The Official Guitar Thread
- Thread starter Dr.Retarded
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Guest, it's time once again for the massively important and exciting FoH Asshat Tournament!
Go here and give us your nominations!Who's been the biggest Asshat in the last year? Give us your worst ones!
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Eh, UG is pretty hit and miss. A lot of the tabs aren't even in the same ballpark for tuning, let alone note accuracy. Songsterr is pretty decent, but it's kind of a popularity contest. Obscure stuff will get missed.
My buddy told me once "The best tab is no tab at all," and I think there's some truth to that. A good chunk of the shit I know is shit i figured out while messing around with other shit. Pretty amazing how simple most music is.
My buddy told me once "The best tab is no tab at all," and I think there's some truth to that. A good chunk of the shit I know is shit i figured out while messing around with other shit. Pretty amazing how simple most music is.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Didn't you just start playing? I think we might have had that conversation across boards, but that's what I seem to remember.
I don't think you need to worry about a pedal board until you're at the point where you give a shit about your sound. Lotta time between then and now to figure it out.
I don't think you need to worry about a pedal board until you're at the point where you give a shit about your sound. Lotta time between then and now to figure it out.
Alex
Still a Music Elitist
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There are a ton of approaches to the pedalbaord madness. If you just started playing, then I'd just go for one of the lower levelDigiTech multi effect processors. I started out with something similar then upgraded to theDigiTech GNX3. A few years later I just wasn't into that digital sound anymore and started buying up indvidual effects pedals. Eventually, you will spiral out of control and realize you have more money invested in pedals than guitars.
By the way, this is my current pedalboard setup. Brought to you via the LG Revolution's shit ass camera.
Alex
Still a Music Elitist
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Definitely part of the fun. There are most certainly some best practices, but there really aren't any rules. I think the only true golden rule is have your tuner be the last pedal in the chain. That way, if you have an awful hum or something goes awry with your board, you can use the tuner as a kill switch. The two other rules I follow are having all pitch-shifting effects and wah prior to your distortion pedals. Having the wah after distortion gives it an extremely nasal "duck-like" sound. Having pitch-shifting effects after distortion just confuses the hell out of the effect. You need a clean signal going into pitch-shifting effects. That's why in my chain for the pedalboard above, the POG, wah and Whammy II are the first pedals. Then come the distortion pedals. I like all the other effects post-distortion because the distortion effect essentially boosts the presence of those effects as well.
Stosh
Bronze Knight of the Realm
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So I'm half convinced my wife is spying on my posts. This morning, out of the blue she comes up to me and says "I've always wanted to learn to play guitar, lets go buy one." Ummm, ok. You know I'm left handed and we won't be able to share? "Ok, lets buy two." So that's what we did today, I'm pretty excited.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Yeah, see, that's not a noob setup right there. That's a guy who's been playing for many many years and has figured out what he wants in sound. You won't need anything that looks even remotely similar unless you start doing this full time, or have a whole lot of money to blow on gear.
Fortunately for me, the guys I spend the most time listening to use the least amount of effects possible, so that's kinda what aim for as well, and judging from that picture, it's gonna save me a lot of money in the future
Fortunately for me, the guys I spend the most time listening to use the least amount of effects possible, so that's kinda what aim for as well, and judging from that picture, it's gonna save me a lot of money in the future
Alex
Still a Music Elitist
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Of course I'm not suggesting to go out and splurge $1500 in pedals, but I just wanted to bring up the paths I took to get to that point. I don't think buying a distortion pedal alone and outright is the best move. That's why I suggested that DigiTech multi effects processor. It's not a huge monetary investment and it helps introduce you to the world of effects so you can get a better idea for what you like. Then you can go from there.
Any idea when/if there will be a Jam Play sale? if it goes down to $99 for a year subscription I will bite. i checked out the site and it seems like there are a ton of resources for guitarists at any level.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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They had one at the end of last year, that's when I subscribed. Reading it at the time gave me the impression that they do it end of the year every year.
I'm talking like last full week of the year/new years day kinda thing. It's really insanely good, wish I could link some vids from it, because there's a lot of just fucking gold on that site if you give a shit about music at all.
I'm talking like last full week of the year/new years day kinda thing. It's really insanely good, wish I could link some vids from it, because there's a lot of just fucking gold on that site if you give a shit about music at all.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Oh, I can. I didn't even think that they would already have shit on Youtube, but they do.
Look at the in depth kind of shit they have here. Just picking some of the more mainstream stuff that people would recognize here.
That Hangar 18 video is 2 hours long. It's insane how much depth Allen goes into on that thing, it's fucking unreal. You'd think he wrote it himself.
And this shows it's not just some hack with some shitty tabs. Every part of every song, played together in the way it's meant to be played.
Look at the in depth kind of shit they have here. Just picking some of the more mainstream stuff that people would recognize here.
That Hangar 18 video is 2 hours long. It's insane how much depth Allen goes into on that thing, it's fucking unreal. You'd think he wrote it himself.
And this shows it's not just some hack with some shitty tabs. Every part of every song, played together in the way it's meant to be played.
I had JamPlay maybe 1.5-2yrs ago. It is a pretty solid site to learn. I may resub at some point because when I was there they were just starting to build up the metal lessons and it seems like they're much better now.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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There is everything from "never picked up a guitar and can barely figure out which end us up" all the way to the highest end of literally every style of music on there, all taught by loads of different teachers. Don't like one? Np, there's other guys to teach you how to strum chords.
Nick Catanese (Zakk Wylde's evil twin) is on there now, breaking down Black Label Society's shit, Steve Stevens (Billy Idol's guitarist) has White Wedding and Rebel Yell on there, it's getting better all the time. You'll pick and choose what you feel you want to learn, and for $100 a year (with year end sale coming up here shortly), it's like a sore dick - you can't beat it.
The site is very good about progression but it is extraordinarily self-motivated. They'll try and guide you but it is easy to steer off course. They'll attempt to teach you the basics of the guitar and then move onto theory. Most will find this extremely boring. I did. However they did teach me how to locate notes on the fret board, chord theory and scale theory. However I have since lost most of that knowledge. Since I have no aspirations of being anything more than a hobbiest I quickly just jumped into learning songs while doing some of their warmup practices. I'm not sure if it is still up there but Kris Norris had a fantastic lesson about various modes that was the most in depth explanation of them I've ever seen.
Cutlery
Kill All the White People
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Completely. It's not like you need to show up for practice every Tuesday at 6pm and have someone tell you to run scales. You'll get out of it what you put in. But I think there's enough breadth and depth of resources available there that basically anyone can find something to get out of it.
That being said, it's exactly like Tenks said. None of us are gonna be making a career outta this, so you do what's fun. What's fun for me (and most people, I would imagine)? Playing the shit I love. So after you learn some chord progressions and shit like that, you start to see how it plays into songs you've known for years, and you learn them easier and quicker. Mini-goal for me - Play through Slayer's Decade of Aggression. That disc changed my fucking life. Over halfway done with it, and I love every minute of it. If it's not fun, why do it?