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I'm going to make a foray into the world of electric guitar soon. I've had an acoustic for a few years now, and I'm not particularly good because I don't practice like I should, but that's another topic entirely. I'm looking to get a guitar of reasonable quality (maybe $200-$500), and I want to play blues. My only other requirement is that I want to be able to make the nastiest, crunchiest, most distorted sound possible (ok, maybe not indecipherable, but you get the point, I love the crunch). Recommendations are greatly appreciated as well as just any insight into what I should be looking for.
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Aug 30, 2010 05:44
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Walked posted:Pretty standard fare around here. This sounds ridiculously underpriced to me. My piano lessons when I was younger was $100 for 45 minutes. Granted, I had a brilliant teacher, and it was classical which tends to require more "official" qualifications (pieces of papers from expensive institutions etc.). Regardless, it's what you derive from the lesson. If it takes $100/hr to get an instructor worth your money, so be it. If you can get a lesson that makes you a better musician for $25, even better. I personally tend not to look at the absolute cost when it comes to activities that greatly enrich my life, but rather the relative cost. If you feel a teacher isn't worth $26 an hour, that's cool too, but as an example you don't get to watch movies at a theater for $5 just because you think $10's a rip off.
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Aug 30, 2010 23:48
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Picking up an Epiphone Standard Plus after work for $325 from some guy.  Probably just gonna grab a cheap-o Practice amp in the $80 range until I can afford a better amp and a distortion pedal, unless somebody knows a decent pedal to hold me over in the $20-$30 range.
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Aug 31, 2010 23:31
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Side Effects posted:A sub-$100 amp should be a crime to sell. You will be outgrowing that amp before you can even play your first chord. I am completely serious. Seeing how I can already play guitar (lovely, but I can play), this makes me concerned. The best news is I got a huge raise today and went from independent contractor to salaried, so I'm going to treat myself to a ~$150 amp and worry about the pedal later.
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Sep 1, 2010 02:22
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Side Effects posted:Sub-$100 aren't bad if the person buying it is an absolute beginner or likes to tell people they play guitar while smugly strumming an E chord every couple of years. I picked up the Standard Plus last night, which is in retarded amazing condition for its price (the guy wasn't lying when he said he only played it a few times) and I got a Vox DA20, which Guitar Center was selling the floor model of for $30 off for $120 total. Oh man, I don't know why I didn't start playing electric sooner.
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Sep 1, 2010 14:39
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Walked posted:Gauging progress here. Can anyone give me a feel how I'm doing? You're doing amazingly well for 2 weeks. I will say that strumming is the most underrated part of guitar in terms of difficulty, but it's not really something that you can just learn a new technique to help you do better with. It's about playing the guitar more and more and getting comfortable with it. When I first started playing I noticed that every so often something would just "click" for me with strumming, and one day I'd be noticeably better than the day before. I came from playing Violin and Piano, both classically, and strumming came off to me as a very unnatural way to produce sound. As time has gone on I've gotten more comfortable with the instrument, and I don't have many issues strumming anymore. Granted, I'm not as good as I should be, because I don't practice, but I'm starting lessons soon! The only piece of advice I can give you is don't be afraid to strum open strings in between chord changes. For example, if you listen to Karma Police, towards the end of the intro, after the B flat minor a D major is played before going back to A minor for the first verse. In between the D to Am chord change, he strums the open bottom 3 strings. You'll never find these notes written down on any tab/chord list (not sure about the actual sheet music because I've never seen it) as it's one of the cooler parts of the instrument that you have notes you can play to create a continuity of sound in between the actual chords.
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Sep 2, 2010 20:19
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I have a tune-o-matic bridge on my new Les Paul, and the action is way too high (we're talking the bridge cannot go any higher) because the guy I bought it from played acoustic and obviously wanted the action more like an acoustic. I want to lower it, but since I'll probably wind up lowering it a significant amount I'm afraid it's going to throw off the intonation. Since the adjustment screws are under the strings facing the pickups and neck, it's not really easy to adjust while the whole thing is strung. Is there a trick or a tool that will help me with this whole process, or is this going to be something I have to sink an hour or so into and do it right?
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Sep 3, 2010 23:45
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Hey, can somebody please give me (including key) important scales I should know that are not used as frequently as say pentatonic or major/minor scales? You don't need to provide tabs/notes, as I have a book. I decided I'm not going to get a teacher yet, because even though I can easily afford it there's so much I can teach myself still, and I don't really want to spend the money when I should be saving it. People were talking about Modern Method for Guitar earlier and I was thinking about buying it awhile back. I can read music already, but it takes me a long time to figure out notes on guitar because I'm lazy about memorizing note locations (I play by ear most of the time like a jerk). I'm pretty sure most of the way I play guitar is wrong too, such as hand position and how I finger notes, will the book help with that too or am I going to need to get a complimentary resource?
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Sep 11, 2010 20:27
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chordate posted:Is there a relative consensus on how to advance through the ranks of guitar playin? Learn your basic chords. There are some very basic shapes you will see over and over again like G major, C major, D major, and D minor. A minor, A major, and E major are technically barred chords, but the open strings take the place of the index finger holding down an entire fret. E minor is kind of a power chord, really just a fifth chord, but nobody calls them that on guitar. It's the easiest way to get satisfying results on guitar because you'll be able to play a ton of popular songs just knowing basic chords. Always, always, always practiced your barred chords. They are a major pain in the rear end, and it will hurt to play them, but you aren't going to get magically good at playing them. Sound out each string one at a time when you're learning chords and don't let yourself move to the next chord until you can make it sound pefect. No trust me, I used to practice like poo poo. Take your time and it wont be painful later trying to retrain yourself out of dumb habits. edit: CalvinDooglas posted:beyond those diatonic scales, they are all derived from the chords in a song. You could learn your melodic and harmonic minors, but those aren't of much use outside of certain musical contexts that, really, you don't see a whole lot in guitar rock music. I'm at a point where I need to just get a ton of repetition in. I'm too busy always dicking around instead of just doing some good practice for 30 minutes before I dick around. Time to go hammer out some scales with my arch-nemesis, the metronome. Your incessant ticking makes me want to strangle babies. TheGopher fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Sep 11, 2010 |
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Sep 11, 2010 22:12
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baka kaba posted:I think he means the part you fret is like a power chord, if you ignore the top three strings - kind of a confusing thing to say! Didn't really mean it to be confusing, since I tried to put in the context of chord shapes.
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Sep 11, 2010 23:33
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Porn Thread posted:Learn to make the metronome your friend. Yeah I'm getting the point where keeping time is completely natural, and being able to play by ear affords me a lot of flexibility, but in terms of communicating with other musicians, you gotta learn the language, you know?
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Sep 12, 2010 05:09
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So I was having a brilliant time today playing. Probably have sunk in about 4 hours today alone and since I just got an electric I've been messing around with teh sound. Been messing around with harmonics and creating a lot of noise without it sounding bad. After playing relatively aggressively all of a sudden the guitar cuts out. Amp is definitely working because I can hear the feedback plugging the cable in. I toggle the pickups and figure out the neck pickup (Rythym according to the toggle) just crapped out. I switch to the treble pickup and keep going for another 10 minutes before I decided to just record whatever came out when I was playing: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/9777320/FUCKINGPICKUP.wav (it's only 500kb before anybody freaks, and ya the beginning is pretty terrible but whatever fu guys.) Yeah, the other one failed and you hear it just...go. So here's the thing, I bought this guitar used from a guy, and it looked like it was in really good condition, has been playing brilliantly but there is one caveat. The top guitar strap button wasn't actually screwed it. The hole it was drilled into is completely stripped and it's something I'm going to need to sink a lot of time into fixing/pay somebody else to fix. The fact the neck pickup went out first makes me think the guy dropped the guitar at some point and obviously didn't tell me. What should I be doing to diagnose the issue, if anything? I kind of want to gently caress around with this guitar if possible, seeing how this will probably be the cheapest electric I'll own, so I might as well take the opportunity to learn from it without making a ridiculously expensive error.
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Sep 12, 2010 08:41
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Gorilla Salsa posted:The strap issue can literally be fixed with a toothpick. Just slide a toothpick in to the strap hole and screw in the strap pin in as normal. Pickups are easy to replace, and they probably don't need replacement anyway. (Can pickups really break? They don't have moving parts or anything... gently caress if I know. All I do is smash a pick against the side of the strings and I make horrible sounds. I will try the toothpick however, because that's an amazingly simple fix. Side Effects posted:It's probably just a bad connection. Check to see if any of the wires from the pickup and the toggle switch are broken or have become unsoldered, then it's just a simple case of resoldering the connection. Will do, would never have guessed the toggle switch could be the issue rather than the pickups themselves.
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Sep 12, 2010 17:03
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I unscrewed the cover to the toggle switch on my guitar last night and I don't think there are any loose or bad connections. I can't be sure because it's in such a tiny compartment I cant see much. I kind of want to replace it myself, because I can't really bear parting with my guitar at the moment for a few days, but I don't think I'm going to last very long with only being able to use the treble pickup. Then again, it'll be a lot of work becaues I haven't done any work to an electric beyond lowering the bridge. If I do need to take it in somewhere, I want to kill a couple of birds with one stone, and though I still am going to try the toothpick suggestion for the stripped strap hole, I'll probably see if they can repair it the "right" way. I'm not really sure what else I'd want somebody to check out, but I don't want to have to bring it back in for repairs any time soon. The only other complaint I have with my guitar is that I don't get much of a resonate sound out of it. Granted, you don't need much of a resonance when you're using a fair amount of distortion, but when I want to use just a little bit to add some crunch for a bluesy sound, my notes sound so... dull. Chords sound great, but the low-pitch individual notes have no real depth to them. The high pitch notes I can supplement with harmonics to add that wailing effect and make it much more interesting, but like I said, the low notes are so ugh. I have no idea how to get the sound I'm looking for, and maybe I need a pedal, strings, different pickups, a better amp, or better speakers.
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Sep 13, 2010 21:43
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chordate posted:Practice. Your hands do NOT want to be playing guitar My hands are big (Esc - F11) and I have wide fingers. I thought for the longest time I would never be able to play a barre chord properly. I can play barre chords. Keep practicing.
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Oct 2, 2010 05:46
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So after a few months of dicking around with my Epiphone Standard Plus and a Vox amp (VT-20? I think) I've discovered a couple things: I need pedals. I'm definitely getting a Digitech Whammy WH-4 pedal for Christmas (hurray for musician father!) but I'm looking for something more in terms of distortion. My Vox amp does distortion pretty well, and it has some cool effects but there's no real middle ground on it between Super Clean/Clean with a slight electric sound and a very metal sounding overdrive. Basically, I'm looking for something that sounds like the guitar on Thickfreakness by The Black Keys - distinctly blues-like, but with a solid rock distortion. I know there's a ton of personal preference involved, but I'm curious if anybody knows what I'm talking about and has some insight. How the gently caress do I make noises like Jack White can? Jesus christ the guy turns the guitar into a noise machine just as well as Tom Morello, only I can understand how Morello can make some of the sounds through feedback, clever toggle switch usage etc. It just seems like Jack White stands there and doesn't do anything obvious but can make the guitar shriek and wail like he's taking a hammer to it. Please somebody enlighten me because it's a loving mystery to me.
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Dec 4, 2010 02:35
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Zakalwe posted:Dan Auerbach uses a Maestro MFZ-1 fuzz box Thank you! This reminded me I was really interested in getting a Big Muff Pi awhile back, and I had totally forgotten until now. Actually heading out to pick one up right now I think.
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Dec 4, 2010 05:21
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