The Guitar Thread

So I'm about to take a cab out to take a lesson with one of Lenny Breau's old students

and I'm freaking out a bit (in a good way)

and I thought it'd be radbeans to have a thread for all things related to guitar...

from playing them to looking at them to whatever.

 

Here's some Lenny Breau stuff:

 

 

 

 

Here is one of my idols Kurt Rosenwinkel just taking the piss:

 

and here is a clinic excerpt he did on chord-melody:

 

 

Anyway, how many guitarists does WATMM have?

i started playing guitar in 2004. i stopped getting better in 2008. i got worse from 2008 to 2010. then i recouped a little from 2010 to now.

 

i was real into percussive playing from 2007-2008, just trying to make up my own style. now i'm kind of a soft night forest cabin guitar type of person.

 

i don't get real hard into makes or models. i have 2 acoustic guitars (steel and nylon), 2 electrics (which i almost never use), and also a banjo and a gold tone octave mandolin.

 

current favorite is the nylon.

I've been a guitarist for 25 years (fuck!). I've moved away from playing guitar a little but I still love to jam out on my Steinberger.

 

I just bought one of these, actually

 

It uses the GK pickup not only for synth sounds, but for *guitar* modelling, processing each string individually to make it sound like different guitars (including fkn banjo and nylon string classical). It even has some crazy good stuff like polyphonic distortion, which sounds pretty majestic. Plus, the built-in synth engines are actually pretty deep for something in a guitar pedal.

I originally bought it just to replace my previous multi-effects pedal (digitech rp150) which died during rehearsal mere days before a gig, but it's actually inspiring me to work on some prog metal stuff that will use it to its full capabilities—it has some nice pitch bend features, so not only can I go full djent on a 6-string, but it can bend each string individually with the pedal, for pedal steel style bends :D

  On 1/21/2016 at 10:00 PM, sheathe said:

current favorite is the nylon.

yeah I have a lovely old handmade classical guitar that sounds beautiful, I still love to pick it up and fumble my way through Spanish Ballad or something.. one of these days I'll work on getting my classical guitar chops up to a good level :P

 

lol I was going to start a guitar thread, how odd. nwae, carry on

I played a lot of guitar in high school, my dad collects guitars and has a hand full of really nice amps. I kind of wish I had pursued an interest in keys at the time but hey.

 

 

oh lol, I used to know how to play mood for a day, one of the first things I learned on guitar, funny hearing it after all these years.

Been playing since 1991. Started messing with open tunings about 7 years ago and now I'm at the point where when I go back to standard I feel like I've lost a decade of skill.

 

Never had a good classical, but I would love to. Also an octave 12 string, they're one of the most fun things I've ever played:

 

 

Probably going to build myself one by the end of the year, but I've got some other projects I need to finish first.

Nice one WATMM. Picked up a guitar for the first time in a year tonight reading this thread. I couldn't afford to get my guitar shipped when I moved. Played for about 10 years and got pretty good, then stopped and can't play for shit. luckily my flatmate just bought one so tonight I went and got his and played. So much fun. Though of course I got annoyed cause I couldn't remember lots of stuff I used to be able to play in my sleep, but it felt pretty good at the same time.

Nice. I still count guitar as my first instrument. Always been around them as my Dad was a player. but started later as I was originally a synth geek into JMJ as a kid. Still been playing guitar for nearly 25 years. Not that i'm any good, like most people, I can't shred anymore but I guess I have my style which i'm happy with.

Building guits is fun too.

Nice to see all the guitar love in here!

 

 

So, I learned who (probably) killed Lenny Breau last night....sheesh

pretty much only play in alt tunings that i make up.

yeah. I've played in bands and taken lessons. I still play time to time but nowadays I'm mostly just making music on my computer.

I've a gibson les paul, epiphone sg and some thing made by Cort or something. I mostly play my dad's old beat up nylon string Landola tho.

I've been playing for about 18 years, with varying levels of taking it seriously. I drifted away from it in the past couple years, but have been getting back into it lately... Been jamming a lot of doom metal riffs in C standard.

Here's a pic of me playing with the most recent band I was in, about 5 years ago.

  On 1/22/2016 at 6:01 PM, sheathe said:

pretty much only play in alt tunings that i make up.

 

alt tunings rule

 

 

 

p.s. wow i had no idea watmm had so many guitarists...nice

i bought some washburn thing a couple of months ago. easily the nicest to play guitar i've ever owned (it was like $180 so you know the other guitars i've had have been crap). i took like 2 guitar lessons and never practiced and the instructor could tell so he didn't want to work with me (i was like 12). i know maybe 3 chords and then like, the standard bar chord? i bought that videogame that's supposed to teach you how to play last year and messed with it a bit. seems like if i stuck with it i could get at least more proficient than i am.

 

but i didn't...

i dream of one day owning a rickenbacker bass just to put on the wall as a piece of art

 

and maybe learn to play

 

but probably not...

Can't play for shit, but unearthed hours worth of my pops jamming blues standards/Django Reinhardt solos & what not that I will rape in due time. Maybe if I was single that be a good motivator to learn to play back in the days, now emulating through a pc, running a synth through a good distortion unit will do just fine :) . Karplus string ftw ;) .

i started playing around a year 2000, and around 2009 pretty much stopped and got into synths. never was much of flashy player, but heard more than once about my perfect, session musician level sense of timing and precision. i started playing more recently because my friend gave me most of the parts to built a fender jazzmaster, but man, i suck now.

 

i play bass guitar in a band since 2013 and i got pretty good. but bass is wildly different from guitar.

 

My main guitar style involves me bashing the stings with my thumb, like a bass play would. And when years ago my brother had his bass set up and around for me to muck with, apart from being in a much lower register, I used to play it like a guitar sometimes with melodic riffs, it's fun to pop and slap to though.

i feel like guitar is good to just play

On my 4th birthday(1980) my parents got me a kid sized acoustic guitar that was pretty cheap, but I loved it and eventually broke it after a couple years. I then got my first grown-up acoustic at a garage sale for $1 and abused the shit out of that for about 10yrs. If I remember correctly it went out in a ball of flames during an epic performance in my bedroom.

 

Got my first electric guitar hand-me-down from a neighbor kid who was a very talented musician when I was around 14yrs old. I've never had a drive to be a legit guitarist. Never had will to learn, it was more of a rhythmic accompaniment to my life. But, I always have an acoustic in the room, and I have picked it up almost daily my entire life just to strum & hum for a few minutes. It's definitely some form of meditation for me. Feeling out rhythms and getting lost in the sound is emotionally pleasing.

 

I would also love a nylon-string classical guitar, & a 12-string acoustic.

 

My favorite electric guitar is a Gibson Les Paul. Preferably the black "gothic" version I first held & played in high-school at a friends house. I have a black Les Paul studio version (cheaper finish but the same hardware). And holy shit does it sound beautiful running clean out of my 5w blues jr amp. I rarely find the time to play it, mainly because the acoustic is always within arms reach.

 

I'm definitely more prone to play bass in a live jam setting. Probably has to do with being a drummer and really finding enjoyment complimenting a good drummer.

nvm

Edited January 24, 2016 by QQQ

A week or so ago I finally got my piece-of-shit electric set up; I've had it since I was about 14 and over the years the action had crept up to the point where it was giving me pretty heavy-duty wrist cramps and pains; I play in a weird punk-ish band and there's a lot of really fast-paced power chord shenanigans so it was really becoming a problem at gigs, to the point where I could barely even play some of my riffs at the end of the set. Anyway, finally got it set up and the action lowered and it plays like a dream; looking forward to getting more practice in these days.

 

Also a big fan of playing massive chunky Sabbath-style riffs with dense woolly fuzz going on. Mmmm.

  Quote

that code is sent to the synthasizer via midi, so the glitching problems inherent in some systems, really don't apply

heh, midi is a glitch and a problem all by itself. (Yes I realise that I'm the only person on the planet that thinks this, I will not however give up my hatred of it, so much of music in the 80's and 90s was ruined by it).

 

That said, this would be fun for a play play.

Started playing in '83, and really got into it in '88 (Metallica, Sepultura, Malmsteen, etc). Did pretty much nothing but rehearse through my teens and into the mid twenties. Done mostly death/thrash metal riffing, but I can decently fake shredding as well.

 

Got pretty sick of the guitar a few years back when I realised that muscle memory was taking over and the brain was taking the back seat, so I started making electronic music instead. Still have a doom metal and a black metal side project.