Greatest Christmas Present Ever!

Soon it will be Christmas Day, that's the way the song goes. (photo: My Dad, Rich, and I, playing my old Harmony guitar. He's playing and older Gibson guitar that I got and fixed up for him.)

Let me tell you that one of the most memorable days in my life was the day I received the greatest Christmas present, greatest any present, that I've ever received.

Christmas Eve, 1998, my Dad took me to the 5th St Pawn Shop in Santa Rosa, where we had previously observed some good guitars at great prices. This particular evening was special because the most beautiful guitar I'd ever seen was hanging there. An H-72 Harmony electric guitar. It was a light-sunburst, hollow-body, big square pearl inlays on the fretboard, fancy outlined f-cutouts, it was totally decorated and in good shape. As pretty as B.B. King's Lucille.

Well, my Dad asked to take a look at it. He gave it to me to play with and inspect. It played so well and felt good, I loved it. Dad liked it too, just his style. He found a few blemishes and a minor crack on it, that was enough to haggle the salesman down $100 bucks to a price of $249. Dad looked at me and said, "it's all yours." Merry Christmas.

I was thrilled! I knew that we were looking and shopping for my first electric guitar but I didn't know that I would be getting one that day. It has been the greatest present to me ever, and has given me countless hours of entertainment, a special outlet for creativity, fame and acclaim, and best of all money! It's is my profession now to play guitar. Joined by my Dad, the originator and my partner in crime.

Happy Holidays to all you Dads out there and I hope you can find that special present for your children that will make them happy and inspire them to be the greatest that they can be.

Paul's Guitar Improvising Tips

So you wanna jam??

You wanna run the fretboard??

You wanna be the next guitar hero??

So do I! But it is most likely that both of us are far from the latter status. Achieving the first two abilities may not be so hard. Here are a few things I do when soloing or improvising on guitar:

-Know and use a lot of licks/riffs from your favorite guitar players. When I was first learning to play guitar, I would learn and memorize guitar parts of my favorite players on my favorite songs. That means I was copying all of B.B. King's guitar licks, on nearly every one of his recordings, the best that I could. I did this for many other guitar players like Albert Collins, Freddie King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc...

-From your "library" of learned riffs mix, match, alter, and blend them they way you think sounds good. Hopefully the audience will agree.

-Know your scales. You can learn these from wikipedia "Jazz Scales." Use the scales that match the Harmony of your song. You might want to use some of those other notes in the scales that were not previously used by another player.

-Try different rhythms, long notes, stops, and funk it up or straighten it out.

-Take all the above mentioned ideas then improvise your own improvisation.

If all else fails, you can light your guitar on fire like Hendrix; someone is bound to think that it's cool.