a great example of how easy and cool these lessons are. Ok, so the lesson is on the blog, which is here: Gypsy Jazz Lesson and you can read more about the DVDs and get your copy here.

Have a GREAT weekend and happy playing.
All the best...

FCDB
Your dedicated guitar instructor

Download Adobe Illustrator CS3 Portable

Adobe Illustrator CS3 is a vector graphics application which is very good. The most famous rival of it all is CorelDraw. But, the weakness of CorelDraw in my opinion, is the difficulty of maintaining consistency of color, whether viewed on screen, with a printed, or when you have to move from one computer to another. With this program, you can get -in my opinion- the most accurate colors.

As excellent editing program, it is also characterized by the ability to create and design illustrations, this version is totaly portable does not consume many resources on your computer...






With a full range of drawing and painting tools, and controls for typography, Adobe Illustrator is a package or tool we can use for images that allows users to create great technical illustrations, graphics, sophisticated vector artwork in any medium.


Download Adobe Illustrator CS3 Portable Edition (81.84 MB) here!

Steve Vai Acoustic Enlightenment

Here's 7 reasons you should be excited because
Steve Vai's new guitar course Acoustic Enlightenment is coming out (today or tomorrow) depending on when you get this.

Here we go:

1. He's a real pro

Steve Vai is a PRO guitarist. Being pro means he makes a living playing guitar. Steve Vai doesn't have a day job… The only thing he does is play guitar. He gets hired to do studio gigs, go on tour, play for celebrity birthday parties and more.

He's the ultimate kind of guitar teacher. He's been and there and done that and
now he's going to pass on his best knowledge in 3 beautifully filmed high-definition DVDs.

2. He only teaches easy fun stuff, no boring scales

One of the best things about Steve is that he's not a flashy player that's trying to impress you with crazy theories and shred licks. Instead he empowers you by giving you everything you need to create beautiful sounding music on your guitar.

3. You get the tabs

Learning EVERYTHING that Steve shows you is even easier because every lick and song is broken down and tabbed out for you. Just follow along with the tabs while you watch the DVD and wowzer! You'll be learning everything in no time. No questions asked.

4. You get a variety of styles

Steve is a multi-dimentional acoustic player and he's going to open your mind up to new possibilities on the guitar. Prepare to go on an amazing journey into the wonderful world of the acoustic guitar.

5. You'll impress your family and friends

Once you learn just a couple of the cool things Steve's going to show you… You can pull out your acoustic guitar any time and impress those around you. Your friends and family will be shocked when they hear you create beautiful sounding magic with your guitar.

6. You'll get revitalized and inspired

There's nothing more energizing and revitalizing than learning some new cool stuff on the guitar. With these 3 hours of instructional material, you're going to be armed with enough new stuff to keep you pumped up for a looooong time!






7. You'll save tons over private lessons

Even if you could fly down to San Francisco and afford You could still only learn
a fraction of what he's going to teach you on the DVDs. Best of all -- you'll save a small fortune compared to private lessons.

That's what you get with Steve Vai. It takes a very special kind of guy to nail accomplish what he has. You would get some exclusive new music from Steve Vai.

So there you go…

The Art of the Riff

Someone asked me yesterday: what's the difference between a lick and a riff?

Ok, so lick vs. a riff... Well, a lick is few notes , or a short musical phrase... It usually relates to lead guitar or maybe a "fill" as part of a rhythm.

A riff is more of a musical statement on its own - usually a rhythm part, creating a main theme of a song, often using full chords or partial powerchords... Although sometimes they could be single notes. But maybe you already know all that :-)

Riffs are great to write songs with.

I like how Virtuwul divides up riffs into 2 main categories -- powerchord riffs, and single note riffs. Like he says "ITS JUST THAT SIMPLE." Try this technique -- take any scale, like a major or minor scale, and play a simple melody. Then take each note of that melody and turn it into a power chord. See what you can come up with!





Another really powerful way to learn to write your own riffs is first learn a lot of the all time classic riffs to give your bag of tricks some meat. Then you'll be READY :)

Amazing powerchord trick

This neat little twist on a powerchord will give you a new sound instantly. Most people will tell you to play a powerchord with your first finger
and your third finger...

I'm talking about a 2 note powerchord... Like for example your first finger on the low E string, 5th fret, and your ring finger on the 7th fret of the A string.

That's an "A5" powerchord. But instead, try using your pinky instead of your third finger. This gives you the flexibility of moving your first finger around, for example one fret down...

That gives you the famous "Journey Sus Chord" sound. Try it. It's amazing because its so easy to do yet gives you a whole new sound.

Rock vs. Metal

Who wins?

Metal or rock?

For me — there is no battle. Metal is just rock with a bit more distortion and attitude. And the guy that “embodies that” the most is none other than Jack Frost.

He’s like a metal god with a touch of motivational speaker. Here’s some cool lessons from him showing
you one of Van Halen’s secrets: EPIC RHYTHM SECRETS.

Rock on!

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P.S. I also highly recommend his “Epic Rhythm Guitar Power” course. IT’S EPIC! lol