About our Founder

Carvel Avis, Founder and President of HotFrets, Inc., has a bachelor’s degree in Music Theory & Composition with an instrumental major in guitar and cello. He recently sold Soigne' Recording, a commercial recording studio in Louisiana, which he has owned since 1996. The studio's major focus was producing independent artists.

Probably due to his studio experience, he is known as a versatile player able to fit into most any group from old rock n' roll to new country to the most sophisticated jazz. He has written several classic guitar pieces as well as a method book that was used for a few years at the university level. Below are a few cuts from various projects for you to sample.

Jazz and Fusion Cuts:

• Solo on "Swamp Chatter" (MP3 - 1.2MB) Title cut from one of Carvel's solo albums
• Solo on "Away In A Manger" (MP3 - 1.03MB) from a jazz christmas project titled, "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" by Gary Hallquist
• Solo on "O Come Emanuel" (MP3 - 890K) from the above project

Acoustic Projects:

• "What Child Is This" - (MP3 - 4.13MB) Classic Guitar Solo arrangement written by Carvel from his Acoustic Christmas Volume II project and yes, it's just one guitar!
• "Crimson Moon" - (MP3 - 3.75MB) Carvel played acoustic guitar on this song by Steve Conover. It's a new country ballad.

Just Messing Around!

• Burned Out - (4.21MB) This is a guitar, bass, drums and percussion tune that was just thrown together one night while playing around with some new loops. It's not on any project anywhere. Just here for you to enjoy.

In 1995 Carvel started experimenting with HTML and designed his first guitar instructional web site called Carvel's Guitar Page which later became "Guitar Tips, Tricks and Licks." It was strictly a hobby borne out of a desire to pass along a few goodies to other guitarists. The site utilized text, real audio files and animated gif files. The site grew in popularity to the point that a company by the name of MusicStaff.com, a music teacher locator service, purchased the content and domain name. You can still see those old lessons by going to http://www.musicstaff.com/guitar/

In January 2000 Carvel started a web design business and after doing several commercial web sites he decided to revisit the guitar instructional web site idea only this time on a much larger scale. After gathering up a few private investors, he began work on HotFrets.com in 2001. The site went public in the middle of 2001 and continues to grow today.

The HotFrets slogan, "The More You Learn, The Easier It Is To Learn More!" is something he constantly told his private students. His vision for HotFrets is that it will be the premiere online source of high quality instruction for guitarists. Almost all the lesson content on the site was created by Carvel.

THE REST OF THE TEAM

J. Scott Hamlin- Scott, who has written several nationally published books on Photoshop, Flash, etc., (do a search on Amazon.com and you'll find 25 results for books for which he has been author or co-author) designed the original look of the HotFrets Main Tutorial interface. He has been a constant source of ideas and encouragement. He also designed the first HotFrets web site for us.

Scott is the director of Eyeland Studio, whose clients include Nabisco, Proctor & Gamble, Sun Microsystems, Nokia, and Nickelodeon. You can buy Eyeland Studio products at EyeWire

He is the author of the best-selling books Flash 5 Magic and Flash 4 Magic, and the author of Effective Web Animation, Photoshop Web Techniques, Interface Design with Photoshop, and CorelDraw Design Workshop.

Scott has also written over 100 articles for more than a dozen industry periodicals including InterActivity Magazine, Computer Artists Magazine, Web Review, and Web Techniques Magazine.

Tom & Joe Constantini- Otherwise known as Two Animators created our mascot guitar dude, the guy who you'll see during the preloader of the tutorial. He plays so fast that his guitar burns up but, it's ok, he pulls another one out from behind his back!

Tom is an extremely experienced artist and animator. He holds a degree in Commercial Art and Design, and is a certified Web Developer.

Joe is an amazing animator who has worked for MTV Animation, Oxygen Media, and AMPnyc Animation to name a few.

Together they founded TwoAnimators.com. Their main goal is to create fun and entertaining animations, which are quickly downloadable on the web.

Their online clients range from corporations to small businesses and organizations. They specialize in everything from traditional and flash animation, to distance learning, web design, and more. Some of their online clients include: 360HipHop.com, Sugarqube.com, Eyeland Studios, and of course HotFrets.com.

James Harris and Charles Armour - James and Charles did most of the work under the hood. They are the guys who made the engine work!

James is an accomplished designer, webmaster, and developer, giving him the coordination skills to bring both large-scale and small-business sites from a concept to a reality.

Charles is a professional developer, knowledgeable of the capabilities and technologies necessary to provide powerful programming and scripting solutions that push the limit. Together James and Charles founded PensaWorks, Inc.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

We're offering one of the most comprehensive sets of interactive guitar learning tools available on the Internet today. The 6-part lesson system covers all the bases. You get to learn the lesson one fingering at a time in the main tutorial, print out the notation from the notation window, hear the lesson performed using the LISTEN button, read critical information regarding the lesson in the INFO page, pull up a video of the teacher playing and/or discussing the lesson and pull up backing tracks using the PRACTICE window! We have music theory for the guitar, a Riff Archive, a TIPS area as well as all the "Cool Tools. "

WHERE WE'RE HEADED

We know that the majority of the new generation of guitarists have all grown up with computers in their homes. Multimedia is the only way to reach many of these folks. But just putting together a video isn't enough. "If you're gonna help these young players, give them something to sink their teeth into, you've got to give them interactive multimedia," said Carvel Avis. "We've had several magazine mentions as the place to go for guitar instruction as of late." (most recently in "Best Life Magazine" from Men's Health).

We believe this popularity is because people are hungry for a place to learn that gives them control over the pace of their learning as well as lets them start where they are. Though people do want structure, they don't necessarily want limitations.

"I think there are beginner guitarists out there that will actually learn to play some of our advanced lessons and completely bypass several of the beginner and intermediate lessons. They'll just jump right in and get it! And it's because we're not telling them they can't do it," said Carvel.

We want to grow our interactive multimedia capabilities way beyond what they are now.

NEW TOOLS AND CONCEPTS

We've developed the Tab Alive! online application for instantly converting text-based tablature into something with which a guitarist can interact. You can now hear it, see it and loop small sections for example.

"The thing that has me most excited," said Carvel, "Is the upcoming teacher account!" Teachers will create a sort of affiliate account where their students can join under their account number. The teacher will create lesson content for their students that will play in the interactive tools such as Tab Alive! and make them available to the public at large for free or a fee, whichever they choose.

"I plan to revamp all the "Cool Tools" to become more and more interactive and useful to someone who is sitting by themselves looking for answers to all their guitar and music related questions," said Carvel.