The Official Blog of Pro Guitarist Allen ROBOT Van Wert

Hello, I am in the process of converting this shared office into a full on A/V recording studio. There is enough space for that type of thing once my girlfriend is placed downstairs in her own new little office. This way we both win. I will have a nice area to record in. I can finish my instructional. She will have her own space and not be forced to listen to the same 5 seconds of audio looping for hours and hours when I am mixing.

I just fixed her computer up with some new parts and I am ready to take the next serious step in the career path of a musician. I already have the text and most of the video finished for the instructional and just need to put it all together in various formats for publication.

Now the sad truth about being independent…
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The new Metallica album is due out soon! I have my worries about it and miss 90s metal. I know most people are into the earlier albums from Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax but my favorites were “The black album”, “Countdown to extinction” and “The sound of white noise” respectively. I was never into the straight out thrash metal with thin guitar tone and lack of melody. I admire the power of those three albums. They had strong composition, melody, harmony, and lyrics. After that point things all seemed to go downhill. Metallica came out of a five year tour with haircuts and a new sound that was quite disappointing. Megadeth had another set of good albums but then released “Risk” a little too close to pop and lost one of my favorite musicians “Marty Friedman”. Then they sort of fell off the map. Anthrax had a decent album that (if I remember correctly) was performed by their drummer “Charlie” on all instruments. It was still that same good melodic metal but at that point they were off the map as well.
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I just happened to go through my records for last years earnings and it is quite bleak. The only thing notable is that the book I wrote made over two times the amount of album sales for 2007. This got me thinking. I really enjoy sharing my lessons and years of knowledge about guitar and music theory. I seem to be able to help people out with all of the confusing stuff they pay teachers to show them. I will be working on a set of instructional books for guitarists. They will help you master your craft and will be in a step by step process that will work. I never aimed to publish my first book and it went over well with the masses. I might give this one a shot at being published and put into stores. I have a long list of personal exercises I used myself. I will be making some new ones that should really hurt. It seems like people would rather learn how to play guitar then listen to guitar based music. This isn’t true because the album was priced quite low (way too low). Someone actually has the song ROBOT Funk as their ringtone from Verizon. I noticed this in the sales log today. Perhaps things are looking up. I am excited to begin work on these books!

I just heard about Buckethea…I mean Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci playing 2008 G3 with Joe Satriani. It should be interesting. I never went to a G3 show but I have been at a Joe Satriani show once. I will never go to one again. He is a great musician and the guitar playing was decent, however guitar alone is boring to me. I can only listen to guitar solos for a little while and then I want to leave. My favorite part of that show was the Stu Hamm bass solo actually. I should mention that Stu gives online lessons along side of me at Music Virtuosity.

One cool thing about guitar shows is that the audience tends to clap in time. The shitty thing is that it is basically all guys who play guitar and stare at the dude on stage with their arms crossed thinking… yeah I play that song better at home on my POD…or whatever.

One review of my album said I should be a third of G3 someday. It would be fun for me but I always tend to think a straight out guitar show is boring for the audience. Steve Vai is a great front man and musician…perhaps he could pull off entertaining without vocals. He seems to. I liked his DVD from London.

Before anyone thinks I am bashing guitar based music…keep in mind, I put out an all instrumental guitar album and love listening to instrumental music. But as far as a live show goes, It seems boring to me.