Guitar Gear Thread. Your new, next or future guitars, amps, FX etc.



mackemglastoid said:
I might be in the minority here but I just can't get away with the sound of someone flexing or shredding. I can absolutely appreciate the talent and technique of those who can play super fast but the actual sound it makes just does nothing for me.
I'd much prefer to listen to someone who can play tastefully with good touch and feel. I guess it's all subjective I just mentally switch off when you see these virtuosos doing fretboard gymnastics.
Click to expand...

I don't think the two things have to be mutually exclusive. Over the years there have been plenty of guitarists who could play tastefully and quickly, even at the same time.

Unfortunately the modern shredder does seem more concerned with how fast they can play and less concerned about what it is they're playing.

As @chriswallace85 said, it's a useful tool to have in your locker, even if you don't plan to use it very often.
 
Dinsdale said:
The recent discussion reminds me of this meme which made me chortle

View attachment 15589
Click to expand...
What are people's learning history with guitar and solos?

I'm finding it interesting what has been said on this thread. I got a guitar at 16 and basically just wanted to do solo stuff, mostly Guns N' Roses. I didn't have lessons and just picked up bits of tab where I could. I had a crap guitar, it never sounded right and I didn't know most GNR like a lot of rock is tuned down half a tone, adding to that not quite right. I rarely played any rhythm or had a decent strumming technique. My guitar became the thing to pick up once in a while but was rarely played. Add to that young kids in bed by 7, so the amount of noise I could make for a decade was limited.

Then as I got older, I started listening to rhythm and strumming more, got motivated, got a better guitar and started to make much more progress. A couple of years ago, adding an acoustic and loving playing that. My strumming is still a bit shit but improving. Most of all, I'm finding it a lot more fun and I practice because I want to unwind and enjoy myself, not suffer the pain to get to that end goal of being an impressive guitarist.

I am now definitely in the camp of "rhythm is better".
 
DaveH said:
What are people's learning history with guitar and solos?

I'm finding it interesting what has been said on this thread. I got a guitar at 16 and basically just wanted to do solo stuff, mostly Guns N' Roses. I didn't have lessons and just picked up bits of tab where I could. I had a crap guitar, it never sounded right and I didn't know most GNR like a lot of rock is tuned down half a tone, adding to that not quite right. I rarely played any rhythm or had a decent strumming technique. My guitar became the thing to pick up once in a while but was rarely played. Add to that young kids in bed by 7, so the amount of noise I could make for a decade was limited.

Then as I got older, I started listening to rhythm and strumming more, got motivated, got a better guitar and started to make much more progress. A couple of years ago, adding an acoustic and loving playing that. My strumming is still a bit shit but improving. Most of all, I'm finding it a lot more fun and I practice because I want to unwind and enjoy myself, not suffer the pain to get to that end goal of being an impressive guitarist.

I am now definitely in the camp of "rhythm is better".
Click to expand...
I learned by buying a chord book and having to use my ears. Pausing and rewinding tapes and endlessly trying to figure out what was being played. It was very different back then. Before the dark times, before the Internet.
There's a ridiculous amount of information available these days. My son now generally just pulls up a youtube tutorial and he's away.
There's still some value in doing it oldschool though. Working out the root notes and then whether it's major or minor and listening for intervals and trying to figure it out yourself.
 
DaveH said:
What are people's learning history with guitar and solos?

I'm finding it interesting what has been said on this thread. I got a guitar at 16 and basically just wanted to do solo stuff, mostly Guns N' Roses. I didn't have lessons and just picked up bits of tab where I could. I had a crap guitar, it never sounded right and I didn't know most GNR like a lot of rock is tuned down half a tone, adding to that not quite right. I rarely played any rhythm or had a decent strumming technique. My guitar became the thing to pick up once in a while but was rarely played. Add to that young kids in bed by 7, so the amount of noise I could make for a decade was limited.

Then as I got older, I started listening to rhythm and strumming more, got motivated, got a better guitar and started to make much more progress. A couple of years ago, adding an acoustic and loving playing that. My strumming is still a bit shit but improving. Most of all, I'm finding it a lot more fun and I practice because I want to unwind and enjoy myself, not suffer the pain to get to that end goal of being an impressive guitarist.

I am now definitely in the camp of "rhythm is better".
Click to expand...
I started off on the back of loving Oasis and Guns N' Roses. So I wanted to be both a Noel and a Slash. Being a Noel was a lot more realistic :lol:, but then Oasis always had the strummy rhythm parts and the lead guitar solo. So there was always both sides of the coin.

For me, it's never been a case of either or, I'll try and turn me hand to whatever I fancy, whether it's finger picking Bob Dylan, strumming Oasis, riffing some Sabbath, or soloing over some Zeppelin.

I relied on tabs & chord sheets a lot in me formative years. Still use them for the ease of it. There's no point working songs out by ear when the resources are there. Picked up bits of theory, but nowt in-depth.
 
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DaveH said:
What are people's learning history with guitar and solos?

I'm finding it interesting what has been said on this thread. I got a guitar at 16 and basically just wanted to do solo stuff, mostly Guns N' Roses. I didn't have lessons and just picked up bits of tab where I could. I had a crap guitar, it never sounded right and I didn't know most GNR like a lot of rock is tuned down half a tone, adding to that not quite right. I rarely played any rhythm or had a decent strumming technique. My guitar became the thing to pick up once in a while but was rarely played. Add to that young kids in bed by 7, so the amount of noise I could make for a decade was limited.

Then as I got older, I started listening to rhythm and strumming more, got motivated, got a better guitar and started to make much more progress. A couple of years ago, adding an acoustic and loving playing that. My strumming is still a bit shit but improving. Most of all, I'm finding it a lot more fun and I practice because I want to unwind and enjoy myself, not suffer the pain to get to that end goal of being an impressive guitarist.

I am now definitely in the camp of "rhythm is better".
Click to expand...

Started on piano when I was about 7. Moved onto guitar when I was 14 because I was listening to Iron Maiden and pretty much nothing else at that point, and got into a band with some schoolmates playing Maiden covers (we never made it out of the garage).

I loved Maiden's instrumental dual-lead-guitar harmony lines and guitar solos. Started getting lessons around the time I was starting to learn about other rock/metal bands like ACDC, Van Halen, Metallica, Megadeth, Helloween, Motley Crue, Extreme, and so when the guitar teacher asked me what I wanted to learn to play, told him "guitar solos".

He taught me some Maiden stuff, the solos to Extreme's Get The Funk Out and ACDC's You Shook Me All Night Long, the tapping part of the solo from Van Halen's Eruption, and introduced me to Guns N Roses by teaching me Sweet Child O Mine.

At college from 91-93 I started getting into alt-rock/indie-alternative/grunge from bands like The Wonder Stuff, Faith No More, The Levellers, Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pearl Jam, Carter USM, Rage Against The Machine, Skunk Anansie, Nirvana... but was finding the guitar lines to some of it a bit too simplistic to keep me interested. Playing along to The Levellers for example, I'd find myself trying to play the fiddle lines instead of the guitar parts on songs like The Game and The Devil Went Down To Georgia, because they were more challenging and fun.

At university I started getting into more of the hard rock/metal stuff like Alice In Chains, Skid Row, Soundgarden, Pantera... all of which had tremendous guitarists that made me want to practice my arse off to get good at shredding. A friend I met there introduced me to the music of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Dream Theater. These artists changed my outlook completely. This was a whole other level of musical genius and technical wizardry that I didn't know existed beforehand. I no longer wanted to be a shredder, I wanted to be a virtuoso.

I started taking a guitar with me everywhere. When watching TV, there'd be a guitar on my lap doing exercises and jamming along to the music on the adverts and TV show theme tunes. If I needed to take a shit, I'd take the guitar with me and practice on the toilet. If I went to the pub in the daytime I'd take a guitar with me and be doing scales quietly in the corner.

I didn't just want to be able to play fast though. I wanted to play with real feeling, which meant I needed real life experience. If I wanted to be a rock star, I needed to live the rock'n'roll lifestyle if I wasn't just going to be some "poser". So, whenever I wasn't playing guitar (and sometimes when I was) I'd be getting drunk, getting stoned, tripping out, generally partying my arse off.

Around this time I got introduced to Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Marillion and Rush, so these bands started creeping into my influences. I got heavily into writing music with weird time signatures and started a kind of grungey prog alt-rock/metal band. The sound was somewhere between Alice In Chains and Dream Theater with sprinkles of Floyd and Zep.

After playing live on stage for the first time at a battle of the bands competition with this band, that was it. I knew what I wanted to do with my life was play in bands. I left my computing degree to concentrate on music. Unfortunately, that band fizzled out after a fairly short run around the local pub scene.

Things took a turn when a local disco/funk/soul bassist/songwriter approached me to put some guitar lines down on some of his songs. I ended up joining his band and staying with them for 7 or 8 years. During this time I started getting into jazz, acid jazz, jazz-funk, fusion. I had to get good at the rhythm side of things, expand my jazz chord knowledge and change the way I played my solos massively for the stuff I played with that band.

I kept the rocker inside me alive by writing and recording solo stuff that was more like the previous alt-prog-grunge band in my spare time.

I went back to uni in '98 to do a Music Technology degree, and actually graduated this time. Those 3 years were insane for me, musically. Everything just exploded. As well as the disco, funk, soul band that I was still in at the time, and the solo stuff I was writing, I also regularly played session guitar live for two other soul bands, was a guitarist then briefly drummer for a nu-metal band, was lead vocalist and guitarist for a kind of garage rock covers band with a few old buddies who I wanted to help get out there on stage, played guitar and lead vocals and drums with a bunch of uni friends briefly in a band we threw together doing - who'd'a thunk it - Iron Maiden and Metallica covers - for a short set at the uni as part of a live sound assessment for the folks on our course (they needed bands to do the live sound for, so we put one together, and just to fuck with them we kept swapping instruments because we were all talented bastard multi-instrumentalists :lol: ), was helping produce/record a few other bands at uni, and was doing live sound for some local bands on the pub/club/small festival scene. All day every day was music.

After uni I got a job at a local college as a techy for the Music Tech and Performing Arts departments, where I was exposed to all manner of weird and wonderful new influences from sonic art to electronica to avante garde to mathcore. Continued doing live sound for local bands, playing in the garage covers band on the local scene, and writing and recording with the disco/funk/soul band.

The latter two bands ended explosively, and I quickly put together a new band with me on guitar and backing vocals, a ludicrous bassist and drummer, and really soulful smoky-voiced redhead on vocals. We were kind of like the jazz-funk-rock of Incubus and very early Chilli Peppers if on vocals they had Michelle Pfeifer draped over a piano in a classy long red dress.

My guitar parts were heavily focussed in jazz-chords, with undercurrents of rock energy bubbling up occasionally, and solos that ranged from Gilmour to Hammett but usually with a jazz scale thrown in here and there. Really fun band to play in. And the last time I played live on guitar. Crikey has it really been more than 20 years?

Alas, it wasn't to last. The bass player went off to uni, the drummer went on walkabout in Australia for a year, and I ended up moving to London for a job with EMI at Abbey Road and Olympic Studios as a technical engineer. Amazing job, amazing facilities for jamming with friends and recording my solo stuff, but just not enough spare time to put together a serious band.

Eventually got made redundant as the studio industry was on its arse due to the rise of home recording and rising popularity of random playlists / streaming / youtubers over that of full albums.

Since then I've just been sporadically writing and recording solo stuff and recording covers. My practice regime has taken a nose dive, and I don't shred anywhere near as much as I used to when it's time to play a solo.

About a year ago I picked up a guitar and tried to play along to the entirety of Iron Maiden's Killers album, an old favourite from my heyday. It was the first time I'd done more than just tinker or play easy rhythm stuff for quite some time. Struggled to keep up with most of it and my solos were WAY off the mark, but I had a lot of fun. Took my fingertips about a week for the blisters to disappear.

Now, I find that I'm more interested in getting really good clean / slightly overdriven bluesy tones than the old super-saturated multi-rectified scooped shreddy sounds I used to crave.

TL;DR SHRED! > MORE SHRED! > Less shred, more jazz/funk! > Petered off into bluesy obscurity.
 
fyl2u said:
Started on piano when I was about 7. Moved onto guitar when I was 14 because I was listening to Iron Maiden and pretty much nothing else at that point, and got into a band with some schoolmates playing Maiden covers (we never made it out of the garage).

I loved Maiden's instrumental dual-lead-guitar harmony lines and guitar solos. Started getting lessons around the time I was starting to learn about other rock/metal bands like ACDC, Van Halen, Metallica, Megadeth, Helloween, Motley Crue, Extreme, and so when the guitar teacher asked me what I wanted to learn to play, told him "guitar solos".

He taught me some Maiden stuff, the solos to Extreme's Get The Funk Out and ACDC's You Shook Me All Night Long, the tapping part of the solo from Van Halen's Eruption, and introduced me to Guns N Roses by teaching me Sweet Child O Mine.

At college from 91-93 I started getting into alt-rock/indie-alternative/grunge from bands like The Wonder Stuff, Faith No More, The Levellers, Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pearl Jam, Carter USM, Rage Against The Machine, Skunk Anansie, Nirvana... but was finding the guitar lines to some of it a bit too simplistic to keep me interested. Playing along to The Levellers for example, I'd find myself trying to play the fiddle lines instead of the guitar parts on songs like The Game and The Devil Went Down To Georgia, because they were more challenging and fun.

At university I started getting into more of the hard rock/metal stuff like Alice In Chains, Skid Row, Soundgarden, Pantera... all of which had tremendous guitarists that made me want to practice my arse off to get good at shredding. A friend I met there introduced me to the music of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Dream Theater. These artists changed my outlook completely. This was a whole other level of musical genius and technical wizardry that I didn't know existed beforehand. I no longer wanted to be a shredder, I wanted to be a virtuoso.

I started taking a guitar with me everywhere. When watching TV, there'd be a guitar on my lap doing exercises and jamming along to the music on the adverts and TV show theme tunes. If I needed to take a shit, I'd take the guitar with me and practice on the toilet. If I went to the pub in the daytime I'd take a guitar with me and be doing scales quietly in the corner.

I didn't just want to be able to play fast though. I wanted to play with real feeling, which meant I needed real life experience. If I wanted to be a rock star, I needed to live the rock'n'roll lifestyle if I wasn't just going to be some "poser". So, whenever I wasn't playing guitar (and sometimes when I was) I'd be getting drunk, getting stoned, tripping out, generally partying my arse off.

Around this time I got introduced to Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Marillion and Rush, so these bands started creeping into my influences. I got heavily into writing music with weird time signatures and started a kind of grungey prog alt-rock/metal band. The sound was somewhere between Alice In Chains and Dream Theater with sprinkles of Floyd and Zep.

After playing live on stage for the first time at a battle of the bands competition with this band, that was it. I knew what I wanted to do with my life was play in bands. I left my computing degree to concentrate on music. Unfortunately, that band fizzled out after a fairly short run around the local pub scene.

Things took a turn when a local disco/funk/soul bassist/songwriter approached me to put some guitar lines down on some of his songs. I ended up joining his band and staying with them for 7 or 8 years. During this time I started getting into jazz, acid jazz, jazz-funk, fusion. I had to get good at the rhythm side of things, expand my jazz chord knowledge and change the way I played my solos massively for the stuff I played with that band.

I kept the rocker inside me alive by writing and recording solo stuff that was more like the previous alt-prog-grunge band in my spare time.

I went back to uni in '98 to do a Music Technology degree, and actually graduated this time. Those 3 years were insane for me, musically. Everything just exploded. As well as the disco, funk, soul band that I was still in at the time, and the solo stuff I was writing, I also regularly played session guitar live for two other soul bands, was a guitarist then briefly drummer for a nu-metal band, was lead vocalist and guitarist for a kind of garage rock covers band with a few old buddies who I wanted to help get out there on stage, played guitar and lead vocals and drums with a bunch of uni friends briefly in a band we threw together doing - who'd'a thunk it - Iron Maiden and Metallica covers - for a short set at the uni as part of a live sound assessment for the folks on our course (they needed bands to do the live sound for, so we put one together, and just to fuck with them we kept swapping instruments because we were all talented bastard multi-instrumentalists :lol: ), was helping produce/record a few other bands at uni, and was doing live sound for some local bands on the pub/club/small festival scene. All day every day was music.

After uni I got a job at a local college as a techy for the Music Tech and Performing Arts departments, where I was exposed to all manner of weird and wonderful new influences from sonic art to electronica to avante garde to mathcore. Continued doing live sound for local bands, playing in the garage covers band on the local scene, and writing and recording with the disco/funk/soul band.

The latter two bands ended explosively, and I quickly put together a new band with me on guitar and backing vocals, a ludicrous bassist and drummer, and really soulful smoky-voiced redhead on vocals. We were kind of like the jazz-funk-rock of Incubus and very early Chilli Peppers if on vocals they had Michelle Pfeifer draped over a piano in a classy long red dress.

My guitar parts were heavily focussed in jazz-chords, with undercurrents of rock energy bubbling up occasionally, and solos that ranged from Gilmour to Hammett but usually with a jazz scale thrown in here and there. Really fun band to play in. And the last time I played live on guitar. Crikey has it really been more than 20 years?

Alas, it wasn't to last. The bass player went off to uni, the drummer went on walkabout in Australia for a year, and I ended up moving to London for a job with EMI at Abbey Road and Olympic Studios as a technical engineer. Amazing job, amazing facilities for jamming with friends and recording my solo stuff, but just not enough spare time to put together a serious band.

Eventually got made redundant as the studio industry was on its arse due to the rise of home recording and rising popularity of random playlists / streaming / youtubers over that of full albums.

Since then I've just been sporadically writing and recording solo stuff and recording covers. My practice regime has taken a nose dive, and I don't shred anywhere near as much as I used to when it's time to play a solo.

About a year ago I picked up a guitar and tried to play along to the entirety of Iron Maiden's Killers album, an old favourite from my heyday. It was the first time I'd done more than just tinker or play easy rhythm stuff for quite some time. Struggled to keep up with most of it and my solos were WAY off the mark, but I had a lot of fun. Took my fingertips about a week for the blisters to disappear.

Now, I find that I'm more interested in getting really good clean / slightly overdriven bluesy tones than the old super-saturated multi-rectified scooped shreddy sounds I used to crave.

TL;DR SHRED! > MORE SHRED! > Less shred, more jazz/funk! > Petered off into bluesy obscurity.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you're about ready for Jazz Odyssey or
Puppet Show and
Fyl2u
 
fyl2u said:
Started on piano when I was about 7. Moved onto guitar when I was 14 because I was listening to Iron Maiden and pretty much nothing else at that point, and got into a band with some schoolmates playing Maiden covers (we never made it out of the garage).

I loved Maiden's instrumental dual-lead-guitar harmony lines and guitar solos. Started getting lessons around the time I was starting to learn about other rock/metal bands like ACDC, Van Halen, Metallica, Megadeth, Helloween, Motley Crue, Extreme, and so when the guitar teacher asked me what I wanted to learn to play, told him "guitar solos".

He taught me some Maiden stuff, the solos to Extreme's Get The Funk Out and ACDC's You Shook Me All Night Long, the tapping part of the solo from Van Halen's Eruption, and introduced me to Guns N Roses by teaching me Sweet Child O Mine.

At college from 91-93 I started getting into alt-rock/indie-alternative/grunge from bands like The Wonder Stuff, Faith No More, The Levellers, Pop Will Eat Itself, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Pearl Jam, Carter USM, Rage Against The Machine, Skunk Anansie, Nirvana... but was finding the guitar lines to some of it a bit too simplistic to keep me interested. Playing along to The Levellers for example, I'd find myself trying to play the fiddle lines instead of the guitar parts on songs like The Game and The Devil Went Down To Georgia, because they were more challenging and fun.

At university I started getting into more of the hard rock/metal stuff like Alice In Chains, Skid Row, Soundgarden, Pantera... all of which had tremendous guitarists that made me want to practice my arse off to get good at shredding. A friend I met there introduced me to the music of Joe Satriani, Steve Vai and Dream Theater. These artists changed my outlook completely. This was a whole other level of musical genius and technical wizardry that I didn't know existed beforehand. I no longer wanted to be a shredder, I wanted to be a virtuoso.

I started taking a guitar with me everywhere. When watching TV, there'd be a guitar on my lap doing exercises and jamming along to the music on the adverts and TV show theme tunes. If I needed to take a shit, I'd take the guitar with me and practice on the toilet. If I went to the pub in the daytime I'd take a guitar with me and be doing scales quietly in the corner.

I didn't just want to be able to play fast though. I wanted to play with real feeling, which meant I needed real life experience. If I wanted to be a rock star, I needed to live the rock'n'roll lifestyle if I wasn't just going to be some "poser". So, whenever I wasn't playing guitar (and sometimes when I was) I'd be getting drunk, getting stoned, tripping out, generally partying my arse off.

Around this time I got introduced to Pink Floyd, Led Zep, Marillion and Rush, so these bands started creeping into my influences. I got heavily into writing music with weird time signatures and started a kind of grungey prog alt-rock/metal band. The sound was somewhere between Alice In Chains and Dream Theater with sprinkles of Floyd and Zep.

After playing live on stage for the first time at a battle of the bands competition with this band, that was it. I knew what I wanted to do with my life was play in bands. I left my computing degree to concentrate on music. Unfortunately, that band fizzled out after a fairly short run around the local pub scene.

Things took a turn when a local disco/funk/soul bassist/songwriter approached me to put some guitar lines down on some of his songs. I ended up joining his band and staying with them for 7 or 8 years. During this time I started getting into jazz, acid jazz, jazz-funk, fusion. I had to get good at the rhythm side of things, expand my jazz chord knowledge and change the way I played my solos massively for the stuff I played with that band.

I kept the rocker inside me alive by writing and recording solo stuff that was more like the previous alt-prog-grunge band in my spare time.

I went back to uni in '98 to do a Music Technology degree, and actually graduated this time. Those 3 years were insane for me, musically. Everything just exploded. As well as the disco, funk, soul band that I was still in at the time, and the solo stuff I was writing, I also regularly played session guitar live for two other soul bands, was a guitarist then briefly drummer for a nu-metal band, was lead vocalist and guitarist for a kind of garage rock covers band with a few old buddies who I wanted to help get out there on stage, played guitar and lead vocals and drums with a bunch of uni friends briefly in a band we threw together doing - who'd'a thunk it - Iron Maiden and Metallica covers - for a short set at the uni as part of a live sound assessment for the folks on our course (they needed bands to do the live sound for, so we put one together, and just to fuck with them we kept swapping instruments because we were all talented bastard multi-instrumentalists :lol: ), was helping produce/record a few other bands at uni, and was doing live sound for some local bands on the pub/club/small festival scene. All day every day was music.

After uni I got a job at a local college as a techy for the Music Tech and Performing Arts departments, where I was exposed to all manner of weird and wonderful new influences from sonic art to electronica to avante garde to mathcore. Continued doing live sound for local bands, playing in the garage covers band on the local scene, and writing and recording with the disco/funk/soul band.

The latter two bands ended explosively, and I quickly put together a new band with me on guitar and backing vocals, a ludicrous bassist and drummer, and really soulful smoky-voiced redhead on vocals. We were kind of like the jazz-funk-rock of Incubus and very early Chilli Peppers if on vocals they had Michelle Pfeifer draped over a piano in a classy long red dress.

My guitar parts were heavily focussed in jazz-chords, with undercurrents of rock energy bubbling up occasionally, and solos that ranged from Gilmour to Hammett but usually with a jazz scale thrown in here and there. Really fun band to play in. And the last time I played live on guitar. Crikey has it really been more than 20 years?

Alas, it wasn't to last. The bass player went off to uni, the drummer went on walkabout in Australia for a year, and I ended up moving to London for a job with EMI at Abbey Road and Olympic Studios as a technical engineer. Amazing job, amazing facilities for jamming with friends and recording my solo stuff, but just not enough spare time to put together a serious band.

Eventually got made redundant as the studio industry was on its arse due to the rise of home recording and rising popularity of random playlists / streaming / youtubers over that of full albums.

Since then I've just been sporadically writing and recording solo stuff and recording covers. My practice regime has taken a nose dive, and I don't shred anywhere near as much as I used to when it's time to play a solo.

About a year ago I picked up a guitar and tried to play along to the entirety of Iron Maiden's Killers album, an old favourite from my heyday. It was the first time I'd done more than just tinker or play easy rhythm stuff for quite some time. Struggled to keep up with most of it and my solos were WAY off the mark, but I had a lot of fun. Took my fingertips about a week for the blisters to disappear.

Now, I find that I'm more interested in getting really good clean / slightly overdriven bluesy tones than the old super-saturated multi-rectified scooped shreddy sounds I used to crave.

TL;DR SHRED! > MORE SHRED! > Less shred, more jazz/funk! > Petered off into bluesy obscurity.
Click to expand...
Cheers, really interesting to hear.
mackemglastoid said:
I learned by buying a chord book and having to use my ears. Pausing and rewinding tapes and endlessly trying to figure out what was being played. It was very different back then. Before the dark times, before the Internet.
There's a ridiculous amount of information available these days. My son now generally just pulls up a youtube tutorial and he's away.
There's still some value in doing it oldschool though. Working out the root notes and then whether it's major or minor and listening for intervals and trying to figure it out yourself.
Click to expand...
YouTube has made a massive difference when you are not playing with mates or have a teacher.

I have had endless spells in the past looking at tab or chords and just not being able to figure out how to make it work. 10 minutes with someone like Justin or Marty Schwarz and I’m away. If only it has been around when I weee young.

It has been interesting reflecting on my learning progression, or lack of it. It was just over 4 years ago I got a new guitar and was motivated to learn properly this time. But I was one of the people with no free time during covid. A full time job, home schooling and then kids wanting more company on an evening because they were bored and friendless, I had no time. Then I broke my hand which set me back another 6 months.

I’ve progressed a lot in those 4 years, but have not really had as much time as I’d like, which explains the stuff I thought I would have cracked. Still, there are things with simple strumming patterns I’m enjoying. There is a local open mic and the crowd there are really supportive. I’m tempted to have another couple of months practice and try performing. It might not be the most memorable performance for people, but if I get through that without sounding awful or pissing myself with fear, I feel I’ll have earned myself a pint.
 
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DaveH said:
What are people's learning history with guitar and solos?

I'm finding it interesting what has been said on this thread. I got a guitar at 16 and basically just wanted to do solo stuff, mostly Guns N' Roses. I didn't have lessons and just picked up bits of tab where I could. I had a crap guitar, it never sounded right and I didn't know most GNR like a lot of rock is tuned down half a tone, adding to that not quite right. I rarely played any rhythm or had a decent strumming technique. My guitar became the thing to pick up once in a while but was rarely played. Add to that young kids in bed by 7, so the amount of noise I could make for a decade was limited.

Then as I got older, I started listening to rhythm and strumming more, got motivated, got a better guitar and started to make much more progress. A couple of years ago, adding an acoustic and loving playing that. My strumming is still a bit shit but improving. Most of all, I'm finding it a lot more fun and I practice because I want to unwind and enjoy myself, not suffer the pain to get to that end goal of being an impressive guitarist.

I am now definitely in the camp of "rhythm is better".
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Self taught to get get girls in around 1992. Worked out about a week later girls don't care about guitars but I was well into it by then. I learned throughout the 90's by finding any tabs online, buying tab books and in desperate situations trying to work out parts for myself.

Used to jam with people in the early 00's but pretty much packed in once our little group had broken up. I didn't know it at the time but I probably got to my highest level of capability around mid 00's, then I just stopped picking the guitar up regularly. By mid 2010's I'd hardly picked up a guitar for years, but just before lockdown I'd picked up a guitar for the first time and got the bug again. I'm much slower in my late 40's than I ever was, and find learning much more laborious but I love it probably more than ever. Even been flirting with getting some lessons to see if I can learn anything new
 
Dinsdale said:
When you say you can't, do you mean you can't because you don't have the tools or don't have the nerve?
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I don't have the tools or the know how, I'm pretty useless when it comes to that sort of thing. I have always avoided guitars with Floyd Roses as worried it'll be too much hassle for me.
Big Jeff said:
Nice HSS strat. You really can’t go wrong with a strat. Add a couple of judicious pedals and you get it to do just about anything.

If you don’t fancy tackling the setup yourself there is no shame in paying a pro to get it singing.
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I'm going to message @gabbiadini1
 
I’ve been learning piano for a month or so. Really enjoying it - it’s already filling in so many gaps in my theory (which was admittedly awful)

It’s getting me back into guitar and just music in general. My guitar playing plateaued years ago I think because of my lack of theory. I’m self taught, mostly through tabs and by ear when I was in my late teens. Mostly fingerpicking - folk, country blues, American primitive stuff.

I got into guitar repair and ended up doing that for a living for about a decade, but that sort of killed my playing, I wasn’t interested in them when I got home.

It comes creeping back though. I go through phases of playing regularly, but it’s tricky getting it to stick.
 
ErichZann said:
It's here :) seems like a lovely guitar, action needs adjusting though (I can't do it)
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Lovely looking guitar. My neighbour (in the 80s) had a USA orange 70s strat and had it repainted in black 😖
I've bought a couple of new Mexican Fenders (from guitarguitar & Andertons) and they're not bad set up out of the box so I've found.
Out of interest, what is the problem regarding the action ?
 
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Frasmotic said:
Lovely looking guitar. My neighbour (in the 80s) had a USA orange 70s strat and had it repainted in black 😖
I've bought a couple of new Mexican Fenders (from guitarguitar & Andertons) and they're not bad set up out of the box so I've found.
Out of interest, what is the problem regarding the action ?
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It's too high, my others guitars are Charvel and Ibanez so as soon I played the Strat out of the box I noticed straight away.
 
Dinsdale said:
Self taught to get get girls in around 1992. Worked out about a week later girls don't care about guitars but I was well into it by then. I learned throughout the 90's by finding any tabs online, buying tab books and in desperate situations trying to work out parts for myself.

Used to jam with people in the early 00's but pretty much packed in once our little group had broken up. I didn't know it at the time but I probably got to my highest level of capability around mid 00's, then I just stopped picking the guitar up regularly. By mid 2010's I'd hardly picked up a guitar for years, but just before lockdown I'd picked up a guitar for the first time and got the bug again. I'm much slower in my late 40's than I ever was, and find learning much more laborious but I love it probably more than ever. Even been flirting with getting some lessons to see if I can learn anything new
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Lessons have crossed my mind. Go to someone for perhaps 3 months, just to correct all the bad habits I have got into and start moving a few other techniques forward. My barre chords on my acoustic are still a bit hit and miss, but that is probably more and more practice needed.
 

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