On Saturday 10th Oct 2009 the winner of the Spear guitar competition collected his prize from the shop. He is pictured with the owner Eddy Hailwood. John Osola is 15 years of age and resides in Locks Heath, Southampton. John has a band that as yet has no name . He likes all kinds of music but has a leaning towards metal. He uses a Peavey VK212 purchased from Fret Music (good lad!). Our winner is also involved with a guitar forum.

At the moment John is a pupil at Brookfield School but will be starting at Barton Peverell next year.

It was a pleasure to meet John and his family and we wish him all the best for his musical future.

Loz Dewey one of the guitar teachers at ADW Musictech situated at Fret Music’s premises has started an online tuition site. Loz is a great player and this comes with our total recommendation. It’s well worth a look.

Welcome to The Guitar Mule, the leading Online Guitar Tuition Website, brought to you by Loz Dewey, Professional UK Guitar Tutor since 1995.
Whether you want to be a Guitar Hero or just strum a few chords we’ve got it here using Short Courses,Theory and Technique lessons plus learn the secrets of the top guitar players in the style file zone.
Lessons feature a full beginners course to take you right from the start.
Learn from a huge database of rock, blues, acoustic, metal, jazz and country styles, using tab and notation, accompanied by clear and accurate video with close ups on hands.
The Guitar Mule offers you one tutor teaching a defined learning process with direction, where quality and content rise above other Online Guitar Lessons.

Once subscribed you can access the entire site which includes:-

• Access to entire lesson library and backing tracks.
• All Lessons rated as Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced to help you obtain your goal.
• Full courses in Beginners,Rock,Blues,Acoustic,Metal,Jazz and Country Styles.
• Learn the Styles of a Guitar Hero in the Style File section
• Precise Theory and Technique Lessons
• All lessons professionally written in Tab and Notation just like the official Tab books and if you want Download and Print
• Clear and consistent Video to accompany lessons with close up footage on hand movements.
• Play along with the Backing Tracks online or Download the mp3 to keep from The Mule Player.
• Use to Unique Practice Monitoring System exclusive to The Guitar Mule.
• Create your own course by adding lessons to your personal lesson page.
• Full support via email for if you get stuck or are struggling with a lesson.
• Receive new and updated lessons regularly.
• All lessons and backing track preformed and written by your tutor Loz Dewey.

Check this out. I was at a reunion gig recentlyand one of our customers was telling me about making guitars from cigar boxes. It’s really quite fascinating. Check out the videos.

Lakland Bass Guitars are among the market’s most well respected instruments; favored by discerning players and professional artists worldwide. The vintage comfort and contemporary ingenuity of our basses deliver an unparalleled playing experience. They are made by a small specialised company. This is very unusual these days and is actually very refreshing to deal with people that are actually involved in making the guitars

Since the introduction of their flagship models in the mid 1990’s, their basses
have been recognized for their superior tone, playability and construction.
At Lakland, they invest in innovation and set new benchmarks for quality and versatility. They listen to the instruments and to the people who play them.

Now that Greyum May has rejoined us at Fret Music (he just missed us so much!) we were looking for a decent bass players bass. Lakland is just that bass. We will be carrying twelve pieces in stock. They have started to sell through already. Come on in and have a look and give them a try.
We also have now started stocking the Eden range of bass amps. We now feel we have a bass dept worth visiting so come on in and take a look.

Solent University are a leading example of a vocational style university working with people that have succeeded in the industry and have applied their talents to  future performers on their courses.
Fret Music installed an XA2 PA system in the main audirorium as part of a major refurb recently opened by Craig David. http://www.polaraudio.co.uk/news_08/SouthamptonSolentUni.html

Peavey has been supplied by Fret Music and they have proved to be a major helper and supplier over the past few years providing equipment for all the courses including performance and recording.

Mapex drum kits have been supplied throughout by Fret Music.

Dave Paulton of Solent University says the following
“The relationship with Fret Music  is built on respect. They have provided good advice  and equipment at good prices. We know we can trust our local retailer”

We originally started stocking Godin in any depth about ten years ago. Those of you out there who remember the Buster Jones gig at the Griffin know what great guitars they are. Many of our customers are owners of these fine instruments so we are probably preaching to the converted.They are a real niche product and well worth checking out. The single most important to consider is these guitars are made in North America. Any other guitar would be much much more expensisive. Combine this with the superb build quality and innovative features and you simply must take a look. We have now decided to stock the guitar again. My prediction all the staff will own one within a few months.  This is what the Godin Website has to say for itself:
 
If this is your first visit to Godin, we’d like to take a few minutes to introduce ourselves. We started building guitars over twenty years ago in a village in Quebec Canada called La Patrie. The man that started it all is Robert Godin. Robert still owns the company and he continues to design the vast majority of our guitars.

We are a Canadian company with our head office located in Montreal and we build our guitars in several different locations, five in Quebec and one in New Hampshire. For those of you keeping score, that adds up to six factories spread out over about 1000 kilometers. So why not just have one giant guitar factory? Although there are some obvious inconveniences associated with spreading ourselves out this much, the up-side is that these smaller operations promote a more intimate working environment which gets everybody more involved and this is reflected in the instruments themselves.

Godin guitars are assembled in our Richmond, Quebec and Berlin, New Hampshire factories. The necks and bodies are all made in our original location in La Patrie, Quebec.

We are also known for our other guitar brands which include our new electric line known as Richmond Guitars, as well as our acoustic brands which include: Seagull, Simon & Patrick, Norman, LaPatrie and Art & Lutherie.

From the beginning the company has been more or less divided between our acoustic side and electric side. The electric side of our business was originally that of a parts supplier to other guitar companies. We built their necks and bodies. You might be amazed to find out how many different guitar brands are all being produced in the same handful of factories. We’re not telling you this because we want to divulge somebody’s secrets but simply to let you know where we’re coming from. In any case, what started out as some generic replacement necks and bodies soon evolved into a major business producing finished necks and bodies for many established U.S. guitar companies. The great thing about this is the tremendous experience that we gained building all of these instruments to their various specifications. The down side is that the sub-contracting business is a pain in the neck, so to speak, but more importantly it does not include the best part of building new guitars and that is: coming up with new designs and coaxing them through the process that begins with a sketch and ends with the music.

New Guitar Concepts
Unlike many other instruments that follow a fairly strict set of design parameters-such as most orchestral instruments-guitars truly lend themselves to variation in design. This capacity for variation manifests itself in two distinct ways, there is the purely visual variation such as, the lightning-bolt-shaped-pointy-headstock-you’re-obviously-not-in-an-easy-listening-band guitar. In other words, guitars as fashion statements. Don’t get us wrong, we are committed to high aesthetic values in all of our designs but what we find most compelling is the other type of variation inspired by the endless musical possibilities in guitar design. From designing a Nylon string guitar that can be played at stage volumes and feel comfortable to a primarily steel string player (Multiacs) to the creation of the multiple-voice instruments in our Signature Series, exploring new design possibilities is an integral part of what we do. The Godin commitment to new guitar concepts is typified in the Glissentar which is so much of a variation on the standard guitar that it isn’t even a guitar anymore and qualifies as a whole new instrument. The Glissentar project was not born out of a marketing meeting (i.e.) “Man, I bet if we built an eleven string fretless acoustic/electric we could sell a boatload of them.” Instead the Glissentar was conceived because of the intriguing musical possibilities it promised and hearing some amazing Glissentar performances from musicians like Michel Cusson, Fareed Haque, and Sylvain Luc (to name a few) that deliver on that promise truly makes the exercise worthwhile.

Bob visited the shop the other day looking better than ever. His clean life style is obviously working for him.
Bob as you probably know is a stalwart of the South of England blues scene.If you want to check out what he’s up to visit his site.

http://www.bobpearce.co.uk/

If like me you remember the old ice rink , standing on the ice on a Friday night watching the local groups, The Mod Ball Saturday spectaculars at the Guidhall or the pier on a Sunday night then check out this web site. It is fascinating stuff. The picture shows the Meddyevils with in the lower middle Cuddles (Martin Smith) who used to run Fret Music’s drum department but sadly passed on a few years ago.http://www.davidstjohn.co.uk/sitemap.html

This is a very exciting time for us at Frets with the launch of a new web site and the opportunity to instigate more music making in our area and indeed on the web.

Our mission should be to turn as many on to playing as possible. I have often seen the potential in people who would have definitely made great musicians and or singers but the opportunity never arose for them.

Barring the onset of senile dementia, stroke, the loss of a hand or arthritis you can play an instrument until you die. Not so lucky for those who just have sport. You can only play football until maximum forty then that’s it. No music is a lifetime pursuit. It can be for profit or the sheer joy of playing or both. It can be on your own or as a group. It can be song writing, recording, gigging, and teaching. A life of music can be many different things.

We initiated the Fret Music Academy last year. This mainly pulled on the existing excellent ADW Musictech who teach guitar and bass. I don’t know how many guitarists and bass players have learnt with them but it must now be measured in thousands. Tony West has been running this at Frets for the last 18years. To this was added the services of two great drum teachers Matt Hayward and Steve Barker. We also have the services of Don Shin a legendary pianist and Hammond organ player. At a later stage we will be adding sax and vocals.

We want to take this a lot, lot further by encouraging the students and customers to form partnerships. When I started playing in the 60’s there was only one other guitar player at my school and there just were not the opportunities to form bands. Having said that there were venues in the form of youth clubs, pubs and clubs in abundance. These have sadly diminished thanks to the interference of politicians telling us what and what not to do. So we now need to provide the facilities to encourage people of similar interests to form bands, song writing partnerships etc. There is a similar scheme endorsed by the MIA (Music Industries Association) called Weekend Warriors. However we wish to expand on that idea to include all age groups.

This can initially take the form of a monthly meeting one evening at the shop, probably on a Wednesday from say 7 –9.30pm.

Can we have your thoughts on this idea.