I hope you are staying safe during these crazy times and that you and your family are healthy.
It's been hard for me to keep the blog updated but here I am today.
These last few weeks have been really busy online for me.
Strandberg Guitars
The Latino artists for Strandberg Guitars had a great .Stranded* live Zoom with the one and only Ola Strandberg. It was great sharing with the amazing Lore Paz Ampuero and Koke Benavides (Chile), José Macario (Mexico), and Liam (my son) and I.
We had a fantastic conversation, which you can watch at the Strandberg Facebook https://www.facebook.com/strandbergguitars/videos/226677915296969/ and Youtube pages (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRfy4ejdJI)
We own three of these amazing instruments now and love them all!!
Fun Challenge
Just for fun (and responding to a challenge from my friend Scott Burstein's from Little Kids Rock) I took a shot at Iron Maiden's "The Trooper" solo on the Classic Malta Blue (right on the picture above). Since he did the first solo, I took Dave Murray's and it felt really great to play it on a "strat-ish" type of instrument. I had't bent strings in a while, hehehe. Here it is:
Conversations in Isolation
I started a live conversation series online, "Conversations in Isolation" (Conversaciones en Aislamiento). I'm inviting a friend every Thursday to talk about music, life, or whatever else. This has been done through Instagram Live, so far. The first guest was the incredible saxophonist Jeff Coffin (Dave Matthews Band, Bela Fleck, and too many others), then we had one of the greatest musicians coming out of the Dominican Republic, Waldo Madera (Ricky Martin, Ricardo Arjona, Juanes, and many, many others). These conversations have been super fun and we are open to questions from the audience. You can watch them on my Instagram and I will upload them to my youtube channel soon.I hope to have alternate between English and Spanish. We hope this helps alleviate the situation the entire world is going through.
Other guests will include many other friends, composers, producers, guitarists, etc. I have some already confirmed that will blow your mind. For next week I'll have the great composer Ron Jones (Star Trek, Family Guy, Fairly Odd Parents, and many others). This one will be on Zoom at the same time (8:00 pm Eastern; 7:00 pm Central; 6:00 pm Mountain; 5:00 pm Pacific). If you are a movie fan or composer, don't miss this one!
Mezclando en Casa (Mixing at Home)
My great friend Allan Leschhorn and I gave a mixing workshop for invited guests on Zoom. Allan is a great musician and one of the best engineers I know. We have worked together since our teens and are still doing things together. Multi Grammy winner, Allan owns a recording studio in Dominican Republic and is the recording and live monitor engineer for Dominican superstar Juan Luis Guerra. The clinic was incredible! Super fun! We had guests from the United States, Spain, Argentina, Chile, and many from the Dominican Republic. Thanks to everyone who attended!!! We hope to keep doing more in the future.
Frank Gambale Online School
Recently I affiliated with the great Frank Gambale. Frank has been one of my biggest influences andd inspiration for many years and it is an honor to be affiliated to his amazing online school. You can check it out (and get discounted prices on his courses) at:
https://www.frankgambaleguitarschool.com/link/skhtqh?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.frankgambaleguitarschool.com
Well, that's it for today and I hope I can keep sharing more in the coming weeks.
Blessings and stay safe,
SG
