| | | Hey Friend,
I recently got an email that pointed me to an article about some of the more oddly-shaped Gibson guitars. Unlike the Flying V and Explorer, these guitar models didn't really catch on with the guitar-playing public.
There was the Gibson Moderne, The Corvus and the 18-string Explorer (more like a harp than a guitar).
Additionally there's the Gibson RD, which is a hybrid of the Firebird and the Explorer - like if the two of them hooked up and had a kid...
Made in the late 70s to 80s, there were less than 3000 of these beauties built originally. There has been at least one re-issue from Gibson, but if you can get a hold on one of the originals from 1977, you'd have a real find on your hands.
Anyway, the article included a demo video of an RD which featured a very cool song - a song rich with power chords and solid riffs.
I fired up Video Surgeon to capture the video off Youtube and isolated the song part of the demo vid.
Here it is:
BTW, that's Fluff (Ryan Bruce) doing the demo. He runs a popular Youtube channel called Riffs, Beards & Gear. Many, many demos of equipment and tutorials. Very informative for rockers in the making...
As you watch the video, notice the shapes he's using on the fingerboard. These are classic power chords at their best. You can clearly see how combining these solid chord forms along with the metal riffs he uses creates a driving sound - I can see your head bobbing along with him as he rocks it out.
I used an older version of Video Surgeon to clip the song section out of the video, and unfortunately I couldn't record a slower tempo version, but the newer version of Video Surgeon (v2) will do that for you.
Another interesting point about this demo is the tuning he's using. I was adjusting the pitch in Video Surgeon because it was clear to me he wasn't using standard tuning. One of my guitars is currently tuned in Open D, and as I listened to the video, I could hear that his sixth string was even lower.
I thought, "hmm, dropped C?" Nope, It looks like he's in a B tuning, which requires tuning all your strings like 5 semitones lower than normal.
A word of caution - if you're going to do this regularly, have your guitar set up for these lower tunings. You may also have to use heavier string gauges than you normally would. You almost have to dedicate a guitar for lower tunings because the truss rod has to be adjusted to compensate for lower string tension on the neck.
If you haven't yet tried out a demo of Video Surgeon, you can get a copy right here. Mess around with the tempo and pitch sliders to see what I'm talking about with this demo. You can try raising the pitch five semitones (+5), but I think you'll agree that the lower tuning gives a song like this the punch it needs.
If you don't have access to a live teacher, learning from videos is one of the next best things. Get the demo of Video Surgeon here and try out its features.
Peace
Dave
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