The OS Guitarists thread

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Anybody know of any good starter amps? I was looking at a 15w Line 6, but the reviews haven't been that great and don't sound like what I want anyway. I basically want just a practice amp or something to just start out on for the time being and something that isn't too big.

[Gibbz]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Anybody know of any good starter amps? I was looking at a 15w Line 6, but the reviews haven't been that great and don't sound like what I want anyway. I basically want just a practice amp or something to just start out on for the time being and something that isn't too big.

Try a 15 or 30 watt Roland Cube.

You can get a 15 online for $100.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Try a 15 or 30 watt Roland Cube.

You can get a 15 online for $100.

This?

[UNC_Pete]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

I'd suggest the Peavy Vyper. Kinda like the Roland Cube but a bit more versatile. Either one would be good. Stay away from Line 6, garbage tone.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Either of these would be good for blues-rock/classic rock/hard rock?

[UNC_Pete]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Can't go wrong with either, if I were you I'd go to a local music store that'd have them and play through them. I love my vypyr due to it's versatility but cube's are very good as well. Even check youtube if you can't go to one, there are comparison videos of people playing through practice modeling amps like the two above.

I bought the vypyr due to having a lot of metal tones, but it's very flexible, a buddy of mine came over and is a huge pink floyd fan and got something very similar through it, which is impressive.

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Yeah, the reviews for the vypyr are very good even compared to the cube. I'll probably go with the vypyr when I decide its time.

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

I have the line 6 spyder 3 30 watt amp as a practice amp... which my girlfriend bought for herself but she pretty much quit trying to learn so I inherited... I don't like it very much so I sort of agree that the tone on line 6 isn't the best.

I was pretty happy with my fender frontman 15r that came with my squire strat way back when... That's powerful enough for you to practice with but not loud enough to jam with a drummer wailing on his skins. I've played through a couple slightly higher wattage fenders 25 watts for example and I dug the tone.

[UNC_Pete]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Really you have to decide on it you want one very nice tone "one trick pony" or if you want to be able to get a lot of decent-great tones out of one amp. The versatility of the vypyr is crazy, but the tones will be close to the real thing without it being the real thing.

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

So I wanted to give my thoughts on how to approach guitar study.

First thing is first, you have to know where you want to get to. If your goal is to become a gigging musician who makes at least part of his/her income from the music industry your path will be much different than if you just want to strum a few songs around the campfire. I don’t feel like either path or anything in between has less merit than the others.

Being a musician is just like being anything else; if you want to be great then you have to work for it. If you just want to be competent, well it’s not as hard. Let’s start with being competent since that’s where most people fall into.

Understand the basics of how the guitar works: The guitar is much different than other instruments in that it can produce the same exact tones in multiple places on the neck; as opposed to a piano which produces a different tone for every key. This fundamental fact makes the guitar both easier and more complex to play. So lesson 1 is relative tuning, I’ll explain

In standard tuning the strings are (from thickest to thinnest aka 6-5-4-3-2-1) E-A-D-G-B-e

At fret 5 of your thickest String (6 :the E String) you have the note A, the same A as your 5 string

At fret 5 of your A string you have the note D, the same D as your 4 string

At fret 5 of your D string you have the note G, the same G as your 3 string

At fret 4 (yes 4 not 5)of your G string you have the note B, the same B as your 2 string

At fret 5 of your B string you have the note e, the same e as your 1 string

Those notes should sound identical and is the most fundamental way of making sure you’re in tune. This is also useful if you don’t have a tuner handy and you’re playing unaccompanied. Just get the thickest string as close to the note E as you can by ear then tune the rest of the guitar relative to itself and you'll be in tune with yourself
* If you have multiple guitars get the thick E to the same note and go from there

Next up:Finger Excercies

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Lesson 2: why don’t my fingers work?

They’re not used to moving in the fashion necessary to play the guitar.

But how do you get them to work?

By doing finger exercises

What kind of finger exercises?

Ah good question:

First some terminology: the fingers on your fretting hand are as follows: index=1, middle=2, ring=3, pinky=4

The simplest finger exercise is the chromatic scale which is just playing every note, for example

Start with the open 6 string -1st fret of the 6 string- 2nd fret of the 6 string-3rd fret of the 6 string-4th fret of the 6 string then play the open 5 string and repeat the pattern on all 6 strings. You’re playing 1 open note and fretting 4 on each string , common sense tells us we have 4 notes and 4 fretting fingers, so we use a different finger for each fretted note ;-)

You should also work on playing a chromatic scale on only one string, again start with the Open 6 string and play the first 4 frets using your 4 fingers and then you slide your hand landing on the 5th fret with your 1st finger, continue this until you run out of room.
Please use a metronome for this, it will really make a difference plus it helps you mark your progress, think of it as a high score.

This is both boring and painful at first but to quote BB King “everybody’s got to pay their dues”

For a ton of great exercises check out JustinGuitar.com

I used the finger gym and spider a lot and it really helped. Once you get your feet wet check out the scale pattern exercises that he teaches, they helped me a lot too.

Next up: Learning songs

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Lesson 3: I want to learn how to play songs man

Great, learning to play songs we recognize is the primary reason most of us pick up a guitar in the first place. It’s fun, it can get you chicks what more is there to life really?

Ok here’s my advice, start off with the easy stuff, it keeps you moving forward and therefore engaged.

I wanted to play Hendrix solos when I first started playing too, we all did but by the time you build up the finger dexterity to do it you’ll probably be beyond frustrated that you’ve been working on 1 song for so long and still can’t figure out how that crazy Mother F’er played that one little part. End result is likely you put the guitar in your closet (or smash it against the wall) and your guitar career is over before it started.

There’s about a million songs that only use a few basic chords, Figure out which ones you’d like to learn how to play (ie which ones would impress that hot girl down the street the most) and learn a few of those. All of a sudden you have 4 or 5 songs under your belt and you’re grooving.

To me this is the best way to approach learning basic Chord songs: Learn your basic chords first then all you have to do is get the chord chart and you can learn a few songs in a short amount of time rather then spend a bunch of times learning each new chord of different songs.

Once you have A, E, D, G, C, am, dm, em you’re on your way to learning literally thousands of different songs
*upper case are Major chords lower case are minor chords

Next up: Music thoery

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Lesson 4: Music theory can’t be cool right?

Actually it is and not knowing anything about it is like not understanding grammar or how to read or write:

But my friends will make fun of me if I learn music theory

Get new friends….

You don’t need a master degree in music theory but the basics help so much I can’t even begin to express it:

Knowing a bit of theory helps you when learning new songs, improvising , creating your lead parts , creating melodies, creating the chord progressions for you to do crazy solo’s over, talking to other musicians about music, how to play new chords, and about a million other things.

Music Theory is not just the super complex stuff Motzart only understands. Just by knowing what a D Major chord is when someone says “hey play a D Major chord” you have taken your first steps in understanding how music theory makes things easier.

Here’s an extremely simplified crash course

Music is made up of half steps and whole steps, a half step is the distance between a fret and another (fret 1 to fret 2) and a whole step is … yup you guessed it the distance between fret 1 and fret 3.

Another way to see it is on a piano: every key white and black is a half step apart

These steps are given a note name after letters: A,B,C,D,E,F,G there’s a whole step between all of these notes except between B-C and between E-F *there’s only a half step between these.

Every half step in between is a flat/sharp and just a note A sharp is the same as B flat just remember that.

Scales are made up of combinations of whole and half steps which give each scale its flavor or mood.

The mother of all scales is the Major scale, it has 7 notes in it and you can number them 1-7 you can use this formula of steps to figure out any Major scale: it’s whole, whole, half, whole, whole, whole half

Chords are made up of combinations of tones from a particular scale. Each chord type has a formula for example a major chord formula is 1-3-5 referring to the 1st tone, 3rd tone and 5th tone in a Major scale.

*if you guys want me to go a bit more in depth let me know and I will

Alright well I know that was a long read, and that's just the tip of the berg haha

Happy shredding guys!

[clipperfan811]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

Either of these would be good for blues-rock/classic rock/hard rock?

When I think Blues I think Fender tube but if you want to get an idea of what certain guitarist use for their rigs check out guitargeeks.com and search to your hearts content

Obviously you won't be able to get the exact amps effects that the guitar heros use but you can get an idea and buy a lower end model on the same family tree

[Fresh Tendrils]

Re: The OS Guitarists thread

I do want a Fender because I listen to a lot country/country-rock, but I love the sound of the Les Paul rock n roll.