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I picked my old late 90s Fender acoustic back up last month for the first time since college and my big takeaway is, lord have mercy resources are better now than they were 15 years ago. Now, when I pull up a chord/tab that starts with "tune your entire guitar down a whole step and the song starts on 079900" you can go pull up a YT video of the dudes playing it in straight D. I must not have had that sense when I was 19, but happy to have it now.
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Jun 27, 2019 15:55
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I'm about to change strings on my old acoustic after picking it back up a few months ago. Is there any sort of care/maintenance/wellness checks I should do to it while the strings are off?
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Jul 28, 2019 01:28
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Join the list of people checking the thread once every few days to see if they've come back up.
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Aug 9, 2019 20:17
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What is the current recommendation for a budget around $300? I'm a reasonable acoustic player but want an electric to noodle around with in the bedroom.
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Aug 10, 2019 21:04
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Lumpy posted:Notice all the Firefly chat the last couple pages? Use your $300 and get two of those. My wife talked me out of it specifically last night. 😀 "If a Chinese knock off that's half your budget is good, you certainly can get something for your whole budget that you can at least put your hands on first."
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Aug 10, 2019 21:14
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The amp (I'm still shopping around on) isn't part of my budget, thankfully. The whole reason we're down this road is, I had been building my "new acoustic/electric" budget out of freelance work over the past few months. But my dad heard I was shopping and decided to "loan" me his older Martin as an excuse to buy himself a new one. So I'm actually amp shopping for the acoustic and thought, "hell if I've got an amp in the bedroom already ..." Which honestly does make it sound like a Firefly-shaped problem still.
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Aug 10, 2019 21:39
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I knew bass amps were different, didn't know that. Back to the research pits.
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Aug 10, 2019 21:43
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Lester Shy posted:Does anybody make a reliable budget acoustic? I wish there was a Firefly-equivalent acoustic brand. I guess personal preference is a lot more important when picking an acoustic, but I just hate going to the music store and trying out 15 slightly different but fundamentally identical Yamahas or whatever. Alvarez makes good instruments at a lot of prices, and probably the best $300 you can spend is on a used Seagull. If you are looking cheaper, the best Yamaha you can afford will be just fine. I played a $200 acoustic Fender for years and it always impressed people who knew what they were talking about.
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Aug 11, 2019 13:31
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I did end up getting the Firefly because why the hell not. Thanks all for your recommendations. It's coming Wednesday, and before then I'm either going to get an Orange 12 or a Fender Mustang. The Mustang has a shitload of options and will make me sound like [whatever] right out of the box, but the Orange will teach me what the knobs actually do and also will look cooler.
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Aug 12, 2019 21:21
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Has anyone ever actually held one of the Orangewoods? They're heavily ~~marketed~~ and their parlor is like, $120 shipped, which is about right for something to prop up in the living room and not worry too much about one of my kids putting a foot through it. e: Also, I picked up a looper pedal a while back and I don't think my kids have ever had so much fun as running a karaoke mic through it and layering a bunch of terrible beatboxing. Huxley fucked around with this message at 15:56 on Aug 21, 2019 |
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Aug 21, 2019 15:10
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Apologies for the, uh, contempo christian, but my wife is a church pianist and handed me this book and I want to make sure I'm reading it right. Those are NOT slash chords, correct? I assume that's the line for the bass where it differs from the root of the guitar chord. But I only suspected that when I tried to work out the fingering for a Dm/G and had a tougher time than I expected to for who this book is aimed at. Could you even actually play those as slash chords?
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Aug 22, 2019 01:18
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The Dark Wind posted:Those are just slash chords written weirdly. You could probably interpret the Dm/G as being a G9 chord and it's more or less the same thing. Often times you'll see the slash chord instead of the more complex full voicing in jazz lead sheets for a variety of reasons, but they're essentially interchangeable in terms of voicing. What makes this tricky is their harmonic context, so you want to pick voicings that have good voice leading into the next chord, and sometimes the slash notation can help with that. In the case of that first Dm/G, it makes more sense to write it out that way because essentially what the piano is doing is playing diatonic chords based off the C Major scale (Dm, Em, F, G) leading into the V of I, while maintaining the G pedal point to keep everything in the tonality of V. So your best bet is to somehow keep the G on the lowest string at all times while playing the ascending chords. Much easier to do on piano (my main instrument), not quite sure how you'd pull it off on guitar! Thanks everyone for the input on this! That 3rd measure was what led me to stop trying to play them as slashes and start interpreting them as the bass line (as in, specifically dedicated to telling the bass player what to do when it differed from the guitar player's root), even if that was wrong. Trying to find my way through eighth-note changes, like 3 x 0 2 3 1 3 2 2 0 0 0 3 3 3 2 1 1 3 2 0 0 0 3 x 3 2 0 1 0 Fully broke my fingers. But I'm not very good, I'm sure plenty of people in the thread could rip it off. Or maybe the trick is you just play the 4-6 strings through the fast changes and just let the pedal note do most of the work leading into the C. Plenty of ways to make it work that nobody would appreciate haha.
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Aug 23, 2019 19:48
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Thumposaurus posted:Look at this guy that has "friends" Friendship ended with other musicians. Now looper pedal is my best friend.
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Aug 27, 2019 18:48
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Acoustically, the standard Max-Grip nylon 60s are my favorite strumming pick, and for mixed play I liked the 88s enough I started using them on the mando too (though I still prefer the 114 for straight picking the mando).
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Sep 9, 2019 18:16
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The Muppets On PCP posted:oh buddy that ain't close to stupidly expensive for picks If there's one thing all the dudes on mandolin cafe have in common, they all seem to play $50 Blue Chips. And that's on the cheap side for Blue Chips. I've never priced actual tortoise shell picks, but I bet they are nuts considering the ethics around them. (The ethics being, don't play tortoise shell picks.) Huxley fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Sep 10, 2019 |
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Sep 10, 2019 00:08
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They sound good, but when I sound bad it isn't because of the pick, so I play $6 a dozen picks from Guitar Center.
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Sep 10, 2019 01:05
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Helianthus Annuus posted:i think that notation is supposed to be used for polychords rather than slash chords. http://www.thejazzpianosite.com/jazz-piano-lessons/jazz-chords/polychords/ Thanks everyone for helping to unravel these mysteries. I'll say, a few weeks on having hung around with more church guitarists, many of them think the numbers after chords signify dynamics. Like, "I don't know what the 7 after this chord means, so I just play them louder." Also, they will capo as far up the neck as it takes to keep them playing in G. Even on 12 strings.
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Sep 10, 2019 18:53
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Capo does sound amazing just about anywhere on a six, but I think when you push them past like, the 4th or 5th fret on a 12 string you can to turn that nice 12-string chorus effect into a bit of a mess. Maybe I just haven't heard anyone make it work, this is where an old timer pulls up some George Harrison video to prove me wrong.
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Sep 12, 2019 01:09
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I am picking up a Pacifica to play through my acoustic amp just noodling around the house. What's a fun, hopefully versatile, one-stompbox kind of thing I could do to help me go from folkdad to bluesdad?
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Oct 3, 2019 15:24
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lol y'all are crazy
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Oct 3, 2019 16:05
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I've been told an acoustic amp is basically just a straight PA system that happens to include EQ and reverb knobs, so I assume running some sort of modeling/OD pedal into it would work about the same as plugging your electric into the board.
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Oct 3, 2019 16:46
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For a teacher, I would find out if there's a guitar shop nearby that does actual decent setups, walk in and look for flyers then ask the front desk if they have a recommendation. For your goals, I would recommend being patient with yourself and what you are capable of at the moment. Your near-term goal isn't fingerpicking, it's "learn my chords." You're going to drive yourself nuts trying to travis pick over A-F#m-D-E if you can't strum it clean. Then, don't be ashamed to throw a capo on and just travis pick your chords one note at a time. It's not going to sound like the pro does it, but you'll be amazed at how close you can get, especially if you sing (or you have a singer). Pick something you really want to play, figure out the chords, then really hammer down getting your single notes in without any flourishes. The song is still in there with even this little expertise, I promise. Something like Landslide is good for this or the Iron and Wine cover of Such Great Heights. They're going to come through without all the eighth-note transitional hammers and slides and stuff. Then once you've got that nailed down, your chords are clean, your single-note lines are right, pick ONE little flourish and work it in. Literally go, "Ok well here in Landslide he does a pinch with this bass note" then work it in. Do that measure of the song a hundred times with the pinch. Do it at half speed. Do it at quarter speed. Slow down, it's faster that way. Your ultimate goal will be to learn to read tab, to translate something like this to your fingers:  But for the time being, literally just worry about the G and the C.
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Oct 16, 2019 17:20
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Good luck! It sounds like you're on a good path, looking for a teacher. I bet there are a thousand music majors at UM who would love to teach you lessons for beer money. My wife runs a music studio and nearly all her teachers are from the local state school. My only other piece of advice is, make a point and a habit of picking your instrument up every day. There are some days I sit and play for a couple of hours, and some days I run some simple stuff that was on my mind for 2 minutes while the kids are taking baths. But a half hour six days in a row is miles and miles more useful than one three hour chunk once a week. If you travel for work, consider a small instrument to travel with or even a baritone uke, which is tuned DGBE and will translate over to the top 4 strings of the guitar.
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Oct 16, 2019 18:09
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Pick a two-chord transition you are struggling with, Am-F, and practice just that transition, strumming straight down just once per. Set a timer for 1 minute and just repeat Am-F-Am-F. Go as slowly as you need to, focusing on getting your fingers in the right place. Don't count how many you do or anything, just spend all your mental energy on getting your fingers set before you strum. If it takes you 5 seconds every move, that's FINE. Forgive yourself for being a beginner, then keep going. Once you get comfortable at whatever speed, start counting your Ams (or Fs, doesn't matter). See how many you do in a minute. Try to speed it up, just a touch while staying clean. Once you get sped up a little, add in some strumming variation, down down downup downup is a classic place to start. Now you're playing a song! ALSO: if your hands are miserable, take a break. If it's late, go to bed. The guitar will still be there in the morning and a lot of what you learned will still be there, too.
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Nov 6, 2019 18:33
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Helianthus Annuus posted:this is good advice, we call this exercise "minute changes" I'm pretty sure I picked it up from this thread many months ago. It helped me with my B minors.
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Nov 6, 2019 18:50
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I get a lot of mileage out of muting same same way, but with my thumb over the top.
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Nov 6, 2019 23:14
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I played with a band in front of a crowd (of a couple hundred) for the first time ever this weekend and kind of fell in love with it. I even jumped into a bridge a verse early, dropped out for the rest of the measure then picked it back up and nobody stormed the stage to tell me I suck and rip the guitar from my hands.
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Nov 12, 2019 22:29
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That just looks like another full-size drednaught to me. I'd personally go looking for a drastic change and buy a really nice parlour.
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Nov 30, 2019 19:10
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Clayton Bigsby posted:Tried a GS mini and didn't like it. Hit me up with suggestions. When I was shopping for something smaller to play lounging around the living room, I looked awful hard at Alvarez, which makes several across their range. Yairi is their lux line, all wood hand made in Japan. I ended up getting a tenor instead because I'm a first a mando player and lot more comfortable playing melody in 5ths. Taylor doesn't make anything in the "classic" parlor shape, but Martin calls it their 00 shape. A note: lot of these come in the VERY classic 12-fret style with a shorter scale length to match, but most makers are doing 14-frets and cutaways with the body style now, too. If you want to go all out, here's Chris Hadfield playing a https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc8BcBZ0tAI (You can go all out either way, Collings and Larrivée are both $5k+ instruments.  )
Huxley fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Dec 1, 2019 |
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Dec 1, 2019 14:59
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e: NM
Huxley fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Dec 2, 2019 |
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Dec 2, 2019 16:16
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Also a handy tip some people may not have seen it yet, the little gear icon in the bottom right on Youtube will let you slow down a playback. This is really handy for watching someone's fingers really closely to transcribe, but also for just playing along with a song you don't have up to full tempo yet.
Huxley fucked around with this message at 16:42 on Dec 9, 2019 |
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Dec 9, 2019 16:38
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Clayton Bigsby posted:All right, I am setting a challenge for 2020 for myself to learn to play this well. It's actually not THAT bad. I got the A riff down in an evening, and I'm pure garbage. e: maybe I should say the A riff isn't that bad, haha. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IKXUnmHbpw&t=148s But also, re: Buckingham in general: 
Huxley fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Dec 9, 2019 |
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Dec 9, 2019 20:56
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From the perspective of a primarily mando player, learning to put actual sheet music onto the fretboard is super rewarding. If for no other reason, it expands your practice options beyond "G-run variations people have put on YouTube and parking lot pickers books."
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Dec 10, 2019 00:26
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Anime Reference posted:I keep feeling a weird urge to buy a mandolin and start a one-man folk metal project. They're a lot of fun, and for some reason I've found my brain just wraps around 5th intervals better than 4ths. And there are lots of way to play them, not just Bill Monroe bluegrass chops. Jethro Burns went out of his way to sound as much like Django Reinhardt as possible. Chris Thile is the best player ever to live, and even he does a lot of weird stuff beyond bluegrass and irish folk. It can be a beautiful classical instrument when you're not standing behind a banjo player pretending to be a snare drum. There's a lightly travelled thread around here somewhere with a really great OP and tons of great online resources for learning. The mandolin equivalent of Justin Guitar is mandolessons. e: why not link some music? Here's a group named Mandolin Orange. Andrew plays a lot darker, more focused arpeggiated runs than virtuosic "do it as fast as you can, just fuckin' rip it" that the instrument is associated with. He also tends to play with reverb on 11, which is unusual for the instrument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EdP8S0uKP5U&t=1869s Here's a duet of Autumn Leaves, which is about as trad jazz as it gets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnYupNV2Mbs Here's Sierra Hull doing St Anne's Reel, a fiddle song, in some LR Baggs sizzle reel. Very country but not the sound most people immediately assume a mando is going to make. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVXTRrx6UZo Here's Thile playing Partita 1 in Bm off the top of his head (the double presto at 13:27 is him at maximum "just fuckin' rip it"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NloB_UecPno Huxley fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Dec 10, 2019 |
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Dec 10, 2019 20:08
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Anime Reference posted:Any of you have an opinion on this guy as a bedroom acoustic? It ticks a lot of boxes: https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/APX600BL--yamaha-apx600-thin-line-cutaway-black Yamaha is one of those brands that, everything they sell is going to be good for the money. There are a lot of good $300 guitars, but probably not many will be appreciably better than that one. One of the best motorcycle/guitar companies going.
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Dec 11, 2019 22:55
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Pablo Nergigante posted:Thinking about a new acoustic guitar, specifically an acoustic-electric... can anyone recommend some good options around $400? Or am I better off getting a regular acoustic and a soundhole pickup or something like that? Seagull makes amazing A/Es in that price range. They keep them at Guitar Center, and they feel a lot better to my hands than a lot of the $1k instruments.
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Dec 16, 2019 02:29
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TraderStav posted:For a newbie, can someone please explain what a Zombie chord is? There's a type of player who learns a dozen or so open chords, sees that almost every song on ultimate-guitar.com is written in those dozen chords, and decides they're done learning the instrument. So when they see A minor in a lead sheet, they jam good ol' X02210 every single time without variation. You'll also sometimes hear this called playing "Cowboy Chords." It's a perfectly competent way to play, but the instrument is capable of a lot more. Exploring down the neck and into weird open voicings (and 7s, and add9s, and sus4s, etc) is sort of the galaxy brain meme level 2. Basically, someone in here once said eventually everyone finds their way to jazz, and getting away from Guitar Level 1 is where that starts.
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Dec 16, 2019 16:54
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Play in DADGAD.
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Dec 16, 2019 19:47
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massive spider posted:I think the best way to learn anything musically is to discover it in context from something you like, as opposed to reading it from a book and not knowing wtf to do with it. I can't stress enough how important it is to actually watch people play things as part of learning. One of my big a-ha moments early on was, trying to learn a mountain goats song that went A E D A A C#m D A Which listening along to the song I just couldn't do cleanly at tempo and didn't sound right. Then I watched him play it on Colbert and, lo and behold, he plays A E D A open standard, but after he drops down to barre the C#m he ALSO barres the final D A. So it sounds different and cuts way back on the movement. It's the kind of thing that's probably obvious to more experienced players, but everyone has to SEE it happen once for that kind of thing to click.
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Dec 16, 2019 20:12
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 09:06 |
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Hello jazz friends! I got a Real Book for Christmas, and the only thing I know about it is "never let an actual jazz musician see you carrying it around." For someone with more of a cowboy chord, campfire kind of background, what are some of the good songs to start learning and practicing?
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Dec 25, 2019 16:05
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