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.......News
..........Things happen. Then people want to know. So here is a place you can go to find out...
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"Back at Music Messe with a vengence"
The Frankfurt show was busy and exciting as always. This time I was privledged to debut the Triple Play
wireless MIDI guitar controler. The product is still evolving and growing stronger in the process. I/We had
some really funny moments with some German guys who's english was not that good, but were overcome
with excitment upon hearing Bari Sax come out of my speakers as they watched my fingers on the
guitar neck.
This one guy would mimic each of the different instruments that I was triggering with
the guitar. At one point he was kind of bouncing around the booth singing as saying stuff I could not
understand. Its great fun to use technology to inspire people. Click on the image above to see
more photos of the show
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"New Burr Johnson Model Hagstrom Guitar, to be equipped with the
Triple Play Wireless Controller built inside"
At the NAMM show this year I was demonstrating the new Fishman "Triple Play" Wireless Guitar Controler.
Click here to see it closer
This new technology promises to be the best effort yet to develop a truly user friendly
MIDI guitar
system that will break into the mass market and finally elevate MIDI guitar to its rightful place.
Craig Smith (GM, Hagstrom) is
very eager to have the new revised Burr Johnson Model outfitted
with this awesome new technnology. Not on top as a clip on,
but built directly inside the body. As
a result, this instrument will
be the first guitar in the history of guitar to have a wireless MIDI system
built inside.
Click here to see some pics from NAMM.
The first wireless MIDI guitar.
Now that is worth writing home about.
Click on the image above to see the original article written in Vintage Guitar
Magazine (oddly enough) about the previous release of the Burr Johnson Signature Hagstrom
Model Guitar
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"Burr Johnson programs the MIDI guitar chair for the new Broadway musical Soul Doctor"
Click here to see stuff about the show.
I was approached originally to help with the proper equipment they might need to have a MIDI guitar chair
in the orchestra. But in the end I wound programing the MIDI guitar parts the whole show. They wanted it so the
guitar player would only need to press a pedal every time he needed to advance to the next sound in the show.
It took some doing but it came out great! I was also asked to take the chair over myself, but with so much on my
plate, it just wasn't do-able. Apparantly there is more to come, so, stay tuned
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Pat Metheny
So Pat Metheny calls me and says he hears I'm good with the MIDI guitar stuff. I say well yes its true, so he asks if he
can come up and work on some Axon related issues he's having (Axon is the MIDI system he and I use). He had the new
robot project he was working on and wanted to get better results with his Axon. So when he arrives, he watches me
play and says that clearly my set up is better because it tracking much more accurately for me than it does for him. So
I give him my guitar and he starts to play but now its perfoming very poorly (the Axon, not Pat. He sounds great!). Turns
out Pat has a very unique playing style that causes the Axon to become confused (some machines are such bone heads).
Pat picks on the side of the pick and places his left hand fingers more on the frets than in between. This causes more
harmonics that the Axon confuses for notes. So it mistakenly starts fireing off notes it thinks you want. There is nothing
wrong with the way Pat plays in the world of analogue. But when you try to convert those notes to MIDI, then things
get messy. Anyway we worked on it for a bunch of hours and he seemed to be quite happy when he left.
Click here to see his comments about our time together.
Pat is truely awesome.
Very open minded, very warm.
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Published in Carl Fischer's Fusion Drum book (Written by Kim Plainfield)
Kim Plainfield and Carl Fischer published this book on comtemporary
music for drums. In this book they decided to use (publish) my song
"Ol Factory" for the reader to study and practice with, and to demonstrate
various techniques of Fusion playing. A great honor to have one's music used
to help define a genre. Thanks to Kim for including us. Please see below the
printed pages of the music.
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"Mike Varney Writes an article on Burr Johnson"
Guitar Player Magazine
did this article showcasing different Fusion artists and in this issue, I was featured.
Here is a quote from the article
"Burr is a harmony-oriented player who is as comfortable playing clean chord-solo- phrases
as he is laying down a barrage of blistering fusion licks. Burr augments his sound with
guitar-synth
soundscapes,
which serve as foundations for his masterful soloing."
Mike Varney, Guitar Player Magazine
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"Burr makes a video"
When I flew to Germany that year I wasn't sure what I was going to find. I knew I was shooting a video but I was unclear as to what kind of budget these guys had been given and for how long we'd be at it. Turns out it took two days in which I had to wear the same shirt I had on, under super hot lights, two days in a row with out being washed (I had to look like this was all completed in one sitting)(I guess people don't like having the actors in their infomercials/testominials/turorials, or what ever you call this thing, to make costume changes. Lots of cameras, lots of lights, lots of work. but we got it done. When I got there I realised they wanted me to use the AIX 101 (seen on the guitar in the picture below) instead of the built in Gk2A I had beautifully installed by David Lee. So I had to literally cut the pickup out and replace it with what you see down below (scaring). Click here or on the image to see the footage. Its kind of funny actually.
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