Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog! This is a special post I am writing because a few weeks ago I wanted to pay tribute to the late great Randy Rhoads by doing a full guitar cover of Mr Crowley. Which I will post below.
When I recorded this video, I felt a warm peace. I felt completely locked in and I just felt midway I was going to produce a great take. As with all my videos, I do everything in a full take and if I make mistakes or don't like it then I will rerecord. Most players on social media do what is called pantomiming their video while they record their guitar on their digital work station. This allows them to do the guitar playing as many times as they want on the side while only having to record their video without sound once. To me, I like to represent my playing as if I were playing a live concert. You get one full take. I do this by using XLR cables which are mic'd to my amp and fed into my camera so both video and audio are recorded in the same take.
During the recording of Mr Crowley as I mentioned, I felt locked in with this take. As I was getting towards the end of the song, during Randy's second solo, I had a guitar tuner that was on my desk and it just randomly flew off. It was really strange and I knew that where I left my tuner it wasn't at the edge of the desk and there was no wind in my office or my cats around. This drop of the tuner onto the carpet almost broke my concentration mid-solo and I had to really focus to get through the take. After I was done recording, I felt the take was great. Then I started to process what happened with the tuner.
For some reason I ended up taking this as a sign. I uploaded my video to Instagram, and I intuitively tagged Randy Rhoads sister Kathy in the caption. Randy Rhoads if you have read in my bio, has been such a major influence in my life. Studying his music and reading about his life, led me to seeking classical guitar instruction, getting a degree in classical guitar and teaching full-time privately online and in-person. I visited Kathy's page and I let her know what her brother meant to me. I had previously reached out onto one of her posts before but she had not responded. However, with the calm feeling and tuner incident I had decided to reach out to her again and she graciously replied. I was completely blown away by this but what happened next was incredibly EPIC!
She ended up seeing my full guitar tribute of Mr Crowley on my Instagram and wrote something incredibly meaningful and such a treasure to me. I will post that here.
It is still hard to process and I am very grateful and feel blessed by receiving her heart felt words. As a guitarist you just want to share your music and if you can just inspire one person your work as a musician is fulfilled. I have given my life to music and have gone through many tribulations and trials. To receive a gift like this is surreal. These posts were on the week of his passing 41 years ago March 19th.
Take what you will about the tuner but in my mind it was a sign to reach out to her. I want to thank all of you, my current and future students for giving me an opportunity to provide guitar lessons and help you with your individual goals. It is such an honor to teach all of you.