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Groundbase posted:Does anyone have any tips for doing 'percussive thumb' type strumming (not really sure what else to call it, sorry!) e.g. John Mayer's Who Says http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v_cDXeAtN8 He's just doing this as far as I can tell (I think some people call it thumping too) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68idAuBaWWQ I don't think his index finger's involved in the slap, just looks like he's playing the normal fingerstyle pattern and throwing in the slap on the beat, so sometimes an index finger pluck happens to occur close to the the thumb slap
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May 8, 2012 16:46
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Can anyone tell me how well I'm doing? I started just under two weeks ago. I get a few hours per day to practice, but no teacher apart from forcing my friends to show me chords. I'll follow the example of the guy posting about this back on page 2 and put up a list of things I can do. I can play these chords: G, C, E major and minor, A major and minor, D major and minor, the F chord with the barre part, G7, and C7. I can switch between them very slowly. The F chord and the 7 chords are too weird and cruel to reliably switch to yet. I know the G major scale and the A minor pentatonic and can play them up and down at about 80 BPM. I can do the 1-2-3-4 exercise up and down at about 96 BPM if I'm careful. I also learned a weird (pseudo-)Japanese pentatonic scale that starts on the 12th fret and goes (up strings) 12-13/12-14/10-14/10-14/12-13/12-13; still working on stretching far enough to play it at a reasonable speed. I memorized the circle of fourths and the location of most of the Cs and Gs on the fretboard. I can also do two-handed tapping and reliably switch up or down a string cleanly while muting strings. I can mostly guarantee a clean down-strumming. Up-strumming is really tough, which I blame on my left-handedness (learning right-handed) impairing my picking hand, but I can reliably get it to sound clean. However, I tend to miss either the highest or lowest string on up-strumming. Right now I think my biggest issue is strumming upwards. Is it really tough for everybody? I've been at it for a while now and I still don't know what angle to go at. 
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May 9, 2012 08:39
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If you can do all that after two weeks I'd say you're doing pretty drat well! Gonna recommend Justin Guitar to you as well - it's basically as close as you're going to get to having a teacher without having someone there, it's really well structured so you could do a lot worse than following his plan of lessons. I always recommend this technique for learning the fretboard too - it's for bass so you're missing a string (well technically two), but I reckon you can work it out You upstrum the same way you downstrum! Basically your hand constantly moves up and down over the strings, passing back and forth, and you let the pick come into contact with them when there's a strum. So your pick is generally pointing straight at the guitar, perpendicular to the body, and the angle is 90 degrees whether you're strumming up or down. In practice it depends on your technique, I often hold my pick fairly loose so it doesn't fight the strings so much, so you get a little bit of a tilt as the strings drag on the pointy end, some people hold the pick so only the very tip protrudes and doesn't move anywhere, some people intentionally play with a tilted angle for a certain feel or sound. It is a little harder to play upstrums though, probably because the physical movement involved is less familiar and controlled (it's also physically different to contact the thinner strings first), so really it's a case of practice. Playing upstrums constantly to a metronome and really listening for accuracy and consistency will help a lot
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May 9, 2012 12:20
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I'm actually having the worst trouble upstrumming arbitrary 2 or 3 string pairs. But I figure that the cure is basically more practice.
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May 9, 2012 12:35
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Yeah same deal really, it's easier to wang across the entire six strings than to do a precision movement that swoops in and out accurately with the correct force, your arm (and wrist and whatever else) just don't feel used to doing that upward movement with any elegance
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May 9, 2012 13:14
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baka kaba posted:If you can do all that after two weeks I'd say you're doing pretty drat well! Gonna recommend Justin Guitar to you as well - it's basically as close as you're going to get to having a teacher without having someone there, it's really well structured so you could do a lot worse than following his plan of lessons. I always recommend this technique for learning the fretboard too - it's for bass so you're missing a string (well technically two), but I reckon you can work it out Thanks! Justinguitar has been really helpful learning all this stuff, for sure. And another thanks for that studybass link, it's really helping me out!  Upstrumming is actually feeling more natural to me now. My main problem now is making sure I don't spazz out and fling my hand too far above or below the strings, because it ruins the next strum. Right now I'm spending most of my practice time doing chord changes, and when that gets boring, trying out sweep picking to get my dexterity up. I figure that if I learn fancy techniques right off the bat, I'll gain a lot of precision to help me with other fundamentals. (And pinky strength.)
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May 11, 2012 06:29
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If you know how to play the G Major scale (hopefully without any open strings), then you can just move that up and down the neck to transpose it. This page has been super helpful for me. http://www.justinguitar.com/en/SC-001-TheMajorScale.php I'm just guessing the frets you're actually playing, but the G Major scale is Position 1 (E Shape) on that page with the root note on the 3rd fret of the low E string (G). Also, I dig these: http://www.justinguitar.com/en/SC-002-MinorPentatonicScale.php http://www.justinguitar.com/en/SC-005-MajorPentatonicScale.php
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May 11, 2012 23:23
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I'm curious - if one memorized the note relationships on the fretboard with techniques like these, would it even be necessary to memorize box shapes for scales? It seems like you could just remember the formula for whatever scale you're playing in and that would be enough to keep you from hitting off-scale notes. Like, learning the five different forms of a scale wouldn't be necessary if you understood where every individual note on the fretboard in the scale lies. Visually rote-memorizing a ton of boxes for every scale seems like it would take way longer and be less useful than just learning the whole fretboard.
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May 13, 2012 02:25
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Well someone with formal training in something like jazz or classical would be able to tell you if they learn to rely (almost) exclusively on familiarity with keys and the positions of those notes, but in general the box patterns are an easy way of giving you fast access to the notes you need, no matter where you are on the neck. Imagine you're playing a very fast ascending solo - it might be possible to be so familiar with the key that you know a)exactly which scale tones you want to hit, b)which notes they translate to in the key you're using, c)exactly where those notes are available on the neck, and d)which string and fret you should play them on, setting you up in the best hand position for later notes. But that's a hell of a lot of information to process while playing 16th notes at 120bpm! A lot of the rote box playing is about muscle memory too, and it's real helpful to be able to want to hit a fifth and know exactly where that is relative to the current note. In some sense it's a shortcut, but shortcuts are practical sometimes. Ideally you'd combine the two, so you're aware of exactly what notes you're playing, and how they fit into the key, but you're also familiar with the relative approach - basic interval and chord shapes, melodic runs and so on. You can learn to play guitar entirely based on this relative approach, and I did, and it's easy - but ultimately very limiting, because you don't fully understand what you're doing, so it's harder to move out of that box. I know entire songs I learned early on where I have no idea what I'm actually playing half the time, purely from muscle memory, and if I ever have to compensate (say playing in another key) I can be totally lost when there are things like open strings - or if I happen to lose my place and I've no idea what fret I was on, like if you learn a lead part as a series of moves from a start point. Basically learn both approaches, so you can see what you're doing from multiple angles, and you'll have a much broader understanding of music and your instrument - and you'll have a lot more fun! You might want to look at the CAGED system too: http://www.justinguitar.com/en/TB-031-CAGEDsystem1.php
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May 13, 2012 03:04
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I don't see the need to distinguish between shapes and the notes in them.
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May 13, 2012 03:14
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It would be impossible to learn a scale on guitar without memorizing the shape anyway. You would end up learning the shapes incidentally just from playing them so often even if you made an effort not to think about them. What matters is sounding good and you do that by knowing what notes to play when. Seems like whatever method works for that is fine.
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May 13, 2012 03:47
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baka kaba posted:You can learn to play guitar entirely based on this relative approach, and I did, and it's easy - but ultimately very limiting, because you don't fully understand what you're doing, so it's harder to move out of that box. I know entire songs I learned early on where I have no idea what I'm actually playing half the time, purely from muscle memory, and if I ever have to compensate (say playing in another key) I can be totally lost when there are things like open strings - or if I happen to lose my place and I've no idea what fret I was on, like if you learn a lead part as a series of moves from a start point. Basically learn both approaches, so you can see what you're doing from multiple angles, and you'll have a much broader understanding of music and your instrument - and you'll have a lot more fun! Okay, that makes a lot of sense! I'm just trying to figure out what would be most immediately beneficial to work on, but I think I get the advantages of each approach now. Thanks for the replies.
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May 13, 2012 03:55
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CalvinDooglas posted:I don't see the need to distinguish between shapes and the notes in them. Eventually, yes, you would want to arrive at that point. Personally, I tried just learning the note relationships initially, as I started on piano, and while it worked, it added an extra mental step that was not initially intuitive. My first guitar teacher had me expand from random notes to triad associations, to arpeggios, to scales, and then finally to chords. In the end it made a ton of sense, though it wasn't exactly in that clear-cut of steps. It made scales very natural to learn, though.
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May 13, 2012 06:17
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The thing about the guitar scales or CAGED system I posted earlier is that although it shows 5 different shapes, they are actually the same pattern, just rotated up or down to another string. They're literally the same pattern.
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May 13, 2012 17:09
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Cobweb Heart posted:Okay, that makes a lot of sense! I'm just trying to figure out what would be most immediately beneficial to work on, but I think I get the advantages of each approach now. Thanks for the replies. It's probably worth working on the box patterns, but say the notes (or sing the names, if you can) as you play them, so you get familiar with the scales in each key and it's not just 'ok Bb starting on the 6th string, so that's Bb then two notes up then onto the next string...' This will help a lot more if you start doing practice with particular scale degrees, like practicing going root-3rd-5th-7th or something, and you start to remember that in Bb it's Bb-D-F-A, and that D is the 3rd in Bb... Which you can do when you practice the entire scale of course, if you can focus on associating each note with its specific degree, instead of just going this then this then this. Once you're familiar with the notes, and how they fit into the key and each chord that you play, you can start to do cool and interesting things when you move between them, or hint at an upcoming change, or throw in some harmonisation, and more!
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May 13, 2012 17:52
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I asked this a couple of pages back and didn't get a reply so I figured I'd ask again. Does anyone know of or have a trusted guitar luthier in the NoVA/DC area? I need to have one of my electric guitars set up, badly and would hate to have to take it to Guitar Center. Thanks as always!
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May 14, 2012 02:32
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I recorded myself playing guitar today, because I realized I've never seen how my technique looks. Here it is in case anybody wants to see me play some Black Keys poorly 
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May 14, 2012 22:10
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dexter6 posted:I asked this a couple of pages back and didn't get a reply so I figured I'd ask again. I've taken guitars to Crossroads Guitar Shop in Arlington several times and never had any issues. They have a plek machine if you are looking for that as well. There is also Action Music - I have not had any guitars set up there, but it is the same type of small guitar shop and I have seen them working on guitars while shopping around and I would have no issues on taking a guitar there either.
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May 16, 2012 01:23
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I've been looking lately at getting a Gibson LP Studio, but it looks like there are several different models (tribute, faded, etc.). Are there any big differences between them or is it just the visual aesthetics? Are there certain years that were better than others for this model? I plan on buying used from CL or eBay.
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May 17, 2012 20:21
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Realjones posted:I've taken guitars to Crossroads Guitar Shop in Arlington several times and never had any issues. They have a plek machine if you are looking for that as well.
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May 17, 2012 21:16
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I was playing a gig last night and wouldn't you know it - Amp head stopped working. Its a Orange Dark Terror - Tried a couple of different kettle leads, so pretty sure its not a fuse gone that end. Do I replace the valves / fuse or should I just take it to a tech? edit: changed the mains fuse after a bit of googling, that did it. Should have known really. Depressing Drawers fucked around with this message at 12:02 on May 18, 2012 |
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May 18, 2012 11:36
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Yeah, tubes are not usually the part that causes instant failure. You can hear a tube going bad like 6 months out.
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May 18, 2012 17:56
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Just wanted to drop this here to get some critique on my country playing. I know it's a bit rhythmically sloppy in parts but I have no ability to gauge my own playing. There is a 4 chorus solo about 2/3 of the way in. I'm mostly faking this style, I've never really transcribed many country guitar solos. I just want to know if I'm on the right track with this.
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May 19, 2012 15:03
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Lately I've developed a fun way to practice guitar. I put on an album, google for the tabs, then play along with the song playing through my computer speakers. So far I've only been able to find three albums that I'm able to do this with: Desire, Street Legal, and John Wesley Harding, by Bob Dylan. Just about each song on those albums is made up of the basic guitar chords strummed in simple patterns. Am, D, Em, C, G, Dm, F, etc, with the occasional 7 chord thrown in. Does anyone know of any other albums that are easy to strum along to? Any genre... Also, is it possible that it's just impossible for me to play B/Bb major chord? My finger joints just do not bend past 180degrees (any of them). Is it something I'll eventually get by practicing, or is there another way I have to finger it?
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May 20, 2012 20:13
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You can either use your finger tips and all 4 fingers to do it or you can make a bar with your index and use 2 fingers. I have no idea what you mean by your finger tips bending past 180 degrees. If your finger bent 180 degress it would be pointing back into your hand. Salt Fish fucked around with this message at 20:27 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 20:19
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Salt Fish posted:You can either use your finger tips and all 4 fingers to do it or you can make a bar with your index and use 2 fingers. http://i.imgur.com/Reakw.jpg heres a crappy cellphone pic of me trying to do a B. (I know my finger is on the wrong string). My ring finger needs to press down those three strings, but not the 6th string, correct? Yeah, my finger doesn't bend that way...
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May 20, 2012 22:58
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Every video I've seen (including justinguitar's) says to just let your third finger mute the high E since very few people can bend their finger enough to clear it. Personally I went with using my pinky, which I can bend enough, but that's me and people will probably shout at me about it. What kind of music do you like, how!!??? All those chords you mentioned are in the key of C major (or A minor), it's pretty unusual to find whole albums in the same key, but singer-songwriter stuff is often pretty simple and easy to hear. I mean I could recommend something like Neutral Milk Hotel, but it depends what you want to play. A lot of rock music can be fairly easy too, if you work out power chords - melodic punk music especially tends to be pretty straightforward. Probably the best thing is to learn barre chords (and power chords) so you're not trapped in one particular key, and then concentrate on listening like you already are, and it'll come together. Power chords are nice because they're based on the root note (like the A in Am) but they're neither major nor minor, so an A power chord (A5) goes with A major and A minor - basically it's missing the third, the note that really defines the major or minor colour. Once you have the roots or power chords for the song's progression, you can try turning them into full major or minor chords and seeing which of the two works in each case. And if you notice there's a little more to it than you have, then you can try adding some more tonal colours in there (like your 7th chords)
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May 20, 2012 23:10
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how!! posted:http://i.imgur.com/Reakw.jpg heres a crappy cellphone pic of me trying to do a B. (I know my finger is on the wrong string). My ring finger needs to press down those three strings, but not the 6th string, correct? Yeah, my finger doesn't bend that way... I'm not totally sure what you're going for there, but I think you have the strings backwards - you want to barre the entire 2nd fret with just your Here's what you need to do: http://www.justinguitar.com/en/IM-131-AShapeMajorBarreChords.php You also might want to watch this one which goes over barre technique in general: http://www.justinguitar.com/en/BC-161-F-chord.php baka kaba fucked around with this message at 23:25 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 23:16
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The picture is even more confusing. Your index should only be fretting the A string. ---x ---4 ---4 ---4 ---2 ---x
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May 20, 2012 23:18
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Here is the other shape I was talking about. I prefer this over the bar shape but anything higher than E and I have to switch because I can't cram my fingers between the frets anymore.
Salt Fish fucked around with this message at 23:28 on May 20, 2012 |
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May 20, 2012 23:26
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http://www.how-to-play-guitar.eu/guitar_chords/B_guitar_chord.htm That is the chord I'm trying to do. The only way I can get each string is to do it lik this: http://i.imgur.com/d9o0k.jpg but I can't do it with just one or two fingers. I can only get those three strings down if I use three fingers. Is this bad technique? I can do all other barre chords (F, Bm) without problems, but the B/Bb I can never get unless I stop to carefully place my fingers into the right place and strum it a few times to get it right.
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May 20, 2012 23:31
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It's going to be slow at first, and barres are especially difficult in the beginning - they require a lot more strength and dexterity than most chords, and at first your fingers are going to ha ve a lot of trouble quickly switching into that position and applying pressure in the right places. You'll get there but yeah, it is slow at first. Wacth that first video I linked, it goes over all of this and why the three-finger one is sometimes useful and when it isn't. He'll show you how to hold your hand and so on and I'm sure it'll help you out a lot and make things click
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May 20, 2012 23:45
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Gotta start with the basics! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IscDj_-Nr0s
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May 20, 2012 23:46
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baka kaba posted:Every video I've seen (including justinguitar's) says to just let your third finger mute the high E since very few people can bend their finger enough to clear it.
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May 21, 2012 02:21
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Is it a bad habit to anchor the pinky when doing tapping riffs? I tend to get much clearer and more defined notes when i anchor my pinky, but I feel like more complicated patterns will have me stumbling if I keep my pinky anchored.
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May 21, 2012 05:20
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anchoring is generally a bad habit, yes
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May 21, 2012 14:25
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How do I block a ZPS "edge zero" trem? It came with 2 stud locks that can be installed I think inside the action adjustment screws but the manual indicates that I should remove the "Tremelo unit" before doing that. Does this mean taking out all of the springs? Just the ZPS springs?
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May 21, 2012 22:51
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I've mostly been a rhythm player, as in I learn a song in every way than the guitar solo. My perspective on guitar solos is that they should be more loose and free and none should sound the same. Learning somebody else's solos is good for learning, but if its your own music, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Also, guitar solos intimidate me. Whenever I start I lose track of the rhythm altogether, or worse, the key. Especially when I know its being recorded. So to my great surprise, I had a ton of fun recording this for my Mother's day gift to my mom. I made some missteps, but I think overall it was a milestone for me in both recording and overcoming my shyness with laying down a melody over something that I wrote. 
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May 23, 2012 15:48
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Is anyone hip to Reverend guitars? I was originally thinking and LP Studio, but as I've done research on Reverends it looks like they make some really nice guitars; haven't met anyone who has played one first hand though and I don't have any dealers around here.
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May 23, 2012 18:14
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So, I'm trying to record some acoustic practice tracks through my laptop's mic and it keeps on alternating between sounding decent and sounding like someone's put it through a weird filter or holding a towel over the speakers or something. I know my first problem is recording with a laptop, but this is just for fun and to arrange things and I don't wanna waste any money. Can I fix this, or will I have to shell out some money for a more viable solution? e: Plugged in my electric acoustic through the mic line in and it's still doing this. Anyone got any idea of what it could be? Paulocaust fucked around with this message at 02:50 on May 26, 2012 |
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May 26, 2012 02:40
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