Heheh, nah. I relic my guitars the old fashioned way: I play them while walking around the house and being a clumsy idiot. If you want your guitar to be a relic, just loan it to me for a few months. I’ll ding it up real good.
No kidding. That is what drove me to search out the JMJ Mustang…I’d get home after 2 hours of rehearsal and my shoulder would be complaining the rest of the night.
I’m a tall guy, so the P-bass-made-of-lead fits my wingspan as if it were a regular guitar, but I’m getting too old to have that much weight on my shoulder.
The JMJ has been my only axe since I found it–the others hang on the wall.
A Mustang is also what I use now. It is the same weight as my fairly light Tele and more bearable for two hours. I also have a super padded strap that really helps.
The joys of getting older.
Anybody here have a cajon? I was thinking of getting a portable one like this to maybe layer up an alternative to a click track when I someday dust off my 8 track. Doesn’t really cost anything, and it might be fun just grabbing it to tap on.
I made a metal song. It is mostly sequenced but I played the lead. No AI, I programmed each note. But it was very easy to do compared to other attempts. It practically wrote itself. Hence the title.
This is dope. That slower riff from 0:56-1:08 or so rips.
What’s the one thing that really helped unlock the guitar for you? What helped you off a plateau and start progressing more? What’s that thing that really helped change your thinking on how to learn guitar?
Looking for other posts/comments, even from Reddit or other online forums, or any suggestions on particular courses, YT channels, books, PDFs or just general and specific tips/tricks that have really changed the guitar playing game for you.
@NegativeZer0 Thank you!
To your question: the thing that has helped me the most was playing to pedal tones, where you play an open string and then harmonize with it on other strings going up and down, as well as across the neck.
Nice work. What DAW do you use, and what were the drums done on?
Probably not what you were looking for, but…
When I realized I really was a bass player all along and stopped trying to learn guitar.
This was ten or fifteen years ago. I had spent decades studying guitar with multiple teachers and it was drudgery, with any progress I made evaporating as soon as I stopped practicing that specific song. There are some really cool Villa-Lobos solos for classical guitar that I was playing at one point, but as soon as I stopped to breathe they vanished.
Then I found the bass guitar and totally fell in love with the beauty of the 4 strings that are at equal intervals, so patterns work all over the neck. The chordal concepts and the rhythm aspect also resonated with me.
More important: I now had a venue to play my instrument. My wife is a pianist and I have been playing bass with her for many years, mostly as part of a worship team. Without a place to perform music, it goes nowhere.
@xtenkfarpl Thanks! I used an old DAW called Orion64 by Synapse Audio. For drums I used EZ Drummer. Rhythm Guitar was Ample Sound Metal Eclipse and the bass was Loki Bass 2. I can and do play both but not nearly as tight as a sequencer can! =p
Are there any banjo players in this thread?
I recently acquired a banjo and was wondering if there are any tips or shortcuts for a guitarist to get started playing banjo – as opposed to someone learning banjo as their first instrument.
I haven’t started and not even sure what I’d want to play. I recently heard a trio playing 19th century American music and that seems like an interesting place to start.
Interesting; never heard of that one. I’m a Reaper user.
I haven’t really looked very much at software guitar instruments since I’m a pretty good rhythm player myself. But the one you used seems to be doing a decent job.
Do you have any other work available? Any interest in trying an occasional collaboration?
I have a banjo that I can kind of play. If you can pick a roll, you’re half way there, depending on what style of banjo you want to play. The tuning you pick is also kind of dependent on the style of banjo you want to play. I found it most easy to think about banjo as an open G guitar, with that weird 5th string hanging out to mess with me.
But yeah, I can only kind of play my banjo. It’s hard to practice such a loud acoustic instrument without bothering folks. It’s not a drum set, but most of them have most of a snare drum to work with.
Oh, and @by-tor, rifftastic. If I didn’t know they were samples, I would have just guessed it was overproduced. Nice work!
@scabpicker Thank you.
@xtenkfarpl Sure. PM me and we can talk. (=
Say, how many of you have a guitar hanging on the wall that you really wanted to love, but it just doesn’t ever get played?
You know the one…when your spouse starts saying things about the guitar population, that’s the one you gaze at sadly and ponder its place in your life.
This is mine: The Tony Franklin Fretless P-bass. Man, I was so excited when I brought it home.
The problem is, it’s a fun instrument to play but it is a weird Frankenbass, with a bridge pickup, pickup switch, and a sound that just isn’t my favorite.
And it’s yet another forty-pound P-bass on my shoulder.
One of these days it’ll go to a happy new owner.
Nice question. Actually I’ve never been much of a collector: all the instruments in my home studio are basically workhorses. I have a classic Strat for single coil, an Ibanex Roadstar for humbucker.
And for bass I have an Aria Pro II and a Kramer 450B.
These are all tools I use for recording. Not so much playing out, alas… covid killed live music and I never really got back into it.
I will say, this guitar was very well loved when I got it. But that was 18 year old me nearly 40 years ago. Now, my Gibson Flying V clone (Hondo) sits in it’s case. I get it out once a year and play it a bit, then it goes back in when I remember how uncomfortable it is to played while seated. It was played a lot back in the day.
Not much of a collector either, and that’s why the Tony Franklin is getting ready to go–I really only want instruments that bring me great joy. But I wanted to love it.
I have never really tried to play a fretless bass, though in the hands of a master like Jaco it’s a great sound.
Have you used one much? If so how much of a learning curve did you experience… assuming you started out on a fretted instrument?