Shred the Classics is back.  Sorry about that delay, but other opportunities come up that need to be handled.  All’s well though and we’re back with an extra contributor (not to mention some others who are interested in contributing as well).  There have also been several updates and will be many more coming in the near future.  Every so often, we may need to take the site down for maintenance, sorry about that. In a way, this feels like a brand new “Shred the Classics”.  We launched version 1.0 just as a test to experiment with, then got busy.  But, it’s something we’re committed to, something we’re passionate about, so of course, we’re committed. Here’s what’s new with this latest release of “Shred the Classics”: [...]

As if you couldn’t tell, Shred the Classics hasn’t made a post in a while.  Sorry about that!  Well, we’re especially sorry about not mentioning it until now.  The site is fledgling and still considered to be in-the-works.  But, the founders and contributors are all very busy on other high priority projects.  However, we’re committed to getting this site up and going again.  After all there’s just too much awesome content to not share with the world! Our target date to be back on line will be around the new year.  In the mean time, we’ve been preparing tabs and discussing the best way to share lessons, licks, tips, and so on, with the technical shred guitar community.  We’ve also had some new contributors commit [...]

Introduction Available now, the world premier recording of the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto in D Major…on the guitar!  I suppose if there’s any big classical piece that I will forever identify with, it’s this one.  The time span for this recording is huge:  oh, about 15 years!  When I first started considering playing classical violin works on the guitar, I started with the Tchaikovsky Concerto.  My college roommate and I even performed sections of it together:  him on synth, me on guitar. I recorded the first movement on four-track in the late 90′s, then re-recorded it digitally a couple of years later and finally completed the concerto a year or so after that.  I used a synth orchestra as the accompaniment, which I always thought a [...]

Man, I can’t believe this project is finished.  It’s been in the works a long time.  Again, something that sounded very easy turned out to be involved and lengthy.  This time, despite it being a music project, I was completely ignorant of the effort that was going to be involved. Basically, I wanted to improve my recording of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto on the electric guitar.  I recorded it a long time ago with synthesizer tracks replacing the orchestra.  Although I was happy with the recording, the synth sounds had always been the weakness.  Just a year or year and a half ago, a friend, colleague, and fellow guitarist suggested that I redo the MIDI tracks with real orchestral recordings. I finally got around to looking [...]