I Heart Guitar’s 1st birthday giveaway spectacular!
Today is I Heart Guitar’s first birthday. That’s right, one year to the day since I decided to follow Mrs I Heart Guitar‘s suggestion to chuck a couple of stories online and see what happened. That first story is right here. And birthdays need birthday presents! But since the blog itself is not a person, it can’t really accept presents. So how would you like to win some instead?
To get your hands on this sweet sweet booty (and there might be more to come – I think DiMarzio may also be sending some shirts and other stuff in addition to what’s listed above, and Chris from Riot said he’d throw in some CDs and posters but he’s on holiday this week!), email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com with your name and location. Winners will be drawn at random on September 16. I promise I won’t use your email for any purpose other than informing you if you win.
There are a lot of people, sites and companies to thank for making the last year so freaking awesome. Premier Guitar, Guitar Edge, Jon at Guitar Noize, Laurie at Truth In Shredding, Lewis from Japan Guitar Journies, JP from Strat-O-Blogster, Ava from the Jemsite blog – in fact, just check out the blog list on the right side of the page and click on all those links, cos everyone there is awesome.
Huge huge huge thanks to Mr Kosta Linardos, my editor at Mixdown magazine, for not having a problem with me using Mixdown stuff on the site.
Others who have hugely helped me out include Taylor Guitars, Jim Dunlop, Guitar Toyz, DiMarzio, Peterson, Grover Allman, IK Multimedia, Waves, Zoxsy, Native Instruments, Australasian Music Supplies, CMI, RJM Music, Shire Music, Rob at 1988 Media, Bob at Roadrunner, Andrew at Melodicrock.com, Mitch at Bravewords.com … and if I forgot anyone I’m really sorry, my brain is fried today but if you send me an email I’ll add you to this list!
And let’s not forget lovely gents like Bryan Beller, Paul Gilbert, Steve Turner, Joe Matera and Nick Brown! And anyone who has ever left a comment, followed me on Twitter or sent me an email about the site.
Most of all though I’ve gotta thank Pilgrim because she’s gorgeous and beautiful and super-supportive and I don’t know how the heck I got so lucky!
And our son (almost 3 years old) gets special mention for being really cute and funny and for getting almost as excited about pedals as I do.
NEWS: Relaunched Guitar Edge mentions I Heart Guitar
Check out the article here
The new Guitar Edge site is still coming together but it’s already full of awesome content, including lessons with John 5 and Greg Koch, reviews of the Tech 21 Double Drive XXX, Peavey Vypyr Tube 60 and a cool comparison of clean boost pedals. There are also lots of guitar tabs accompanied by notes on what’s required to play each song, including technique and tone tips. And interviews with Mastodon, Helmet’s Page Hamilton, and much much much much more.
NEWS: I Heart Guitar hits #1 on news.guitarworld.com
Wow, I almost fell off my chair right now after seeing that today I Heart Guitar is ranked #1 on the news.guitarworld.com/blogs site. Awesome! I’d like to give a big shout-out to my fellow bloggers because the charts are compiled to reflect how many links a blog has pointing to it from other blogs.
Here are the links to the other blogs in the top 10.
NEW GEAR DAY: AxeTrak
This morning my 2-year-old and I climbed into the car to zoom across town to Billy Hyde Music in Blackburn to pick up my latest toy, a JLH AxeTrak. I bought the AxeTrak after reading about it on Harmony Central and posting about it here on my blog.
The AxeTrak is a speaker and microphone inside a soundproofed box, and with it I’ll finally be able to record my Marshall DSL50 amp in a controlled environment – which means I’ll now be able to record audio and video reviews of various products for I Heart Guitar. I’ve already planned the first few pedal reviews, which will be the Roger Mayer Spitfire X and Mongoose X, and the MXR EVH Phase 90. It might take me a couple of weeks to post them while I mess around with video editing programs (used to edit video for a living but I’m a bit out of practice now) and try to figure out the best way to do it. But at the very least I should have audio samples of the Roger Mayer pedals finished some time this week.
NEWS: I Heart Guitar on Twitter
I’m still messing around with it, but I recently set up an I Heart Guitar account on Twitter. I’ve been reading some articles on how to best utilise Twitter with blogging (here’s a good one for you bloggers: http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2008/12/how-to-use-twit.html) and hopefully I can figure out how to make it all work. Bear with me as I no doubt make dumbass mistakes for a few days.
The address is http://twitter.com/iheartguitar
Hi! I'm Peter Hodgson. I write for Gibson.com, Australian Guitar, Australian Musician, Mixdown Magazine (including my instructional column, 'Unleash Your Inner Rock God,' which has been running since 2007), Blunt, Beat (including their weekly hard rock/metal column Crunch) and The Brag. And I'm Assistant Social Coordinator with Seymour Duncan.
I've been playing guitar since I was 8 years old, and I've been writing for magazines since I was 18. I've also worked as a guitar teacher (up to 50 students a week), a setup tech, a newspaper editor, and I've also dabbled in radio a little bit. I live in Melbourne, Australia, and my hobbies include drinking way too much coffee, and eating way too much Mexican food.
You can check out my guitar playing at Bandcamp or on YouTube, and feel free to email me at iheartguitarblog@gmail.com