Got back into playing guitar at the end of the summer and I think my strings are starting to lose their tone. A couple questions: How often do you guys change out your strings? Even though I have calluses, I notice after prolong playing the higher strings feels like they are slicing into my fingers, maybe itās my positioning but I got girly hands so sometimes I have to place my fingers where itās not on the tips. Would going with heavier strings benefit, and can I still use them for standard tuning?
Also, I pretty much got the A minor and A major pentatonic scales memorized, but Iām having difficulty on combining the 2. Can someone give me advice or point me to where I can find the way to transition from minor to major? One last thing. I have a mediocre set up, I bought the guitar and amp at a Best Buy a few years ago. What can I do to improve the tone so it doesnāt sound so bland? After market pickups? Tube amp? Iāve messed with the settings and I want a more earthy 70s rock tone but still have the potential for metal stuff.
A minor doesnāt really work with A major generally. Use the relative minor/major keys, which is really just starting the scale on a different note. For A major its F# minor, and for A minor its C major.
Youāre proly better off getting lighter gauge strings cause heavy gauge have more tension.
Hello guys, Iām a drummer.
My friend and I decided to do an original work and he told me in what tone or something I wanted it inā¦in like A, B, C etc or somethingā¦Iām not sure what heās talking about, any insights?
My guess would be the key signature of the piece (A, B, C, Major or minor which shouldnāt really affect you as a drummer). I guess it could be also the structure of the piece that youāre working on ABA, ABC, etc., but I donāt know if thatās commonly used.
*Iām not a bassist, but Jack Bruce just died. Cream has had a role in my musical tastes, specially when I was younger and Jack Bruce was no small part of that.
Weird, but I was just humming born under a bad sign yesterday.
Hey guys, whatās a similar brand/model to those japanese ESP models that have slim necks? I had an Edwards model years ago:
And enjoyed playing it as I got small hands. The Schecter guitar I have currently, the neck is big and chunky. While I didnāt mind it at first, Iām starting to miss how easier it was to play scales on the jap esp.
Bumping this thread for the new year. What are your guysā plans music wise for this year? For me itās to continue to learn new stuff, and incorporate it into improvising/jamming. I started keeping a guitar diary, trying to jot down what I practiced and other related stuff, this has helped me keep myself in check and has assisted in my progress. Iām starting to do sweep picking just out of repetitive practicing, and learning new strumming techniques like the gallop, which is still a work in progress. Picked up a bunch of new equipment too(first valve amp, black star ht-5r, boss chromatic tuner and harmonic ps and ts808 pedals) at the end of the year, and this new axe sent from Japan came in today:
http://scontent-b.cdninstagram.com/hphotos-xfa1/t51.2885-15/10864937_320840964790944_954883226_n.jpg
Needs a setup, and found a reputable guitar shop to do it. Super psyched!
would love a vid of that guitar in action. ive been a fan of hizaki and his guitar for a while lol
im just finishing up an EP so planning on doing some traveling soon to promote it. anyone flown with an acoustic guitar before? Iāve got a hardshell case but had a friend telling me today heād still be hesitant to check a guitar.
hoping to spend the new year expanding my repertoire of licks and metal technique
NYR - try not to kill myself while playing this new 8 string i got a couple of months ago; have a guitar or 2 build by the end of this year
what kind of metal, pherai?
just finished an EP I was working on last year. mostly simple clean playing. also all the band members are 3s players, so support (or hate if appropriate) us!
I figure thrash would be a good base to start learning metal technique. before I start learning deedly type leads I need to improve just standard metal riffing. like painkiller era priest type riffing I guess. just learning harmonics would be a start lol
Hey guys, so winter where Iām at is causing my skin to dry up like crazy. My fingertips are peeling and catching on the strings, so what do you guys do when ever this happens? Should I use a nail file and smooth out my tips? Anyway, got GAS again, and after trying an Ibanez RG420 at a guitar center, ordered up a Prestige RG655 Galaxy Black, love the neck of these guitars, maybe even more than my Edwards.
I donāt know about the OD pedal, but the DS1 kills your low end. Amp distortion/drive usually sounds best in my experience, especially if youāre trying to go for a heavier tone, but I used to use my ampās overdrive channel and then add distortion from a pedal on top of it if I wanted to go harder. If your amp has any overdrive, Iād suggest using that to beef up your tone.
@pheraiā Iāve flown with an acoustic before and have been ok just using the hardshell case. You may want to pack it with newspaper or something to keep it from moving around in the case in-flight (especially put some under the joint where the headstock and the neck meet as thatās the most likely to break part, though donāt pack it too tight!) but it should be ok. If itās an expensive guitar maybe get a beater to take or invest in a road case if youāre that worried about it.
Btw, the tunes sound great, I love me some good power pop! And Iām jealous youāre in a band of 3s players! None of my musician friends here play fighting games really and if they do, theyāre just casual at it. Dunno how far East you guysāll be but if you end up hitting Nashville, look me up and we can have some beers and play some 3s!
ended up just getting a 3/4 scale yamaha acoustic with electronics for about 2 hundo. my main acoustic is a gibson so i just didnt want to risk it. this yamaha is pretty damn cool though!
really appreciate you giving them a listen bud! was just a lucky coincidence that a few of my 3rd friends could form a rhythm section (and the legend himself, Victoly designed the logo lol). I must go to nashville someday as Iām a bit of a country fan, but unfortunately its not part of the plan, and just rolling solo sadly. i write all the songs on acoustic anyway though so i think its enough to get people interested. are you nashville demolition on soundcloud?
I have a 100 watt carvin legacy IIā¦
I donāt get to use the oerdrive on the amp, so Iām stuck using my pedals as psuedo overdrives. Depending on the sound that I need and want, I can get good low output tones that are still crisp. Itās a neccesary adjustment. That set up was just a bargain bin djent sound for less than 100$ provided your pickups had the necessary output.
and thatās the beauty of digital also. It gives you most of the benefits and characteristics of high power amps without the hassle. itās a fair trade imo. Granted, if I could, iād be cracking this 100W to 7 all the time, but Iām poverty, I dontā get to have my cake and eat it.
Yeah man, thatās me. Anytime youāre near Nashville, hit me up and weāll have a time and can jam some tunes.
If you get an attenuator you can crank up the gain without the volume, whichāll help. Something that also might help is maybe setting the Tone on the OD pedal towards a more bassy tone and using the DS1 for the highs. Some pedals do different frequencies better than others and the DS1 tends to be kinda screechy in my experience.
I mentioned on reddit that my TS808 kills the bass on my amp and a couple people said that a lot of over drive pedals tend to do so, and went further into saying that a lot of people that play solo, tend to compensate for a lack of having a bass player, by cranking out the bass. That made a lot of sense to me, and maybe this is the situation with the ds1, maybe just using it as a slight boost in the ampās OD?
Tonight I picked up the Prestige RG655. Neck feels amazing, canāt wait to try it out tomorrow with the different DiMarzio pups.
MOST distortion and overdrive pedals tend to sap the bass out of your signal, which is why I generally prefer amp distortion. I DID get a boss Mega Distortion pedal years ago that has a bass knob on it which is a bit better but still not the best. I started using an Ibanez tube screamer as a boost which worked pretty well in conjunction with my amp OD. I only really use light overdrive or distortion though, I donāt really need a big distorted sound
The best, most warm distortion youāll ever get is going to come from tubes in an amp. Depending on how much distortion you need, even if itās just overdrive, you throw a compressor on that and itās going to sound like magic.
Yeah, another distortion pedal that seems to not only keep the bass but enhance it are the Big Muff pedals. Though, I agree that the main dirt should be from the amp. I need to look into those compressor pedals, Iām still a noob and I get those confused with the noise gate ones when I was looking at them a while back.
What other pedals would be used in the effects loop besides modulation? Are there certain pedals that are normally found infront of the amp be also used in the loop?
It depends on what you want in your signal chain. I generally use delay rather than reverb (or a very short reverb if Iām using one) because it tends to make things a little less muddy in a band setting.
Compressors are nice for tightening up your sound, although if you compress things too much, it can make it sound small and without dynamics. Itās a nice thing to have though, and it can also function as a lead boost if you like your tone without it and just kick it on to increase your volume. The difference between a compressor and a gate is that a gate cuts your signal off when you hit a certain dB, whereas a compressor fits your existing signal (compresses it, hence the name) within a certain dB range.
I donāt have much in my pedalboard really. Tuner, OD/Compressor, TubeScreamer, & delay is really it. Unless youāre using the ampās effects loop, having too many pedals in your chain can degrade your sound a bit. But on Cardinal rule is to keep all your reverbs and delays at the END of your signal chain (meaning theyāre the last pedals in the chain before the amp.) They just sound better that way for some reason. But experiment with different orders of pedals. You wouldnāt think so, but it can completely change your tone just rearranging the order of even just two pedals.