Guitar thread

[Jeff Kelly]

Yeah, it's pretty silly when people start making up rules. There were comments in that vid like "tapping and hammer ons are just for fill-ins, not a whole song. This is just masturbatory!" I hate - hate in the truest sense of the word - anyone who talks like that. About any subject really. There's personal taste, and then there are rules you try to make for everybody. You should probably get punched for the latter. Hell, I'm pretty sure the guitar's history wouldn't exist if it wasn't for rule breaking. And rules might be the very thing holding other instruments back from being as popular.

Well I hope you agree however that a lot of guitarists do such stuff just for showing off. I once went to a Deep Purple concert where the guys actually played a 45 minute rendition of 'smoke on the water' including two guitar solos plus drum and keyboard solo. That was way beyond rulebreaking and clearly in the realm of 'look how awesome a guitarist I am'. There is a fine line between brealking rules and creating great music and just showing off your giant musician's ego on stage. Unfortunately too many guitarists today are on the wrong side of that line.

[stray]

Yeah.. like I said, I like hooks -- which is just another way to say emphasis on the song. I mean, I guess it's cool to masturbate if that's what your listeners want. Most listeners want something to bob and groove to though, I think. Or something to identify with clearly -- even if it's not overtly groovy stuff, you should be trying to identify and speak to listeners, right, touching their mood.. something? I think it's the funniest when some people play the blues, for example, and aren't actually showing any bluesiness at all! They're showing that they're pretty damn pleased with themselves. Heh. Like the whole idea of what the blues is about is a joke to them. "My Baby left me.. blah blah blah" <insert sterile guitar solo here>

But, Son House was not a fucking joke, no matter how much better you play than him.

[sigil]

Chapman stick, Warr guitar, look at trey gunn and Tony levin for some fascinating interplay. but that goes more into newer crimson, which isn't everyones bag.


Greg Howard does some nice stick work as well.

I play, but merely for myself, although I had a huge leap after ten years in a rut and it's made me think more about collaborating with others.

I will own a stick one day. and I will grove to my own beat, probably in the basement in headphones.

[Amarr HM]

Yeh Brozman is a bit "egg-heady" watching him live is quite enjoyable though, he swaps instruments from sitar to weissenborns, to ukelele and plays  numerous musical styles cajun hawaiin indian/blues so I really enjoyed the show from the eclectic mix and the historical value. I got some of his blues-Dvds, but I learned more really from sitting on a beach jamming with an awesome street busker (it kinda helped that I was totally baked on cookies at the time too).

[Righ]

Tony levin

Here is a photo I took of him playing his stick with Liquid Tension Experiment at NEARfest last year:

[sigil]

I envy you, it's been twenty years since I've seen him live

[Righ]

King Crimson were even better, but Robert Fripp didn't want us to bring cameras to that one.

[sigil]

Fripp's disdain of cameras is legendary.

[Sky]

Trying to bust this rut, I decided to start working on this book, from one of my favorite bands. Great stuff, and I highly recommend it if you dig traditional music. Worth it for the CD alone!

The book is notation of the main melody and some chord names, so there's a lot of room to interpret. Sometimes the chords seem off, not sure if that's the instrumentation or if they're just not showing inversions and extensions and whatnot. I'm putting the notation into tab, which is a good exercise in reading. Hopefully I can get a few good numbers workable and then sit in with the band this summer :)

[sidereal]

Random fact:  Trey Gunn's (step-?)kid goes to school with my kid.  Also Dave Matthews' twins.  We run into each other frequently at bake sales and what not.  Trey's Warr guitar is some fucked up shit.  I don't have the heart to tell him I hate prog rock.

[sigil]

I wouldn't have the heart to tell him that Tony will always be better than him at stick.

However, cool to know.

[stray]

To get off the subject of geniuses, but to stick with gypsies, this guy rocks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjRKsoMM2QI

All of them rock actually, but the second guy, I mean. His name is Titi Demeter. Seems to play a little slower than most of these type of guitarists, but he sounds better (imo).

I've been obsessed with this song lately. It's called Bossa Dorado. Kind of new chords for me... Especially the F#m Diminished.. thing. Easy phrases to learn, but not so easy to wrap my head around and improvise. But it's a nice step into gypsy/rumba type of rhythms.

This guy points out the chords:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqO1MWT5fSo

[Nebu]

Very cool tune.  The first guy playing leads makes me think I should sell all my guitars and just give up on the instrument.  His dexterity is amazing.

[stray]

The second suit guy, like I said above, is what I wish I sounded like. As for dexterity, this guy Joscho Stephan is crazy on this song. I still like it a little smoother though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_jzSv7G6vQ

[Sky]

Cool DTB contest.

[sigil]

I recieved a Baby Taylor as  a prize in a drawing.

Wow.

for such a small guitar, just wow.

I'd never experienced a piece of equipment elevating my playing, but I was putting out stuff I'd never been able to express outside of my head. additionally my repitoire of covers just about tripled as  stuff from twenty years ago came to me and I was able to put chords and rhythm together in way's I'd never seen.


So, although I can't swing anything else now, I know this won't be the end.

I prefer a smaller fretboard. the spacing on the baby felt perfect to me. am I stuck playing overgrown uke's for my best performances?

[stray]

Well, a lot of Martin's have a similarly skinny neck, but are full size bodies. Might want to check some out. Look for any model @ 1 11/16.

[Sky]

Taylors are amazing guitars, I love my Baby. She does need some setup, though, too long in a non-temp controlled closet is starting to mess with the intonation. I have the mahogany one and it's the most mellifluous sounding instrument I've heard. I have a sitka spruce-top Alvarez jumbo that is nowhere near as loud or rich, despite costing almost twice as much as the Baby.

[stray]

I can barely do what I want on my guitar, it's too small, yet it's still wider than a baby.

I'm saving up for something big, like 1.8". Something that plays like my classical, but isn't a classical. I feel the opposite - that I can pull off better stuff the wider the spacing is. I'm just torn between finding a fingerstyle steel string, or getting some gypsy guitar. Both would be wide, but both are totally different niches.

[Raph]

I need to bring my Baby back to the office so she gets played... I know exactly what you mean about it elevating your playing though... it opened up new tonal atreas for me that I was then able to take back to the other guitars.

Maybe you should try parlor fingerstyle guitars?

[sigil]

I need to bring my Baby back to the office so she gets played... I know exactly what you mean about it elevating your playing though... it opened up new tonal atreas for me that I was then able to take back to the other guitars.

Maybe you should try parlor fingerstyle guitars?

That's exactly it. It was like a door was opened.

I'll  definitely look at the recommendation

[Raph]

As promised ages and ages ago, here's some stuff using the Digitech Vocalist Live 4 pedal. Basically, this thing lets you do up to 4 part harmonies that track the guitar chords. You can choose from 50 presets, or make up your own.  Here's an MP3 file with three songs I have written recently -- I posted the lyrics to one a couple of pages back. In these, I stuck to a few presets.

All of these are basically quick live renditions, so forgive the over-reverb and stuff -- not worked up AT ALL.

http://www.raphkoster.com/music/harmonysampler.mp3

1st tune, "Woodson Song," is in a crazy tuning -- capo on second fret, partial 3-4-5 at fret 6. Preset is "Bass Altos" I think. I played the song too fast, alas.

2nd tune, "It's The Way," some present called "Alt Harmony" -- basically, uses inversions on the harmony parts I think. Yah, there's a bad bass part there too, please ignore. I tried doing main vocal and harmony guide vocal separate here, didn't work as well. This one is also in a crazy partial capo tuning, just slightly less crazy than the last one.

3rd tune, "Two Bodies," just a female duet voice. And the guitar is too loud, sorry -- it ought to sound spare and empty and instead it's jangly. And yes, another crazy partial capo tuning. ;) On this one, I play behind the partial capo for some of it...

So there you go, that's what it can do. It is taking a bit to master it -- I don't usually play with pedals for punching in and out; expression, sure, but remembering to punch in and not miss the one pedal out of four is something I keep messing up. And getting the mix right is tricky. But it's definitely adding something.

Feedback on the tunes welcome too. ;)

[Arnold]

Taylors are amazing guitars, I love my Baby. She does need some setup, though, too long in a non-temp controlled closet is starting to mess with the intonation. I have the mahogany one and it's the most mellifluous sounding instrument I've heard. I have a sitka spruce-top Alvarez jumbo that is nowhere near as loud or rich, despite costing almost twice as much as the Baby.

Baby's a killer guitars!  I have a full-sized Taylor (420B), which I love and is the far superior guitar, but the Baby Taylor is so much guitar for such a small price tag.

I heard great things about them and went to buy one when I was traveling a lot for work.  I looked at them and thought, "What a bunch of GARBAGE!!!"  They just looked so damn cheap and cheesy.  Then I started playing them and it was a revelation.  They are tiny, but sound bigger than just about any student-level, and full-sized guitar I've heard.  Plus they play easy, like an electric.

While nothing close to the problems presented by, say a Martin Backpacker, they do have intonation issues.  But for the size, sound, price, and surprising durability for something that looks so cheap, they are killer guitars.

[Sky]

Dunno Raph, the bass alto sounds good but the others sound like an effect more than additional voices, at least to my ears. I know what you're saying about pedals, too. I hate just about anything that distracts my fragile mind, part of why I can't sing and play anything complex.

[Raph]

Dunno Raph, the bass alto sounds good but the others sound like an effect more than additional voices, at least to my ears. I know what you're saying about pedals, too. I hate just about anything that distracts my fragile mind, part of why I can't sing and play anything complex.

Well, it IS an effects pedal. :)

I've done a fair amount of emulating backing vocals via pitch shifters and effects, and the big thing here is just how easy it is. No fiddly trying to match the pitch shift note by note. It follows the chords for you. In the first example, there's four chords per line for the chorus. Same in the last example. But the harmony effect doesn't sound out of tune unless I am singing flat. ;)

[Sky]

Hmm. Guess what I found out this evening? The AC outlet in the back of my FJ has enough juice to power my guitar amp.

 

[Arnold]

BTW, I saw you guys were talking about Chapman Sticks.  I have owned one for years and aside from messing with it for a few days, have never touched the thing.  If someone is interested in buying one, PM me. 

I'm the third owner of this one.  The first guy was a professional musician who used it regularly.  The second owner was just like me - a guitar player who thought it would be cool, but just never used it and played his guitars. 

[Sky]

If I had any money in my budget for non-guitar stringed instruments, it'd be a charango and a viola de gamba.

[stray]

Open G is an oddly good cockrock tuning. Who woulda thought? Does anyone here know a lot of Mick Mars stuff? Some of the riffs I'm coming up with sound kind of Crue-ish. Either way, he's a pretty tasteful guitarist. Fuck it, no shame in admitting it. 

[Grimwell]

No shame at all. He's better than their music (and I'm a Crue fan). I caught them live a few years back, for the first time ever, and he was pretty mean to his guitars. He does not touch things lightly, to say the least. It was fun to watch someone hang the entire guitar by the tremolo bar and let it bend some strings for effect.

Plus, he nailed the songs. Age and time didn't cause him to try to reinterpret the songs as something else. He knew what most of the drunk folks wanted, and ripped the old stuff right up. I'd kinda like to see him do a solo album with the focus on guitar and not three minute songs. Just to see what he would put out there. I think he's better than the bands reputation. :)

[Raph]

Yesterday was the first time I have gotten to touch the strings in weeks. Trolled the Net for new material to noddle with, figured out the basics of Chris Whitley's "Phone Call from Leavenworth" (standard tuning, picked, not slide, though I want to tackle that at some point) and "Big SKy Country"... then got Chuck Brodsky's "Bill & Annie" off the recording.

[Famine]

Open G is an oddly good cockrock tuning. Who woulda thought?

I use to love playing in Open G when I was in the 'metalcore' listening phase for some very odd reason. I couldn't deal with it in the end. Now I just stick to Drop D or standard. 

Taylors are amazing guitars, I love my Baby. She does need some setup, though, too long in a non-temp controlled closet is starting to mess with the intonation. I have the mahogany one and it's the most mellifluous sounding instrument I've heard. I have a sitka spruce-top Alvarez jumbo that is nowhere near as loud or rich, despite costing almost twice as much as the Baby.

Taylors are nice but I'm stuck on Martins myself. However, I haven't bought a new one in a very long time. I use to play live and when it came down to it, you never play a expensive ear-blowing guitar at a gig for risk of damage or being stolen. So I always stick to my bang-for-the-buck Fender.

[Nebu]

I thought the standard tuning for metal was standard Eb.  Van Halen, G&R, etc.  Thrash is what loves the drop D.

[Famine]

I thought the standard tuning for metal was standard Eb.  Van Halen, G&R, etc.  Thrash is what loves the drop D.

Depends on what you consider metal. Lot of kids today just consider metal tuning as D and C. Then you have the 7-String tunings like B and A. I've also seen some sick 8 string playing but no clue what tunings they are using. Mostly, there is a lot of blues/jazz being mixed up in todays metalcore/hardcore scenes that I've seen where people are going beyond dropped tuning to spice it up with some sick jazz or blues tunes.

[Nebu]

99% of players I've seen on a 7 string still haven't mastered a 6 string... same could be said for people playing 5 and 6 string basses.  Call me a purist, but I prefer music player with the classic rock instruments.  I hate synthesizers and drum machines too and don't even get me started on the overuse of vocal enhancers and harmonizers.