Acoustic guitars have always carried with them a mystique of sorts. The image of the lonely singer-songwriter playing in small intimate gatherings or the cowboy on the range. Those that can play them well are revered by even the most hard-core electic rockers. Even Zakk-Wylde has released an acoustic CD! In the modern era of music production - acoustic guitars are often recorded along with or even preferentially to electric guitars. The success of MTV's "unplugged" series has shown that people love the intimacy and emotion that can be expressed by the acoustic guitar.

There are many pedal effects that changed the sound of rock and roll. Phasers, flangers, and wah-wah pedals added a new dimension to funk, rock, blues, and R&B guitar sounds.

Have you ever found that your gear just wasn’t sounding the way you wanted it. You had the right tone dialed in and all your effect settings were as close as you could get them to perfect, yet something was missing. No matter how you change the settings on your amp or the parameters on your effects the sweet spot just isn’t as sweet as you would like it to be. What is the matter you wonder? The answer to that question is simple. You are missing one of the essential effect units in your effect chain. This unit is the Aural Exciter by Aphex Systems. www.aphex.com The people at Aphex Systems were kind enough to send me their new stomp box style Xciters for acoustic and electric guitar to review for you.

No matter how sophisticated our technology, a melody is still a series of single notes. Nobody ever sings chords or tracks. They sing individual notes.

While creating music, some of us might hear melodic and/or rhythmic ideas in our heads, then high-hurdle the sofa en route to the keyboard to play and record them right away. Others may not hear anything specific, but will feel that lightning urge to create and hope they'll find some magic hidden between the black and white keys. But no matter where we find our music, or where it finds us, a melody is still a series of single notes.