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 band Breakin Benjamin started out local to me, I even shared the same practice space as a few of their members years ago. I talked with some of them at one point but I forget which members.

I like to study music and I am able to find formulas in the music of most bands. I thought it would be interesting to share my studies with you guys and let you see how I see things from a compositional analysis standpoint.

Firstly I will take a few songs that are big radio hits and within a few passes of the songs I discover and plot out the bands “formula”. This is a good way to learn about composition and how things fit together in a song. I would not suggest directly ripping off the formula of a band because you will end up sounding a lot like them in most cases. No one likes a copycat. (Ex: How Saving Abel is 100% copying Three Doors Down’s formula…listen to “18 days” from saving abel and then just about any recent Three Doors Down song.)

Here is how I do it:
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There has been some buzz about the all star band named “ChickenFoot” The members are:
Joe Satriani – guitar
Chad Smith – Drums (He was in RHCP)
Michael Anthony – Bass (He was in Van Halen)
Sammy Hagar – Vocal

Before I start in on the sound of their sample tracks I really need to get something off my chest. There seems to be a LOT of borrowing going on lately. The borrowing of ideas and quirky gimmicks. Being one of the few odd ball guitarists who sound like a nintendo or “insert non guitar type sound here”, I happen to be a little more sensitive to the little rip offs here and there.
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Outside of guitar I have been studying NLP and hypnosis. It is very rewarding and I would choose it as my second career choice. Make that third. First is being a musician, second is a video game programmer/designer, third is an NLP practitioner. Take some time to check out youtube videos pertaining to NLP and you will probably enjoy it too.

I have written another massive section to the text portion of the instructional. This portion doesn’t actually deal with guitar playing at all. It deals with learning in general. I will have it separated from the other text so the reader can find it easily when needed. I am planning on recording 20 more exercise videos today. I am liking the flow from exercise to exercise. I also think you will like the extra information included in every video. Instead of having one exercise played at different speeds from different camera angles.
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