The Guitar Channel

Problem with pictures on the site

Friends,
I'm having a picture problem with the site. If you click on a pic to see it full-size, the resulting pop-up window is the wrong size for larger pics. It's no longer resizing on it's own to accommodate the full picture. I'm not sure how long this has been going on, but I think it's a recent problem (though the problem is occurring on old pics as well). I've altered the last couple of posts to allow scroll bars at least, but that's not something I want to keep doing. Plus it looks crummy. I'll throw up another post when the problem is fixed.

Rich

I'm going to Disneyland!

Friends,
The family and I are heading to California tomorrow for a much-needed vacation. We won't be back until next Wednesday, so you probably won't see any new posts until then.

Rich

Adding more tags to the site

FYI - I'm going to start adding tags (categories) to all the posts on the site. I've always had the Reviews tag, but now I'll be adding Tour Dates, Interviews, player names, etc. I'm hoping this will make the site a bit easier to navigate. Stay tuned...

Guitar Blogs Discovery Project

Jason from the Atomic Guitarist blog has launched the Guitar Blogs Discovery Project. It's a simple yet good idea - to create a "web ring" of guitar blogs to help other like-minded guitar geeks discover new sites, and to spread some linkage love. If you run a guitar blog and would like to participate, simply copy the list of links below, add your link to it, and create a new post about the project. Great idea Jason!

Guitar Noize | IG Blog | Strat-O-Blogster | Guitar MX | Mad Stratter | Guitarz | Building the Ergonomic Guitar | Guitritus | Musician's Notebook | GuitarToyBox | IGUITARGOD | Mr. Blues Guy | markmcguigan.com | Acoustic Guitar Player | iFingers Guitar Experience | Play Like a Girl | Electric Guitar Review | Guitar Novice | Truth in Shredding | Thumbrella | Music Ramble | The Soul of Rock and Roll | Guitar Lifestyle | GuitaroJam News | Music Gadgets | The Guitar Channel | The Guitar Resource | Guitar Stuff | Axe Victim | Guitar Flame

The Guitar Channel on MySpace

Yes, I finally did it. I put it off for a long time, but a few days ago I took the plunge... and put up a MySpace page. I figured everyone else seems to have one, so I should probably jump in too. I decided to make it The Guitar Channel's MySpace page, as opposed to Rich Murray's MySpace page, since I want to keep the focus on this site. So if you're on MySpace, stop on by at myspace.com/guitarchannel.

 

Last.fm issues

There have been some issues with Last.fm the last couple of days. I can't get anyone's playlist to start, including mine. It either sits there and does nothing, or it gives a message saying there was a problem connecting. Even when it was working, it wasn't shuffling very well. Can anyone out there listen to my playlist right now?

Rich

UPDATE 9/30/07: The playlist issue seems to have been resolved. I had discovered that I couldn't listen to playlists when I was signed in to my Last.fm account, but could listen fine when I wasn't. It's working fine now though.

 

Moved my Guitar Licks page

I've changed my Guitar Licks page so it's fully integrated into the site (as opposed to being a stand alone page). The main difference is the notation jpg's are now thumbnails, since the full size pics were too large for the middle column of the site. You can click the notation images to get the full size pic in a pop-up.

Website changes

I've done a pretty big overhaul of the site. Here's a rundown of the various changes:

- New red theme (I can't believe I kept that green theme as long as I did).

- Created a new Musician Websites page. This is just a collection of links to the websites (and in many cases the MySpaces pages) of various guitarists, bassists, drummers, and keyboard players.

- Added a "Site Map" section to the upper right to make the site easier to navigate. The links to the Guitar Licks and Archive pages (which previously had their own sidebar sections) can now be found here. The Search field is now under this section as well.

- Moved my FaceBook and Last.fm profile links to my bio page.

- The links to subscribe to my RSS feed are now grouped under an "RSS" section in the lower left of the site.

I think that about covers it. I hope everyone finds the site easier to navigate and to look at.

Rich

I've shut down the Guitar Channel radio stream

Friends,
I've decided to shut down my SHOUTcast radio stream. The bottom line is it had become too much of a burden to run it, plus with the Sound Exchange nonsense regarding internet radio royalty rates, I figured it was time to get out. I can't tell you how many people emailed me thanking me for the stream, and for turning them on to music and guitarists they had not heard before. I think that's so cool. I originally started this site so I would have a homepage for the stream. Even though the name "The Guitar Channel" was a reference to the radio stream, I am not going to change the name of the site just because the "channel" is gone.

However, you can still listen to streaming music on my site! In place of the SHOUTcast radio stream, I have added a widget in the upper left that plays my Last.fm playlist. The playlist is mostly comprised of music I had in the SHOUTcast stream, but there's a lot of tunes that were not in the radio stream also. I even threw in a few songs that have no guitar at all (ie. from Billy Sheehan's band Niacin). The widget you see in the upper left-hand corner of the site is the small version (annoyingly, the full size version was too wide to fit in my sidebar). However, if you click the link below the player, you will get the full size widget, which includes the album art and track durations, in a pop up. (NOTE: if you click on a song title from the list, you will only hear a 30sec preview. The only way to hear the songs in their entirety is to let the player shuffle on it's own.) There were a lot of artists in my stream that are not available on Last.fm yet, but I'm a big fan of their site and will continue to add new music to this playlist (which currently has about 120 songs). One thing I noticed is when the playlist is shuffling (which, from what I can tell, is the only way to play it), it will sometimes repeat a song that was previously played even though it has not finished the whole playlist yet. Something to keep in mind when you are listening. Anyway, I wanted to keep some sort of streaming music on my site, and I think the Last.fm playlist is a pretty cool alternative.

Thanks,
Rich

New Reviews page

I made a change to the site. There is now a proper Reviews page that has a list of links to every review I've posted. In the past, if you wanted to see a list of every available review, you would have to go to the Reviews category page which actually displayed the text of every review post on a single page. That page had become too unwieldy; I wanted a cleaner look. Also, I retitled the Reviews section on the right to "Latest Reviews", and cut that list down a bit. I'll probably tweak the Reviews page a bit more, and add a link to the main Reviews page at the bottom of each review.

Rich

"Day Of Silence" tomorrow

FYI - I will be participating in the radio "Day Of Silence" tomorrow June 26th. Most major internet radio stream hosts (including Pandora, Live365, Yahoo!, and others) will be shutting down their radio streams tomorrow in protest of the recent CRB ruling regarding internet radio royalty rates. For information on this protest, and the  current state of the CRB situation in general, check out the Radio And Internet Newsletter.

Rich

My Jazz Rock Fusion Guitar iMix

I've created an iMix in iTunes called Jazz Rock Fusion Guitar. It's a collection of some of my favorite fusion and instrumental guitar music that is available on the iTunes Music Store. Some of the songs may be familiar to you, but there's some cool obscure stuff in there as well. Clicking the link below will bring you right to the iMix in iTunes. Check it out!

Jazz Rock Fusion Guitar iMix

Rich

Listen to The Guitar Channel on your Nintendo Wii

I love my Nintendo Wii. One of the coolest features is the Opera browser for web surfing. When I first heard it would have this functionality, I wondered if it would be able to do streaming music. I figured SHOUTcast streams wouldn't work, since they operate using a .pls file (You launch the file using your music player of choice, the player connects to the ip address in the .pls file, and the music streams from that ip to your player). The Wii handles most embedded flash players well, but since it has no separate music player to play a .pls file, I figured SHOUTcast streams wouldn't be possible. Then I heard about WiiHear.com. Wii Hear is a site where they use a flash-based player to launch SHOUTcast streams. They have about 80 stations listed so far, and they are adding more all the time. One of the recently adding stations is... you guessed it, The Guitar Channel! Now you can blast The Guitar Channel in your living room by streaming it through your Wii. It's super cool. Just go to WiiHear.com through the Wii's Opera browser, go to the Rock section in the directory (that was the closest category I could get), click The Guitar Channel, then click the big play button. If the stream is running and there are open slots available, the music will start playing. Enjoy!

Rich

Radio stream issues today

FYI - The Guitar Channel stream seems to be going up and down today. I'm not sure if my internet connection is spotty or what.

The radio stream is back up

The stream is back up. Enjoy!

The Guitar Channel radio stream is down

The radio stream has been down since Friday night. My relay server IP address is unreachable. I have no idea what's going on yet, but I'll post an update when I get some info.

Rich