Guitar Spaceship

Guitar Spaceship presents Hawaiian Slack-Key Guitar

2009-05-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

Guitar Spaceship is pleased to present Hawaiian Slack-Key Guitar videos this month! The new posting includes videos of Peter Moon, Ledward Kaapana, Gabby Pahinui, Sonny Chillingworth, George Kahumoko, Jr. and Dennis Kamakahi.

Please go to http://guitarspaceship.com/archive/2009May_HawaiianSlackKey.html to check out the new videos.

Here's how Wikipedia explains Hawaiian Slack-Key Guitar:
Slack-key guitar is a fingerstyle genre of guitar music that originated in Hawaiʻi. Its name refers to its characteristic tuning: the English term is a translation of the Hawaiian kī hōʻalu, which means "loosen the [tuning] key". Most slack-key tunings can be achieved by starting with a classically tuned guitar and detuning or "slacking" one or more of the strings until the six strings form a single chord, frequently G major. In the oral-history account, the style originated from Mexican cowboys in the late 19th century. These paniolo (a Hawaiianization of españoles—"Spaniards") gave Hawaiians the guitars and taught them the rudiments of playing, and then left, allowing the Hawaiians to develop the style on their own. (Musicologists and historians suggest that the story is more complicated, but this is the version that is most often offered by Hawaiian musicians.) Slack-key guitar adapted to accompany the rhythms of Hawaiian dancing and the harmonic structures of Hawaiian music.

As always, please let me know if you have any comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

So relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.

Guitar Spaceship presents Chicago Blues Guitar

2009-03-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

Guitar Spaceship is pleased to present Chicago Blues Guitar videos this month! The new posting includes videos of Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush, Son Seals and Howlin' Wolf.

Please go to http://guitarspaceship.com/archive/2009Apr_ChicagoBlues.html to check out the new videos.

Here's how Wikipedia explains Chicago Blues Music:
The Chicago blues is a form of blues music that developed in Chicago, Illinois by taking the basic acoustic guitar and harmonica-based Delta blues and adding electrically amplified guitar, amplified bass guitar, drums, piano, and sometimes saxophone, and making the harmonica louder with a microphone and an instrument amplifier. The music developed in the first half of the twentieth century due to the Great Migration (African American) when poor Black workers moved from the South into the industrial cities of the North such as Chicago. Chicago Blues has a more extended palette of notes than the standard six-note blues scale; often, notes from the major scale and dominant 9th chords are added, which gives the music a more of a "jazz feel" while remaining in the confines of the blues genre. Chicago blues is also known for its heavy rolling bass.

As always, please let me know if you have any comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

So relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.

Guitar Spaceship presents Bluegrass Guitar

2009-03-01T15:20:00.001-08:00

Guitar Spaceship is pleased to present Bluegrass Guitar videos this month!

I found so much incredible Bluegrass music that I posted 8 clips this time. I also decided to add banjo and mandolin players to the mix for this month only. They're such close relatives of the guitar, and they're both featured so heavily in bluegrass, so it made sense to me. The new posting includes videos of Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Clarence White, David Grisman, Reno and Smiley, Jim Eanes and Dr. Ralph Stanley.

Please go to http://guitarspaceship.com/archive/2009Mar_Bluegrass.html to watch the new videos.

Here's how Wikipedia explained Bluegrass Music:
Bluegrass music is a form of American roots music, and is a sub-genre of country music. It has its own roots in Irish, Scottish and English traditional music. Bluegrass was inspired by the music of immigrants from the United Kingdom and Ireland (particularly the Scots-Irish immigrants in Appalachia), as well as jazz and blues. In bluegrass, as in jazz, each instrument takes its turn playing the melody and improvising around it, while the others perform accompaniment. This is in contrast to old-time music, in which all instruments play the melody together or one instrument carries the lead throughout while the others provide accompaniment. Traditional bluegrass is typically based around acoustic stringed instruments, such as mandolin, acoustic guitar, banjo, fiddle, and upright bass, with or without vocals.

As always, please let me know if you have any comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

So relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.

February 2009: Guitar Spaceship is featuring the bands of "The British Invasion" this month!

2009-01-31T10:28:00.000-08:00

Guitar Spaceship is featuring the bands of "The British Invasion" this month. The new posting includes videos of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Kinks, Cream, The Who and The Animals.

Please go to www.guitarspaceship.com/archive/2009Feb_BritishInvasion.html to watch the new videos.

"The British Invasion was the term applied by the news media - and subsequently by consumers - to the influx of rock and roll, beat and pop performers from the United Kingdom who became popular in the United States and Canada. The classic British Invasion period was 1964 to 1967 (roughly bracketed by The Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan and the emergence of Jimi Hendrix as a U.S.-born superstar who had his first success in the UK)." (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: January 31, 2009 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Invasion)

In an attempt to stay true to the time frame of the original British Invasion, all of the videos posted this month were made between 1964 and 1967 (to the best of my knowledge).

I'm also pleased to announce that many "Musician" pages have been added this month to GuitarSpaceship.com. Some of my favorites from the new batch are Jimmy Page, Dick Dale, Julian Bream and Buckethead. Please go to www.guitarspaceship.com/musicians/index.html to check out the "Musician" pages.

As always, please let me know if you have any comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

Flamenco Guitar: January 2009 videos are now available!

2008-12-31T09:20:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year!

Guitar Spaceship is featuring Flamenco Guitar videos this month. The new posting includes incredible videos of Paco de Lucia, Sabicas, Paco Pena and Carlos Montoya.

Please go to GuitarSpaceship.com to watch the new videos.

So relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.
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I am also pleased to announce that GuitarSpaceship.com has been re-designed during the past month. Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback about the site - your comments and ideas were extremely helpful!

I also created a "Musicians" section at GuitarSpaceship.com this month, which has pages that feature videos of specific musicians. As of today, I have created pages for fourteen musicians and my plan is to continue to add new pages as I have time. To check out the Musician pages, go to GuitarSpaceship.com and click on "Musicians" at the top of the page.

Here is the list of Musician pages that I've added so far:

Chet Atkins
Ry Cooder
Jimi Hendrix
John Lee Hooker
B.B. King
Bob Marley
Wes Montgomery
Les Paul
Baden Powell
Django Reinhardt
Sabicas
Ali Farka Toure
Stevie Ray Vaughan
John Williams

Personally, I have been really inspired this past month by Ry Cooder, Les Paul, Baden Powell and Ali Farka Toure. I hope you enjoy checking out their music!

Please let me know if you have any comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

And please click here if you'd like to sign up to receive an email each month that announces the new video postings. I promise that I will never ever use your email for any purpose other than the monthly announcement.

Guitar Spaceship features Country Guitar in December 2008!

2008-11-30T10:22:00.000-08:00

Guitar Spaceship is pleased to present videos of amazing country guitarists this month! The new videos feature Hank Garland, Merle Haggard, Phil Baugh and the Texas Troubadours.

Please go to GuitarSpaceship.com to watch the new videos.

So relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.

Many thanks to everyone who gave feedback about GuitarSpaceship.com last month. Based on your suggestions, I have made many changes to the site during the past few weeks, and my plan is to continue to make improvements going forward. So please let me know if you have any more comments or ideas about Guitar Spaceship. I would love to hear from you.

And please click here if you'd like to sign up to receive an email each month that announces the new video postings. I promise that I will never ever use your email for any purpose other than the monthly announcement.

November 2008 Guitar Spaceship videos are now available!

2008-11-19T10:29:00.000-08:00

The theme for November 2008 is Bossa Nova. This month's videos feature Baden Powell, Luiz Bonfa, Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim (with Frank Sinatra).

Please go to GuitarSpaceship.com to watch the Bossa Nova videos!

And please click here if you'd like to sign up to receive an email each month that announces the new video postings. I promise that I will never ever use your email for any purpose other than the monthly announcement.

The Guitar Spaceship has landed!

2008-11-19T10:20:00.000-08:00

I am proud to introduce a new website that I just created and launched called GuitarSpaceship.com!

I'm a lover of all types of music, especially guitar music. I'm also a guitar player, and I love to play my guitar everyday. The music transports my mind and my spirit to wonderful places and spaces.

Ever since YouTube came around, I've become a huge fan of finding clips of master guitarists playing their music. Watching the musicians perform helps me to understand them more deeply, and I'm oftentimes blown away by the raw emotional power and virtuosity of the guitar playing.

I enjoy watching these clips so much that I decided to compile them on a website so that I could go there when I needed some inspiration. And I also thought that it would be great if other people could stumble upon the clips and find inspiration, too.

So to start things off, I am pledging to myself to post 4 excellent clips each month at GuitarSpaceship.com centered around a specific theme, such as Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Rock and Roll, Country, or Classical Guitar. Hopefully, as I'm able to devote more time to this, I can make postings every week.

So go to GuitarSpaceship.com, relax, take a deep breath, and spend fifteen minutes watching this month's clips. And if you have headphones, I recommend that you use them. You are about to hear beautiful music.

Please click here if you'd like to sign up to receive an email each month that announces the new video postings. I promise that I will never ever use your email for any purpose other than the monthly announcement.