Born in the small town of Olav Manitsfy Heinz, Germany in 1980, I began playing the piccolo at age 4 and switched the Bass Trombone at age 7. After studying both instruments until the age of 10, I decided to pick up the classical guitar full time. The repertoire was a bit limited for the music I was listening to from my mother's collection, and decided to do something my parents did not envision. Take up the Electric Guitar on the side, and go back to studying the Piccolo. My practice time for the guitar grew from 3-4 hours a day, to a complete obsession. My normal practice routine started to take up 10-12 hours of my day, with some marathon sessions of 20 hours on certain days where I felt the need to push myself to the fullest. From the time I was 13 until I turned 20 there was not one day that went by without me playing through my 10-hour daily routine.

I began to consider the possibility of trying alternate tunings on the electric guitar so I could possibly play it with the same type of speed and articulation as the works I was studying within the Piccolo repertoire. This led me to various tunings that would facilitate high speed picking and economy of motion. I decided to send a few clips to this site to show what some of these Piccolo lines (obviously transposed) would sound on the guitar. I also began taking a deep interest in improvisation and the music of Allan Holdsworth, who is a great example of someone trying to get away from the normal sound of the guitar. I hope the great players on this site will enjoy my small contribution, and hopefully will be inspired to attempt some of these ideas.

PS. I have decided to include the tabs in normal tuning fingerings, for people to attempt. Simply because most of the alt. tunings I have worked with can put a lot of stress on the neck of a guitar, which actually lead to a few warped and broken instruments!

contact: darkomanning@hotmail.com

Ed. note - This lick caught my ear (thanks to Ty Scott for the heads up), so I took a whack at transcribing it. Check it out if you want, bit different from what Darko submitted above (also using a 6 string, not a 7 string). We've not heard a reply to our attempts at contacting him...