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Check out one of my 80s tunes, recorded in 1989.


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Posted

You guys like to give me {censored}, but I can play the guitar pretty well, and I have done it for a long time. In 1989 I had played about 5 years, during which I had only become serious towards the last one and half years preceeding this recording, when I practiced about 4-6 hours a day. 3 -4 hours of scales, an hour of rhythms and an hour of chords, with random days devoted specifics like alternate picking and stuff.

 

Anyway, here's the tune, say what you will about it, just remember, no matter what music you like to play, the only way to really be able to play it right is by being very disciplined when it comes to practicing, and not goofing around and noodling, or learning to play songs, (although that's a very important part of the introductionary phase to learning to play the guitar), but biting the bit and knuckling down to serious study and exercise designed specifically to develop one's mastery of the instrument and the components of musical sound. Basically it breaks into three parts, after the initial song learning phase that familiarizes the student with the instrument's mechanics and their direct relationship with the sounds made by it, and those three parts are skill training, the practical application of the trained skills in a limited and structured environment, and then real playing.

 

So, in working terms, study and practice your chords,scales and picking and strumming until your mind and forearms go numb, and then create a composition in which you can try making effective musical use of those things and jam over it, and if you have your own songs or know songs, then you rehearse them until you can play them in your sleep.

 

 

http://www.soundclick.com/util/downloadSong.cfm?ID=3701561&key=C43D1154-C

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Posted

That song needed a breakdown, badly. Until the end it was shred, shred, shred, bend, shred, shred, shred, bend. At the end you started to actually let some notes play out and that was nice. I don't have a problem with shredding. It's just constant shredding, like Yngwie, that bothers me. There's no voice. It's almost as if a girl came up to you and said HIMYNAMESAMANDAWHATSYOURS YOURECOOLCANIHAVEYOURNUMBERSOICANCALLYOUSOMETIME. You would be like WHOAOAOAOA!! This chick needs to calm down. Some jazz is like that for me too. Too many notes. Oh yea, and there was no melody so there's nothing to really remember your song by. A good melody is the key to a song that will stick in people's head NO MATTER WHAT.

For example, I was standing in sheetz one day... and that stupid Hockey Song that goes Bern neeeeeeeern nern HEY!!! dumdum dum dumdudum Bern neeeeeeeern nern HEY!!! dumdum dum dumdudum everyone was singing along and getting into it and why is that?! BECAUSE OF THE MELODY, everyone knows it. I f*cking hate that song and I was still getting into it because it is so catchy.

So I would just say don't be afraid to have a breakdown in there and a nice melody. It makes a song much more interesting and will keep people coming back to listen.

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Posted

Thanks for the straight up reply, if it makes any difference, and not that it should, that was an example of the 2nd phase, a controlled structure to practice shredding over, the real value of that piece, if any, for what most people want from music they listen to for pleasure, is in the rhythm, the solo was just incidental, but the rhythm was the highpoint. It was my 1st attempt at mixing chords with riffs to create a rhythm composition. But, I do have a tune that more closely resembles the type of structure and organization you prefer.

The next clip linked below was derived from the rhythm track to a song I used commercially in a film score, but the drummer didn't know it, so in order to prevent a hard crash landing at the point where the existing composition was meant to end, I dragged it out and ab libbed through the groove until I sensed the drummer was ready to wind it down. After we concluded the tune, I played a lead solo to it while I recorded the mix of my solo and the drums and rhythm guitar to a CD.

http://www.mp3lizard.com/download.cfm?id=18116

I wrote this in 94, from a more simple version I wrote in 1987, and the two main riffs of this piece are identical with the prototype I recorded in 87,(Although the lead melody on the 2nd riff is from 94). I may try and make a clip of the 1987 recording of the prototype, if I can locate any recordings of it, since I recently moved and my belongings are at several places and not inventoried or sorted as to what is stored where.



Originally posted by PRSnotPOS

That song needed a breakdown, badly. Until the end it was shred, shred, shred, bend, shred, shred, shred, bend. At the end you started to actually let some notes play out and that was nice. I don't have a problem with shredding. It's just constant shredding, like Yngwie, that bothers me. There's no voice. It's almost as if a girl came up to you and said HIMYNAMESAMANDAWHATSYOURS YOURECOOLCANIHAVEYOURNUMBERSOICANCALLYOUSOMETIME. You would be like WHOAOAOAOA!! This chick needs to calm down. Some jazz is like that for me too. Too many notes. Oh yea, and there was no melody so there's nothing to really remember your song by. A good melody is the key to a song that will stick in people's head NO MATTER WHAT.


For example, I was standing in sheetz one day... and that stupid Hockey Song that goes Bern neeeeeeeern nern HEY!!! dumdum dum dumdudum Bern neeeeeeeern nern HEY!!! dumdum dum dumdudum everyone was singing along and getting into it and why is that?! BECAUSE OF THE MELODY, everyone knows it. I f*cking hate that song and I was still getting into it because it is so catchy.


So I would just say don't be afraid to have a breakdown in there and a nice melody. It makes a song much more interesting and will keep people coming back to listen.

 

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Posted

The lead guitar was hard to hear for some of the song but I could hear the melody and I really liked it. I don't know if you've ever noticed this about your playing but you seem to be more concerned with rhythm. In all of your songs I've heard the rhythm guitar is always louder than the lead guitar.

Have you ever considered being a rhythm guitarist?

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Posted

Originally posted by PRSnotPOS

The lead guitar was hard to hear for some of the song but I could hear the melody and I really liked it. I don't know if you've ever noticed this about your playing but you seem to be more concerned with rhythm. In all of your songs I've heard the rhythm guitar is always louder than the lead guitar.


Have you ever considered being a rhythm guitarist?

 

 

The lead guitar sounds loud in the room while I am recording the stuff. I playback the rhythm track and play the lead which is mixed into the rhythm track and the blend goes straight to the recorder, so I hear my amp and the stereo mix of the rhythm playback and the lead solo I am playing to it. So, the lead seems much louder, because it's from two sources;the mix and the amp. If I had an isolation room, and just had the monitors to hear everything, then I'd be able to hear what is actually being recorded while I'm playing the lead. However, what I hear when I record it a loud lead guitar, and often not enough volume to the rhythm guitar. So I turn it up and then reduce the lead level running into the mixer which feeds the combined live playing with the recorded tracks being played back and sends it to th 2trk stereo recorder, so it sounds balanced in the room. All my leads are played live to the final mix, and I cannot remix them, because they are never recorded as a track like the drums and rhythms guitars, the lead is blended with the recorded track playback into the stereo recording.

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Posted

Welcome to the Lesson Loft, not the Feed My Ego Loft. Sure I could be a nice guy and say wow that was really good, but what would that do? Nothing. Positive feedback will only boost your ego more into you thinking that you don

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Posted
enigma1_300.jpg

enigma3_225.jpg

And this is a picture of what I saw when I heard "Muttface":

people_grey_block.gif

I can't even see your flashy finger tapping in all that grey!

Music is an art form in case you have forgotten. Do you play music just so you can impress others? Well you didn't impress me.


Something I noticed immediately is that you don't know your arpeggios. You don't know them at all! Did you just skip over them or something? Learning arpeggios will help you breakup those mindless runs of scales up and down the neck. You need to learn all your arpeggios including the Major7, Minor7, Dom7, Minor7b5 and also the Melodic Minor arpeggio. You need to learn these ALL just like you learned that G major scale.

Your chords are limited. You've been playing electric guitar for this long and all you can play is move a power chord up and down the neck? It's not even 3 notes! Only 2. How is your chord progression any different from Blink 182? Are you on the same level as Blink 182? That's what it reminds me of. You could at least change the rhythm up everyone once in a while. Now tell me, when you were recording the background chords, You had to have gotten tired playing the same thing over and over again right? There is very, very little variance and extremely elementarily for your level.

So my advice is to turn off the distortion. No no no, you don't have to play any of that tippy-tap jazz crap. That's not what I'm asking. Maybe you could just switch to acoustic guitar for the rhythm.

There are sooooooooooooo many really cool chords out there and you limit yourself because you want to have the raw grungy distortion. You can still portray the pain your ex girlfriend brought to you by playing lead with distortion, but do you really need that annoying rinky-dink power chord sliding in the background? There are so many other options available and so many different chords, which I think you have no idea EVEN EXIST. Hopefully some day you will find them and can express yourself better than just a little 2 note power chord. If you want to stay in the 80's that's fine. Go back and stay there. But kids these days are progressing and progressing fast: EVOLVING. They aren
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Posted

Say I'm playing C major.... are there some chromatic notes that will sound better than others? I'm trying to practice my chromatic playing. Or what about the blues scale? there's like... 5 notes in a row.

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Posted

kinda getting of topic of p51's thread but...

Its the same thing for C major. Just transpose all the stuff I wrote above to the Key of C major.

Example: like in the first 3

G major chord = C major chord (the root)

- G major triad = C major triad

- C major triad = F major triad (why? because C is the 4th of G and F is the 4th of C)

- D major triad = G major triad (why? because D is the 5th of G and G is the 5th of C)

Get it?

transpose the rest and post your answers in this thread, ill tell you if they are right. this is good practice for learning chords and, scales and keys.

So when I said the D# would be a chromatic note in the Key of G, what would be the chromatic note in the Key of C?

Well a D# is the #5 of G >>>> so whats the #5 of C? ... = G# So G# would be the chromatic note in relation to the first example.

Start with one chromatic note at a time. Only the G# if you are working in the Key of C. Work that note in every here and there and see what you come up with.

hint: in your phrasing - start with "in" notes, make the "out" notes in the middle and then come back hom to the "in notes.

its kinda like wandering off into a dangerous zone and then come back to home. you must come back to home, if you don't, it will sound like crap.

for the blues scales (the minor pentatonic ones i listed)

- some of the notes in those scales are "in" and some are "out". its a combination of "in" and "outs" :)

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Posted

let me see if i can find a good example... of a chromatic lick in the key of C major that uses the G#.

no luck, so i just made one:

http://media.putfile.com/chromatic-in-C

i cheated though and used 2 other chromatic notes - D# (or the #9 of C major) and F# (the #4 to get a lydian sound)

edit: up to the 7 second mark i am playing only notes in the c major scale. you want to establish the root/home first so people know where you are. right on the 8 is the awkward G# chromatic note followed immediately by the F# then to the G to go back to home real quick, F and then to another chromatic which is the D# followed immediately by the C. notice how these chromatic notes are RIGHT NEXT to the "IN" notes. Then I go right back into a Cmaj7 arpeggio "in". Now I want to go back "out"- so I do that little thing on the lower strings. I picture the B pentatonic and the A minor pentatonic, but how do i get from 1 to another. I go to the B min pent to the Bb minor pent (WHICH HAPPENS TO HAVE MY CHROMATIC G# IN IT) and then right into my A minor pentatonic. All notes in the A minor pentatonic are "in"

so "in out in out in" never end on an "out" ok ok, i wasnt really thinking of Bb pentatonic for the middle. I was think patterns because i played the same thing 3 times 1 fret difference shifting downward.

never let those "out" notes hang too long or else they turn sour. usually you should immediately shift into an "in" note.





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Posted

Wow! I remember what it sounded like to play guitar in the 80's, and that was right on par :)

Did you right any songs back then? I've been toying with posting some originals directly from '84-'89. Then, I decide not to :)

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Posted

Originally posted by Paragraph51



The lead guitar sounds loud in the room while I am recording the stuff. I playback the rhythm track and play the lead which is mixed into the rhythm track and the blend goes straight to the recorder, so I hear my amp and the stereo mix of the rhythm playback and the lead solo I am playing to it. So, the lead seems much louder, because it's from two sources;the mix and the amp. If I had an isolation room, and just had the monitors to hear everything, then I'd be able to hear what is actually being recorded while I'm playing the lead. However, what I hear when I record it a loud lead guitar, and often not enough volume to the rhythm guitar. So I turn it up and then reduce the lead level running into the mixer which feeds the combined live playing with the recorded tracks being played back and sends it to th 2trk stereo recorder, so it sounds balanced in the room. All my leads are played live to the final mix, and I cannot remix them, because they are never recorded as a track like the drums and rhythms guitars, the lead is blended with the recorded track playback into the stereo recording.

 

 

Well whatever it is, it's not working. So stop it.

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Posted

Originally posted by red|dragon

let me see if i can find a good example... of a chromatic lick in the key of C major that uses the G#.


no luck, so i just made one:




i cheated though and used 2 other chromatic notes - D# (or the #9 of C major) and F# (the #4 to get a lydian sound)


edit: up to the 7 second mark i am playing only notes in the c major scale. you want to establish the root/home first so people know where you are. right on the 8 is the awkward G# chromatic note followed immediately by the F# then to the G to go back to home real quick, F and then to another chromatic which is the D# followed immediately by the C. notice how these chromatic notes are RIGHT NEXT to the "IN" notes. Then I go right back into a Cmaj7 arpeggio "in". Now I want to go back "out"- so I do that little thing on the lower strings. I picture the B pentatonic and the A minor pentatonic, but how do i get from 1 to another. I go to the B min pent to the Bb minor pent (WHICH HAPPENS TO HAVE MY CHROMATIC G# IN IT) and then right into my A minor pentatonic. All notes in the A minor pentatonic are "in"


so "in out in out in" never end on an "out" ok ok, i wasnt really thinking of Bb pentatonic for the middle. I was think patterns because i played the same thing 3 times 1 fret difference shifting downward.


never let those "out" notes hang too long or else they turn sour. usually you should immediately shift into an "in" note.






 

 

x_x

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Posted
Originally posted by Kinetic

You crack me up r|d
:D



Well I've gotta keep it a little comical, just my style. If nobody understands a word I say atleast I can make them laugh. But it's really nothing but the brutal truth. No spin whatsoever. It can come across harsh, and did. So the comical interjections are ment to make people relax.

Originally posted by gennation

Hey r|d, you didn't have any backing. Without a backing you can play whatever you want. Nice licks but, let's get some changes in there.



Yeah, Unfortunately I live in an apartment and I am limited because I can only play so loud. I'm try to save my money up for one of those software/hardware packages that I can just plug directly into my computer so I dont have any background noise at all, so I can listen to it on headphones and then lay down multiple tracks... might be my project for this summer.

Originally posted by PRSnotPOS



x_x



What?

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Posted

heres another example with more obvious chromatic playing in it:

http://media.putfile.com/chormotog-in-C

IN: up to the 5 second mark, im playing out of the c major scale

OUT: right on the 5 second i slide down to the G#

OUT: all that stuff... first i go into diminished for a brief moment then right into the g whole tone scale or you could think of it as some melodic minor sounds

IN: you can clearly hear the C major triad that all that chromatic weird stuff turns into.

IN: C major scale run filler to remind my listeners how good i really am :cool: (lol im joking)

OUT: first chord i play, i dont even know what chord it is, i just made it up, but i reminds the listener of all those chromatic, tension arrising notes, i let it ring long enough for the ? feeling.

IN: back to my C major chord to end it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

heres another:

http://media.putfile.com/cornatic-in-C

OUT: In this one I actually start out on a Bb!!! But quickly move into the comforting B note

IN: I play a few notes out of the C major scale and then go right into a C major triad.

OUT: Next I form a staircase on the bottom 3 strings and playing something that has a G# in it

IN: Next staircase is a C major7 arpeggio that is conveniently located a half step to the left

OUT: Then I go into a diminished sounding pull off from an A to an F# then to a D# and then to C

IN: I go back down at get that G note on the second string. I went back and resolved the tension created with that F# on the second string.

IN/OUT/IN: The fast triplet thing is a combination of IN notes and OUT notes so it works out fine. I played in convincingly and it actually came out a lot cooler than I thought it would. I finish it up with a C major traid

OUT/IN: Then I go back out again with the D# that quickly slides back into an E, which is our home because E is the 3rd of C major.

OUT: The first 2 chords I play are the same chord- a diminished chord. You should be able to hear a lot of those chromatic out notes in those 2 chords played.

IN: 2 notes of that diminished scale are actually in the C major scale so I only have to move the other 2 just a half step in the comfort zone. I finished with a C major bar chord located almost on top of that last diminished chord.

Hope these help.

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Posted

Originally posted by Paragraph51

You guys like to give me {censored}, but I can play the guitar pretty well, and I have done it for a long time. In 1989 I had played about 5 years, during which I had only become serious towards the last one and half years preceeding this recording, when I practiced about 4-6 hours a day. 3 -4 hours of scales, an hour of rhythms and an hour of chords, with random days devoted specifics like alternate picking and stuff.


Anyway, here's the tune, say what you will about it, just remember, no matter what music you like to play, the only way to really be able to play it right is by being very disciplined when it comes to practicing, and not goofing around and noodling, or learning to play songs, (although that's a very important part of the introductionary phase to learning to play the guitar), but biting the bit and knuckling down to serious study and exercise designed specifically to develop one's mastery of the instrument and the components of musical sound. Basically it breaks into three parts, after the initial song learning phase that familiarizes the student with the instrument's mechanics and their direct relationship with the sounds made by it, and those three parts are skill training, the practical application of the trained skills in a limited and structured environment, and then real playing.


So, in working terms, study and practice your chords,scales and picking and strumming until your mind and forearms go numb, and then create a composition in which you can try making effective musical use of those things and jam over it, and if you have your own songs or know songs, then you rehearse them until you can play them in your sleep.



 

 

Well, I can certainly hear that 3-4 hours a day of scales practice in there...

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Posted

RD you are the funniest guy on HC, but the clips of that guy playing, why don't you give him credit, rather than pretend that it's you.

BTW.. Can you even come close to playing those riffs you are posting as examples yet?

Let me know when you can, so you can get to stage 2 of your musician in training period and begin to start learning how to (really) play the guitar.

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Posted

Originally posted by dastardlydrvish



Well, I can certainly hear that 3-4 hours a day of scales practice in there...

 

 

Listen, and trust what I'm saying for being the bottom line, you must spend the thousands of seemingly thankless hours devoted strictly to developing the skills required to master the instrument if you ever can imagine yourself being able to play music without merely imitating the playing of a real guitar player. (Real musicians practice 4-12 hours a day, unless they are performing several gigs a day, or are sick or are on the skids and washed up) And, whatever you do, don't buy into the fools mentality by thinking that if you learn your scales and keys and practice them until you know them by heart and can perform every possible manipulation of notes effortlessly at will, that you'll always sound like you are playing scales. There will be a short period of cooling off where you'll be doing that, but after that passes, you'll be playing from the heart, not from wrote memory.

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