Welcome! Introduce yourself here!

Nice Guitar, I really like that one on the left there!

Sadly I’m having some trouble purchasing one here un the U.S. Anyways I try to stay humble

I guess I should be greatful for what I have…

Happy days my friend. :love_you_gesture::black_heart::metal:

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Hello!

I’m Giovanni, an Italian guitarist who has played guitar for 15 years.

I play in a Hard&Heavy band called The Strikes and I love Hard Rock, Heavy Metal, Thrash Metal Grunge, Prog Rock, Prog Metal, Funk, Jazz, Orchestral Music and much more.

My absolute favourite band is Led Zeppelin, followed closely by AC/DC and Pink Floyd. I love King Crimson, Dream Teather, Megadeth, Chic, Jethro Tull, Sabbath, Purple, Maiden, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, the list goes on and on.

My gear consists in a Marshall JCM900 100watt combo, Digitech Rp355 and my beloved Gibson SGJ.

I have long hair and like vintage clothing, gear, I would have loved to live in the 70’s!

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Hey everyone,

Rahul here living in the San Francisco bay area. I’ve grown up listening to a lot of classic rock but love post-rock,post-metal, progressive and instrumental stuff as well. Bands I’ve been listening to a lot these days - CloudKicker, Miroist, Northlane, Periphery and Thornhill. I own a a Gibson Les Paul and a Schecter reaper. I usually just practice/play on my yamaha thr30 watt amp.

Look forward to interacting with you all a lot. It’s really inspiring to have like minded and driven people all working towards getting better on the guitar. Thank you for having me!

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Hi everyone!

My name is Bruno, I live in France in the suburbs of Paris.
I’m a very open minded music lover with a variety of musical tastes coexisting to the point of confusion! But as Lou Reed once sang : “deep down inside I’ve got a rock’n’roll heart”.
Being the youngest of a family of seven, I was exposed to many different styles and sounds.
Then in my early teens I started listening to 80’s and early 90’s pop-metal, Hard Rock, NWOBHM, Thrash Metal, Grunge, Punk and alternative rock…while still listening to a bit of electronic music, film scores and also the classics : Queen, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Pink Floyd…
Anyway, looking back I notice that my exploration of music evolves like a spiral : Expanding (to jazz World music, Electronica, classical and ancient music, all kinds of Folk music…) but also coming back to certain albums which I still enjoy listening to after all these years. I can’t name them all 'cause even the main ones make a list of over 30 albums but here are a few (from past to present ) :

  • Narciso Yepes’s film soundtrack “Jeux interdits”
  • Getz/Gilberto
  • Ennio Morricone’s film soundtrack for “The good, the bad and the ugly”
  • The Beatles’ “White Album”
  • Led Zeppelin IV
  • Exile on Main Street (The Rolling Stones)
  • Made in Japan (Deep purple)
  • The Wall (Pink Floyd)
  • Queen’s Greatest Hits (I… & II)
  • Entre Dos Aguas (Paco De Lucía)
  • 90125 (Yes) [practicing the intro from the song “Changes” really helped me apprehending odd time signature riffs :bulb:]
  • Walls of Jericho (Helloween)
  • Master of the puppets (Metallica)
  • Seventh son of a Seventh Son (Iron Maiden)
  • Rust in Peace (Megadeth)

… And the list goes on throughout the 90’s and 2000’s with Soundgarden’s “Superunknown”, Radiohead’s “OK Computer”, Mogwai’s “Young team”, Aerogramme’s “Sleep and Release”, Angra’s “Temple of Shadows”, Bloc Party’s “Silent alarm”, Tool’s “10,000 days”… just to name the ones that had the strongest impact on me.
Of course these album involve the guitar but I’ve also listened to non-guitar music : Depeche Mode, Jean-Michel Jarre (pre 1995 period), Vangelis (pre 90’s period), Brian Eno, and a not so famous composer (who started his career as a jazz bass player and later played with Frank Zappa) : Patrick O’Hearn (especially his 1991 album “Indigo”)
In recent years, besides discovering underground artists on Bandcamp, I’ve been listening to Anathema, The National and also post-rock or math rock bands such as Alpha Male Tea Party or Vasa.

Now, about my guitar playing…

I’ve been playing since late 1995 with periods of stagnation (from 1999 to 2001 then from 2003 to 2005 ). Between those two periods I had bought John Petrucci’s “Rock Discipline” (the VHS version) which did help me (and I still remember some advices and exercises from that video) but I lacked the required patience and discipline back then. Later, in 2006 I tried to discipline myself, practicing scales and modes which really helped me improve. I also started giving guitar lessons during that time. But I was facing stagnation in my professional career, so I went to University and had less motivation and time for serious guitar practicing. But during that time, I played in a few bands which helped me gain some confidence in my playing.
From 2012 onwards I learned new things but was still confronted to the same barrier of not being able to play faster than 390 bpm without missing notes (I’ve improved since, being able to play at 424 bpm recently).
At that period I also started experimenting with compositions and sound design. From 2012 to 2014 I mostly used cheep softwares but I ended up being bored with the “mechanical” sound of sequences and programmed drums so I started using a drum pad to make the drums myself…
In early 2016 I thought I had enough good material to make a 10-track demo but after listening to the tracks together I felt there were still too many things to be fixed and the atmosphere of that demo was too “sad and gloomy” (It was just reflecting the mood I was in… 2015 was a depressing year for me). So I wrote down notes to make each track better. But… I needed a break.
I started hanging out more often, I needed some sunshine in my music AND in my life…
And I found sunshine in early 2017. Her name is Antonia. We’re together since.
At about the same time, I bought a classical guitar, left my electric guitar aside and focused more on classical playing. I practiced reading sheet music and playing from sight.
From 2017 to 2018 I joined a collective course to learn Flamenco techniques but a part from a few Sevillanas and very basic Flamenco and Rumba techniques, I didn’t learn much because a lot of the students there were complete beginners…
Anyway I stopped that, focused on other things… 2018 brought its lot of problems… And in 2019 Antonia fell into depression.
So I needed to find strength somewhere. And I went… “Back in black”. Back in metal… Gradually Favoring the electric guitar over the classical, worked on tabs of metal songs I liked, found an app which helped me write tabs and developing ideas of exercises to practice. Lockdown helped me get more time to practice, gave me time to watch inspiring guitar tutorials on YouTube, I subscribed to Kiko’s channel…
… And here I am.

My guitars :
-A good looking and sounding SCHECTER (Custom Diamond Series with a dark red marbled body and a Gibson-like neck with 2 double splitable Seymour Duncan mics)

  • A 630 Cedro PEREZ classical guitar (with a nice natural reverb)
  • An old VANTAGE folk guitar which I’ve had since 1996 (and to which the repairs needed would largely exceed the price of the guitar itself… But I’ve shared too much history with that guitar, I can’t get rid of “her”)

My amps :

  • a small Pathfinder VOX amp and an old 250 Watts LANEY I had bought a long time ago expecting to play more open air concerts… I tried to sell it but It still needs fixing.

My pedals :

  • A Digital Electronics Trinity Reverb, A Boss RC-1 (Helpful for practicing and improvising ideas💡), a used (and abused lol) Ibanez FL-9, a DE Noise gate, a DigiTech “Screamin’ blues”, an old Ibanez DE7 delay and an old Cry-Baby Wah Pedal.

Thank you for having the curiosity to read all this and really sincerely sorry for this long introduction (Believe it or not but I edited it. It was almost twice as long originally😅).

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Hi everyone, my name is Harley, I’m from Taiwan and I’m living in Tainan city now. I listen many kinds of music , such as classic rock, power metal ,death metal , slam metal, etc. I have a e-II arrow-7 and a fend strat . I usually use boss katana mini because it’s convenient. I can go anywhere to practice .

I started to play guitar at 15 years old, now I’m 19 , currently study music in Tainan university of technology . I was recommended by kiko to join guitar hacks , I hope I can improve my guitar skill and become a song composer someday, it would be better if I can meet some friends here.
(sorry for my english if it looks weird)

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Hi Harley,

Your English is OK. :+1:
Could you be more precise by what you meant by “I was recommended by Kiko to join”? Do you mean personally recommended?

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Hey everyone,

Just signed up today for the guitar workout course. I’ve been playing on and off since around 1997 and just feel lost when it’s time to practice. I love all sorts of music genres, but in guitar I probably identify more with 80’s rock.

My biggest influences include: Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, EVH, Yngwie Malmsteen, Jason Becker, Marty Friedman, Paul Gilbert, Alex Skolnick, and of course Kiko, just to name a few.

My favorite gear includes my Ibanez Prestige S series guitars (S5470Q), my custom Brazilian-made super strat made by Carrozza Guitars in Jaú, São Paulo (photo attached), and my Fender signature YJM strat.

Some trivia about me is that I live both in the US and Brazil, and I’m fluent in Brazilian Portuguese.


If you’re curious about the wood of this guitar, body is Imbuia Canela with flamed maple top and neck is a 5-piece of Sucupira and Cabreuva with a flamed maple scalloped fingerboard—all Brazilian woods except for the flamed maple.

Regards,
Joe

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No, Kiko mentioned guitar hacks when he responded fans on facebook and I also saw guitar hacks advertisement with kiko . and then I decided to join it, but it would be exciting if I was personally recommended by him, he’s a great guitarist😆

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Nice to meet you my fellow Canadian! Cheers!

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Hey everybody, my name is Mike, and I’ve been playing guitar since 2003. I’m a metalhead :metal:t4: :metal:t4: :metal:t4:, but I enjoy all kinds of music. I think if one wants to be a great musician, then it’s good to listen to other genres and styles and get inspired.

My fav and current gear are my ESP Horizon, Mesa Dual Recto, and all my pedals. I am still not convinced about modeling processors. I still love using stompboxes.

and I am allergic to pasta :nerd_face:

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Welcome @mikegroove8! And so sorry you’re allergic to pasta… :innocent:

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Hello all I have three guitars a Jackson King V from the 90’s, Fender Strat all right handed swapped over to left handed and a Musicman which is left handed. Eclectic taste from Jazz and Blues all the way to Megadeth. Got to meet Megadeth on a meet and great best moment of my life. Better get to practicing see you all later :sunglasses:

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Welcome @mikegroove8, welcome @michael_lab :metal:

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Hello guys!
This is Tower from China.
I love Heavy Metal,especially Megadeth. Not only because of the music,but also the lyrics.
I like Flying V the most,so I got a few collections of V. The mostly used one is the Dean Dave Mustaine VMNT Angel Of Deth.
I usually play in my bedroom with BeatBuddy, Ibanez TS808 and Marshall JCM2000 DSL401.
It’s very simple but enough for me.
Share some trivia…Okay,I tell you guys a secret, I just bought an used Gibson 1980’s flying V2 on Reverb.It’s flying to me on the way~so excited!

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Hi Guys,

This is Art Polendo in NYC. Long time metal fan. I was fortunate to see Rhoads, Van Halen, SRV live (and Megadeth too!). I have a hot rodded 1972 Marshall Master Mark II, but can’t plug it in because its too damn loud. I have a Les Paul, Strat and an 1980s Charvel that I love. Excited to be in this community!

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Hi
I’m Dennis from Hampshire UK
Mostly into music from the Hair Band days, 80s to 90s rock, a little bit of progressive rock. Simply love Vito Bratta from Whitelion, he’s playing style, riff s and solos
Have a Sol Cal Charvel 22, just brought a CODE 50 marshall …
Think i’m in between a beginner and intermediate player… still trying to get the hang of solos and etc

See ya guys around

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Hey there, I live in NYC too! :guitar:

Hey guys nice to meet all you amazing guitarists! I like all music to be honest because it’s all an emotion so it depends what mood I’m in but I’ll boogie, I’ll listen to metal even classical I just love music. I have a schecter, line 6 and a acoustic and a les Paul. I’ll buy better equipment when I feel I’m deserving I see it as mile stones in my learning! Something about me that you don’t know is that I’m in school to become a chiropractor! So I’m always busy studying but guitar and exercise are my release from life and I’m very excited to be here thank you friends and Kiko! See you live next august in Dallas on your tour :smiley:

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Welcome @tower1125, @arthurpolendo, @dennislomenzoc, and @omery.trevino!

Thank you so much and glad to know you all :metal:

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