WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation, Data and Commerce's successful markup and passage of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act, the following statement can be attributed to NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt:

Washington, D.C. – NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt issued the following statement in response to the markup of the American Privacy Rights Act:

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) filed its initial brief in its challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) local radio and television ownership restrictions.

Today, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) announced the appointment of Nexstar Media Group, Inc., President and Chief Operating Officer Michael Biard to its Television Board of Directors, effective immediately. Television Board Chair Pat LaPlatney made the appointment in accordance with NAB by-laws.

In response to the release of Evan Gershkovich, a journalist wrongfully imprisoned in Russia since March 2023, the following statement can be attributed to NAB President and CEO Curtis LeGeyt.

Washington, D.C. – The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), in collaboration with members of the Hispanic Media GOTV Coalition, today launched Martes de Acción (Tuesdays of Action), an initiative aimed at encouraging Hispanic voter participation and strengthening civic engagement ahead of the November elections.

Radio and TV personality Bobby Bones will take the stage as host of the 2024 NAB Marconi Radio Awards, set to take place on October 9 during NAB Show New York. Bones will also be honored with the prestigious NAB Distinguished Service Award (DSA), the National Association of Broadcasters’ highest honor.

The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) commends the House Energy and Commerce Committee for its strong bipartisan passage, by a roll call vote of 45-2, of the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act out of committee today. This important legislation ensures the continued availability of AM radio in all vehicles, recognizing the essential role it plays in delivering critical news, emergency information and public safety updates to tens of millions of Americans.

Washington, D.C.— Proposals for technical papers and panels are now being accepted for the 2025 NAB Broadcast Engineering and IT (BEIT) Conference, part of the 2025 NAB Show, held April 5-9, 2025, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. The conference is an unparalleled opportunity for industry professionals to present their expertise at the premier broadcast, media and entertainment event.

Last year I went on one of the craziest adventures of my life. I was on a crew for a non-stop bike race across America. And I just agreed to do it again.


                                                           
From June 16th to June 22nd, I will be on the crew for a bike race across America as a member of Team Donate Life , a non-profit organization that raises money and awareness for organ and tissue donation and transplants. By joining others and contributing to team donate life you can help give hope to thousands by raising money and awareness for organ/tissue donation and transplants, and feel good about it all. Every little bit helps.

The Race Across America begins in Oceanside, CA and will end 6 days and 3,005 miles later in Annapolis, MD.  Our relay team will ride 24 hours a day, racing from the Pacific Ocean, through the Mohave Desert, climbing 3 mountain ranges (including the Colorado Rockies) totaling over 118,000 vertical feet, traversing the Great Plains, with all its wind and rain, riding throughout the day and night on our way to the Atlantic Ocean until finally, worn out yet victorious, we’ll celebrate with actual organ donors and recipients, as we cross the finish line, to support the miracles associated with organ donation~ LIFE!

Your tax deductible donation of any amount can either be made by check to “Team Donate Life” mailed to the address below, or you may go directly to our fundraising page here:http://teamdonatelife.com/riders.asp?ifid=198 to donate online.  Please note on your donation who you are supporting. We are committed to reaching our goal by June 16th.  

Recently I have felt the need to do something more at my concerts as far as music advocacy is concerned. I hate to just hit my audience over the head with it as I am not sure how effective that is, so I had an idea for this years Christmas Concert. I interviewed each of my music students (only those who wanted to) and then I put edited them all together into a video that I played on a big screen while parents were coming in before the concert ever started.

The parents really seemed to love seeing their kids via this medium and the kids loved being on the big screen. I did this for both my Junior and Senior High Schools. I think if I did it again I would make the videos shorter and maybe sneak in a few slides with music advocacy stats on them.

What bumper sticker would I put on my dashboard/music stand or t-shirt for the world to see?

Bumper sticker car parked in Santa Cruz, California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

• The pathway to hell is paved with it will be fine at the concert.

• It's not your fault but its your problem.

• All music must dance.

• Character is more important than talent.

• Hell is when the person you are meets the person you could have been.

• We are what we repeatedly do, excellence then is not an act but a habit.

To be continued....

Please add your own in the comments.

Yet again, Mr. Ransley delivers another awesome Pentatonic guitar lesson. If you haven't yet checked out part 1 of Robert's Pentatonic lesson, I highly recommend that you check that one out first, before continuing with this one. You can find the first installment here. I'll now turn over the reins - enjoy!

Pentatonic Scales (lesson 2)
(For any instrument)

Hi all,
Robert here with the second part to the pentatonic lesson. I hope you got a grasp on lesson one because this lesson is a direct continuation. Enjoy it and remember if you have any questions place them in any comment section of www.bluesandjazzguitar.blogspot.com. Have fun!

What follows is the superimposing of a major pentatonic scale, whose root will change, over a static root. This will produce the relationship of:

Maj. Pent.
Static root

The major pentatonic scale will ascend by half step and we will analyze the resulting tones when played over a fundamental static bass note (root).

At this point I will refer to all non chord tones (2nds, 4ths and 6ths) as their compound interval equivalent (9ths, 11ths and 13ths). These are also known as the extensions of the chord or scale. So:

2nds = 9ths
4ths = 11ths
6ths = 13ths

Let’s start with C major pentatonic (1, 9, 3, 5, 13) over a root C or mathematically I/I (Maj. Pent./Fundamental static root)



Note that in the “fraction” I/I, the fact that both roman numbers are the same simply means that the roots are the same. The roman number on the left will be the major pentatonic scale and it shares the same root as the roman number on the right which is the fundamental bass note.

Now, we want to analyze this relationship and see the resulting tones to determine over what chord(s) it will fit.



So, when a C note is sounding in the bass and you play a C maj. pent. scale, the resulting tones are those listed above the scale. We need to see which notes are chord tones (part of the structure of the chord), that way we’ll know what type of chord it fits. Chord tones in this case are 1 = Root; 3 = Major 3rd; 5 = Perfect 5th. A clear major triad is formed inside the structure of a (or any) major pentatonic scale. So this scale must sound good over a C major chord. The 9th and 13th are the extensions or color tones.

In lesson 3 we’ll start to compare this scale with other roots and you’ll see all the neat sounds it produces! ‘Til then, bye…

Its almost like there are two worlds in guitar playing. You have the guitarists
who like to use a flat pick, and then you've got the guitar maestros who use
a strict finger picking technique.

Getting the dexterity down for acoustic guitar finger picking can be a bit
of a hassle, and it almost seems as though the fingers don't want to budge.
With some simple exercises, the obstacle can be removed from the road.

Before we continue to explore finger picking, we first need to establish something. In the classical guitar world, where plucking the strings with the fingers is quite common, there is a labeling of the fingers. The labeling is simple, and knowing it will help you to guide yourself when you start working with these passages.

P = Thumb
I = Index finger
M = Middle finger
A = Ring finger



The abbreviations come from the Spanish words of Pulgar, Indicio, Medio, and Anular, and its a very easy system to work with.

By the way, one of the best beginning guitar books has always been
Frederick Noad's First book for the guitar

I even have it in my collection, and it helped me get started with classical technique.

Now that we know that the fingers are labeled as P,I,M, and A, we can apply this identification tool to simple guitar tab.

For this lesson we're going to simply focus on getting our fingers warmed up
with some simple plucking, using P and M for the chords and I for the single
notes. This is also a similar approach to the Beatles song Black Bird.



A word of advice. The key thing here is to take your time, because you want to
put your focus on syncing up the chord changes with the picking. I know that
seems obvious, but the plucking helps to keep a really good rhythm.

Stay tuned, because in the next lesson I'll show you how to put a little more "pep" in it ;)

So in the last guitar finger picking lesson, we learned about the finger labeling system of PIMA. Remember, it was P = thumb, I = index finger, M = middle finger, and A = Ring finger. If you need to, you might want to check out the last finger picking lesson, because this lesson will be an expansion of the piece that we were working on previously.

In the last lesson we were making use of the thumb and middle finger to pluck simple two note chords with, while using the index finger to insert some single note action, which helped to keep a good rhythm and produce a nice melody.

In this lesson we're taking it a step further, by not really doing much more with
the piece.

We're going to divide our chords up a little differently, and add more single note finger picking. By doing this, it will sound a little fancier and have a better rhythm structure. This produces a more interesting appeal, because the arrangement gives us a bass line as well, creating the effect that there are two different guitar layers happening at once, and yet - oh my gosh! its only one guitar player!!

Oh yeah, notice the last note where I goofed and had to erase it later and replace it with the correct note - sorry about that guys. Enjoy.

When I first started getting into recording my own music, I tried every way to find the best free solutions in recording software. I can remember like yesterday, scouring the internet for the most mediocre of recording programs. I would download and use them, but still the results were always limited, and probably because of the times. Now why did I choose to do this? well the reason back then was because I didn't know anything about recording my music, and especially not by way of direct, digital methods, so I didn't want to waste any money at this time.

I can now honestly say that I am a proud owner of Ableton Live, which I use religiously, and would recommend to absolutely anyone. However, the program is a little pricey AND it requires months of experimentation just to get the basics down. Is this recording program worth all the money and effort? yes it is, but a lot of people want something that they can use immediately, without having to spend hundreds of hours devoting their time to reading through training manuals, and investing just as much time by way of trial and error.

I recently found a great solution to this problem. Though this is a guitar
instructional blog, I have no problem talking about recording software or anything related, because recording your own music also benefits the expansion of learning and recording musical art, well....duh!

There is a beat creation program that is now available called Sonic Producer. This beats program, mainly assists a musician in creating music of a hip hop or rap flavor, which you would think would only benefit those who are interested in hip hop music or similar styles. I beg to differ.

I have a drum set, yet I do not have the space, amount of mics, equipment, nor acoustic set up to facilitate the process of recording live drums. This is great if you have a drummer to work with, but if you are an independent guitar player such as myself, and you want an easy solution, then a recording program like Sonic Producer is the way to go.

I do have Ableton Live which is in my opinion the most phenomenal recording program ever to grace the face of the planet, and is pretty much the cream of the crop for beats, but I know that it isn't the cheapest solution. With the release of Sonic Producer, I can seriously say that this is the cheapest solution for creating backing tracks to compose to or jam over that I have ever seen. Sonic Producer contains thousands of samples to work off of, and if you are more traditional, you don't just have to work with new age hip hop beat sounds. Yes, it can deliver exactly what you want, no matter what your style is. Its 30 bucks!!! my God!!

I can't believe this, because anything of this high caliber is always in the multi-hundred dollar price range. I'm really thrilled, because though it can't do what a program such as Reason or Ableton can do, it isn't that far away from the quality of these programs.

I look at it this way, and from the perspective of a mainly lead guitar player - the drums and bass are the bones of the song, and the rhythm guitar is the meat. What's the candy of this operation? lead guitar of course! It doesn't matter what your deal is, you gotta have the bones to make this music thing work. Sure, you can turn the bones into the candy of your masterpiece, but you still gotta have 'em!

There is nothing tastier than creating raw beats to either practice guitar over, or to recording with. How do you think I practice or find inspiration? I gotta have beats and bass!! with my recording program, it takes me five minutes to get a good, basic backing track down. Sometimes I just practice over a set of drum beats, but a lot of times it amounts to a complete song.

I also like the fact that Sonic Producer is so easy to use, and it the necessity of it easily fits in with other plugins or bits of recording software.

If you feel that rhythmic backing tracks are what is lacking in your arsenal, then definitely check out Sonic Producer.

Its typical for any guitar player to want to isolate techniques and work on each one separate from another. For instance, we tend to work on sweep picking, and then when we're finished doing that we'll move on to something like alternate picking. Here's the rub - most professional sounding guitar players will combine such techniques. There are two strong reasons for this. One, it makes playing the advanced stuff on the guitar easier, and two, it gives a guitar player more room for expression.

So in this lesson we're going to work with an outstanding exercise that I use to warm up with personally, that combines two techniques. What are they? alternate picking and economy picking, but with more focus on alternate picking.

One more thing before we get started - I truly believe in the power of limiting yourself to working with just two exercises per technique. One big and one small, and I'll show you exactly how we're going to do that. We're going to build a small exercise, and then gradually turn it into our larger exercise.

Watch the video, then consult the tab.

Its been a little while now, but roughly a month ago I went to the Alice Cooper Theater Of Death show, and I would have written about it then, except that things have been nuts lately. I must say, if you enjoy Alice Cooper's music and you want to go to the best show that you've ever been to in your life - check him out on tour.

I had seen video of him and his famous, eccentric stage shenanigans before, but seeing the master himself live blows everything else out of the water. There was no shock rock vaudeville stone left unturned as he truly commanded the stage like only a mascara running, self resurrecting, bad boy can.

My brother had always described to me the atmosphere of the show so I did have a little bit to go off of, but then when you are actually witnessing the flow of an Alice Cooper concert, you really don't give an F about any other show. Seriously, everything else is just boring to me now, and the man is in his early sixties now, so now is the time to enjoy what he has to offer, because again - his work is made to be spontaneous, or in other words - live!

Don't let the early sixties part fool - Alice is like a fine wine - he gets better with age.

I've got a pretty cool (I think) sweep picking lesson that I just added to GSS.com. It is definitely directed towards beginners, but advanced players can get some good out of it too.

It starts off with a more manageable pattern, and then expands into something really hot at the end. I've been jamming with this one a lot late because I think its a lot of fun to play. Its very simple in sound - nothing too fancy, and its not a barre sweep either, so it may be a little easier for some of you to tackle.

Read through the text guide, which explains how to develop and practice it. If you like it, let me know and we'll work on some more sweeps together! I bet we can get pretty crazy with this stuff ;)

Check out the Spanish translation of this article here! We recently added Stephen Street‘s Urtext Edition of Bottesini’s Concerto di Bravura to our Sheet Music Store, prompting a common question: Why is Bottesini’s music written down an octave? The issue at hand is that Bottesini wrote all his solo bass music at sounding pitch rather […]

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Room 21, Parliament Buildings

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Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings

Room 29, Parliament Buildings