Guitarist – Surfer – Nerd
Musician Bio 🐐
Acoustic folk roots and rock singer songwriter from Uki, NSW Australia. I embrace the mistakes. If reality TV became a thing, then I’m all for reality music? All my tracks are live recordings and you may hear things like rain, birds chirping, dog barking and other random noises in the background. I believe there is no such thing as a mistake in life or in music. If we learn and evolve from our mistakes and let it be a lesson, then it becomes a positive. The so called mistakes take music somewhere new and after many years of practice I learnt to make up for them by improvising to make it work.
Music Bio Continued 🎸
I started playing guitar pretty early in my life between 5 and 8 years old. My Mother was a singer and father a classical, acoustic and electric guitar player. My right hand is natural and seems to play automatically to some extent. My left hand on the other hand, took years of practice, patients and dedication. If one practices for 10 minutes a day, one can improve by the end of the year. An hour a day, in a matter of months. See my Top 10 Tips for Learning the Guitar here.
Musical History
I started playing the acoustic guitar I purchased at the local markets for 50 bones in the beginning. I had a few guitar lessons, where I learnt basic chords, the minor and major scale, string names, music notes and tone tone semitone tone tone tone semitone. Guitar basics that are vital to continue learning music the right way. I played bass from about 14 – 20 years old in a few different bands. I had one singing lesson when I was about 25 and I learnt how to breath and push from the stomach, I had no idea before that and still have to remind myself sometimes.
Music Style
I play mostly fingerstyle and fingerpicking acoustic guitarist instrumentals with some melodic, roots, folk, slide, blues and acoustic rock. I mainly play a Fender 12 string acoustic guitar in a variety of tunings including Standard, DADGAD, Easy Open C and Low C. I used to play on a Maton and Takamine 6 string guitar, but since moving over to the 12-String , I find the 6 Strings a little bit limiting and guitar boring.
8 track reel to reel Revox.
Recording Studio
I started recording my own music early in my youth. My dad gave me a second hand 8 track reel to reel multitrack recorder, most people would have no idea what that is, but they are very large and heavy and the sound quality is nothing like what is achievable today. In my twenties, I was using mini discs, which are a far cry better and smaller than the 8 track reel to reel. Today I use a macbook and mobile phones and the sound quality might not be perfect, like in an expensive modern studio, but it is far superior to even the best quality cassette tapes that I grew up listening to. I don’t use any expensive software or hardware. I record with an iPhone, Samsung phone and my laptop. I use a free app called Audio Copy to record the music and then put it through Garageband to tweek the effects. I then put it all together in iMovie to make videos.
Recording on a mini-disk player.
Musical Influences
In no particular order, but my all time favourite guitarist is John Butler. There is a lot of other musicians that I have not listed, because it might take up the whole page. A lot of my own music reminds me of the soundtracks to surf videos I used to watch when growing up. I started out playing bass in a bluesband and then got into heavy metal and punk surf rock. After that I got into roots music and then finally acoustic music. Music to me is a communication of vibrations, the underlying code of the universe. Happy music is not my thing, I would rather have an emotional effect, but at the end of the day, I just play what comes out. Music influencers: John Butler Trio – Buddy Guy – Jimi Hendrix – Pink Floyd – Led Zeppelin – Ben Harper – Jack Johnson – Pearl Jam – Audioslave – Soundgarden – Damien Rice – The Beatles – Newton Faulkner – The Doors – Cream – Eric Clapton – Tool – Fleetwood Mac – Sungha Jung – Gabriella Quevedo – Tommy Emmanuel.
John Butler – Buddy Guy – Jimi Hendrix – Jack Johnson – John Lennon
Guitar Songwriting
I try to write most of my lyrics as a story start to finish without repeating a chorus. Along with guitar fills instead of standard verse chorus verse chorus song structures. The words and meaning stem from what I’m passionate about in life, my experiences and understanding. I guess the most important thing I can say about songwriting comes from learning through other great artists music and storytelling. Learning their songs and analysing how a good story is told. Creating an introduction a body and a conclusion.
Guitaralize was born into existence after creating my own music and guitar site, I was looking around the internet for websites that I could submit my songs, playlists and music videos to. What I found was not cool. A lot of dinosaur websites and blogs, some of which looked 10-20 years old. So I decided to make a website that anyone can submit guitar videos to all day everyday. Guitaralize allows seamless submission of bass and guitar videos for free, instantly and with no login or sign up. Submit Guitar Videos here.
Submit Spotify Links – Submit Playlists – Submit YouTube Music
About This Website
I studied web development back in 2003, when some people were saying the internet is just a phase and will phase out.
Anything and everything My Guitar World
All My Videos A collection of all my music, surf and random videos wrapped up in one convenient place for you to watch until your heart’s content.
Ylia Callan Music Videos All my original singer songwriter songs including music video for you to listen to until the cows come home.
Instrumental Guitar Videos A collection of my instrumental videos, everything in the universe communicates via vibrations.
Audio Tracks Not into video? Here are some of my songs in audio format!
Audio Playlist Listen to some of my best original singer songwriting songs in a playlist.
Random Videos A collection of videos of my life seen through the lense of my digital reality!
Surfing Videos A collection of my Surf Videos and original guitar instrumentals.
Full Size Photo Gallery A collection of my digital life through the lens of a mobile phone camera.
Photo Gallery A collection of my life experience through the lens of a digital camera in one neat gallery.
The Tibetan Drum
The tale of an inquisitive young man that marvels at the patterns and meanings of life through his adventures that take him from California through Central America, across the seas to Vietnam and far beyond to find the voices in his soul and discover the truth from within.
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