I hear you though. I have been wanting to play fingerstyle - not fingerpicking; more like Mark Knopfler where you kinda throw your fingers out there and see what works. Anyway, I have tried at various points and just been lost. I have checked in every few years, and recently realized that this approach was much more available to me. Who knew? Same thing kinda happened with slide - couldn’t do it for years, checked in occasionally, and then a few years ago, boom - slide competence.
When I was 15 and just starting to play the electric guitar (this would be 1988 or so), I sauntered into my local guitar shop (this would be Victor Litz Music of Gaithersburg, MD for any of you who know the area around our nation’s capital) to buy some strings and wow the staff with my acumen. I started spouting off about Gibson Les Paul this and Gibson Les Paul that, fortified by all the things I’d learned from thumbing through the copies of Guitar Player magazine at my school library.
Only problem is that, not knowing any better, I was pronouncing “Les Paul” like a French word. :smack:
The (mullet headed) guys behind the counter were all snickering at me, and it was probably a good couple of weeks before I realized why. At which point I didn’t set foot in that store again for a whole year. Just to make sure they’d forgotten me.
Well fuck you anyway, guitar store guys! Twenty-five years later, guess who owns a Lay Paul now! :mad:
Too funny. When I was a wee lad of 15 or so, I was in my local music place, Gelb Music in Redwood City, CA. While there I was pointing at a row of Gibsons and started discussing their “humdinger” pickups. :smack:
One guy was there who was my age and just started snickering. He and I became friends as he explained to me that they were “humBUCKer” pickups and we have been close friends ever since.
Yeah, I never made any lasting friends out of my humiliation. My only solace is imagining that those dudes still have mullets (balding from the front, perhaps) and are still playing Cinderella covers on snakeskin-finish Charvels somewhere.
I’ve recently been checking out Knopfler’s style. The fingerstyle comes easy, to the extent that I have any ability, because I spent years playing the banjo growing up. As for the book, I’ve ordered it and will give my impressions after it arrives.
Cool. But isn’t Banjo kinda “fingerpicky” - meaning: you set up a picking pattern vs. just…I dunno, using your fingers. If you are comfortable with picking patters, though, it would make sense that you would be comfortable with using your fingers vs. using a pick.
It’s funny - I referred to Knopfler. My hero Jeff Beck is a fingerstyle electric guy, too. But I am not trying to learn their approaches - I am not on YouTube looking for lessons. I just pick up my guitar and start playing grooves that I can playing using fingerstyle and see if I can stretch them out, adding lead fills, different groove variations etc. The longer I can go keeping the groove going, the better I seem to get.
I have never done well following a lesson - I always just play until something sticks. It can take me years, but I am not trying to make my living at it, and when I do finally learn it, it sticks!
Since this thread popped up again, I thought I’d mention that I got to hear Mimi Fox play at the jazz festival in Newport, OR a few days ago. I’d never heard of her, and I’m not really a fan of jazz guitar, but she blew me away with her virtuosity and unique (for jazz) style. I usually don’t like pop songs put to jazz, as they just sound. . .odd, I guess. But her rendition of the Beatles’ She’s Leaving Home was amazing. We got to hear her both as a soloist and as part of an ensemble. I’m sorry to say that I have no idea what the hell she was doing much of the time. She has done a lot of YouTube teaching videos, so I may have to check those out.
Not yet, but I’m getting there. Lessons are alternating between electric and acoustic, and my tele just isn’t cutting it, for reasons stated prior to this. It’s fine in the middle/upper registers, but at the lower end the strings are just too far off the fret board. Combine that with some arthritis problems and I get a lot of ‘thunk’ instead of ‘pling’. I’m looking hard at a Taylor 414CE, but have got to get my lazy ass over to the music store to try it out.
Chefguy, perhaps taking a file to the slots of the nut might solve your problem. You’ll want to have the bow and string heights adjusted after you did that, though. Better to have it done for you. Maybe find a guitar in a shop that has a feel you like, then ask their tech to make your tele have the same action as that one.
I do a drive-by on this thread once in a blue moon, and here’s another.
Recently I acquired a new guitar – an Epiphone EL-00.
This is a great little guitar. It was quite playable out of the box. The nut and saddle (and strings) are cheap stuff, but they will be replaced with something decent pretty soon.
It’s a great little guitar for fingerstyle playing. I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
That or change the neck relief via adjusting the truss rod. Though I’d think a misadjustment with the truss would tend to cause high strings in the mid/upper neck region, so it’s more likely to be a problem with the nut as you said.
Chefguy: electric guitars often need a pro to get setup properly, though a gifted amateur can do all the same stuff given some tools and research. Filing the nut should probably be done by a professional, but stuff like setting intonation, bridge saddle height, even adjusting the truss rod can be done by you if you’re comfortable with it and proceed carefully. Just make sure any adjustment you do can be UNdone if you mess up – count how many turns you made to something, try it, and if you’re unhappy just turn it back that many turns and you’re not in worse shape. You can’t “undo” filing the nut, hence you should probably pay someone to do it. It’s usually not very expensive to setup electric guitars, unlike some sorts of acoustic guitar setups.
But if I take your good advice, then I don’t get to buy a new ax! All my whining to my wife will be for naught! I may try a self-help fix, but this guitar was won at a silent auction, so a shop repair would cost more than the guitar is worth, I fear.
Well, okay, you’re a woodworking dude, a nut file may be a natural fit for you, and you can give it a go. I have no advice to offer since I’m utterly at a loss working on something that a pair of pliers, allen wrench, or screwdriver can’t solve on their own, but filing a nut is also very likely within “gifted amateur” territory if you get good advice. Of which I have none except: file a bit, check the height, does the string buzz, rinse/repeat. At some point you’ll change the height enough that neck relief will matter (perhaps a lot); see linked tutorial on neck relief/truss rods. That’s all I’ve got.
And perhaps you’ve gone the “oh fuck it, I’m really an acoustic guy” route internally – and I can totally respect that – but I hope a promising but unfortunately-setup instrument didn’t scare you away from also being an electric guy.
Good luck with the electric axe, your future guitar purchase, and the wife’s patience with all this nonsense.
Love the electric sound, which is why I’m looking at acoustic/electric instruments (like the 414CE noted above). I really do appreciate the advice and have bookmarked your link for future reverence.
If you file a nut, be sure to angle it ever so slightly down on the end pointing toward the machine heads. Flat is OK, but you definitely do NOT want it to be a tad higher on the fingerboard end of the slot, and it’s fine to err a little in the other direction (but less than a straight line to the machine head post.)
The reason should be obvious: if the highest point is on the headstock end, it can buzz. You want solid contact on both ends of the slot.
