***The Official Guitar Thread***
- Thread starter Nitefly
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Man of Honour
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I haven't got that much wizardry except for the Variax's and Roland GR55 but what I have is enough gear to setup two fully working 5 piece bands.
I have lots of gear all over the place.
Man of Honour
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I could have done with that last night.
We decided to do a song 2 notes up which made me transposing very difficult to play so I went to the display to try and find the pitch parameter but gave up.
As I type I'm using the Floorboard editor which is superb, to create two presets in F# for that song - rock and acoustic sounds.
Caporegime
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Anyone here got any experience of the Orange Crush amp series? Considering the Crush 20 as it supposedly has pretty good headphone out sound quality which is absolutely vital as I don't want to disturb the neighbours.
Looking to change from my Blackstar HT1R as it's developed a real bad hissing noise, not sure what's wrong with it.
Looking to change from my Blackstar HT1R as it's developed a real bad hissing noise, not sure what's wrong with it.
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Well all I have at the moment is a nice Spanish classical and an acoustic and I borrow my lads electric when he is at school and his practice amp.
Started my youngest this holiday. Only 5 but working on good posture and open string apoyando playing. I don't teach them tirando at first. And of course good sightreading. I started my lad off that way and he is scary good now even at the tender age of 8.
Man of Honour
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I wish I'd had proper musical training in guitar/keyboards instead of being a self taught pub/club musician.
You seem to have ended up at a result most and certainly you yourself are pleased with!
I do think though even if you want to learn to shred or play whatever you can't go wrong with starting off with classical just to get the technique down so you move efficiently and effectively. At the end of the day it reduces the chance of injury too which unfortunately is a lesser talked about part of being a musician. It's also good to know why things work rather than just playing them because they do.
I do think though even if you want to learn to shred or play whatever you can't go wrong with starting off with classical just to get the technique down so you move efficiently and effectively. At the end of the day it reduces the chance of injury too which unfortunately is a lesser talked about part of being a musician. It's also good to know why things work rather than just playing them because they do.
Man of Honour
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For somebody who has played so long about 4 years ago I had an embarrassing but instructive experience.
I can do solo's but I learnt them parrot fashion and if I did improvise I'd be lucky to stay in key. I was a month away from playing 2 gigs where the band I sing with asked me to do the solos because the lead guitarist was going away. This would mean a lot of work but the rhythm guitarist would be carrying the main guitar backbone.
I was talking to another musician about my concerns and he just said "Learn your pentatonic scale" but I wouldn't have any saying I was too old at 54 to get into that nonsense. He wouldn't let it drop and the following day he texted me with the same advice.
I Googled pentatonic scale, saw a picture of Em scale on the 12th fret and suddenly had the formula where to play the notes which just so happened to be the notes I played but now I knew where they were
I told a work colleague and the following day he came in with a picture showing Em all over the neck and for me it sank straight in so I put a blues backing track on and I was up and down the neck like Eddie Van Halen.
I then played different blues backing tracks in different keys and it all slotted into place and the two gigs went smoothly with me getting a bit more respect.
I'm quite embarrassed that in 42 years of gigging I'd never known this secret but my lead guitarist who is considered one of the best in the City still doesn't know - some people don't need to I suppose.
I then put that theory into practise with my keyboard playing and was playing like Jon Lord within minutes (well 1% like him).
I'm very jealous of my 15 year old nephew who has been learning theory since the age of 5. He can pick a piece of music up and be playing drums, guitar, keyboards and bass immediately. At the age of 12 he was offered a place in all the major music colleges for his drumming.
I can do solo's but I learnt them parrot fashion and if I did improvise I'd be lucky to stay in key. I was a month away from playing 2 gigs where the band I sing with asked me to do the solos because the lead guitarist was going away. This would mean a lot of work but the rhythm guitarist would be carrying the main guitar backbone.
I was talking to another musician about my concerns and he just said "Learn your pentatonic scale" but I wouldn't have any saying I was too old at 54 to get into that nonsense. He wouldn't let it drop and the following day he texted me with the same advice.
I Googled pentatonic scale, saw a picture of Em scale on the 12th fret and suddenly had the formula where to play the notes which just so happened to be the notes I played but now I knew where they were
I told a work colleague and the following day he came in with a picture showing Em all over the neck and for me it sank straight in so I put a blues backing track on and I was up and down the neck like Eddie Van Halen.
I then played different blues backing tracks in different keys and it all slotted into place and the two gigs went smoothly with me getting a bit more respect.
I'm quite embarrassed that in 42 years of gigging I'd never known this secret but my lead guitarist who is considered one of the best in the City still doesn't know - some people don't need to I suppose.
I then put that theory into practise with my keyboard playing and was playing like Jon Lord within minutes (well 1% like him).
I'm very jealous of my 15 year old nephew who has been learning theory since the age of 5. He can pick a piece of music up and be playing drums, guitar, keyboards and bass immediately. At the age of 12 he was offered a place in all the major music colleges for his drumming.
Well to make you feel better Milos said he had never learned to improvise until last year. Classical these days is very much about interpreting the classics with no emphasis placed on improvisation at all. But if you read about the actual masters then it was the opposite with them. For example Mozart was described as an improvisational genius rather than a composer in those days. I strongly bet if Mozart was around today he would be a cross between Frank Zappa and Hendrix playing some EDM/jazz fusion and would never have touched classical fullstop. I reckon if Beethoven was around he be playing full djent dropped down a few more octaves with a touch of something like Skrillex.
I've always said learn classical to get the theory, dynamic control and the technique then start jazz the expand on the theory and learn why you play what you do and then throw all that head learning out of the window and learn blues so you play from your heart and not from your head.
At the end of the day music is about getting something out of playing and finding a way to get what you are feeling and hearing in your head out there to other people. You don't really need to travel a set road to get there but there are some well established ways to get it sorted. Also tastes change over time - I well in love with guitar sounds from listening to some nice pseudo Flamenco on an All About Eve album of all things. I still think one of the greatest guitarists of all time is Kurt Cobain because he wrote great songs and then his playing comes across like he was struggling to play what he wanted to do (which he was) and that adds to his message of forlorn struggle and angst. If he played it with the skill of some more technically adept artist it wouldn't have worked so well in all likelihood.
I've always said learn classical to get the theory, dynamic control and the technique then start jazz the expand on the theory and learn why you play what you do and then throw all that head learning out of the window and learn blues so you play from your heart and not from your head.
At the end of the day music is about getting something out of playing and finding a way to get what you are feeling and hearing in your head out there to other people. You don't really need to travel a set road to get there but there are some well established ways to get it sorted. Also tastes change over time - I well in love with guitar sounds from listening to some nice pseudo Flamenco on an All About Eve album of all things. I still think one of the greatest guitarists of all time is Kurt Cobain because he wrote great songs and then his playing comes across like he was struggling to play what he wanted to do (which he was) and that adds to his message of forlorn struggle and angst. If he played it with the skill of some more technically adept artist it wouldn't have worked so well in all likelihood.
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Man of Honour
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Yesterday evening me and my lead guitarist spent a couple of hours with just our acoustics in an old Police cell in a Town Hall. That was one of the best 2 hours I've had for a long time because we went over harmonies for the new band and then he pulled out songs that we may do like Hurt and Across The Universe.
That's what it's all about.
That's what it's all about.
So being the bedroom rockstar I am, I've been practising a lot with standing up and playing guitar. Basically - how low does my guitar need to be to look cool? As low as possible really. As you all will know, things get miserable as your left and right hand start bending to uncomfortable angles. The real tricky part for me is picking angle. As the guitar gets lower, the angle increases and encourages 'scrapey' picking particularly with relatively thin tortex picks. Different picks can alleviate this (I.e heavier picks with a more rounded edge e.g jazz iii) but it largely technique based.
Just random musings!
Just random musings!
It depends on your build and finger length. Strictly speaking you can only get away with it being slung lower if you keep the guitar more horizontal otherwise you won't pick through the strings efficiently. The size of your hands will then effect the way you can hook your thumb over or get clear bar lines when and if you need to do that. When you consider that ideally you left hand thumb should be behind your second finger in the middle of the neck for efficient playing then you aren't helping that either.
Another consideration for your random musings. Most low slingers are not playing with an upright posture the lowness is predominately affected by a slouch so the arms will be not as straight as if you admiring yourself in the mirror! Most of them are either doing riffs on the low strings too or widdling on the highs 12 to 15. It may look cool but you are increasing the chance of injury.
Another consideration for your random musings. Most low slingers are not playing with an upright posture the lowness is predominately affected by a slouch so the arms will be not as straight as if you admiring yourself in the mirror! Most of them are either doing riffs on the low strings too or widdling on the highs 12 to 15. It may look cool but you are increasing the chance of injury.
Nitefly if you like heavy jazz picks the one I use is a Guzz S3 https://www.guzzguitar.com/S3_GUITAR_PICKS.html - forgot to link that yesterday.
I have to say the staff in that shop were pretty helpful when I went looking to buy my taylor acoustic. Friendly bunch of guys for sure.
Man of Honour
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I bought both my James Tyler Variax's and Blackstar amp from them.
Great shop and only 45 minutes away from me.
Man of Honour
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About 2 years ago I went from 0.8 Dunlops to 0.4 Dunlops, I would break my guitars with those Skinnys.
My rhythm guitarist uses them.
Yep, they are really good. They don't push you into buying stuff you don't really want or try and get you to spend more than you want to. They just help you decide what is best for you. I've got my electrics and acoustics from them. Just 5 mins away is http://www.classicalguitar.co.uk/index.html which I can wholeheartedly recommend to anyone. If you want a classical I wouldn't go anywhere else - I've seen top international performers too and fro from that place.
Caporegime
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Is this the Birmingham GuitarGuitar?
I got my Taylor GS mini and Yamaha tHR10 from there, was 5mins on the bus from work when I was working in Brindleyplace and went there a few times on my lunch hour.