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Posted by: Kristofer Dahl May 19 2007, 10:10 PM

Hey there,

I have the honour to present David O' Toole.

David will be broadening your horizons with a bluesy and tone/phrasing oriented style.

I don't know much more about him yet - so I will let him introduce himself more thoroughly.

He gave me whole bunch of sample mp3:s - which I find very tasty, enjoy!

Kris

Posted by: Norven May 19 2007, 10:35 PM

This sounds Great!

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 01:55 AM

Thanks Norven glad you liked it.

David

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 02:07 AM

Thanks 4 the intro Kris - here's a bit of that info to get the ball rollin' ...

***

Well hi all out there at GMC and welcome to my first post at the forums. I thought
I'd spin a few lines giving you a bit of my musical background and whatever else
comes out, so here we go ...

I got into guitar playing back in the '70s (that's the 1970s not the 1870s , when
my big bruvver brought home a lend of an album by a then relatively unknown
young band called Thin Lizzy. This was back in Ireland, my home and old town
Dublin (these days I live in Switzerland cos I married a Swiss frau).

After inspiration from this first album by Lizzy, featuring a 3 piece lineup with the
great Eric Bell on guitar, my first guitar was an unrolled coat hanger played deftly
(I thought in front of a wardrobe mirror in my bedroom. I was an official
Air-Guitarist and that was the start of my journey.

A good friend's dad was the manager of a band, and he used to store instruments
and amps back in the house and I grabbed every chance I could to play this
magic electric. Also my teacher in school was in a band playing guitar and
that an influence on me too. So all this was adding up and the writing was on the
wall it seemed.

I kept up this interest over the next few years and upgraded my coat-hanger to a
Fender Stratocaster copy a few years later. Electric Guitar playing was not so
common then back in green Ireland as it is today. I learned the instrument and
upgraded a few times as I got more into it and became mostly a Strat man.

Eventually I got to gigging and after a few years I was getting better. A lucky
break and some dedication to the instrument landed me a Blues/Rock gig with a
local band which featured Thin Lizzy's "Brian Downey" playing sticks. Gary Moore
even arrived at a gig one night but that's another story.

After that I played in various bands over the years doing both covers and
originals, and I ended up gigging a lot in Spain. I learned how to program
MIDI and earned a living from that with the gigs as a pro musician since then.
That went on for a few years and I can't remember most of it .

Oh yeh as well as that, I always seemed to be giving guitar lessons in Dublin,
different folks from different countries and backgrounds from age 8 to 80.
Well maybe not 80 but it sounds good .

I then got into a lot of home-studio stuff and I learned the electric bass,
keyboards and music/drum programming. This was a great learning curve as I
had to learn how to emulate many different instruments and players from Brass
to Bagpipes. I guess I got an insight of how other instrument players approached
it, and I transferred this knowledge into my guitar playing. I would recommend a
home studio to every player.

I love PCs and like to mix the guitar and music with the computer. Guitar websites
and the like, and of course now with the GMC. Really looking 4ward to that I hafta
say.

And as I mentioned earlier, I met the wife doing a gig in Mallorca and we moved
to Switzerland.

Since then I've been working on the Internet because the music scene here is
virtually non-existant compared to Ireland. But I plan to get back into the
gigging over time. I still play and keep in shape and keep up with improving on
this lifetime guitary/music quest.

I love listening to and playing lots of different styles of music from old
bluesy Fleetwood Mac and crackly Jazz recordings, to Pink Floyd, Thin Lizzy
of course, Uli Jon Roth, Allan Holdsworth, Gary Moore, U2, Coldplay,
Paco De Lucia ... well there's loads really and I'm running out of paper .

So that's a brief bit of background on my playing up to now. Yup I'm really
looking forward to getting stuck into it here at the GMC and I always find that
giving lessons "keeps you on your musical toes" which is a big plus I think.
I have some tasty ones lined up and I hope you enjoy them.

By the way I'd just like to say a big well done to Kris and all the
instructors here - some awesome stuff I've seen so far. I wish the GMC had of
been around when I was starting off !

If I was to offer one general piece of advice to anyone learning the instrument
it would be one word ... "persist!". Oh and make sure to practise on a DAILY
basis - this will make ALL the difference to your playing.

So I wish you the best of luck with your own guitar journey and look 4ward to
chatting to all.

David

Posted by: The Uncreator May 20 2007, 02:46 AM

Great Music HIstory looking forward to your lessons

Posted by: Ryan May 20 2007, 02:47 AM

sounds like you ahd a great life so far..i would lvoe to be able to go around and gig..

welcome to gmc

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 03:05 AM

Cheers Ryan, keep at it it'll happen

D



Thanx!

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn May 20 2007, 03:53 AM

Welcome David - sounds like you have some great experience, looking forward to some great lessons from you!

BTW, I am also an ex-pat - a Brit living in the USA, and I also have had a lot of fun with my home recording setup, so we have some stuff in common

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 04:09 AM

Hey it's 4 o'clock in the morning here and time to hit the hay . But I was just bangin out a few bits on the guitar, as you do, and a killer riff came out of nowhere .

It was a "The Trooper" from the lads. I was thinking 'now where did that come from - secretly hoping it was one of me own I'm sure' . But nope it wasn't, I figure it was musta been "inspired" by looking at your Maiden image in your post.

I usta play that toon in a band a few years ago. We used 2 do another Maiden song as well ... what was it? ... ah the name eludes me for the moment. It was the one they used for the Lucozade ad - not sure if you got it where u live? It'll probably come back to me by the morning. Great riff in that one too ... and about 10 tempo.time sig changes as far as I remember.

David



Thanx Andrew

Yeh I miss the ol' sod. Where are u in the US? Where were u in the UK? I've been over to London and Liverpool a few times on holiers and driven through the country a few times from the ferry in Wales down for gigs and all that.

Yeh I love me oul studio, good to meet another fan of the recording - we can swap notes .

David

Posted by: MickeM May 20 2007, 11:29 AM

Welcome! I very much look forward to learn from you. The demo tunes sounds teriffic, I'm sure you could throw in a few hints on studio work aswell

Posted by: Tolek May 20 2007, 02:00 PM

Hi David,
your demos sound fantastic and I like your guitar tones. Very melodic ones. The first of sample N°3 reminds me of Gary Moore, one of my favourite guitarists. So, you live in Switzerland? I was there last holiday to practise Judo with a great trainer called Mikami. I was in Fiesch, maybe you know it. All in all, I am looking forward to see your lessons, I´m sure they will be very helpful for us.

Tolek

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn May 20 2007, 02:04 PM

I'm in Connecticut - about 40 miles from New York - Married a fine American Girl who rocked my world and we eventually moved over here - used to Live in Hemel Hempstead in the UK.

I've been recording for probably 15 years, working up from a cassette based portastudio, through Fostex Hard Disk to Cubase - I'm a real Junkie, have all the plugins, do all the Midi stuff, and love making produced songs out of basic ideas!

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 02:41 PM

Cheerz Tolek - yup you might find a little Gary Moore in there I'm sure. The 5th track fade out on demo 2 is very guilty and is probably due to gigging Parisienne Walkways too many times ha-ha . The 4th one on demo 2 is a bit Jeff Becky and he's a big inspiration for Mr. Moore and on it goes.

I'm not familiar with that place you mentioned, I'm not too well up on Switzerland I have to say - I'll have to get out more often LOL it's a beautiful place.

I was into the Judo myself a few years back, love the martial arts - big Bruce Lee fan. On that, I like to think in terms of "Guitar Koon Do" - "The Way of the Intercepting Guitar" or should I say "The Art of Style Without Style on the Guitar" .

David



Thanx MickeM - yeh I'm sure to be adding a few studio bits in there on some parts of the lessons, as, apart from the interest end of it, I think it's a serious learning tool for guitarists if used in the right way. Watch this space

D

Posted by: Tolek May 20 2007, 02:46 PM

Fiesch is a town directly linked to the frontiers of Italy. It´s a beautiful place like every corner of Switzerland. Do you also speak "Schweizerdeutsch"? For me, it´s difficult to understand the accent, but when I really concentrate, I´m able to understand a bit. Other question: when is your first lesson going to be released?

Tolek

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 02:51 PM

So are you planning on staying over there in that part of the globe?

Yeh similar story here - starting off with a cassette based Fostex and then a Fostex digital 8/16 track which I still use. I mix it in with virtual stuff/plugins on the PC, and yup my first Cubase was on an Atari - great machine for running it. These days I use it on XP + don't see myself ever moving away from it.

MIDI is an artform in itself lol. I spent about 2 years studying it from a huge Cubase manual and with it, made my old keyboards do things they were never intended for . These days you can buy it all!

David

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn May 20 2007, 03:33 PM

Sure am planning on staying, I really like it here ! Sounds like we have very similar studio experiences and rigs, looking forward to sharing some info, and interested to hear how you get some of the wide ranging tones you use

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 04:10 PM

Well I speak a bit of high german when I need to mixed in with some Swiss stuff - I'm always on the net working etc and it's all english of course which doesn't help. The Swiss language is much more melodic on the ears than the high german I find. The wife speaks english perfectly so that doesn't help either .

If I attempt to speak to someone here in german or whatever they usually answer me back in english - it's common here to speak a few languages. Where I come from (Ireland) it's not so normal.

The 1st lesson is done, just ironing out the last few details with Kris at the moment - should be up soon. It's a Country/Blues lesson with some mad bends in it you should enjoy.

David

Posted by: Gabriel Leopardi May 20 2007, 07:01 PM

Hi David!! Welcome to GMC!! Can't wait to see your blues/country lessons!!

gabriel.-

Posted by: DavidO May 20 2007, 07:06 PM

Thanx Gabriel!

Posted by: Tolek May 20 2007, 09:40 PM

Ah, high german. I speak it, too, but also polish, luxembourgish, english, french, yougoslawish (is it right?) and next year spanish. It´s very helpful to know so many languages, I find.
Again a blues lesson? Yuhuu. I like blues and playing it.

Posted by: edgor67 May 21 2007, 02:33 AM

Oh man (whine!) I really got the blues from Lesson 1,2, and 3. I'm heading to the metal blues next. g

Posted by: nrpstreetballa May 21 2007, 03:39 AM

what do u have cooking up next for gmc??????????????

Posted by: kiciolud May 22 2007, 12:33 AM

Yes! This is what I was looking for - colour of sound, floating melody line and this "lazy" feeling,
giving a bit of slow donw to life.
I hope new lessons will coming soon.

Posted by: DavidO May 28 2007, 02:23 AM

It's just going through final uploading and touches and should be up and out there tomorrow nrpstreetballa. It's "on the edge", that's all I'll say 4 now .

D



Yup should be a new one out tomorrow as I write kiciolud. A few tech problems to sort out and it's live ...

D

Posted by: Meho98 May 28 2007, 03:11 AM

Thanx a bunch Kris and David.

Posted by: MickeM May 28 2007, 11:35 AM

I wild(?) guess... it's in the style of The Edge!!

Posted by: DavidO May 28 2007, 01:36 PM

You MAY be 'close to the edge" . It'll be up soon I'm sure, still workin out some server tech probs on it with Kris.

D

Posted by: DavidO May 30 2007, 12:42 AM

Hi Andrew

I just got thinking today when I was working on some tab today for a lesson. I wonder does Andrew work in Hemi-demi-semi-quavers or jus plain ol' 64ths? .

With your mixed geographical background u never know m8!

Oh, on the subject of music notation and all that, here's a piece of useless information for you.

I was looking at a songbook/music script here a few years ago and I noticed that there was no note or chord "b" on the sheet. It's called a "h" in Swiss/German music notation/music!

So it's A, H, C , D, E, F, G ... I'm sure there's a valid reason for it but I don't want to know what it is ja-ja .

David

***
David Ø
www.uni-guitar.com

Posted by: MickeM May 30 2007, 07:45 AM

Swedish is related to the German language and it's the same here - H. But when we talk in the band we always say B. And when I was young being taught music (on the electric organ) I learned it doesn't start witth A but with C.
C D E F G A H
Looking at thas old school swedish way it's A that's misplaced.

Posted by: fkalich May 30 2007, 07:50 AM

Greetings from kansas. i really like your play. very tasteful, great rhythms.

i have a question. that sort of triplet rhythm in the second recording. i learned that a long time ago, from clapton, let it rain (played as a kid, just picked it up again now after many years). people should learn that, but you are the first I have seen play that rhythm here. i believe that the rhythm actually repeats every 96 notes if you carry it out far enough. does that thing have a name? i can do that as you do it, but I never could quite figure out what what going on with that rhythm, or what to call it.

Posted by: DavidO May 30 2007, 10:20 AM

Yeh I was wondering if other European countries used that too. Well I just wrote that down starting with "A" (must have been alphabetically thinking .

But the note C would be pretty normal to start off with as you say, because it has no sharps or flats and it builds from there. Still looks odd to the "b" users whatever you start with .

Why is "h" used do you know?

David

****

David Ø
[email protected]

Posted by: MickeM May 30 2007, 11:33 AM

I got curious and looked id up at the Swedish Wikipedia.

it says when a tone is flat you write it as Gb except for H which is called B when it's flat.
It also says that can be confusing if you mix the swedish and english speaking countries ways since B then could mean B or B flat (eq H or B )

No explanation really. I searched google.se but searching for "B H" plus some swedish search words only end up with plenty of hits for bra's. BH=Bussom Holder or in swedish.
so I give up for now... instead I will closely study these links I've found

Posted by: Gen May 30 2007, 02:14 PM

I love your lesson on the style of the edge
Cant wait for your next lesson

Posted by: Pavel May 30 2007, 03:06 PM

Croatia also uses H instead of B - so B here means "H flat".

Posted by: fkalich May 30 2007, 08:48 PM

Could still be a German influence. Much of Croatia part of the Holy Roman Empire during the later middle ages, (and on the border prior to that) so an association was there.

Posted by: Smikey2006 May 30 2007, 09:05 PM

Hey Dave welcome to GMC.. sounds like uv got alot to offer as far as experience and creativty, can;t wait to learn from you

cheers

Posted by: ibanez rocker May 30 2007, 10:14 PM

can some 1 help me what does mb stand for in the tab????

Posted by: ezravdb May 30 2007, 10:35 PM

microbend
you dont follow the blues lesson from gabriel ??

Posted by: DavidO Jun 2 2007, 11:54 PM

Hi Pavel

I'm starting to think that there's probably more countries in Europe use that than don't. It was really a new one on me coming from Ireland. As I think I said b4, the only reason I came across it is that the wife is Swiss and we live in Switzerland which is how I found out about it.

So far on my list I have Switzerland, Germany, Sweden and Croatia using it. I'm sure there's a lot more!

I think most people in Ireland + England don't know of it as they mostly never would come across it as a rule.

Well whatever they're called I like the "B" note - where would we H without it? .

David

Posted by: MickeM Jun 3 2007, 12:56 AM

I think I read that english speaking countries use B while others use H.
Perhaps we can get word from more countries?


Wouldn't surprise me at all, we've all heard about the odd pound, gallon, inch, B, mile, pint... pint is good.

Posted by: Andrew Cockburn Jun 3 2007, 01:01 AM

Yes, pint is wonderful ... except in the USA where a pint is 20% smaller - that can add up over the course of a night of beers

Posted by: Norven Jun 3 2007, 09:15 AM

In school I have music theory and my teacher in class learned us that: Classical composers like bach wrote things like: Preludium in H. In classical music there are thousands of things like that. And we can´t just change bachs Preludium in H to Preludium in B. my mother play a lot classical music and for here H is what we call B, but B for her is Bb.
But she has never heard about it(Bb). when she studied music at University they learned H not B.

I think why we got B and H is because the classical musicans learned it that way and it´s hard to learn something that you have been told for all your life as musican.

I hope you understand my bad english

Posted by: lavendell Jun 3 2007, 10:00 AM

I heard that it's a misinterpretation. Some guy apparently had a pretty bad handwriting, so the B looked like an H.

Don't know if it's true (I doubt it), but that's the word at the music academy in sweden

Posted by: Kristofer Dahl Jun 3 2007, 08:23 PM

Maybe we should start some insider thing here at gmc and replace all B:s with H:s when typing, so that...

Hey man what are you rehearsing today with you band?

Bey man wbat are you rebearsing today with your hand?

oops bad idea probably

Music theory isn't always logical..

Kris