Got it - sounds good. Nice intonation and bend work, and you are clearly trying to pace yourself correctly. You’re coming along!
Thanks! The hardest part for me on that song was keeping time. When I play it unaccompanied I can really emphasize the sustains and the haunting feel of the piece, but playing it over a rhythm I feel terribly rushed. I am constantly worrying about how I am going to get my fingers to the next chord in time without losing the ringing from the previous chord.
It’s a fun piece. The second take will be better 
I’ve noticed when playing my new Epi Dot that it seems like this guitar has much more dynamic range than my other guitars. It really makes any inconsistent picking attack jump out at me. I really need to work on picking at a more even strength on this guitar or the dynamics are all over the place, particularly on the low end. On, say, my Tele, there’s a decent amount of articulation, but overall much more forgiving and manageable.
Is this common for semi-hollow guitars? Or am I picking up a strength (or weakness) in Epi Dots?
I have a Takamine 6-string and a Takamine 12-string. I’ve taken both to a local (well, kinda local. They’re about 20 miles from my house) luthier and have been highly impressed by the results and the quality of work done. Both times, the cost for the setup was around 50 clams.
Shameless plug for them. If you live in the Houston area, they are great: thetexasguitarcompany.com - This website is for sale! - thetexasguitarcompany Resources and Information..
Hmmm - no, it is not common, but I don’t think it is a problem, per se - it may have something to do with the setup. Maybe one of your pickups is too close to the strings or something, or the geometry of a 335 is different, so your picking hand is right over the pickup with it, whereas it is not quite in the same place on your Tele.
Is your son still taking lessons from that experienced guy? If so, I would definitely demonstrate the contrast between the Tele and the 335 to him, so he can see both the guitars and your playing approach in action. Again, I really suspect that this is a minor issue. 335’s ARE dynamic, but hearing you contrast that with a Tele the way you do doesn’t seem quite right - as I state in that Food Groups thread, Tele’s are the ones that leave you no place to hide.
One last idea: it may sound stupid, but try rolling off the Volume on your 335 to about 8 on the pickup(s) you are using. Humbuckers have a higher output; depending on the type in your Dot, they may simply be louder and you happen to notice it because the higher output loudifies (that’s the technical term ;)) flaws in your technique. In other words, if you scrape the string with your finger or miss a chord placement, a louder guitar makes those mistakes sound…louder.
As context, when gigging, there are two big pains (among many): Switching between guitars where one has a hotter output vs. the other - we all wish we had a Fender/Gibson switch on our amps so the levels stay the same when we switch guitars. The other pain is switching between pickups on a guitar when one is set up hotter than the other. For the latter, a classic example is a Fat Strat, i.e., a Strat with a humbucker at the bridge - switching from the BRIDGE pickup to the neck pickup is an exercise in Volume-knob twiddling mid-song…sigh.
Hope this helps and report back if it makes sense…
This is possible; I haven’t messed at all with the setup, and I’m favoring the neck pickup for those tubey jazz sounds, and that pickup is closer to the strings. Another data point is that I play a setup with a subwoofer, and this axe has so much bottom end compared to my other guitars that I may be getting that woofer to oomph a little more, which can skew your perceptions of loudness quite easily.
Sure, but they’re light in the bottom end, so it may be entirely a deeper-bass issue and the tele may not be a good comparison.
Not stupid at all, and I do this all the time. I don’t like the bark of the humbuckers for some stuff, so I roll it down a bit. Hell, you taught me some of that lesson!
Yeah, I think the buckers are skewing my perceptions a bit. I was perennially used to buckers until I bought my Tele, and now single coils sound perfect to me, and buckers sound like crap. A lot of the reason for the perception shift is that I configure my other equipment differently to match the single coil tone, and going back to buckers can be disorienting. OTOH, I do play my Schecter C-1, dialing it back a little, and can make that shift pretty well. I guess I’m still getting used to this guitar and its new way, which is different from the way of my Tele OR my Schecter.
All of that totally makes sense. I know you are happy with your rig, but the woofiness you hear out of your humbuckers would end up sounding better if and when you got a tube amp and learn how to play it (the amp) as much as the guitar. Sorry for being a weenie about it.
Having said that, I have been going through a long term hiatus with humbuckers and am only now open to seeing them back in my life (what is this, a soap opera?). Tele pickups and P-90’s (and P-90’s in Tele’s - both of my T’s have them in the neck position) are so much more articulate and alike in their responsiveness to knob tweaking. Humbuckers are rarely as much - although much more so in 335’s vs. Les Paul. But I played a recently-made Les Paul the other week in the local Guitar Center that just blew me away - I immediately started to try to make a play for it but can’t execute the haggling I need to right now :(. But they are out there; but for the most part you have to find your spots. I really like middle position; bridge V at 10 or so, Tone ~7; neck V at 8.5 and T ~8. On 335’s you get almost a Strat-like quack (i.e., similar to Strat positions 2 or 4 - Knopfler land) that works nicely; on LP’s, if you have some nice overdrive going, you get this buzzy, thick, bluesy Freddie King thing. Or if you lower your A string to G and play just the middle 4 strings (Cheater’s G tuning), you get wonderful Stonesy/Crowes-y tones…
…they can be fun 
I lost the original version of this post because I worked on it too long, and it logged me out when I pressed “submit reply”. I’ve noticed this tendency before, and I usually copy the text just in case, but I was in a rush, so I forgot. In any case, I had made a rather long second version of my list of greatest guitarists of each decade. It had an introduction, and satisfactory explanations for my choices. Ah well, better luck next time. I don’t feel like spending a good spell of time trying to get what I had back, so here’s a bare-bones version of the revised list:
The Greatest Guitarists of Each Decade, according to MwNNrules
1900s - Agustin Barrios Mangore
Sureness of selection: low.
Former selection: none.
1910s - Andres Segovia
Sureness of selection: low.
Former selection: none.
1920s - Blind Lemon Jefferson
Sureness of selection: low to medium.
Former selection: none.
1930s - Robert Johnson
Sureness of selection: medium.
Former selection: Robert Johnson.
1940s - T-Bone Walker
Sureness of selection: medium.
Former selection: Muddy Waters.
1950s - Chuck Berry
Sureness of selection: high.
Former selection: Chuck Berry.
1960s - Jimi Hendrix
Sureness of selection: high.
Former selection: Jimi Hendrix.
1970s - Jimmy Page
Sureness of selection: high.
Former selection: Jimmy Page.
1980s - Eddie Van Halen
Sureness of selection: high.
Former selection: Eddie Van Halen.
1990s - Dimebag Darrell
Sureness of selection: medium to high.
Former selection: none.
2000s - Derek Trucks
Sureness of selection: low to medium.
Former selection: none.
Well the list surely would have been better with explanations, but at least it stands. Here’s the previous version for comparison: Best Guitarist of Each Decade? - Cafe Society - Straight Dope Message Board. Feel free to comment, question, or criticize.
Strumming is surprisingly hard to practice. I’m sure I’ll get if if I keep going for it.
And if you have to go for an entire decade, I say Slash is a far better player than Eddie. Eddie had a gimmick. Slash has talent.
So better late than never, right?
Let’s start with the L-37 which just sold. There were several things about that guitar that I just didn’t care for. First, as part of Gibson’s ‘budget’ line back in the '30s, there were some inbuilt compromises, mostly in body size. It was a small bodied guitar, just over 14 inches at the lower bout. So it didn’t move a lot of air no matter what you did, especially in the bass. It did one thing, and one thing only, and that’s cut through the mix with a percussive, upper-midrange sound. That’s just what archtops were for back then. Nothing wrong with that, but as I’m mostly interested in working on my flatpicking, there was not a lot it could do for me. Add to that the deeper neck than I like, and the incredibly low frets, I was always a bit frustrated after playing. One the other hand, one of the resident instructors at the shop that sold it banged out a few minutes of some jazzy comping and it sounded great. But I don’t and can’t play like that. So I took the money instead. Got $1,500 for it!
The Huss and Dalton is definitely from the vintage D-18 mold. Probably most comparable to the D-18GE in that it has the scalloped, forward shifted bracing. Better than the Martin (in my opinion) in that like a lot of the small shops, a lot more time can be put into tuning the top. I found the Huss and Daltons (and Collings too) that I tried to be more consistently excellent than the Martins, which seemed to be a bit more variable. The H-D also has a little boost to the mids and highs that I heard described as a D-18 with the presence turned up a bit. All I know was that I thought I was looking for a rosewood guitar, and tried some fantastic ones including a couple of Santa Cruzes and a HD-28LSV that looked like it had been dragged through gravel, but found this particular guitar just jumped out at me. I couldn’t stop playing it. Close second was a Santa Cruz Vintage Artist, also a mahogany guitar, which I guess goes to show that I had no idea what I was looking for when I started out.
The neck on my H-D is pretty modern feeling. I’m not sure how better to describe it. It’s not delicate feeling, but I wouldn’t call it chunky either. I dunno the radius, but would say it feels more like the 12" radius neck of my Legacy than the 7.5" neck on the ASAT. It’s nice and wide too, prob about 1.75 at the nut. I wish I were better at describing the sound though, it’s hard for me to get much past rich, full, warm. I’m no great player, but I find it impossible to get a bad sound out of this guitar, any volume level and anywhere on the next. It just sounds sweet.
But I’ll admit that over the past week or so, I’ve been almost exclusively screwing around with the Bluesboy, since it’s the newest addition, and the first Tele-style guitar I’ve ever had.
I was having trouble with it too (I admit I neglected those exercises a bit in favor of playing melodies) but in the last week or so I’m starting to actually sound like something. Now I need to start mixing in some rhythms or bass note strums.
E (can I call you ‘E’?), do you strum along to a recording, or just practice it in isolation? I really like playing along to the CD that came with my practice book. That gives a lot more variety than just drilling on a couple of simple patterns.
The only problem I have is that the strumming on the recordings is very, very faint. Even if I’m not playing along I have to struggle to hear it, so I’m not sure how it wants me to find a strumming rhythm that works with the melody.
I’ve got a CD, but mostly I’ve just been listening in my head to various Rock Band songs and trying to match the tempo.
Okay, so I guess it’s just me on the how-to books and DVDs. Fair enough. The odd thing is that I’m someone who is forever telling people to get themselves to a real live teacher. (It’s okay - I work up stuff from these kind of books and take them to my teacher. We’re both forever on the search for yet another way to express the concept…)
I would say, also, that this is one of the things that marks me as a classical guy who plays a bit of jazz rather than a true jazz guy - I’d way rather read a transcription and tweak it than have to do my own transcribing.
Which brings me to an interesting question I’d like to throw out - what are the preferences of the various Doper guitarists in terms of reading music? Notation? Tab? Chord symbols? Something entirely different? I know this can be a real can of annelids, but I’m curious…
I read bass and treble clef fluently and sight read well. I also read tab, not as fluently as notation, but still well. My chart reading is good, but I prefer to woodshed a chart so I don’t end up cycling through the same first position chords over and over.
My humble opinion, your mileage may vary, etc., etc. - I think it’s a very good idea for a guitarist to learn to read both notation and tab. There is much snobbery in the classical guitar world about tab, and it gets up my nose, esp. seeing that all the Renaissance music for lute, vihuela, theorbo, et al was written in tab. One of the huge advantages of reading Dowland and his pals in the original tab is you, the player, get to choose your own durations.
And for the record, I don’t think reading music makes you a ‘better’ guitarist, nor do I think playing entirely by ear makes you a ‘worse’ guitarist.
So where’s everybody else on the reading graph?
I can sort of read music. I used to be able to, but it mostly vanished, much like my Ukrainian.
So I’m learning again.
Totally makes sense - some guitars were made for tones or uses that are less, well, useful today unless you play that style of music. Cutting mids through a jazz combo is a different beast vs. most guitar uses today. I would love a mid-30’s L-00 as I said before, but I play some acoustic blues which that guitar is well-suited to, but when I try to play “normal” strummy acoustic stuff on one, it sounds like it was made of a cheap cigar box (which, by the way is a 'nother whole weird category of guitar being revisited these days…)
The issue of acoustic guitars made of rosewood vs. mahogany is a whole 'nother area of geekery. Rosewood is just the accepted standard and mahogany is the Chevy to rosewood’s Cadillac. That is utter marketing crap - they are simply different tone categories and rosewood has gotten more pricey, with Brazilian Rosewood getting Holy Grail status - deserved in the rosewood genre, but a different beast vs. mahogany. I have, over the years and lots of experimenting, realized I am a mahogany guy - who knew? But getting over that hump has saved me a lot of grief since I was programmed as a kid to assume I was supposed to seek out RW guitars, yet didn’t quite get what I needed from them.
I really liked the H&D’s I have played - quality small-shop guitars; I LOVE Santa Cruz guitars, but am totally biased since the factory is about 20 minutes from my parents’ house and I just took a “tour” there a few months ago (tour = free to walk around and ask questions; for a geek like me, very cool).
The necks on both guitars are excellent - medium with a super-comfortable profile. If you are a medium-neck guy, which about 95% of the population is. Again, over the years, I have come to realize I like big honkin’ necks - they had their day in the sun about 70 years ago, so my finding my 1946 Gibson acoustic was wonderful. I love the feel and, IMHO, like what a big neck does for the tone - but I know I am in the exception category, not the rule.
Bluesboys rock - G&L’s are great and anything based on the Tele platform is aces in my book. What kind? Semi-hollow or solid? Those G&L pickups or a humbucker in the neck and Tele-style at the bridge? Does it have that deep V neck profile? Based on what you have said about your preferences, I would assume not, but I have played a couple of G&L V-necks and enjoyed them…
Catching up on a few Great Guitar posts one-by-one; sorry for the chain of posts.
- I can read chord forms
- I can decipher tab, but it takes working out
- Can’t read music notation to save my life
I would love to be fluent in this area and agree with you that a player is better off the better they are in this area. Definitely one of those “don’t do as I do, do as I say” areas for me - i.e., don’t read prideful arrogance in my “I don’t need to no stinkin’ tabs or scores” statement - my playing is weaker because of the lack.
I have just never been able to make it stick - I will get grounded to learn a specific song or lead or something and then it just disappears. I haven’t kept the language use up to keep it fluent.
In terms of what I do to figure out a song: get on line and find the (invariably incorrect) tabs, and couple that with a search on youtube for some schmo showing their version of how to play it. Run through tabs once or twice, then compare that to the youtube schmo (to be fair, some guys who are trying to market their lesson-teaching abilities are actually quite good).
Once I have a feel for the major landmarks of the song, I just turn my back and start noodling. I am looking to find two things: The essential groove of the song, regardless of the chords being played. Yeah, that means “rhythm” but groove is more than that - it is getting the rhythm wired into your body so you can truly rock the song. At the same time, I try to decide which of the dozens of guitar parts that are on the recorded are the key ones - i.e., many/most recordings have far more guitar tracks layered in, right? So which ones “make” the song?
A key then, for me, while I am playing the chord forms, wiring the groove and picking out the essential parts, is to listen for tricks. Is this a weird tuning? Is the player doing something up the neck with drone strings that the tab doesn’t reflect? What is going on with the tone - is the player using stompbox effects that contribute to more than just the tone - e.g., a delay adding notes that are played too fast to do otherwise? Nothing is more :smack::smack: than trying to play the Stones before knowing how to rock an Open G tuning for the songs after about 1969 or so…heck, recently (and I can’t believe I am actually acknowledging this) my band had to learn KISS’ Rock n’ Roll All Nite. I do my basic checks on line and start playing the song and the chords are just…harder than any KISS song has a right to be ;). As I keep listening I stop and think “hey - is this in Open G?” so I switch to my Cheater’s G tuning and the song falls into place while I am playing it - brainless and automatic, like any good KISS song should be.
So, **Le Ministre **- I have no idea what to do with what I am saying, meaning: I do woodshed and figure stuff out, but I am after things that I would call “street smart” - i.e., the groove, the rock voicing of the chords and the tricks. Oh - and how to cheat on parts that sound too hard. If I can find a way to cheat, I am ALL about that.:D;)
Oh - and continuing to reinforce my assertion that Jeff Beck is the best damn electric guitarist working today, I give you an article from the Sunday New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/arts/music/14beck.html. Gotta love it when Joe Perry of Aerosmith says “Beck is so much better than any other guitar player it is not even worth discussing” and George Martin, the Beatles’ producer who also produced Beck says “when I think electric guitar virtuoso, I think of Jeff” - yes indeed.
I am finally going to see him this Thursday at Madison Square Garden - he’s on a mini-tour with some other guy…
- I am squealing like a little girl at the thought of it. Speaking of little girls, he is NOT touring with Aussie bass phenom Tal Wilkenfeld - not sure why; he has a female bassist who played with Prince, though, so I suspect all willl work out fine…
Also, rare for me, I am going to a concert tomorrow (Monday) night, too - **Jim Campilongo **- a Telecaster monster who has taken up Monday-night residence at the hipster, uber-cool East Village / Ludlow St club, The Living Room. He is releasing a new CD, Orange and this is the release party/gig. It’s been getting raves (Fender is releasing a Campilongo sig Tele at the same time - how cool would it be to rate a sig model?)…
I will come back with reports when I get a chance…
Oh - and tomorrow or during the week, I will post a link to the ***teemings ***article on guitar geekery I contributed to the new issue…
…and I just showed my newly-12-year-old son how to play Ramble On - how cool is that?
Yup. I assumed that rosewood was what I wanted, probably because the only really nice guitars I had played at the time were rosewood. My mahogany experience extended only to the no-name beater dread that I dragged to college with me. So I was quite surprised to find where my preferences lie.
Somewhere out there, there’s a six part video talk given by Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz that I’ll try to find the link for. Among other topics, he goes into the rosewood v mahogany deal. He contends that mahogany as a species is in much, much worse trouble than is commonly believed. He said that Brazilian rosewood was a sacrificial lamb in the CITES treaty as it only really had use in instruments, while continued harvesting of mahogany had the weight of the furniture industry behind it. I’ll try to find the link.
One of the reasons that Santa Cruz was on my short list was because that’s where my wife is from. Now, she’s very supportive of my crazy hobbies, but she doesn’t get why a guitar might cost more than $250. But she was very interested in the hometown aspect so the lid was off the jar, so to speak.
The necks on both guitars are excellent - medium with a super-comfortable profile. If you are a medium-neck guy, which about 95% of the population is. Again, over the years, I have come to realize I like big honkin’ necks - they had their day in the sun about 70 years ago, so my finding my 1946 Gibson acoustic was wonderful. I love the feel and, IMHO, like what a big neck does for the tone - but I know I am in the exception category, not the rule.
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I want to like big necks, but it just hasn’t worked out for me yet. Maybe because the bulk of my experience with a larger neck was with that L-37, which I generally disliked. I can’t go guitar shopping for a while now, so I need to stay content with what I have.
It’s a solidbody (I thought I would prefer the semi-hollow, but it turns out no) with the Seymour Duncan Seth Lover at the neck and the G&L MFD at the bridge. That middle position, where you get both pickups, that’s the business right there. That sound is what drew me to that particular model. The Tele-style tones out of the MFD are just a bonus. Now I gotta learn some appropriate licks, as this is the first guitar of this style that I’ve owned. The neck is the G&L 7.5" radius vintage C, which isn’t shredder thin, but not what I’d call beefy. The G&L v necks don’t work as well for me as on electric, I developed the bad habit of brining my thumb over the top occasionally for muting and fretting purposes, but my hands aren’t big enough to do that with a V.
Alex!?!
When I was learning guitar as a teenager, I could read music (if slowly). The problem was that there was a vast sea of notation books written for simple piano that were just plainly wrong when it came to guitar pieces. Some had chord symbols, but even these were hit or miss. I have a pretty good ear, so I just learned to figure out pieces on my own, which is what I still do. Now there’s a vast sea of tabs out there, and I’ll use them sometimes, but prefer just noodling around and working out the tune on my own.