Helen - Brooks, Chris

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Résumé :
While Helen is known as Georgia's Alpine Village, the town's origins are more closely related to 17th-century Indian trading paths, gold prospectors, and timber moguls than to settlers of Bavarian or Germanic descent. As far back as the Paleo-Indian period, tribes roamed the areas in and around Helen, and the physical proof of mound-building groups of the Mississippian period is obvious in nearby Nacoochee Valley. In the 1800s, white settlers of English, Scottish, and Irish descent migrated into northeast Georgia, and the Indian settlements were pushed farther west. Eventually, prospectors of gold and other natural resources settled the area, resulting in the forced removal of the remaining native groups. Helen, as a township founded and built by timberland speculators and a Missouri-based lumber company, did not come into its own until the early 1900s. Alpine Helen developed in the late 1960s, resulting in a tourism-oriented rebirth of a town that had a much different beginning.

Biographie:
Chris Brooks is a guitarist, educator and recording artist based in Sydney, Australia. What began as an obsession with 80s high octane lead guitar has, well, not changed at all.

A former student of the Australian Institute of Music, Brooks exhibited an early penchant for guitar-driven music, whether it was the sideman shredding of Kee Marcello and Brett Garsed, or the solo-artist career paths of Vinnie Moore, Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen. The obligatory eight-hour practice sessions would be fuelled by lesson material from Hot Licks and REH videos as Brooks followed the trajectory to making his own guitar music and instructional content.

Releasing two solo albums, 2002's The Master Plan and 2011's The Axis of All Things, Chris has received acclaim from print and online media worldwide, including Japan where The Master Plan was included in Young Guitar magazine's 500 Essential Guitar Albums special issue, and back home in Australia where Australian Guitar magazine rated him one of the top underground guitarists.

Brooks has also recorded with Yngwie Malmsteen's former vocalist Mark Boals, Australian melodic metal band LORD, toured with major label band Feeding the Addiction, and appeared on compilation albums for labels including Frontiers (Europe), Marquee Inc. (Japan) and Liquid Note Records (UK).

As founder of guitarlickstore.com, Brooks has created popular guitar courses including Sweep Picking Systems for Arpeggios, Picking Systems for Pentatonic, and his most popular to date - The Yng Way, now available as a book entitled Neoclassical Speed Strategies, published by Fundamental Changes and available on Amazon. The Yng Way has been noted by many as a leading resource on the technique of Yngwie Malmsteen.

With a keen eye for the details of what makes things work on the guitar and an aversion to sleeping, Brooks is working towards a large body of educational resources and musical output.