Ch0jin
May 18th, 2009, 02:28 AM
It’s me again!
Yes I know I vanished for a few weeks there, I fell into a bit of a slump I’m embarrassed to admit. It’s surprisingly easy to feel yourself falling out of touch with everything when your lifestyle changes drastically, something I’d been told, nay, warned about, but had not really believed, so it was a bit of a bummer. Anyway, that’s another story altogether, but the reason I bring it up is to enable me to ramble on about the rather shocking discovery I made yesterday that snapped me right out of it, and yeah of course, it’s about guitars.
Basically I’d been bumming about my flat for weeks after losing my job, and I thought that would give me loads of time to rapidly accelerate my guitar playing. I had a couple of jams with a mate who was out of a job too, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated that everything I played lead wise, sounded the same. I tried all my usual tricks, I shuffled my FX chain around and experimented with settings, I re-strung both my Maton’s and tried new sounds from both my tube amps, but everything still sounded the same. I even bought a new guitar book! (Blues you can use).
I thought I’d tried everything for inspiration until a random track I had not really listened to before came blasting out my stereo. The track was “Take it out on me” by “Bullet for my Valentine” (the album Scream Aim Fire is a new favourite of mine, sounding to me like a cross between Anthrax and Skid Row). The track starts with a nice little metal riff that I just knew was going to be pretty easy to nail, and really, that’s all I wanted to learn. I looked up the tab for it and found out I’d need to de-tune a full step. OK I thought, I need to setup my old junker Squier anyway seeing as though I’d replaced bridge/trem/pickups/wiring/pick guard and not even bothered to setup the basics like intonation and saddle heights and so on, so maybe I’ll toss some strings on her and try to set it up as my detuned axe. I strung it, tuned down a full step and plugged into what I call my “virtual” rig (Pocket POD, Laptop, ipod and senheisser cans) and got stuck into trying to master that cool main riff at full speed.
Both hands were getting a bit sore after a while, so I thought I’d just let the song play through all the way and see if I could play any of the other parts, when the slow part of the song started and I thought “Wait, that’s in D for sure, maybe if I try some pentatonic minor scales it’ll work”.
What I did blew my mind.
Now I’m not a good guitar player, and I’m not saying that to be politely modest. I’m pretty lazy and that shows in my practice regime. I still feel uncomfortable calling myself a player, because to me it’s just something I like to mess around with, so if you decide to listen to my little clip, remember I’m not claiming it’s good by anyone’s standards, but when I first heard it back, I had trouble believing it was me playing! That my friends, is a –fantastic- feeling!! It lifted me right out of my funk, that sense of achievement, that after years of messing about I’d actually ripped out a half decent little solo (again, by my simplistic standards). Such a tiny little thing made me feel so much better. So much so that I played so much yesterday I couldn’t even touch my guitars today (My fretting fingers are still buzzing away). So after such a guitar based recovery where else was I going to post my news than here :)
Anyway, if you also would like to feel better about your own playing, I suggest listening to mine ;)
My Clip (http://www.box.net/shared/vxj4zh6ix9)
Original track on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7zXN4bXorI)
The technical details. MIK Squier Strat with GFS Fat Pat Zebra bridge into Pocket POD running my homebrew JCM800 patch. Recorded using Audacity on my old laptop.
I’ve cut the track down to just the lead break I took, and I left in the first 30s or so of my mistakes so you can discern what guitar is me (the harsher sounding tone playing all the pinch harmonics) and what’s the original guitar. It was only a practice so I didn’t really bother with levels, and as such my guitar and theirs are pretty close in the mix, but I think you can still tell mine by the mistakes, and the horrid hum at the start (laptop battery was almost dead so I was charging it at the time, thus the hum). The run that starts at around 40s is my favourite bit.
Anyways, I'm off to read what everyone has been up too :)
Yes I know I vanished for a few weeks there, I fell into a bit of a slump I’m embarrassed to admit. It’s surprisingly easy to feel yourself falling out of touch with everything when your lifestyle changes drastically, something I’d been told, nay, warned about, but had not really believed, so it was a bit of a bummer. Anyway, that’s another story altogether, but the reason I bring it up is to enable me to ramble on about the rather shocking discovery I made yesterday that snapped me right out of it, and yeah of course, it’s about guitars.
Basically I’d been bumming about my flat for weeks after losing my job, and I thought that would give me loads of time to rapidly accelerate my guitar playing. I had a couple of jams with a mate who was out of a job too, but I was becoming increasingly frustrated that everything I played lead wise, sounded the same. I tried all my usual tricks, I shuffled my FX chain around and experimented with settings, I re-strung both my Maton’s and tried new sounds from both my tube amps, but everything still sounded the same. I even bought a new guitar book! (Blues you can use).
I thought I’d tried everything for inspiration until a random track I had not really listened to before came blasting out my stereo. The track was “Take it out on me” by “Bullet for my Valentine” (the album Scream Aim Fire is a new favourite of mine, sounding to me like a cross between Anthrax and Skid Row). The track starts with a nice little metal riff that I just knew was going to be pretty easy to nail, and really, that’s all I wanted to learn. I looked up the tab for it and found out I’d need to de-tune a full step. OK I thought, I need to setup my old junker Squier anyway seeing as though I’d replaced bridge/trem/pickups/wiring/pick guard and not even bothered to setup the basics like intonation and saddle heights and so on, so maybe I’ll toss some strings on her and try to set it up as my detuned axe. I strung it, tuned down a full step and plugged into what I call my “virtual” rig (Pocket POD, Laptop, ipod and senheisser cans) and got stuck into trying to master that cool main riff at full speed.
Both hands were getting a bit sore after a while, so I thought I’d just let the song play through all the way and see if I could play any of the other parts, when the slow part of the song started and I thought “Wait, that’s in D for sure, maybe if I try some pentatonic minor scales it’ll work”.
What I did blew my mind.
Now I’m not a good guitar player, and I’m not saying that to be politely modest. I’m pretty lazy and that shows in my practice regime. I still feel uncomfortable calling myself a player, because to me it’s just something I like to mess around with, so if you decide to listen to my little clip, remember I’m not claiming it’s good by anyone’s standards, but when I first heard it back, I had trouble believing it was me playing! That my friends, is a –fantastic- feeling!! It lifted me right out of my funk, that sense of achievement, that after years of messing about I’d actually ripped out a half decent little solo (again, by my simplistic standards). Such a tiny little thing made me feel so much better. So much so that I played so much yesterday I couldn’t even touch my guitars today (My fretting fingers are still buzzing away). So after such a guitar based recovery where else was I going to post my news than here :)
Anyway, if you also would like to feel better about your own playing, I suggest listening to mine ;)
My Clip (http://www.box.net/shared/vxj4zh6ix9)
Original track on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7zXN4bXorI)
The technical details. MIK Squier Strat with GFS Fat Pat Zebra bridge into Pocket POD running my homebrew JCM800 patch. Recorded using Audacity on my old laptop.
I’ve cut the track down to just the lead break I took, and I left in the first 30s or so of my mistakes so you can discern what guitar is me (the harsher sounding tone playing all the pinch harmonics) and what’s the original guitar. It was only a practice so I didn’t really bother with levels, and as such my guitar and theirs are pretty close in the mix, but I think you can still tell mine by the mistakes, and the horrid hum at the start (laptop battery was almost dead so I was charging it at the time, thus the hum). The run that starts at around 40s is my favourite bit.
Anyways, I'm off to read what everyone has been up too :)