Blues, Beck and The Brits
Hello again,
Sandy here with my 2nd blog (I'm slowly getting use to this blogging non sense) Over the past few weeks I've been gigging, teaching and working away on the second edition of Blues Legacy which is all very exiting. I've also been knocking up some 'Country style' backing tracks which should be available to purchase from the SpyTunes Shop tomorrow - The package currently has about 14 tracks ranging from up tempo Bluegrass to Shania Twain-esque tracks! They were great fun to record (90% of it uses live musicians) so I hope they are of use and fun to play and practice over.
Next week I'm off to the Brits which I'm really looking forward to (The Brits is basically the UK's answer to the Grammy's!) Here's hoping I'll meet some top musical types 
My band Stars & Sons go on tour in February with Screaming Maldini which I'm really looking forward to. Those of you in the UK, the dates are:
February 21st - Sheffield - The Grapes
February 22nd - London - The Old Blue Last
February 23rd - Brighton - The Albert
February 24th - Northampton - The Labour Club
February 25th - Oxford - The Cellar
On a final note, some footage of Jeff Beck and myself jamming has recently emerged on Youtube so thought you would like a little look:
Happy playing
-Sandy
Red Chords Guitar Lesson Daniel Merriweather
Learn the chords for Red by Daniel Merriweather with spytunes latest acoustic guitar lesson.
So what are the chords?
We have I - IV - V - VI
that's it! Learn more in the Guitar Conspiracy, you TAB it, upload to forum, the lesson begins here. Guru has so far answered over 1000 questions.
Spytunes is the only interactive guitar community in the world where you learn from the song, not just learn the song, we give you that bit for free!
With the DIY TAB in the conspiracy you can work out why this is a hit record, the conspiracy now analyze 50 songs from Bessie Smith in the 20s, through every decade including Betales, Pink Floyd, Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel all the way up to 2009 with 'Red' by Daniel Merriweather.
If you want to really learn the guitar, properly, this is it.
-guru
Sandy Buglass First Blog, vocal overdubbing
Here's the room we recorded in for Natasha's session
Here at the site we thought it would be fun to document (or ‘blog’ as today’s young folk say) about what I get up to as a musician and life outside the SpyTunes camp.
I get asked quite a lot about what being a musician actually entails and how you go about your daily routine so hopefully it’ll bring some insight to those wanting to become professional musicians themselves. I’ll try my best to keep the blog weekly, short, interesting and as multi-media as possible (Videos, pictures etc!)
January is generally a quiet spell for us musical types but this is a welcome break as December was particularly busy with gigs and the odd session.
Highlights included playing a show at ‘Fabric’ in London (To anyone unfamiliar with London, Fabric is essentially a massive dance club) and a session with my friend Natasha Bobbe who was demoing for a label (Hot UK boy band, ‘JLS’, were in the next room which was tremendously exiting)
Today I’m putting my producer hat on and recording my friend and fellow musician Murray MacLeod.
He’s in a band called The Xcerts who are super and you should check them out. The song is being sent to New York today to a chap called Mike Sapone (producer for the likes of Brand New, Taking Back Sunday, Public Enemy) Here’s a short clip of us recording some vocals in my room:
Enough of my rambling, see you next week, happy playing!
-Sandy
Eric Clapton Crossroads Spytunes Blues Legacy Guitar Lessons
Next up in Spytunes Blues Legacy series we see Eric Clapton with his contribution Crossroads.
This live recording became legendary and demonstrated why people actually thought he was God.
As Peter Green (whom we shall hear from in the next blog) experienced when he took over from Clapton in John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers; the audience shouted: We Want God, We Want God! Not an easy first gig...
Clapton's fluency in his blues licks are at the time of Crossroads at a peak in his career, there is still a hint of every aspect of him as a player here.
The licks fired off in the crossroads solo are like a hit parade of blues licks as Sandy Buglass kindly demonstrates in this youtube video for spytunes.
More to follow in The Blues Legacy series, which is far from complete, next up will be Peter Green.
-guru
Spytunes updates and T-bone mixing
Been carrying on the endless task of writing the articles around each song, no one told me that playing guitar was gonna mean writing stuff on the computer all day!
I remember Ace saying that he started a band and ended up becoming a record company MD with Skunk, at the time I thought, well that was your choice though wasn't it? This comes back to me as I'm sitting here typing away...
So i'll stop complaining right now...
So, what's been going on lately at Spytunes?
Well apart from the article writing I have finally managed to get some google ads working yoo-hoo! and loads of articles done now, half way through intermediate with:
I'm Yours
Angie
Mad World
Blowin in the wind
1234
American Pie
Kiss Me
Hey There Delilah
and Fast Car
all done, I can't tell you how nice that feels!
I've been going between this and recording with Sandy Buglass for spytunes blues legacy series, he's back tomo again doing Clapton and Peter Green, maybe even some Jeff Beck, yes!
The process of recording, mixing, video editing is a long one, and it does take it out of me. Today I encountered the problem of how to mix the legendary T-Bone Walker.
T-bone is one of my favorites, he was doing the splits and playing the guitar behind his back when Jimi Hendrix was only a twinkle in his daddies eye, so if you want electric guitar, T-bone truly is the father, possibly with Charlie Christian as the uncle...
So i'm in Amplitube, which is where i spend most of my days, and I just realized that T-bone recorded before any of the amps in this program was even invented. Leo Fender hadn't even started building amps when T-bone was laying the foundations for modern electric guitar playing. Suddenly a '59 Bassman didn't seem so retro anymore...
-guru
B.B King The Thrill Is Gone Guitar Lesson
Some more B.B. King from the forthcoming Blues Legacy series.
This time it's The Thrill Is Gone and as usual it's Sandy Buglass on guitar.
Following the first two Kings in this series next up will be the third King of the Blues!
Until next time, keep practicing
-guru
Blues legacy continue with B.B King
The second video in this series is from B.B King, 'Paying The Cost To Be The Boss' is a major blues containing some of B.B's signature guitar licks.
Full lesson to follow, in the meantime, enjoy this youtube video from our spytunestunes account on youtube.
Sandy Buglass is the guitarist for all Blues Legacy vids
-guru
Albert King Born Under A Bad Sign Guitar Lesson
Sandy Buglass plays like Albert King. This is a video in a series to come called "The Blues Legacy"
The series will look at B.B. and Freddie King as well as T-Bone, Hendrix, SRV and John Mayer.
-guru
SpyTunes updates!
If you follow me on facebook you all ready know this, all songs on the site are getting an overhaul!
So far i've sorted out:
The concept of this new style came from doing lots of gear articles, all of whom have had this new concept added to them. Check the pedals, and live equipment for examples. Most of the images you see are links to where you can buy these products.
Hopefully this should ad to the user friendliness of the site.
If I do 2 articles a day i'll be half way there by xmas!
Recordings
Tomo Sandy is coming back to record all the electric stuff we did just before i was burglarized and some bastard stole my computer and Sandys audio files.
-guru
Tears In Heaven Guitar Lesson SEO ideas
After learning a bit more about SEO and how to find users through search I have finally started to implement the full lesson concept at spytunes.
The first one up is Tears In Heaven, and I could use your comments here since i have 74 more tunes to do this to...
First of all, do you prefer this type of lesson to the previous format?
And if there are any SEO experts out there... I would be very grateful to get some feedback on this article.
At the moment SpyTunes have a good following with a steady 1000 unique users a day, less than 3% of which come from search, so lots to improve here.
Hopefully I'm giving away better material with this type of lesson and can soon get some search traffic through.
As mentioned, any help and general comments are hugely appreciated.
-guru