Internet Radio - where do i come from?

When i was a kid, the only music source i can get is the FM radio or from a tv. Other than that should be school bands playing school songs or stuffs. That was 1995, when internet is still a mystery. Not everyone have a PC back then, only rich people have 1 and it's running on DOS with big giant flappy floppy disks. you need to wait 20mins to let it load space invader which was displayed on a black and white monitor. LOL....
I was listening to oldies from a radio cassette player owned by my parents. That was the hip thing at that time. Every music store are selling cassettes, no cds yet. Cd players are expensive that time.

 Then when internet came along with affordable pc for the midrange families, my parents bought 1. The time started with 65k MP3s that you can download with a 55k internet speed. 2MB will need about 4-6 hours of downlload time. Think about it...hahaha. Now we are downloading at 200kb/s. Pretty hardcore ya?
When napster,kazza,morpheus and etc.. program came to life. It was 24hours download for me. I download single mp3 files to bittorent files of discography. Burn them to Cdroms then to DVD then to external harddisk.
Now, I listen to internet radio on my Media player. I wan to listen to The Blues? click on the channel and i have blues, Jazz? Metal? whatever man..
Sometimes i think internet is the one. do you think so?

Oh ya, the winners from the DIY guitar from trash!!

2011 Cigar Box Nation Recycled Material Contest Results

Photos taken from Cigarboxnation.com

Cigar Box Guitar - Primitive > Modern = 3 string Guitar

Cigar Box Guitar or CBG is one of the oldest most original build instrument by Delta blues Musicians.
The first attempt was the Didley'Bow, A 1 string guitar  fretless and played by a bottle's neck as a slide. To accompany the singer for the Blues that are doing.(the guitar was build using scraps they can find, broom sticks/oil can...blablabla

One man's trash is another's Treasure

Later the instrument evolved to a more complex design, 3 or 4 strings, with fret and without fret.Now we have all kinds of CBG. 5 strings , 6 strings. Harp like. whatever. This is the where the fun and interesting part is, There's no rule in building a CBG, it's your own freedom of expression in building it the way you wan it.

  Since there's no rule in building it Heck the same about playing it!!! there's tons of people play CBG in their own way, with theory or not. As long as you get that Delta Kick comin' you on the Roll man!!!

There's lots of website for you to check out more of this CBG,

Google Daddy Mojo Cigar Box Guitar, Guitar Box Nation and 3 string guitar . for starters.
The thing about us here in Malaysia is the lack of cigar boxes. I mean it's hard to find here.
But don't fear, Music Star Academy is goin' to help you build these and sell'em to you. SO for you guys that have been drooling, i will post the DIY Cigar Boox Section later in this blog . so you guys can build'em yourself and we can discuss problems encounter while doin' it.

  The photos above are CBG build for sale by Daddy Mojo, Very very well build!!!

Till Then, here's a Photo of Johnny Depp with his..

Got G.A.S ? - Guitarist's Sickness

How Many guitars do you own???

If your answer is more than 1 there is a high degree of probability you will be affected!
If your answer is more than 5 you have been struggling with the disease!If your answer is more than 10 you have a severe case of 


G A S


** Taken from The Main website of G.A.S http://www.guitaracquisitionsyndrome.com/Page_1.php

All credit's go to this guy, i'm just sharing it and commenting.

What is GAS?
Guitar Acquisitions Syndrome - Means that the person cannot just have 1 guitar and always have a "Just one more" in his head. Compulsive buying of guitar where transaction of money in getting the guitar satisfied the person. May cause serious financial and martial problems.

Wait till your wife knows how many guitars you have.

There's one more article about this, here talks about how to cure this.
But to me, i think you can't cure it, it got no CURE> LOL
I have and diagnose with GAS and am under control.
How About you?
There's a book in Amazon.com talking about this too and tells you that you are not alone with GAS and there's others more serious than you young and old.

If not taken care of, you might end up with 2000 guitars plus other gears such as pedals and amps and ukuleles and bass nad mandolins.


Cheers~~!

Guitar's Core >> The Wood - body

From time to time, I got many students asking me about the guitar. What is it made of? Wood. Wood from a tree. The same wood you have in your furnitures. Your chair , table, cupboard...blablabla.
Ok . Why is it so expensive since it's only wood. Ah ha.... now they started thinking. Guitars are made of carefully chosen wood. Not the normal poplar you get in woodwork shops. (But nowadays China guitars uses poplar because it's cheap.) The wood commonly use in guitars are expensive, thus the price after it's been fully made into one.
The common wood used in branded guitars are:-

1) Basswood - more mid/inexpensive/widely use in Ibanez
2) Alder - more high and low/telecasters
3)Swamp Ash/Ash - USA wood/more mid & low
4)Mahogany - Thick sound/Strong low & mid lows.
5)Walnut - brighter/hard/strong mids.

6)Koa - upper mids/darker
7)Korina - super mahogany/sweet mids
8) Soft/hard Maple - brighter in mids/korea
9)Spuce - more high & lows.
10)Lacewood - brighter than Alder, richer than maple.

These are just common ones. The price will shoot up if the Koa is from a rare Japanese 1000 years old tree. Different wood body will influence the sound and tone of the guitar.This is the main important of the wood, the better the wood the better the cut the better the quality all contribute into the sound that the guitar will produce. Vai even said the body has a pitch, and the neck too. The combination of the neck and body will somewhat produce an interval. If the combo is a consonant it will sustain better , if dissonant vice versa. If Octave the better. All depends on the luthier. On how he wants the guitar to be.

One more cool thing about guitar bodies are, we have tops and base. Common tops are maples. Either a flame maple top/Tiger flame maple or Quilted maple , this add the difference in wood tone and of course the guitar looked fabulously awesome.
The wood that China ripoff guitars uses are mainly poplar, just like the cheap furniture you have in your house. The wood produce no tone, Flat and poor sustain. SO pls, stay away from them. RM250 for a jumpstart. Pls.... ROTFLOL

You can google around and look for more information what wood gives you what tone in detail.
WHY PRS guitars are expensive? They have employees to personally choose the wood to be use. Every wood have to be unique and top quality.

Cheers!~~~~

Music Star Academy - 3 months old

Hahaha, the title looks like i'm blogging a new born baby. 

Just wanna update you guys on the shop's progress.

we doubled our students again to 50. WOW!! great respond

people knew us and kept coming in for classes, monthly drum class, guitar lessons, pay per class. our time is pretty much all used up. we might need to train teachers for our classes. Anyone interested??? 

We sold off all our used guitars!!! 5 units, GONE!! now i have only 1 new unit of a Squier Strat. Have to wait for new old stocks!!lol

Selling pedals all over Malaysia. After our mudah and jamtank buddies got to us. Our used pedals are selling like hotcakes.

I even have requests to get more rare and vintage stuffs. Also DJ equipments.

If the rate is consistently like this. We'll land a huge showroom for sure.

Made more friends in Johor and KL and Sabah.

The only thing not done is our signboard, this thing took us 1 month to get the licenses and now we are waiting for the team to put it up for our glory.

Till then....

THANKS A MILLION from MusicStarAcademy

Frank Zappa - Original Genius

FRANK ZAPPA - What can i say about this heavy mustached man with a guitar? When i got to know him and his legacy. I salute him with all honors as a rocker/shredder/musician. He overshadowed me so much that i thought of letting music be my past. Of course not la, because of him. I knew what making music is all about, expressing what you have inside of you and share it proudly.
This man released over 60 albums in his music career in a band and also solo, which he wrote all the songs, design all the covers, direct all the videos. What??!! 60. man.........

 With his integrity of music he has become the villain in american society, he fought for censorship in music."You can't censor words.." he said.
He was a strident critic of mainstream education and organized religion, and a forthright and passionate advocate for freedom of speech, self-education.
What music he play?
1) Rock
2) Jazz
3)Fusion
4) Classical
5) Blues
6) Everything

The most interesting part is, he can mix all those genre into a collage of musical experience. Tons of musician influenced by him, even the Beatles. He got into the Rock N Roll hall of Fame in 1995 and Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 after his death in 1993 of Prostate Cancer.
His childrens name are as creative as his work,
Moon Unit, Dweezil , Ahmet Emuukha and Diva Thin Muffin.
He does most of his recording and have Steve Vai working for him as a music transcriber and also Stunt Guitarist. 

 You must check out the new DVD by his son Dweezil Zappa playing his Dad's song live with Steve Vai on
Zappa Plays Zappa.