Monthly Archives: November 2019

Wampler Pedals (with Brian Wampler) Ep072



Brian Wampler is the founder and CEO of Wampler Pedals. Brian joins Aaron Sefchick, Joe McMurray, and Miles Harshman to discuss the world’s largest pedalboard, his favorite guitar effects pedals, how he spends his work-days and approaches design, and guitar amplifiers.
Recently, Brian participated in breaking the Guinness World Record for the largest guitar pedalboard (with Rob Scallon and several other effects pedals companies). He tells the guys about his experience and about meeting Alex Lifeson (the guitarist of Rush).
Brian tells the guys about his favorite pedals from Wampler Pedals. The guys want to know how he spends his workdays: from breadboarding to building plug-ins to creating content for social media.
Brian gives insight into the guitar amps that he uses to test his effects pedals during the design stage. The guys also talk about the merits of running a pedal through a clean amp vs. a naturally dirty/overdriven amp.  They also talk about the virtues of amp simulators.  Brian tells the guys about his own Wampler Bravado amplifier.

Jazz Guitar and Online Success Part 2 of 2 (with Jens Larsen) Ep071



Jens Larsen is a Danish jazz guitarist who has become an internet celebrity for his YouTube lessons.  Aside from his incredible jazz guitar chops, he has posted over 700 YouTube videos, has acquired almost 150,000 YouTube subscribers, and recently released two books.  Joe McMurray and Aaron Sefchick sit down with Jens to talk about his journey, how to approach jazz as a player and as a teacher, musical gear, online success, practicing, composition, and recording.
 
Jens has become famous through his YouTube lessons on how to play jazz guitar.  In Part 2/2, he says that he originally started posting transcriptions of jazz solos, then began writing blogs for UltimateGuitar.com, and finally started posting videos on YouTube.  Recently he released two books, Modern Jazz Guitar Concepts and Advanced Jazz Guitar Concepts.
 
Aaron asks Jens how he approaches his practice sessions, and Jens provides an in-depth look into his practice routine.  He warms up by playing chromatically across the guitar neck in all 12 keys, he practices 7th arpeggio patterns, triads, and open-voiced triads over the entire neck, and he creates simple melodies by ear and transposes them to all 12 keys.  Then he practices his triad ideas over the chord changes of jazz tunes.  Jens practices with his metronome set on beats 2 and 4, but also experiments playing with the metronome set on unusual beats to spur rhythmic creativity.
 
Jens tells of some of his most meaningful performances as well as his dream show.  He talks about his band (Traeben), how he/they compose songs, and the differences among his three albums.
 
Finally, Jens gives us a few inside looks at his other hobbies and interests outside of music!