guitar NEWB thread

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

Believe it or not YouTube has been my go-to for guitar rut-busting. Mixed in with infinite numbers of rough webcam covers are some pretty good instructional videos. I like the ones from this instro surf guy

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?

― how's life, Thursday, June 5, 2014 11:31 AM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In Tone Report this week, Jamie Stillman says this has been earthquaker's most popular pedal!

I have been a guitar owner for a quarter century and still feel like a newb as a player. I'm not bothered. A lot of it has to do with not having a shitton of spare time in which to seriously practice. If I'm lucky I'll get 15 minutes a day to fuck around and I'm resigned to that as the status quo for now.

But so, the thing I just started getting into in the last month or so is learning vocal lines. I've gone through phases of figuring out all the other parts of songs: chord changes, riffs, solos, bass lines, trying to teach myself how to improvise, etc. But for some reason I had never even thought to try to work out a song's vocal melodies before and that's kinda crazy to me, in retrospect. Anyway, it's been a really good rut-buste. Feel like I'm learning a lot.

ha given my background as a singer, following vocal lines is my first inclination (2nd inclination is to follow the bass line because I sing bass or baritone in ensembles)

B-b-but did you ever get a teacher?

does Rocksmith count

If u want it to

I fucking love Rocksmith

wish rocksmith used tab instead of... whatever it is it uses

does rocksmith have style-specific lessons? is it mostly just for beginners? the website seems deliberately opaque about the lessons that are offered.

I was initially excited about https://getinstinct.com/ but it doesn't seem to work very well at all. Using a laptop microphone and the internet maybe not such a good idea yet.

but I do like how they have style specific lessons (though I couldn't even get the free section of one to load correctly in chrome to see if I was interested in buying).

Also, I have been having a hell of a great time learning to play ragtime guitar, but I am afraid that it is one of those styles that is great fun to play but horrible to listen to outside of old western saloons.

I realize that ragtime and old western saloons are very different times, but I also don't realize that because I guess it just sounds "old timey" is what I am saying.

wish rocksmith used tab instead of... whatever it is it uses

The default has the strings the opposite way round to tab, but you can reverse the order, I found it OK once I did that.

does rocksmith have style-specific lessons? is it mostly just for beginners?

There are some video lessons for various techniques, not sure they are any better than stuff you can find on Youtube tho. Some of the solos are pretty advanced, I think, but then I am not a very good lead guitarist - I don't think it's just for beginners though - I've got a long way to go on some of the tracks.

ha given my background as a singer, following vocal lines is my first inclination (2nd inclination is to follow the bass line because I sing bass or baritone in ensembles)

― the farakhan of gg (DJP), Monday, November 24, 2014 5:11 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it just feels like the missing piece of the puzzle to me, in terms of understanding a song. Like, the vocals are the thing people think of first when they're thinking about a song, so why wouldn't I want to figure them out on my instrument? How did I skip this?

Feel like if I did have a background in chorus, or in another instrument in the band or orchestra, I would have approached things differently. My son plays violin at his school. I can kinda tell when he's just whistling or whatever that he's getting a pretty good grasp on melody.

It's really frustrating in hindsight, but I'm having a lot of fun now.

xp Guitar is a weird instrument in that many people never go through the trouble of learning to play the kinds of very basic single-note melodies that a first-year student on any other instrument would learn. You learn cowboy chords, then power chords, then barre chords, then blues/pentatonic scale soloing.

Like I'll bet a lot of guitarists who have been playing a couple years would have trouble picking out Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in first position.

meanwhile that has basically been the extent of my guitar playing lately (that, When The Saints Go Marching In, Ode To Joy, and the main keyboard riff from Never Let Me Down Again)

It's a good thing to learn, because then when you play chords you can throw in little basslines/licks/fills and it gives you a nice little stylistic edge since a lot of people don't play that way today (whereas in the 60s it was pretty common)

Do you ever take a melody and just strum in the rests? Like you could do "Oh when the saints" (strumy strummy strummy strum) "go marchin in" (strummmmmm a strummy strum) etc. -- it's a good exercise

I can tell you that back in jr. high school when I was taking lessons I probably made it 1/4 way through the Hal Leonard Guitar Method 1 book. I did't want to practice Au Claire de la Lune or Greensleeves.

xp: Yes! that's another thing that I'm doing too, going back and forth between the melody and the chord or root.

I moved this summer and my guitar is now in a room with a computer so I've been playing a lot more - watching videos on youtube and figuring out how to sort of play Ziggy Stardust, Karma Police, Can You Get To That, Mr. Brownstone, etc.

But playing along is still all I do, and I am still totally stupid about scales, positions, keys, and any music theory stuff. I have no idea where to get started and it feels like I will have to force myself to do this and it stops being fun. Which sucks, as this is how it's been for the last 15 years.

Well yeah getting beyond that is going to require some vegetables-eating, just like you don't get much better at basketball if all you ever do is randomly chuck up shots. But don't make it so huge for yourself, just pick one thing and learn it gradually -- how to play a major scale in a few keys (off a few different chords) or something like that. A lot of this stuff builds on itself so once you get a certain amount of base knowledge it gets easier to learn more.

I think it's more that I need to find some specific list of things to work at on a daily basis that progress and build on previous knowledge but am overwhelmed by the options.

I got really good at cooking because I had to eat everyday so I practiced fundamental things over and over. My guitar playing is more like ordering takeout all the time.

The key is to make a very small, manageable list. It won't be "complete." You won't come up with the perfect practice routine. Doing something is better than doing nothing.

Do you workout? It's not that different than with working out -- unless you're a fitness nut you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure out exactly what to do and how to cover all bases and you wind up not going to the gym at all in the end. Better to just do something. That 20 minutes you wind up spending upgrade walking on the treadmill is at least exercise, whereas wringing your hands about what workout to do is not really.