Electric Guitars

[GreatDane]

i was just sitting here trying to break through a bit of a rut in terms of my lead phrasing.  in the last couple of weeks, i've taken a step back and am now in an effort to slow things down, focusing on letting more notes decay (versus cut them off at the end of a pattern or phrase) and introducing some new space into my lead lines.

what are you working on these days?  you are still playing guitar, right?

oh, and this thread isn't a weak ploy to whore out another one of my pics, but here's the guitar I'm playing right now.

[Elias Graves]

I still can't post pics.

[IMG]http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z352/ElijahGardener/1ACC5B5A-0613-433F-8714-98DBDCF8EC0B-1416-00...

But with the new pickups in the green monster, I can't put it down. It gets the most beautiful trashy sounds out of the bridge pickup. The first bridge pickup I truly liked, too.

Anyway, I've been wasting far too much time building and not enough time playing. This has got me back in the grove again.

I'm busily working on the arrangement for "Mule Named Jack" the last several days. I have the verses about worked out. Working in the chorus tonight and trying to polish it up. I'm supposed to debut the tune at an open mic in a few weeks.
My first live performance in several months and its long overdue.

[GreatDane]

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Elias Graves wrote:
I still can't post pics.

[IMG]http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z352/ElijahGardener/1ACC5B5A-0613-433F-8714-98DBDCF8EC0B-1416-00...

But with the new pickups in the green monster, I can't put it down. It gets the most beautiful trashy sounds out of the bridge pickup. The first bridge pickup I truly liked, too.

Anyway, I've been wasting far too much time building and not enough time playing. This has got me back in the grove again.

I'm busily working on the arrangement for "Mule Named Jack" the last several days. I have the verses about worked out. Working in the chorus tonight and trying to polish it up. I'm supposed to debut the tune at an open mic in a few weeks.
My first live performance in several months and its long overdue.

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sounds good.  i hope you find that chorus that works for you.  with a few weeks until the show, you should have plenty of time if you can put the hours in.

i have this tune i've been working on off and on for about 9 months now- lyrics, arrangement, melodies, the whole thing.  but it's still feeling incomplete and i haven't found that "thing" that's going to make it feel complete in my mind.  it's there somewhere and i'll hit on it when i least expect it, but it gnaws at me a little bit everytime i play it.  oh, how music is such a cruel mistress...

[Elias Graves]

Indeed. My favorite of all my tunes still hounds me. I can't figure out the music to save my hide. Every time I think I'm on to it, I realize I subconsciously lifted it from elsewhere or something goes haywire.
The timing on the lyrics is goofy as hell and I have yet to figure out how to work the music around it.
Usually when stuff like that happens, I'll go back to the drawing board and tweak my timing til I can make it work out. Thing is, I KNOW the timing works. I can can count it out to the T but fitting music to it is challenging. I keep on, though, cuz I know it'll be killer when it does come together.

"Mule Named Jack" is a light hearted little ditty but its turned into a pretty good toe tapper and I need more of those in my set.

Next on my list is a good old fashioned party tune called "Whiskey On Ice."

[Mark Wein]

I've got a handful of songs for my album that are harder to sound "in command of" than I had thought when I wrote them.  I was a little ambitious in my writing I've discovered but its for the best...

[joecool1963]

Trying to. Break out of the box with my lead playing....

[twisty571]

Working on a couple different lessons on True Fire.

[Special J]

I've got 4 different projects going.

One is my new band. We just started tracking an EP on Sunday. We've got half a dozen songs to put down. I've got to finalize solos for 5 of them. I'll probably use several guitar/amp/pedal combos in the process, but so far with this project I've mostly been playing my Ovation Preacher through a Hiwatt Custom 50. I also have a new found love for the proco rat pedal.

Another is an old unfinished album from a band that dissolved several years ago. The bass player and I have decided to finally finish the album which mostly just involves mixing, though I will want to redo a few guitar parts which means relearning those songs. I'll probably use my Strat and my bassist's Jazzmaster through Fender amps which is what I already used a lot of on that album.

The other two projects I'll most likely be playing more drums than guitar. One is another recording project, the other a for-fun cover band we put together yearly for a friend's big party.

[Flintc]

Working for the last couple of years on chord solos. These are trickier than they look if you haven't tried to construct them. The melody note should be the highest pitch, but sometimes there is no voicing for the right chord that puts that note on top. So you learn lots of chord substitutions, odd inversions, altered chords and the like. It is not intuitive yet, but if Joe Pass could do it...

[Elias Graves]

If Joe Pass could do it, I probably can't.

[Strung_Out]

Been working on trying to add more licks and better phrasing to my lead play lately, so I've been studying my favourite solos and learning them lick for lick in an effort to figure out what makes them great.

[Jkater]

I just invested in a complete overhaul and reconditionning of my french horn and it plays "like butter" (only thing, i don't play like butter myself....). And I'm in the process of choosing a new mouthpiece. I bought  five of them online and trying each over a few days (horn mouthpieces are very "player specific and only trying many works) then pick one, send the others back and stick to that one i picked for a while.... and practice, practice, practice....

[mistersully]

been playing the electric upright....i bought a new hardware compressor (La2a), and this bass sounds great through it

i'm working on a bunch of stuff right now though

[Jkater]

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mistersully wrote:

been playing the electric upright....i bought a new hardware compressor (La2a), and this bass sounds great through it

i'm working on a bunch of stuff right now though

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Lovely bass! Looking forward to hear how that sounds.

Did you get my PM? We're not notified with a pop up anymore when a PM is sent.

[Faber]

ii-V lines in both major and minor, or more exactly to gain fluency in those lines. I'm slowly working through the David Baker Bebop book vol 2, taking each line and learning it in every CAGED position, and transposing each major line to a minor ii-v line also. Takes quite a while. I'm not sure which will come first - fluency or boredom  

[Marko]

Practicing guitar, strictly rhythm and singing.  Not dance stuff, though (well, some slow-dance maybe), but listening/folk-type songs, which I enjoy.  Only guitar I play/practice with is an Agile AS-820 semi-hollow, natural-finish (I love this thing), because it’s a “wide” (1-3/4 at the nut) version and I find it easier to cleanly fret chords.

I’d like to get a handful of songs down really well and perform somewhere solo, but I’m not quite there yet.

I have a covers dance band, I play bass, provide sound and sing (one of three), and I probably should be practicing that more…

[BydoEmpire]

Tendonitis flared up the end of last year, so finally about a month ago I had to just stop using my right (picking hand).  Took about 3 weeks for the pain to go away, so now I've got to let it rest for another few weeks before using it.

In the mean time, I've been working on

1) transcribing standards from the Real Book into different keys

2) playing with my left hand only, strictly hammer-ons and pull-offs, working on the notes sounding even and clear and staying in tempo.

3) trying to finish mixing some tunes, which I've been putting off for a while

[Ancient Mariner]

Hardly played last 12 months, so trying to get some strength back into my hands and feeling back to my playing. Also re-jigging the pedal board to try to make everything fit on what's basically a very small board for 8 pedals + volume pedal and power supply.

[Elias Graves]

@jkater... Didn't know you played French horn, too! I played those accursed things for several years. Very difficult in comparison to trumpet.
I always equated it to the violin of horns in that there's no "ok" tone with those things. It's either a choir of angels or a cat in a bathtub. Nothing in between.

[humbuckerstrat]

I got this book for Christmas, it's pretty good and easy. I'm on my 6th riff right now