guitar NEWB thread

Toneprint allows you to use your smartphone to play a modem sounding noise into your bridge pickup and change the settings in the pedal.

Also low budget weird - pretty much every single idiotbox pedal.

my unhelpful opinion is to do nothing re: pedals until you love your amp

^^^^ THIS

Sometimes I think people learning guitar should be banned from pedals for at least 1 year, maybe 3 years.

I would say that they should be banned from playing with them for longer than 3 minutes in a space where others can hear. Otherwise, it's too much fun.

yeah, i regret not waiting to use pedals, they really atrophied my playing skills. not!
Guitars are for making sounds

fucking how do you turn pedals off anyway, do they make pedals that turn off?

A bistable multivibrator

they don't make pedals that 14 year olds can figure out how to turn off

Pedals for your pedals.

http://www.loop-master.com/images/Five%20Loop%20with%20Master%20Bypass%201506.jpg

I like that Slow Engine

Tc electronics hall of fame and hall of fame minidi some weird shit,esp with the toneprint options

― Everyone is awful except you. Wait, no, you are also awful. (jjjusten), Wednesday, June 4, 2014 10:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These are hella cheap right now too. I accidentally bought a Hall of Fame the other week when I entered a half-serious high bid on one on ebay and it turned out to be the winning bid.

Speaking of reverb, jjusten (or anyone else) how do you like the Dispatch Master? It looks like a nice, simple-to-operate pedal with the added benefit of being two effects. Does it lose anything in its simplicity? How does it stack up against other delay/reverb combos like the Boss RV-5 or whatever?

I bought a Jagmaster! =)

Nice! Would shred.

A bistable multivibrator

― Sufjenga Cat Giffin (Sufjan Grafton), Thursday, June 5, 2014 6:10 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

insert TRS jack Boss joek

Alright so tell me about

-amps

-vetting teachers

My friend P says not to get a teacher, just to make noises. What u think of that?

If you're not going to get a teacher, at least get Rocksmith and some teach-yrself-guitar books with some music theory in them

I think I want a teacher, but what is Rocksmith?

I understand the importance of learning, but I am also doing this as something of an escape from a sorta daily preponderance of theory and technology fetish in my day job (film/video), so I'm hoping to sort of avoid the pro thing and the head-of-a-pin obsession with gear and technique. That said, said day job also leaves me with a pretty good understanding of the lie behind the assumption that anyone can get by on intuition, etc.

Kool, I see Rocksmith. Seems cheap enough to give a try, but does it actually work?

if there's a certain style that you want to play, a teacher can be very helpful. if you've got enough time to practice, it should also accelerate things. I practiced obsessively in high school by just learning songs, and I developed many bad habits that needed to be broken later. try to 'alternate pick' everything you play starting now if it's not too annoying. and do some exercises! a guitar teacher can be useful in that she'll make you learn some exercises.

and since you have an electric, you can do exercises while watching netflix or something. so it doesn't need to be grueling.

Yeah, even if you just want to "make noises", some basic instruction in picking and left-hand technique will strengthen your fingers and muscle memory and allow you to make a greater variety of noises.

I dragged my feet on getting a teacher (to the point where I STILL don't have one, even though I still want one; the leads I tried didn't pan out and then I got distracted) but sporadically playing Rocksmith in three week chunks has gotten me to the point where I can play the majority of open chords, plus barre chords, plus simple melodies, and I can credibly play a rhythm guitar part to "Night Shift" by Siouxsie and the Banshees which was the main reason I wanted a guitar in the first place. Plus, it's a great teaching tool for a variety of songs across a bunch of genres that can turn into a bunch of other songs (ie, playing around with Rocksmith led me to noodling around on my own and then suddenly I realized I was playing "Classic Girl" by Jane's Addiction)

Yeah all this depends a lot on what you want to be able to do on guitar. But if you are trying to play in a certain style, or you want to know how to play what someone else played, a teacher can save you a lot of time and bad habits.

I have a good ear and started out learning by ear and I learned a lot of things not merely "wrong" but in a way that made things much harder for myself. Although I guess there's some benefit to some of it, like trying to come up with ways to play stuff that is actually in alternate tuning in a standard tuning.

i didn't know about rocksmith. it looks pretty awesome. i am sad that it wasn't available 12 years ago.

So amps? What to look for if I don't actually play yet? The Fender one looks nice cos it matches my guitar

Fender Hot Rod Deluxe used to be the go-to moderately priced tube amp imo, but now it seems like they've jacked up the prices. Maybe you can find a used one of these. I'm really happy with mine.

boy howdy those have gotten expensive!

srsly, I think I paid around $400 new?

If that?

When I bought my hot-rod deluxe I had this vaguely Carlos Santanaish salesman pitching it to me, and I can still hear him saying "It's got the 'drive' button, for when you want drive, and for when you need a little more drive, you hit the 'more drive' button"

lol

and yeah, it really has a "more drive" button, which is hilarious and spinal tappish

'ow much more drive can it get? none. none the more drive.

I just want to spend 100-200 on amp, at most

100-ish would be ideal

You're probably looking at a solid state practice amp then. I have a Vox Pathfinder. They're pretty nice. An amp of that size isn't going to keep up in a band situation, but for fooling around at home it's all you really need.

yeah. there are low wattage tube amps out there. you may be able to find one for around $200. $100 is tough.

I really would recommend a "jr" sized tube amp. You might be able to find one for $200 or a little less, especially used. I spent several miserable years trying to get the sound I wanted out of a solid state amp.

If the sound of your amp doesn't please you, you won't be motivated to play.

Also, please go to a store and actually try some amps out, maybe even ask the store guy to demo them for you if you're not comfortable playing yourself.

When I bought my hot-rod deluxe I had this vaguely Carlos Santanaish salesman pitching it to me, and I can still hear him saying "It's got the 'drive' button, for when you want drive, and for when you need a little more drive, you hit the 'more drive' button"

― ₴HABΔZZ ¶IZZΔ (Hurting 2), Friday, June 6, 2014 11:34 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love this

I got Rocksmith 2014 for my birthday! It is fucking great fun! I'm not really a guitar newb as such since I've been playing guitar for almost 20 years but I never practice and therefore am probably not much better than someone who's been playing for 2 or 3 years, so I'm hoping this will get me into it a bit more. I also bought a cheap crappy bass last year to play around with so it's good for that too. I just have to be strict about using my fingers to play bass instead of just bashing at it with my thumb like I do most of the time.

I'm not a newb, been playing guitar for 20+ years but feel like I'm in a rut, particularly since not regularly practicing with a band/playing live. I pick up my guitar at home but I feel like I just do the same things and play the same songs, I'm not learning anything new or getting any better. Any thoughts on expanding skills or learning new things when you've been playing forever?

Actually Rocksmith looks fun. Maybe I should do that.

Though that song selection list is hilariously "guitar magazine from 1996" which is how I learned to play guitar in the first place.

hal leonard (probably some others) publishes these huge "white pages" of guitar tab for like 30 bucks with 200 or so songs in them, scattered throughout their catalog - when i get in a rut, i just grab one of those and play stuff by people i dont care about at all and i find it kinda breaks that lockdown mindset. like hey, i would never listen to this maroon 5 song or whatever, but the guitar part is way different than my comfort zone and can be applied/tweaked/messed with

Mick Goodrick's Advancing Guitarist ftw