March 18, 2013

Equipment

One of my favourite pieces of gear is my old Ebow. These days it comes in 2 varieties.

EBow

The name Ebow is a shortened form of Electronic Bow. It’s inventor, Greg Heet, wanted it to enable guitarists to create unlimited sustain. I’ve used mine on countless recordings. Once, on a German session, I was able to create the sound of an orchestra by doing a vast amount of harmonised overdubs.

It can be used in all sorts of ways. Soon I’ll be posting a video of great Ebow techniques. In the meantime, here is the official Ebow website.

www.ebow.com

 

 

Posted by in Ebow, Electric, Gear, Guitars and tagged as , , , , , ,

March 18, 2013

Back in the Day.

Did you know modern guitar has very ancient roots? There are 3000 year old stone carvings showing stringed instruments that can be seen as the ancestors of the Strat and Martin, but the origins could be older than that. And many different cultures have contributed to the story.

Greece, Persia, North Africa, India, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain. All of these countries and civilisations have used stringed instruments not dissimilar to the guitar to make music. (more…)

Posted by in Acoustic, Electric, general, Guitars and tagged as , ,

March 18, 2013

My beautiful Blade Guitar.

Over the years, a lot of people have asked me about my Blade guitar. It’s a black Levinson Blade R3. One of the first ones that came into the UK. I’ve used it on hundreds of gigs and recording sessions.

I don’t like changing guitars through a live performance. My old Blade guitar gives me lots of different sounds at the flick of a switch. Apart from the 3 pickups (2 standard Levinson single coils plus a Seymour Duncan Hot Rail), there’s an onboard pre-amp with different settings. So I can flick a switch to get an acoustic guitar sound, then flick it the other way to get brilliant overdrive. And it plays beautifully! Gary Levinson is an American living in Switzerland where he constructs his growing range of guitars. Check out Blade guitars here.  I’d love to know what you play and why you chose that guitar.

 

Billi-holds-blade

 

March 15, 2013

So You Wanna Be A Guitar God?

You’ve come to the right place!! Do you want learn to play guitar from scratch or improve your existing skills? Maybe you’d like to have a go at some new styles of playing. Billi will teach you. I intend to create 10 teaching courses for players of different abilities, from absolute beginner to advanced level. I’ll also be putting up specialist courses in folk and blues etc. Each course will consist of 10 lessons, with course material you can download and a quiz to see just how much you’ve learned!. 

Do you want to check out guitars and equipment? It’s all here ! You might even get to win something amazing in one of my competitions. 

Want to find out about some great guitar heroes? Check them out here?

Looking for great video clips and interesting artists. Go to my treasure section.

Want to discuss all things guitar with like minded friends? Speak up here.

And, of course, you can follow me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

You can contact me here if you have any questions or if you want to say anything about the site.

 Billi-back 2

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