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I think the biggest obstacle here is your thumb. Maybe it's just the angle of the photo, but right here, it's basically lined up with your index finger, pointing towards the nut, and you're really having to fight against yourself to get the pinky down. Try moving your thumb so it's more in line with your middle and ring fingers and have your thumbnail pointing towards the ceiling; this should give you much more leverage.
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Mar 21, 2020 18:51
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former glory posted:I'm in the process of learning the 12 bar blues and I'm finding it really difficult to put my pinky down properly on the 6th. If I'm fingering the power chord like I usually do with my index and ring finger, the pinky stretch to the 6th causes it to bend inward like the photo here, and I get a bunch of buzzing and it's pretty uncomfortable. If I finger the power chord with my middle finger on the 5th, I can do it fine, but that's a pretty unnatural way for me to do a power chord and it would be a lot of work to practice getting that down smoothly. Did you guys run into any physical problems like this? How did you deal? That's pretty normal! When you're doing a wide stretch like that, your fingers have to fan out so they're gonna come in at an angle, especially the pinky. Moving your middle finger up to the 5th is just changing where the spread happens, so it's not as extreme So yeah, really you just need to work on your finger strength, so it can hold that position solidly instead of kinda collapsing in and sliding away from the fret. (Also helps avoid that even when you're not doing a wide stretch, where it doesn't need to be at an angle). You could try something like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zm_ho26O2U starts around 1:25, you're basically placing each finger down in turn (keeping them down), and moving up the strings and then back down. Then you do it again but with the first finger shifted down a fret (so you've created a 1-fret gap between that and the next finger), and then the same thing but with the pinky shifted out instead, etc. As the finger gets stronger it won't be a problem, and you're less likely to strain yourself Lester Shy posted:I think the biggest obstacle here is your thumb. Maybe it's just the angle of the photo, but right here, it's basically lined up with your index finger, pointing towards the nut, and you're really having to fight against yourself to get the pinky down. Try moving your thumb so it's more in line with your middle and ring fingers and have your thumbnail pointing towards the ceiling; this should give you much more leverage. yeah that too - the thumb kinda provides some stability and centres the hand, so you can move it more towards the middle of the hand so you're not stretching away from it as much. Like a centre of gravity thing
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Mar 21, 2020 18:55
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The third pic is just my hand is a slight claw grip showing how the special pinky bends.
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former glory posted:If I finger the power chord with my middle finger on the 5th, I can do it fine, but that's a pretty unnatural way for me to do a power chord and it would be a lot of work to practice getting that down smoothly. Did you guys run into any physical problems like this? How did you deal? yeah for doing that shuffle most people just use their middle finger for the 5th to make the stretch with the pinky easier. with practice it gets pretty easy to switch fingerings between the normal power chord form and that you can also play it as an inversion with the root on the string above the 5th at the same fret. billy gibbons does that a lot
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Mar 21, 2020 20:28
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During a global pandemic when you don't know if you'll be working from home or out of a job is absolutely the right time to buy a vintage guitar, right? RIGHT?
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Mar 21, 2020 21:31
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widefault posted:During a global pandemic when you don't know if you'll be working from home or out of a job is absolutely the right time to buy a vintage guitar, right? RIGHT? Here in Denmark where there's a lockdown, half the music groups on Facebook is musicians worried how to make it through this thing financially. What I'm saying is, in a week or two, you'll be able to get some good deals. Edit: it's also kind of a lovely thing to take advantage of, but on the other hand, they do need the money. BonHair fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Mar 21, 2020 |
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Mar 21, 2020 21:42
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Is the Digitech RP1000 a good deal for about 150 bucks? I love my old POD HD500, but I think having a backup for it so I don't have to haul a pedalboard full of stompboxes might be good (we are going to do recording sessions, not doing live shows for now, so no worries), and while I'm sure there might be good POD HD500X I can get for a good price, I never really messed with late 00's/early 10's Digitech stuff beyond the Drop Pedal and a Whammy that includes the drop (which made me realize how much I liked my Drop).
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Mar 21, 2020 21:49
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BonHair posted:Here in Denmark where there's a lockdown, half the music groups on Facebook is musicians worried how to make it through this thing financially. What I'm saying is, in a week or two, you'll be able to get some good deals. Nah, I already bought something, just trying to justify it to myself. Since January I've sold off a shitload of stuff, bought some pedals and cheap guitars and still had a nice chunk left over that was to go towards something really nice as a b-day present to myself. For the last couple weeks I was debating throwing it into savings "just in case", but finally said gently caress it. Now I get to wait and see how screwed I'll be for the next year.
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Mar 21, 2020 23:47
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Thanks so much, guys. I'll work on practicing it and will incorporate those stretches into my usual spider warmup routine. You're right Lester, it's not just the angle, my thumb does sit far back during the stretch. Speaking of Gibbons, I think I'll revisit this video - there's probably a lot more I'll take from it now. If that guy does the altered power chord fingering then I won't really feel bad if I have to resort to that. His Guitar Moves interview with Sweeney is awesome: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkzofCTa5SE e: I just tried the inversion method you mentioned, PCP, and it's nice. Really different. Going from a root 6th only shuffle and alternating the inversion on the next set has a nice feel to it. former glory fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Mar 22, 2020 |
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Mar 22, 2020 00:01
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What's the common philosophy for writing bass parts for guitar (or really any lead instrument) for rock/metal? I read some time ago that your best bet is to not be too opinionated with your bass lines, to avoid biasing the tune towards a specific feel. For example, stick to playing mostly "safe" notes (say... root, minor third, fifth) and letting the guitar for example, lean towards blues, harmonic minor, phrygian dominant and diminished scale phrasing. That way the bass doesn't lock you into a particular feel that now you have to stick to. Instead the bass (and I imagine pads too) gives you a bottom end to play against, but leaves it up to you as the guitarist to get creative. Otherwise if both instruments start getting into wacky scales and modes at the same time, you're guaranteed to constantly generate dissonances, and not the interesting kind. Of course it's not a "rule" and you can break it all you want, but I'm curious if that's a reasonable guideline to have early on in one's songwriting career?
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Mar 22, 2020 02:48
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The way I started writing for bass was literally just play the root of your chord, switch it up by doing some licks (like Root->5th->6th->2nd-> Dim 2nd-> back to Root for the next measure). Now that I've been playing extended range guitars, it's even funner. Spice your bass player's life up. 
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Mar 22, 2020 03:08
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My bass philosophy is "less is more." Unless you're writing a part that specifically features the bass or you want the bass in unison with another instrument, start with root notes in time with the kick and snare, and slowly add as much complexity as the song needs. John Myung is one of the best bass players alive and can get extremely flashy when he wants, but a lot of his best bass lines just groove on a root and an octave.
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Mar 22, 2020 03:20
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So far, as a bassist, I don't entirely disagree with what's been posted. Roots, fifths, and octaves are great and the bassist really should serve the song and allow others to shine. At the same time, that approach is likely to result in boring bass lines that do their job but not much else. I really don't think Paul McCartney wrote bass lines the way people are describing, is what I'm saying. Bass is its own instrument, not just a slave to the chord progression master. Don't write bass parts for songs, write a song that has a great bass part.
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Mar 22, 2020 05:20
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DreadCthulhu posted:What's the common philosophy for writing bass parts for guitar (or really any lead instrument) for rock/metal? Well it depends on what's going on with the guitars. Keep in mind I learned how to play bass from punk stuff like 88 fingers louie and Operation Ivy then focused hard on Iron Maiden stuff to balance it out. If the guitars are taking up the melodic parts or being the focus of that part of the song, the bass will just play the root or make a progression to let the guitars shine. The goal of the bass part here is to prop up the guitars as much as possible with doing the roots and some spicy stuff as needed. But if the guitars are doing something simple or kinda droning like a black metal part then I like the bass to take a little bit of the melodic space and do something fancy. If you got the chance to there's some real loving power if you can do two octaves below what the guitars are doing. I hosed around with this for a bit with the guitars playing in B minor (using inversions hinting at lower voiced chords) and using a five string bass. It's fun, give it a shot. I guess the point I want to make is that don't complicate things too much, take your own opinion into the equation on how to structure it. Depends really on what you're going for. A complicated bass line like in Maxwell Murder fits that song because the guitars are simple as hell and the bass will tag team with the vocals. But in every song on ...And Justice For All the bass could be there but isn't entirely necessary for the songs to be good.
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Mar 22, 2020 05:41
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DreadCthulhu posted:What's the common philosophy for writing bass parts for guitar (or really any lead instrument) for rock/metal? the ♭3 isn't a safe note at all if you play it over a major chord (the blues notwithstanding, blues harmony is different), and the ♮5 isn't a safe note over any sort of diminished chord. mirror the changes the guitar plays, but focus on the chord tones. if he's playing some goofy poo poo that doesn't correspond well to chord tones (ie you're experiencing what my bandmates do when i bust out the locrian ♭♭3 ♭♭7), play the root and anything with a leading tone from the scale so you can just power through with chromaticism.
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Mar 22, 2020 05:56
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Keith's best bit in his entire career with the stones is the bassline he wrote and recorded on sympathy for the devil. Which, incidentally, lands neatly on the third for the A major chord in the verse progression.
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Mar 22, 2020 05:56
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The important thing is to avoid everyone doing their own melodic thing. The easiest way to achieve this is to have everyone but one guitar do basic chord progression things, and then have that guitar do some melody. In punk, the bass will surprisingly often be doing the melody stuff instead of the guitar, but the principle is the same. The next step is to get two instruments doing coordinated melody, like harmonies, and so on with more instruments...
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Mar 22, 2020 10:01
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Preggo My Eggo! posted:So far, as a bassist, I don't entirely disagree with what's been posted. Roots, fifths, and octaves are great and the bassist really should serve the song and allow others to shine. At the same time, that approach is likely to result in boring bass lines that do their job but not much else. Mike Mills is a great example, I think, of a bassist who has such a good understanding of theory, etc that he can make these lovely wandering, super melodic basslines that hit all their marks. So many classic REM tracks are really like 70% him and Bill carrying the main mass of the song with Peter and Michael doing basically the same thing with guitar/voice. Like, you catch yourself humming parts of the song without remembering they’re from the bass track.
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Mar 22, 2020 10:25
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BonHair posted:The important thing is to avoid everyone doing their own melodic thing. worked for sabbath 
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Mar 22, 2020 11:17
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Yeah, even the drummer was playing melodically. Bill was such a loving beat back in the day. Think of it, The Who were basically doing the same thing.
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Mar 22, 2020 14:49
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My goal for quarantine is to play acoustic guitar less like a baboon. At the moment whenever someone puts one in my hands and looks at me like I’m going to play something I dunno what to do because most of my guitar playing is riffs on a distorted guitar. So I want to get better at playing acoustic as it’s own instrument rather than boring-undistorted-guitar. I learned Blackbird yesterday for example so I’m looking for recommendations of good fingerpicking songs to learn.
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Mar 22, 2020 15:29
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Ok Comboomer posted:Mike Mills is a great example, I think, of a bassist who has such a good understanding of theory, etc that he can make these lovely wandering, super melodic basslines that hit all their marks. So many classic REM tracks are really like 70% him and Bill carrying the main mass of the song with Peter and Michael doing basically the same thing with guitar/voice. Like, you catch yourself humming parts of the song without remembering they’re from the bass track. That's cool; I've never really given REM a shot. Thanks!
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Mar 22, 2020 16:08
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massive spider posted:My goal for quarantine is to play acoustic guitar less like a baboon. At the moment whenever someone puts one in my hands and looks at me like I’m going to play something I dunno what to do because most of my guitar playing is riffs on a distorted guitar. So I want to get better at playing acoustic as it’s own instrument rather than boring-undistorted-guitar. What difficulty level? I'm working on Big Love by Lindsey Buckingham which is doable if you have some experience and desire to grind it out a bar at a time. If you're a fairly new player GuitarNick's patreon has a ton of fingerpicking songs in both easy and "normal" mode that should suit someone who can play a bit but can't deal with the more advanced stuff yet.
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Mar 22, 2020 16:30
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If you can get your hands on Mel Bay's Complete Country Blues https://www.melbay.com/Products/94710M/complete-country-blues-guitar-book.aspx It's 100% finger picking songs from the Delta, Texas, ragtime era collected by one of the guys who made it a point to go interview/transcribe all those old traveling musicians before they died. Most of the videos are on Youtube now. This is the first song in the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06k657rggVs
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Mar 22, 2020 18:15
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gotta hand it to gibson they always find a way to be the bad guy in every situation https://twitter.com/MikeElk/status/1241744935910506499?s=19
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Mar 22, 2020 18:19
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massive spider posted:My goal for quarantine is to play acoustic guitar less like a baboon. At the moment whenever someone puts one in my hands and looks at me like I’m going to play something I dunno what to do because most of my guitar playing is riffs on a distorted guitar. So I want to get better at playing acoustic as it’s own instrument rather than boring-undistorted-guitar. Any of Kurt Vile's stuff, like Pretty Pimping, is really nice finger-picking guitar that is pretty popular right now.
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Mar 22, 2020 18:27
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Huxley posted:If you can get your hands on Mel Bay's Complete Country Blues this guy's cool also how is gibson still even a thing?
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Mar 22, 2020 18:40
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The Muppets On PCP posted:gotta hand it to gibson they always find a way to be the bad guy in every situation I hope the ghouls that undermine everyone's efforts to distance and slow this down aren't quickly forgotten after we repopulate this post-apocalyptic wasteland. I get the position they're in: a handful of people can realistically WFH in a guitar factory, they're post-bankruptcy with terrible cashflow, and I imagine most of those employees would rather risk it than go without pay. It sucks that by the time the first case pops, it'll be too late for the entire floor. e: typo
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Mar 22, 2020 18:55
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More like Gibsuck  My 2c as an actual bassist/songwriter: First, write the song. You should know what you need melodically and rhythmically then, assign the roles according to the songs needs. If that calls for a melodic bass or just hitting the root with the kick, fine. Don't be trapped into formulas, it's about songwriting not your pet instrument. The example of REM: everyone in that band wrote the songs, and it's not immediately obvious who, which is pretty rare, but that's why the songs are great, they're not someone's sole domain outside a good riff or rhythm. When McCartney shifted to piano as his main writing tool, he frequently added the basslines at the end of the process especially during the Sgt Peppers album. Sting liked that approach so much he made that his process for Police songs. I think these days there's a danger with the writing tools we have to write from the rhythm up, be aware of that and mix up your songwriting process if you find you're finding yourself in a corner with what to do with the bass.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:01
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The Muppets On PCP posted:gotta hand it to gibson they always find a way to be the bad guy in every situation Well, on the upside this might be the closest we'll get to a sick Gibson since the Explorer was released.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:49
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Is Epiphone just owned by Gibson or do they have the same management? I'd like to get an Epiphone SG someday but it seems like Gibson is passing the tipping point of a company you would ever want to support and I don't know how closely entwined they are
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Mar 22, 2020 19:49
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Wowporn posted:Is Epiphone just owned by Gibson or do they have the same management? I'd like to get an Epiphone SG someday but it seems like Gibson is passing the tipping point of a company you would ever want to support and I don't know how closely entwined they are I'm wondering this too, at this point I will never buy a Gibson that's not just an old thing on the used market, if that.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:51
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Wowporn posted:Is Epiphone just owned by Gibson or do they have the same management? I'd like to get an Epiphone SG someday but it seems like Gibson is passing the tipping point of a company you would ever want to support and I don't know how closely entwined they are Gibson do own Epiphone but they do have their own management. To be fair, they've obviously had a good look at the range and made changes, many for the better from an Epiphone owners perspective. The investment in Asian factories is not small, and the main Chinese Epiphone factory is turning out really great guitars for the price. I wouldn't turn down an Epiphone guitar just because of the Gibson association, they're better value in my book, and the company is a valuable asset that Gibson is more dependent on that it publicly admits.
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Mar 22, 2020 19:56
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Almost every Chinese/Indonesian guitar that you can get nowadays "New" for at least 250-300 or so is probably on par with what you would've gotten for a 600-900 range on a Korean guitar during the late 90's/all across the 00's. Sure, they might need some setup/recalibration and whatever upgrades you "need", but most of those guitars will do right by you. The first company that actually surprised me with their overall quality was when Hagström moved all their operations to China in like... 2006-2007 or so. They're sooo drat worth it!
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Mar 22, 2020 20:43
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The Epiphone ‘E’ on my Epi Emperor Swingster continues to fall off. Otherwise, a jewel of a guitar. That is all.
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Mar 22, 2020 20:51
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I got an Epiphone Emperor II a couple months ago that I've been having a great time with. And yes, the E on the pickguard fell off immediately.
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Mar 22, 2020 21:22
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former glory posted:Any of Kurt Vile's stuff, like Pretty Pimping, is really nice finger-picking guitar that is pretty popular right now. Love Kurt Vile, big influence
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Mar 22, 2020 22:21
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What are people’s thoughts on the micro terror siblings?
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Mar 23, 2020 20:07
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Ok Comboomer posted:What are people’s thoughts on the micro terror siblings? Okay, cool? Here we go (warning, shitloads of bias):
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Mar 23, 2020 21:11
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Wark Say posted:[list]
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Mar 24, 2020 01:55
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Apparently I am color blind...so can someone tell me what color the pickguard is on this new mocha burst ultra Stratocaster? https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/StratAUMMB--fender-american-ultra-stratocaster-mocha-burst-with-maple-fingerboard
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Mar 24, 2020 02:59
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