If you follow my constant barrage of Twitter updates (and if you don’t you really should http://twitter.com/guitarnoize) you may have seen a couple of links to these GEMS videos, GEMS stands for Guitar Experts Master Series and is a new upcoming set of instructional video series for learning guitar featuring Eli Santana and James J LaRue from the band Holy Grail. Here is an excerpt from the latest press release:

Are you ready to take your metal to the next level? Meet GEMS, The Guitar Expert’s Master Series, a new, unpretentious guitar instructional series featuring “Holy Grail” shredders James J LaRue and Eli Santana.

Combining prodigious guitar expertise with inexplicable idiocy, GEMS is perhaps the most triumphant series of guitar lessons ever produced in the history of man. The free GEMS “shreducation” begins here: http://www.youtube.com/user/GEMSguitar

This series takes the arrogance out of instructional videos and injects a bit of fun and humour while teaching you everything you need to known in order to be a heavy metal shredmeister, it is a kind of Paul Gilbert meets Steel Panther mashup. I think it is great that someone is having a bit of fun while teaching instead of just going through some technical examples and I look forward to seeing more from these guys.

Holy Grail’s MySpace page – http://www.myspace.com/holygrailofficial