The Guitar Thread

[DJSheogowrath]

I got a Washburn House Of Blues special edition electric and an Ibanez acoustic.
Took guitar last year, sort of lost interest now, but I might get back in to it.

[Pickslide1992]

You should. I've been playing for 4 years straight and I love it.

[MixolydianPony]

I own my own Custom Dean Flying V with
Invader pickup for the bridge and the humbucker pickup left on the neck.
Pearl Flame inlay
Blue Flame body.

Pics?

[Pickslide1992]

I've been playing guitar for 10 years straight.
I own my own Custom Dean Flying V with
Invader pickup for the bridge and the humbucker pickup left on the neck.
Pearl Flame inlay
Blue Flame body.

Worked hard for it but that's beside the point,

Amp: Vox Valvetronix 1/2stack, tubes
got old so I recently replaced them
Marshall MG125, SpiderIII

aaaannnd that's about it.
If you wanna talk about a collab or something,
I can play sweep arpeggios, shred, and
do cross-string-tapping arpeggios like everyone else.

Music styles:
Neoclassical
Jazz
Rock
Metal
Screamo
Djent
Fusion
Orchestraic Metal
Acoustic
Grindcore

Etc.
Etc.
Etc.

Got any clips? If you can do 80s shred, you and I are going to be the best of friends. (I'm mainly rhythm but can do slower, bluesy solos) I'm always up for some tips from shredders (I cannot shred for beans. xD)

[MixolydianPony]

ALOT of shredding in it. Yngwie Malmsteen style.

And as soon as I listen to it, I'll probably explode from jealousy. Or, even better... any advice on learning to shred, if it's not too much trouble? I'm fully aware of the obvious aspects of shred, such as start slow and build speed gradually, and play scales for 6 hours every day, but is there anything beyond that that you could recommend?

[ChromaticChaosPony]

About a minute into the song there's a long 16 measure arpeggio that goes down chromatically by the pentatonic chord structure and then comes back up. that whole section is ALL sweep arpeggios.

16 bar chromatic sweep arpeggios? That's the same thing that I'm doing for a DAW vs. DAW battle against someone else. It can't be longer than 16 bars because of the rules, but I wanted to do something like technical progressive death metal shred with a djent rhythm sequence for the last 8 bars. I'm a good guitarist and am playing this on an 8 string, but am a bad musician and have no inspiration as for writing it or the key.

[Gnarrkhaz]

Why don't you post this in the music section?

[Gnarrkhaz]

Doh. Now i see it : P

[Applejinx]

Enjoy everypony.
And please send me some feedback. I'm in the dark here!

I like it! And I liked it

[Warbalist]

Ooh, I like this thread, let me try!

Strings:
Cruise (my first guitar)
Hamer strat-style slammer
Schecter A-7+ (modified; been my baby for nearly 13 years)
Halo Concorde-style 7
Random classical
Variax 300
Variax acoustic 300
Random sitar
Random lute
Random banjo
Samick Bass

Amps:
My great-grandfather's Fender Champ
B-52 AT-100 stack
Random Crate
Fender Mini-Twin (1 Watt of absolute, soul-crushing POWER!)

Effects: (Not including my stolen ones. I still cry over my limited edition, Ibanez analogue delay...)
POD X3 Live
Cheapo-deapo chorus pedal
EH Small Stone
EH Big Muff Pi
Snarling Dogs Mold Spore Wah (the nastiest!)
Danelectro Free Speech (great for doing soundtrack work)

Now, who wants to shred with me? Meedley-meedley-meedley-meedley-MEEEEEEEE!!!

[Warbalist]

lol you have a Sitar. I envy you...

Everyone does. It's super-cathartic.

[Pickslide1992]

Damn, you have not one but TWO Variaxs? I insanely jelly, and this is coming from a Gibson owner. xD

[Trillionage]

Ooh, I like this thread, let me try!

Strings:
Cruise (my first guitar)
Hamer strat-style slammer
Schecter A-7+ (modified; been my baby for nearly 13 years)
Halo Concorde-style 7
Random classical
Variax 300
Variax acoustic 300
Random sitar
Random lute
Random banjo
Samick Bass

Amps:
My great-grandfather's Fender Champ
B-52 AT-100 stack
Random Crate
Fender Mini-Twin (1 Watt of absolute, soul-crushing POWER!)

Effects: (Not including my stolen ones. I still cry over my limited edition, Ibanez analogue delay...)
POD X3 Live
Cheapo-deapo chorus pedal
EH Small Stone
EH Big Muff Pi
Snarling Dogs Mold Spore Wah (the nastiest!)
Danelectro Free Speech (great for doing soundtrack work)

Now, who wants to shred with me? Meedley-meedley-meedley-meedley-MEEEEEEEE!!!

I have a guitar and some pedals...

[Warbalist]

Damn, you have not one but TWO Variaxs? I insanely jelly, and this is coming from a Gibson owner. xD

Don't be too jelly as they're not exactly the most reliable tools, considering they're the earliest models. When they DO work, though, they're amazing all over the place. The new James Tyler Variaxes, though... /vomitrainbows.jpg

[Warbalist]

at least YOU have pedals. ;_;

No pedals? That's painful! Have a birthday party, like, NOW!

[Pickslide1992]

Damn, you have not one but TWO Variaxs? I insanely jelly, and this is coming from a Gibson owner. xD

Don't be too jelly as they're not exactly the most reliable tools, considering they're the earliest models. When they DO work, though, they're amazing all over the place. The new James Tyler Variaxes, though... /vomitrainbows.jpg

I do want one soon, if for the different tunings alone. Imagine going from drop C to standard almost instantaneously. Plus the different guitar models and whammy bar are the icing on the cake.

[Trillionage]

at least YOU have pedals. ;_;

There are some quite cheap available. The Danelectro FAB series is not bad and most come at less than 25 bucks. Also Flea Markets. Those places are amazing. I got a 40 dollar flanger (my first pedal) for 20

[MixolydianPony]

My dad just bought me a brand new Suhr Pro Series M1. It's the most fantastic instrument I've ever held in my hands. Plays like butter, and has a Floyd Rose. Not to mention that the tone is absolutely god-like. I love it more than I love Twilight Sparkle. That's saying something. I'm excited. Can you tell I'm excited? You should be able to tell, because I'm really excited.

[Pickslide1992]

Holy Hell that is a sexy V, dude.

[EnnervateIndustries]

Thread resurrection again! Well, I have a reason this time.


I do have a couple of guitars (1970s Yamaha FG340II and Silvertone Shredder Sik 1) but I'm more specifically wondering if this thread was intended for technique and tips for guitar? If I'm wrong, could someone point me to the right thread? I didn't find any.

[Pickslide1992]

This thread is for anything concerning guitars, be it bragging about what gear you own or sharing some tips and tricks. Anything goes here, man.

Is there anything in particular you want tips on?

[EnnervateIndustries]

I'm just trying to teach myself it, and coming from a woodwind background, it's kind of going badly. Do you have any good (free) tutorials or something? I have a few books which I can put in here if that's important.

[MixolydianPony]

My first instrument was clarinet, so I know that feel, bro.

Honestly, most of my success as a beginner was due to private instruction. I think that with guitar, it's really hard to teach yourself when you're first starting. It's easy to teach yourself stuff once you already know the basics, though. I went through a few books with my instructor, they might help on your own, but I'm not sure. It's worth a shot, I guess.

Hal Leonard Guitar Method Book 1
Intermediate Rock Guitar by Paul Howard
Mastering Rock Guitar by Eric Halbig
And there was a Beginner Blues Book from the same publisher as those previous two, Alfred Publishing.

As far as outright free stuff, the only thing that comes to mind is a guy on the internet with a thing called Justin Guitar, he has some really nice tutorials, but I'm not sure if those will be helpful to an absolute beginner. I don't know of anything else that's free.

You should probably start by learning chords and scales. Those are pretty basic, and there's a million guitar chord charts on the internet. Start with the simple chords... A, C, D, E, G, Am, Dm, Em. That'll let you play 80% of classic rock songs right there.

Also work on memorizing where all the notes are. It's easy to be lazy and not do that, but it's really beneficial to instantly be able to point to any fret and know what it is. Start with the low E and A strings, because that's where you'll play power chords, and those are pretty basic. That's something you can teach yourself. If you know the chromatic scale and you know the open strings, you can figure it out. I've found that drawing a guitar fretboard on paper and writing in all the notes of C major over and over and over again helped ingrain it into my memory.

I'm sure that any guitarist that visits MLR would be happy to help you, so don't hesitate to ask questions.

Oh, and one final thing, don't become obsessed with speed. Just play the instrument and the speed will come. Learn scales to understand what they sound like and how to compose with them, don't learn scales to mindlessly tear up and down them at 200bpm for 5 minutes and call it a song.

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[Gnarrkhaz]

I learned it the old way (teacher and stuff) so i don't know many helpful free lessons but one thing that's very important are scale patterns. When you learn the scale patterns of 1 scale, let's say a major scale or whatever, you already know how to play every major scale, every minor scale and every mode (ionian, dorian, phrygian...) because they all use the exact same patterns. It's not a keyboard in that respect and much to my embarrassment I just realized that not long ago and i wish someone told me that when i started out. And when you learn pentatonic scales you only take out the fourth and the seventh note so the patterns aren't all that different. Just look up the patterns on YouTube.

Other than that. Make sure you press the notes down from above with your fingertips while still feeling comfortable about it. Don't press too hard. It'll be more strenous to play and the note will be higher when you press too hard. Press the note down as near to the next fret as possible. It'll be easier that way. Also try to use all of your four fingers when they're needed. Don't change the position of your left hand more often than necessary.

Relax your right arm when you're strumming multiple strings especially when you're playing all strings at once. Whenever you play a rythm guitar part your right arm should always go up and down constantly with the beat but only sometimes do you actually touch the strings.

Basic stuff but very important i guess.

This here was helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Srj8Rw7dzk

Can't remember any more videos right now though.

[EnnervateIndustries]

Yeah, I did take lessons, but when coupled with my clarinet lessons, it ended up adding to a stupid amount of money and time, so my non-main instrument had to go. I mechanically know a majority of the skills, but I'm fairly sure there's something basic and obvious that I'm missing. I remember my teacher said that my wonky hand position on the neck (I rested the neck against the heel of my hand instead of my thumb) supposedly wasn't a problem, but I'm trying to fix it anyway. I'm also fairly sure I'm either picking wrong, or just straight-up holding the pick wrong.

As for how I'm learning, I've been relearning the positions for the pentatonic scales, so I'm going to have to hunt down the positions for the major scales. I have a fairly large number of chords memorized, as well as a chord chart lying around somewhere. As for in what order I'm learning things, at the moment I'm using the Mel Bay guide to learning guitar, don't ask me what version because I don't know. It starts with music notation and stuff, which I basically skipped because I know a ton of that already, but it goes through the notes on the neck up to about the 5th fret, I think. I do plan to learn father, though.


The reason I'm learning guitar is basically because I have two of them and it's a little insulting (in my opinion) to not know how to use them. To me, an instrument basically wants to be played. Plus, one of them was my mom's and it's a pretty good one.