New album of the week: Pat Metheny's Orchestrion

There's some cool guitar stuff hitting the stores this week, but I think Pat Metheny's "Orchestrion" deserves a special mention.

The idea goes like this: think about a way to make several instruments mechanically react to your guitar playing or a programmed sequence of music. Find some smart people who can take this concept to practice and use machines to hit the keys in a piano, drums, etc. Now you have a band of robots playing for you!

Well, that is some cool concept. Now you only have to make sure you put some great music and guitar playing behind it. I think Pat Metheny has some credentials to make it work, so I'm hoping he will.

If this whole band-of-robots thing doesn't make a lot of sense to you (as it didn't make any sense to me at first), there's this video which explains what this is all about.

And of course, you can get the album in Amazon.com:

And also check out related Pat Metheny stuff in TopOfGuitar.com

Enjoy!

Jimi Hendrix - The Valleys of Neptune

So now it's Jimi Hendrix's turn. It won't be the first nor the last time when someone decides to bring unreleased material from the vault and profit from a music legend's name. Or is it really the result of an intention to honour a great artist's legacy? 

I guess we won't know, but the fact is we'll have a new Jimi Hendrix release pretty soon!(March 9th to be exact). This project came up after Janie Hendrix (Jimi's half-sister) won the legal battle over who controls Jimi's estate. According to this article in the LA Times:

...the music of "Neptune" comes primarily from 1969, a time of "both frustration and real excitement" for Hendrix as he pushed his way toward "a new direction."

Well, I am a guitar lover and a Hendrix fan, so I'm just plain happy and excited to hear about this album. I hope it lives up to millions of fans' expectations around the world. Me, I'll be listening to it as soon as it's available!