Cam’s Riffs

A brilliant musician, my former teacher, and long-time friend, Cameron Schmitz (a Berklee College of Music grad), had the crazy idea that we could put together a matrix of “riffs” (brief musical statements) demoing different guitars, amplifiers, effects. For example, you could pick a guitar, say a Gibson “Gold Top” Les Paul, and pair it with a Fender “Red Knob” Twin, and an echo unit, then you could hear a juicy little riff. Both of us thought this was a great idea at the time (1990’s), because, a) nobody was doing it, and b) there might actually be a market for these kinds of riffs on a guitar reseller’s site, or even on public radio. We worked on it for years. Nothing much ever came of it, but man, it was fun! Occasionally, we think about resurrecting the idea, perhaps as part of a larger music education project. FYI, we were there first, and while the technology has improved, we still think our approach was (and is) very cool!