what should I be doing?
dunkman
Posts: 19,646
I've been playing nearly 2 years now and i'm reaching a kinda rut!!
I have a big list of songs that i play along to at night but I'm not that "good" (in so much as that I want to play them at gig level) at any of them... should I be concentrating on getting about 15-20 songs just to solely concentrate on till i nail them or should i continue playing snippets of other songs/riffs, the odd full song and just gradually get better until I can play them???
I mean I can play Long Road start to finish but the odd time I fluff a change, or I go to long on the D chord, etc....
should I construct this set-list as it were and get them songs down pretty good first before attempting newer stuff, etc!??!?!?
cheers,
Dunk
I have a big list of songs that i play along to at night but I'm not that "good" (in so much as that I want to play them at gig level) at any of them... should I be concentrating on getting about 15-20 songs just to solely concentrate on till i nail them or should i continue playing snippets of other songs/riffs, the odd full song and just gradually get better until I can play them???
I mean I can play Long Road start to finish but the odd time I fluff a change, or I go to long on the D chord, etc....
should I construct this set-list as it were and get them songs down pretty good first before attempting newer stuff, etc!??!?!?
cheers,
Dunk
oh scary... 40000 morbidly obese christians wearing fanny packs invading europe is probably the least scariest thing since I watched an edited version of The Care Bears movie in an extremely brightly lit cinema.
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"So if he uses no effect pedals live, and no Vox guitars live, then how does he get his distortion?? Well, it's actually a little bit purer approach. First of all, most of the time Ed plays his guitars using only the front (neck) pickup. This pickup typically has a thicker, muddier tone due to its position along the length of the string. And so with the positioning of that pickup, it's a little easier to "overdrive" your amp with your strumming/picking technique. Second, Ed sets his amp tone by first dialing in a loud, clean, full tone. (Clean being the important word there.) He adjusts his input gain right to the point where the "clean" tone is on the verge of distorting slightly. Once this is set, his sound (clean or dirty) is controlled purely with his hands, changing with the intensity he chooses to strum the strings with. If he picks more delicately, he can achieve a cleaner tone. If he picks harder and more aggressively, he can achieve a distorted tone. Cool, huh?
the bits in bold I don't quite get... the rest I do.
anyone care to explain the "dialing in" and adjusting "his input gain" to me...
Tube amps "break up" at a certain point....and give some great sounding distortion.
Ed plays on the clean channel on his amp. He turns up the gain (on the amp) to the point that it distorts when strumming normally and then backs it down just a little so it doesn't distort when he strums normally. But if he attacks the strings a bit harder the sound will break up, and distort.
I have been thinking about that recently.... I'm worried that he'll tell me I've been doing it all wrong and now i have to re-learn the last 2 years of practice
I'll look into it tomorrow actually... might be the push I need, plus I think the guy does one of those group lessons where a maximum of six people get taught at the same time and it's a shitload cheaper!!!
I very much doubt that a good teacher will say that. They all have a different approach though, and sometimes it takes a while to find one that you click with.
It doesn't have to be a formal teacher either, a friend or acquaintance can get you going in a new direction and buff up technique issues.
I am no expert musician or trained teacher, but I have learnt everything the hard way and was in a rut for a long time myself on acoustic, cos I was trying to play rock/electric stuff on it and actually out it down for about 5 yrs. Now I am so passionate about it, but still a lot like Happy Gilmour, hugely enthusiastic but not that great, so don't worry about that.
I often teach people though, and my lack of innate talent is actually an asset cos I have had to reduce everytihng to teh bare basics to learn it myself.
Do you play aoustic or electric ? If you get your hands on that JUnoir you want, that will kick you out of your rut. So will learning some Metallica. I use a bunch of songs there to teach people. Learn Fade to Black, Sanitarium, One, Orion, Nothing Else MAtters, MAma Said, Hero of the DAy, Bleeding Me, The Unforgiven, Sandman OF COURSE, and MOP for teh best trainingin dexterity. Thise chord changes won't give you grief after that !!!!
http://www.guitarprinciples.com/
old music: http://www.myspace.com/slowloader
Essentially, experiment with your amp until you find that 'sweet spot', that is, when you strum normally the tone should be clean, but strumming hard will sound distorted because you're driving the tubes harder.
Actually, my amp distorts at even the lowest volume on the clean channel if I play hard, but that's probably because I have really high output humbuckers.
what you play isn't nearly as important as how you play.
it's cool to learn songs, but it won't help you that much in the long run if you're just memorizing tabs and/or notation without understanding the logic behind it.
work on your chords and your scales. learn some music theory and how it relates to the fretboard (of course you may know theory already). this will make it easier and more meaningful when you want to learn songs. plus you'll be able to write your own songs. and even if they suck at first, that's ok. playing your own shitty songs is a lot more rewarding than playing somebody else's great ones. no comparison.
The VOX guitar bit is that he has one of those 60's Vox guitars which has an inbuilt distortion on it
he plays it on Single Video Theory i think?
Thanks evryone so far for hints and tips... i've sorted my amp so that it has the same(ish) tone as Ed was using! I have no pedals or effects and I've always just loved the simplicity of his tone.... especially on the LATG dvd! In My Tree just melts my ears!!!
so fine picking or light strumming gives a nice cleanish sound and then i get the break-up when i hit hard... took me some fine tuning last night but I've got something similar out of my small Vox amp :cool:
I'm investigating lessons today.. cost, times, etc.