I have it plugged into a pedal board (not sure if isolated or not). I recently purchased a 10-socket isolated power source, but I haven't tried it yet.

It could be just something not meant for apartment bedroom playing. I pretty much just play guitar at home and I don't have a band or play live or anything.

I could try that. Thanks poots & teh b0lly!!1.

Yeah, I tend to stack things because I like different sorts of effects (flangers, phasers, reverbs, delay... I like psych rock so just getting weird noises out of my guitar is fun).

However, I pretty much only ever use one dirt pedal at a time. Stacking distortion or fuzz doesn't tend to produce anything for me that I like better than any one given pedal. I find that it actually sounds like it's just sucking sound out rather than distorting more. But there are exceptions to that. Like, the sound-sucking thing actually helped me be able to use my loud fuzz with another fuzz and create an okay tone that sounded distinct from either one.

And though I like a lot of music with reverbed fuzz, I have trouble using reverb and fuzz in a way that actually sounds good and doesn't just turn everything to mud. I tend to only use reverb for clean guitars and play fuzzes dry now.

This is something I find hard to do. Playing with rhythm and inflections and stuff when strumming to express different feels. Like, it's easy to do when I'm not singing along, but if I'm singing, it's hard to focus on both the vocal rhythm and the guitar, so I revert to vanilla eight-note strumming. I also can't play leads and sing at the same time.

i think you have to take it apart

hit it with a hammer

DK, you also can try setting your amp for a very clean sound, and then turning on your fuzz pedal. Then when you want to go from fuzz to clean, use your guitar's volume knob to dial down the fuzz, and get to cleans. Lots of people use this trick while playing live.

What kind of pickups does your guitar have? I've found that can have a huge impact on things.

I've got quite a few guitars, I like pretty hot pickups, I've got pretty noisy trashy pedals. I got a Bacchus Duke with p90s recently and it doesn't really get on with my pedals at all and sounds shit, the pickups are waaaaaay too hot and noisy. On its own it sounds rockin' and raunchy , wonderful guitar.

I've got a strat with n3s and a les paul with super 57s are they're really polite sounding imo. I can plug the strat into my setup and it sounds ok, fuzzy but a bit too smooth and polite for me... Plug the Bacchus in, all the same settings on everything just a different guitar and it's uncontrollable end of the world sounding noise.

I was playing around with shit, and I think I had messed with things to the point where the fuzz became usable. I noticed some weird things, though. The tone and volume knobs on the guitar would create hiss in certain positions, but not in others. Also, the fuzz became quieter rather than louder with the amp distortion on, but also really bassy, no matter how I EQed it.

But anyway it looks like I just fucked up my amp today, because now it distorts even on the clean channel. I guess the speaker is torn? I have no idea, I know nothing of how amps work. I have no idea why it would be damaged, as it's not like I even use it anywhere near full volume. It's probably just because it's a cheap amp from some unknown Chinese company (Goldea, its called). I'm too poor to buy any real gear but I end up paying for it in the end anyway.

Hmm. I dunno anything about different sorts of pickups. I only have the ones that came with the guitar. Right now, I'm using some Jay Turser guitar that looks like a Squier.

If you cranked up the gain on the amp beyond where it was before, then it might distort on the clean channel even if the master volume is turned down. Try toning down the gain.

The tone I'm most interested in right now is the solo from Granduciel on the War On Drugs hit Lost In the Dream track 3 called "Suffering." Fuck! It's like the sound of glitter strewn across a black sky to become stars n shit

Oh hey, you're right. Thanks! I didn't realize that the gain knob did anything on the clean channel, but I guess it does add gain when it's turned all the way up.

No prob. Gain will act the same on all channels. Volume increases the sound level of a signal, while gain boosts the signal itself. A signal has a headroom, and once it crosses a threshold in its headroom, it will increasingly distort. Volume will keep the signal clean while increasing loudness. Gain will add some loudness too, but will distort the signal as it becomes too large for its headroom.

Using Gain to fatten up, or to cause distortion ("breakup") in a clean-based tone is a useful and musical tool, and is commonly used by guitarists.

lol check out this guy

Anybody have tips for creating leads/melodies over chords, and improvising? I tend to just screw around in the key that the chords are in, but better players seem to actually pay attention to what chord is being played at a given time, and play off that, rather than just kind of playing anything in the key.

I was watching one Marty Friedman video where he said it's good to play notes from the chord, or notes from the chords relative major/relative minor (although a chord and it's relative major/relative minor share all but one note on common).

But it's hard for me to think in terms of playing from the chord without making everything sound arpeggiated. It seems like it'd be really hard to think on your feet fast enough to know what chord is playing and play appropriate notes in a way that sounds fluid and not like you're just playing arpeggios. How do you guys do this in a natural way?

Also, another question: I'm checking out an acoustic listed on Craigslist tomorrow. I would ideally just buy one from a recognized brand like Yamaha or Ibanez or something, but very few are ever sold within convenient commuting distance, so the one I'm checking out is a brand I've never heard of.

What are things to look out for when I inspect it? I don't know how to tell if it will give me problems or if it is okay quality. Like, I'll probably check for fret buzz and the action, but what else?

Neil Young claims to not know any scales, what any of the notes are, and only a few chord names.

“[My lead guitar playing] sucks! It’s just a fucking racket. I get totally lost when I’m playing guitar. I’ll just play a melody over and over again and change the tone, bend a string, do all that. I’m totally engrossed in what I’m doing. At one with it. But I suck. I’ve heard myself.”

“I have melodies, and I have a sense of rhythm and drive. But it’s not about me, anyway – it’s about the whole band. It’s about everybody being there at once. When I play I’m listening for everything, trying to drive it all with my guitar. My guitar is the whole fucking band.”

http://www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle...0717-2012.aspx


but he's on an extreme of the spectrum. I don't think there are many guitarists who can be as sloppy and randomly emotional with their playing and come off sounding so good.

I changed the strings on 3 of my guitars today. So twangy and jangle like, I need to do this more than once a year for sure.

I'm always too lazy to do things like change strings, too. It's very occasional that I bother.

I'm also too lazy to change tunings. A lot of the time my guitar is in Eb, and if a song I wanna play is tuned to E, I'll just play it a half-step down. If I want to play along to a track because I'm learning some songs, I'll just look for songs in the tuning my guitar is already in instead of tuning it again.

I tend to write songs in whatever tuning my guitar is already in (like, if its tuned to C because I was playing some doom song, I'm just like, "eh, this song I write will also be tuned to C"). I know better musicians know their vocal range and write their songs to accommodate them, but I don't bother with that shit and I just leave the song in whatever key I first happened to write it in.

edit I got this pedal board set up but now I can't be bothered to resize the picture so it isn't gigantic

CH-1 Super Chorus is probably my favorite pedal

i think lots of people may be like this.
i certainly am. and what's worse, is that lately i've been writing a lot of songs (which is great for me) but almost each and every one of them is in a different tuning so i can't really revisit them unless i'm reeeeally in the mood to make it happen.

i suspect the upside of this, though, is refraining from over working songs until you get fucking sick of them and never complete them

I've been meaning to get a chorus. Not the sort of effect I use the most often, but I'm sort of a completist and I feel like its good to have all your bases covered for when inspiration hits and you find a use for them. I kind of aim to have at least one of every (basic) sort of effect.

Do you have a flanger? I feel like you would like flangers. I like flangers.

There's a bit of overlap between a flanger and a chorus, anyway. You can kind of use a flanger in a chorus-like way if you have a short delay time, but it also allows you to go crazier so that the whooshing comes in.

I have this one http://www.tcelectronic.com/corona-mini-chorus/ and it's very very good. TonePrint technology is awesome.

Adjusting my tuning to fit my voice is something I need to figure out

I never complete songs either way anyhow. In fact, I feel like it was a bit of an inaccuracy when I referred to myself "writing songs."

Yeah basically I use the Chrorus to tastefully smooth out the edges on the jagged funk chords I play

The Flanger I have set to max setting and just go crazy with it

Hey girls and guys with acoustics

so I played this really, really, REALLY nice sounding Taylor, a 214CE I believe. It's like 900 bucks and the tone is so warm and gentle, yet it has perfect attack. Really balanced sounding, and projects almost like it's plugged in. Anyway, so then I figured out that it has a fucking laminate back. My old acoustic was solid wood and it was cheaper. The sales guy tried to convince me that the laminate backing actually is what makes the projection and attack so perfectly balanced but I am unconvinced. Conventional wisdom tells me no one should buy a 900 dollar guitar without a solid back. What do you d00dz think? Is this a legit concern or is the solid wood obsession a pretentious purists thing?

Hey RBG are you any good at fingerpicking? I'm trying to learn the motor skills to do it fluidly. Any tips? I can do a 5-2-3 (thumb, middle, index) pretty well and am trying to learn 5-2-4-3 (thumb, middle, thumb, index), those numbers being the strings.

I know nothing when it comes to guitar quality and sound. I just buy cheap used shit from Craigslist and as long as it isn't a suspicious $40 "First Act" or "Crescent" guitar, I'll take it.

Punk Rock

I do some fingerpicking but I'm probably not the best guy to ask for any sort of guitar advice cause I've learned everything kind of just over many years through my own trial and error and limited actual teaching or proper learning. I mostly just fingerpick with thumb and first two fingers which I know is not "correct" but it sounds fine. I think what you call 5-2-3 is how you pick Tonight, Tonight, which was my introduction to fingerpicking.

one of my biggest influences is Paul Simon, and his fingerpicking is all over the place. sometimes his picking pattern changes chord to chord and he works in tons of little melodies within the pattern. It becomes intuitive after awhile, but it's hard to explain how. I'm sorry I can't give better advice. Just learn a lot of fingerpicking songs, take them slow, and pay attention to how your different fingers perform different functions (your thumb kind of keeps a bass line in a lot of fingerpicking for example). If you're fairly new to fingerpicking, one song I might suggest is the original version of Landslide. The chords are very simple but the picking will give your hand a good work out. Your thumb will be very active and you'll get a good cramp there for sure. There's probably a name for different kinds of fingerpicking, but this song also is a good example of something I like a lot, which is that in each measure your fingers start on the outside (highest and lowest) strings and then work their way into the middle.

Yea this is what everyone says. I'm anxious to be able to pull of hammer-ons and stuff like that within the patterns, like how you mentioned Paul Simon does. Dylan does that too. I just keep mindlessly practicing over chord changes while watching TV.

yeah I'm sorry to just repeat the same dumb thing everyone else says, I know how frustrating that is. This might seem incredibly obvious but for some reason it wasn't to me for a long time: when you are practicing something you are having trouble with, isolate the exact thing you are getting tripped up on, and just do that thing over and over. Even if it's just one measure with a hammer on, just play that a fuck ton of times. Often a lot of players tend to hit a troublesome spot and jump back to the beginning of the verse or whatever, but I would break it into as small a piece as possible.

Hammer ons are about precision and strength and the only way to improve that is just to exercise your fingers by doing it over and over and over. When you start to get good at hammer ons, it kind of opens up this whole new economy of movement on the guitar because you can do much more with less work.

I remember when I first started playing I thought solos were played with all these complex scales you'd have to memorize

But it's really simple patterns played with a lot of tricks like hammer on and vibrato

I think the Catalinbread dude died.

ewwww...Peavey?

I would guess the Harmony-Central forums and/or reviews might clear that up a bit. Taylor is a solid brand, that's a good start. All concerns are legitimate at $900.

My buddy Paul kinda messing around. He played in Act IV once with Analogue. I needed a soundcheck one day for this Q2HD handy-video recorder from Zcom. Very nice little recorder with an amazing mic. For open air recordings, nothing beats it for the price.

Well it depends on the solo and what scale you wanna use, I suppose. A large chunk of rock and pop solos are built off the minor pentatonic scale, so a lot of people just kinda learn those patterns. If you want to build solos off of other scales, I suppose you'd learn those ones.

It's hard for me to memorize scale shapes, and sometimes I'll have them all down only to forget them again after a while of not playing. I mostly just play in modes of the pentatonic and major scales, but I've been planning on branching out to modes of the harmonic minor (similar to the natural minor, but with a sharpened 7th... the parallel major would have a sharpened fifth in comparison to the regular major scale), and then some cool exotic scales. I like the sound of when I screw around in exotic scales, but I haven't committed any of them to memory because I don't want to confuse myself while I'm still trying to memorize the basics.

That's awful. I've never tried any of their pedals because I always stick to cheap stuff but a lot of them look good.

Dogging Peavey is such an outdated tactic from the era of 'not fender or marshall' line of thinking.