Thank you all. I just came in from moving snow with the tractor (April is a big snow month). In any case, I’m still vibrating from that diesel.
I agree that do what’s best with picks. I’ll need to buy more and drop them in my guitar case. BUT, I also want to be able to pick up the beautiful machine (I’m a programmer, musical instruments are a cross between a machine and art) and play with out picks.
Maybe not though, because I do want to still pick on the banjo, and not get confused there.
This may sound silly, but as a programmer, I know math. Music is math (and heart and soul). I can touch type great, so the brain/finger connection is good.
My hands are strong and flexible. My left shoulder has some problems. Working on it. The MRI did not show anything.
I can keep a beat, but can’t remember a song to save my life. I have be doing the 12-bar shuffle to toughen up my fingers.
Thank you all also, for suggestions re: music/books. This all is really a way to make time for myself. Just got to find that time.
I hear you about math and music. I am a huge Bach fan, who epitomizes that to me. What is your vision for your playing? A flatpick or fingerstyle? I gotta say, as a Math guy, the polyphony available through fingerstyle is SO much more “math satisfying” vs a flatpick. (There is some pick-based stuff your average guitar player should know, but most folks look at fingerstyle as a tougher technique to master).
And, if you can have the patience to master fingerpicks, they are held in very high regard in the guitar world. Developing a decent touch with fingerpicks is really hard - I could never do it. But if you have it, the level of techniques you can get going are really cool. Search on it on the Acoustic Guitar Forum.
I’ve been told that music and math are mirrors of each other. I’m starting to see it. I’m a blank slate. Kinda cool. And I MAY have some natural abilities that I can turn towards music, and can have math and logic help (I’m a programmer).
Or perhaps I will just annoy my dog.
My vision? Hmm…
I’d like to be able to run off some Paul Simon or Beatles with out having to think about it. Probably not good for picking, but more for strumming and chords. LaBamba would be good for picking (I think).
Flat picks are alien to me. For the banjo, I wear 3 finger picks. So perhaps I have a leg up on that. Not using a finger pick or three, is very, very strange.
The guitar has steel strings, like my banjo, so I’m pretty comfortable with the picking of it. Except of course, everything is different, and I’ve never used chords on the banjo. Not a one.
You may enjoy this book but it was a cheesecake for me (dense and best enjoyed in small pieces).
As usual, I agree with WordMan, and don’t give up on the finger picks. The Beatles have plenty of songs that would work, and guess what, there are plenty of songs that aren’t fingerpicked that will work , too. One of my favorite songs to play around with is Echo Beach by Martha and the Muffins and it’s not relly an acoustic song by a long shot!
The best part of playing guitar is the playing around part!
Paul Simon doesn’t use a pick, to my knowledge. I think he plays without fingerpicks, but if you are already comfortable with them, it would be easy to play his stuff that way.
Plenty of the Beatles stuff can be fingerpicked. I learned Hide Your Love Away as easy strummy chords and then transitioned over to a waltz-time fingerpicked approach. All of their stuff can work that way, let alone songs like Blackbird where picking is essential.
I strongly recommend you surf around YouTube a bit and find a couple of easy fingerpicking patterns that start to get you rooted in guitar vs. banjo and then you can decide from there. Okay, off my soapbox for now
Youtube offered that one up to me yesterday as well - must’ve gotten bumped to the top somehow. Anyway, there are videos of her back to 92 playing. She’s been at it for awhile.
That’s Lonnie Mack for you. It was an original and he thought it looked cool, like Albert King did with his. I read how he rigged up the metal piece that goes between the legs of the V but have long forgotten. I do recall that he broke the guitar a few times, even once tossing the pieces in the trash but the going back, retrieving them and gluing it all back together.
Guitars were originally designed with 12-frets clear of the body. In 1929, banjo player Perry Bechtel asked Martin to make a guitar with 14 frets clear of the body so he had more banjo-like access up the neck. Over the next 10 or so years, 14-fretters became the norm, to the point where you don’t even think about it.
Blackstar HT-20 combo, I must say I like it a lot. I replaced the original Rocket 50 12" speaker with a Celestion V-30 and was surprised at the tonal difference…a lot more midrange shows up with that, as well as “peakier” leads.
From reading online apparently there’s a significant breaking in period for this speaker, so I guess I’m not all the way there yet. Not sure what to expect once it’s “broken in” either…a “warmer tone” perhaps?
I also got an Ibanez Tube Screamer (which I haven’t really figured out how to use yet, more on that later) and a Boss DD-7 digital delay, which is an awesome pedal, I think.
Punched up to almost 11 on the clean channel the amp is LOUD with a lot if really cool breakup. The overdrive channel is off the chain too. I like the amp…very dark sounding, especially with the ISF knob leaning toward the British side.
Broken in: the speaker cone gets a bit more flexible, so it is the slightest bit more inefficient. So it dampens a bit of the harsh highs and highlights the mids a bit more - so yeah, a bit more warmth and compression.
Tube Screamer: Google videos that want to show you how to dial in a Stevie Ray Vaughn tone. You basically want your amp to be set to just be transitioning from clean to crunch - light picking is clean; a sharp downstroke sounds crunchy. Then try backing off your guitar volume to 7-8 and stepping on the pedal. Play with the controls, hitting an A or E and letting it ring. Do you like that rhythm tone? Then try dialing up your Volume and playing lead. Do you like it? And adjust from there.
Once you have a good rhythm tone with your guitar volume down, and a good lead tone as you dial up, you now have a couple of new tones to add to your options. Trying playing a song cleanly and hitting the pedal on the chorus. If you dialed up those tones on the bridge pickup, flip to the middle position (guitar volume at 7-8 for rhythm) and see if you like that. Should be kinda Stonesy. And the neck pickup with your volume cranked should sound leady. Oh, and try rolling the Tone completely off while the pedal is on and the V is at 10 - that should be rich and tubey sounding = Clapton’s Woman Tone.
My guitarist friend told me that a pedal like a Screamer should not be used “in front” of the amp, which I guess he means before preamp tubes. The amp has an effects loop in/out but it seems to sound like shit when I put it there. In fact it is noisy and sounds like shit no matter where I plug it in. My friend also told me that the Screamer isn’t a true distortion pedal, but more of a “booster”.
He’s got a super nice Boogie rig and he says he uses it primarily to get “that little extra something” out of leads but otherwise doesn’t use it much. The delay pedal (and modulation effects in general) he told me should always go before the amp, and my delay pedal does indeed sound great there. I need to get more cables, too.
The hard rock/metal tones I can get with this amp alone plus my Schecter C-1 are pretty gnarly. I’ve been playing around a lot with the clean side mostly lately, figuring out how to get “just a little crunch” all the way to full tube saturation. It’s fun to play around with.
Your friend unfortunately doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Overdrives, Distortions, and Fuzz pedals belong in the signal change because their whole reason for existence is too crunch up the signal, i.e, boost input to (over) drive the preamp and to pre shape the tone hitting the preamp.
Please check Youtube for any reasonably respected breakdown of proper effects chaining. Time-effecting pedals go in the effects loop.
I agree with WordMan. Unless you have another pedal in the chain that doesn’t like being fed the distorted signal (my B9 organ pedal is such a beast), the distortion pedal should usually be the first thing after the guitar in your effects chain. If not, it should usually be the first thing after the effects that can’t handle it’s signal.
We opened for The Sonics last night, and I broke another low E on my bass in the second song, but just continued the show without a low E instead of switching basses this time. My spare bass was out in the car anyway – because I’m a super-genius. The drummer didn’t even notice anything was wrong until the last song. So I covered for it well, I guess.
Thirty years without breaking a string, and now two in a few months. Pure nickel roundwounds are next, we’ll see if they are more durable.
I had an interesting question come up about the G chord last night. A guy asked me why I used different G chords in a song.
I’ve always used the full 4 fingered G anytime I’m going between the D and G chords. Keeping my third finger anchored on the B string. It’s so natural moving the 1st and 2nd fingers up or down for the two chords.
If I’m going between G and C then I typically use the 3 finger G. Pinky on the 1st string. It’s just easy to drop the 2nd and 3rd fingers up or down a string for the two chords.
If I’m going to a C/G then the 3 finger G sets me up perfectly. The young guy I was talking to hadn’t been taught the 3 finger pinky G.
I know a lot of players these days insist the full G sounds better.
