So, I’m going Full Retard on the music thing. I’m picking up an APC 40 on Friday to start my foray into a mix of Dance / Electronica and rock guitar. A heavy blues based dubstep might be interesting. What I’m aiming for is a mix of Joe Satriani (without the skill) and electronica. The thing is, I want to make sure I’m doing more than just catchy loops, I want to use my music theory that I’m learning along with my guitar work to really make good music. Might not be some people’s style, but I...

The Mrs. has taken the youngest to Sea World today for a Girl Scout trip. The eldest is having her best friend over, which means an entire day of them sitting in her room, reading books together. That means I actually will have some free time which (sorry to the people waiting on work to get done) I am going to use to compose some music. Here’s where the magic happens I use FL Studio as my DAW, an Axiom 61 for the keyboard MIDI trigger, a Zoom G3 pedal for my Paul Reed Smith, and it all gets...

When you combine 3 months of guitar lessons with FL Studio and a bit of trance? This (For those browsers that cannot see that widget, this is a direct link) It’s not much, just a :45 second little ditty that I managed to put together last night, but one I’m actually quite proud of and plan on working on this as a full song. The backing ‘trance pluck’ is quite complex and I used Cthulhu to assist in the progression and originally I couldn’t ‘hear’ a guitar part for it as the song sounded too...

So, part of learning the guitar is recording some background music then soloing over it. The nice thing about my Zoom G3 guitar effects pedal is that it has USB output which my PC can consume like a champ. So I just purchased FL Studio and am picking up a MIDI keyboard tonight after work to assist with the background tracks. This is something I’ve wanted to do for years now. I’ve always wanted to combine rock with techno, and I’ve always wanted to learn how to mix music. So I’m taking the fact...

But last night’s lesson showed me that unlearning my habits is going to be the kicker. One, I rest my palm on the bridge when I play rather than using my pinky to support my hand when needed. This limits my motion (and thus has had an impact on my accuracy). When I need to palm mute, that’s an appropriate time to do so, but not when I’m trying to play solos. Two, when picking it was noticed that I would change my up / down cadence every time I switched strings. For example, this pattern...

So, I’ve kind of hit a plateau in my guitar playing. I’ve been practicing with a local church band and while I can strum chords just fine, I’ve realized I’m missing… something. What that something is, I can’t put my finger on it, pun totally intended, and the DVD set I have can’t reach out from the screen and tell me that I’m holding my hands wrong or I’m grabbing too hard or whatever. So, I’m starting actual lessons this Thursday. This guy comes highly recommended and I’m hoping he’ll be able...

I’ve been horrifically busy lately, so I’ve only been able to grab a few minutes a night to pluck on the guitar, however last night something very interesting happened. I was just doing some pentatonic scales when suddenly my left hand decided to make the fretboard its bitch. My fingers just flew through the patterns, hitting each fret at lightning speed. I can’t say the same thing for my right (picking) hand. For some reason, I couldn’t seem to pick the right string at the right time to save...

Someone put this on my Facebook page. I chuckled  

In my previous post, I spoke of “rust” and how it pertains to not practicing shooting. Turns out, the same thing happens if you don’t practice your guitar. Now that I have the Paul Reed Smith, I realized that I had gotten away from the boring, repetitive practice of doing the 1st position, pentatonic scale all the way up and down the fret board, moving only as fast as I could without making a single mistake, which is now like 8 bpm. Go figure. Another parallel with guns is that the minute...

This is where I’d like to be in my guitar playing That’s a sound I really, really like and the style is one I’d love to be able to emulate. Skilled, tightly controlled, but not “shredding”. I prefer melody over “wow, he can play fast”. There’s sheet music for this song online so eventually when I think I’m ready, I’ll download it and start picking it apart.

Last night iMac and I sat down for a guitar lesson. Sadly, I had been slacking in this arena so now I’ve started scheduling lessons rather than just thinking we’d get to them when we had time. iMac is a tiny thing, hence why we had to buy her a half sized guitar and even that is a bit big for her. I also started her off with an electric because she doesn’t have enough finger strength to even get the low action of a electric right most of the time. Anyway, last night she managed to learn Mary...

The Paul Reed Smith SE245 Oh LORD the sound this thing has. I’ve been missing out for years.

Just got back from a grueling day of guitar shopping. One thing about guitar shopping is that the salesmen don’t tend to be dicks (they just happen to be very busy). I was able to discuss my desires and found the types of gear I was looking for quickly. First and foremost, there will be no Stratocaster or Telecaster in my future. I simply do not like the feel of them. I tried many types, including the $1500+ models to see if maybe the American made, high end babies were better suited, and… no....

Yesterday I mentioned this site to a coworker who is a musician. I saw that they had one of my favorite songs, Sultans of Swing, dissected down into just the guitar & vocal parts, and one of the things that’s slowed me down a bit in my re-learning of the gitfiddle is that, well, pentatonic scales and picking patterns tend to get a bit boring. So I thought, what the hell, and started figuring out how to play some Knopfler. The more I dig into that song, the more I respect that guy as a...

iMac’s birthday is today. She’s now 7, which means I must have blinked because I swear I remember changing diapers last week. She’s still a tiny thing, unlike her sister who’s generally the tallest kid in her class. Irelyn had been asking, every time I pulled out my guitar to practice, for me to give her a lesson. She instantly remembered the names of the strings (EADGBE) and even started understanding a few chords, but the problem was my full size guitar was too large for her to wrap her arms...

Looking at prices on Gibson guitars. $10,000+ for a Les Paul? Seriously? Does Les come back from the grave, give you lessons, and a happy ending before heading back to Valhalla?

This weekend I was able to relax a little. I did so by starting my guitar lesson on pentatonic scales. At first, I thought I had found Jesus, but that was because I was looking at the Pentecostal scales by accident (don’t even ask what happened after playing a few ginandtonic scales). I was a fool when I was a kid. No wonder I never progressed to anything besides a mediocre rhythm player, I never learned some of the basics behind playing guitar. I keep learning things like “Oh, a Major C scale...

I was watching some videos yesterday on YouTube with Joe Satriani handing out tips on how to be a great guitar player. Watching his fingers move was almost like watching water wind its way around an object. There was no superfluous movement, at no point did he lift a finger any further off the fretboard than absolutely necessary, and each and every note he hit was perfect. The same thing can be said about the top shooters. Watch them move. Everything from the draw to the trigger break to their...

Practicing is going well, however I’ve run into a small snag. I’m burning through the lessons faster than I need to. Not only am I following the DVDs, but I’m reading as much information as I can online. A friend pointed me to the Circle of Fifths, which after learning, the next two lessons seemed almost a waste of time. It’s not burned into my memory so that I can recall the key signature without thought, but it’s getting there. For some reason, anything that has to do with B throws be for...

I just learned the Circle of Fifths. Why I was never taught this in band in middle and high school is a crime.

I’m burning through my Learn & Master Guitar course. Not because I’m a musical jeenyus or anything, but because much of the beginning lessons involve items that, while I might not have known the names of, were items I knew in my previous playing life. Where I was totally a noob is in the “read music” department. Before I started this class, I couldn’t have pointed out where a C was on a guitar. Looking at the staff was even tricky for most notes, but after a few weeks of practice, not only...

Found my effects system for my guitar. Picked up one of these last night, a Zoom G3 All I was looking for was something that had chorus, delay, reverb, and some distortions as well as a headphone jack. This puppy has like 100 different ‘pedals’ plus amp simulations plus looping plus a built in tuner plus a simple drum machine for a metronome. Much more than I was looking for, but it seems technology has infiltrated the music industry the same way it has practically every other facet of our...

The guitar lessons are coming along fine. I’m in the chords section and most of those I already know from the old days. The fingerings shown for some of them are different than I’m used to, so I’m using those instead of the ones I know mostly so that I don’t fall into familiar habits. I’m pretty good on all first position notes and my time from seeing the note to playing it continues to decrease. I’m not quite able to read forward, but I’m getting there. However (and this is where you, my dear...

Part of the whole ‘picking back up the guitar’ thing I’m doing is ensuring I can sight read music. I learned how to read music when I played saxophone in school, but never figured it out for guitar. This means a lot of Mary Had a Little Lamb and Minuets in {Some Key} as I train my fingers to hit the right frets when I see the dot on the line / space. Dropping below the staff gives me a bit of a pause. Granted I’ve only been doing it a few days, for some reason I still have to ‘count’ the lines...

I’m chatting with a coworker who’s in a band, talking about how stoked I was that I mastered the notes B, C, D, E, F, & G last night and could totally rock Ode to Joy. Me: Of course, last night I'm looking up effects processors and, watching the videos of guys who have been playing for centuries rip up the fret board, I almost felt like quitting... Coworker: keeps you humble.  yngwie malmsteen Me: Not because I didn't think I'd ever be able to play like that mind you,...

Got my Learn & Master Guitar course today. As much as I would have loved to just skipped to the 4th chapter and started jamming, I wanted to do it right and started with the “This silver bar here is called the fret” and “From top to bottom, the strings are EBGDAE”. And while I was able to do the super simple exercises without issue, I’m not skipping ahead. There’s bound to be something I never thought of or taught myself incorrectly. I don’t think I’ll need to practice this stuff for a...

Back in high school and the early 90’s, I played the guitar quite a bit. I was strictly rhythm, I didn’t want to make it cry or sing*. I had an old, beat up Charvel, an Ibanez I attempted to customize about a million times, and various pedals / effects processors. I wasn’t Joe Satriani or anything, but I could play a myriad of songs and had a good time with it. For my past wedding anniversary, my wife got me guitar lessons. I had never taken any and simply taught myself throughout the years,...