What Are You Working On Right Now?

[la szum]

Please don't quote me, Tom, as these are just my own half-baked thoughts.

I'd almost compare it to playing a Mesa Marks Series amp if you have not done so before,
where every little misstep, or misfret, or clunk, or clank sticks out like a sore thumb. Nothing
to hide behind. No wall of gain (love walls of gain!). No natural compression. At least with a
traditional style Telecaster.

There is a ton of immediacy and treble in a Tele. I feel like I fought that before, and wanted to
tame it down or mask it. Now I love it! Maybe I am better at working that touchy throttle.

Just feels and responds a little more "all up in your face" than other styles of guitars I have. I find
both Strats and LPs more forgiving to play. Not sure why that is.

 

[la szum]

It has forced me to do something you say you do a lot, which is to play clean.... and certainly
with a lot less gain than I usually do.

Kind of makes me work my hands/fingers more, and the guitar, amp, effects less.

I am enjoying the challenge.

 

[Stratzrus]

Oh man. I can feel that. You have to earn every note on a Tele. Nothing free. Nothing easy.

I kind of like it. It's like having to chop your own wood if you want to stay warm.

That's why I have my SS Telecaster. But I really like my HH Telecaster too and it's much easier to play. I took the SS with me to VT to make me "earn" it.

It's a partscaster I put together with a '93 MIJ 52 Reissue body, American Elite neck with an ebony board, locking tuners, 9.5"-14" compound radius, C to D neck carve, N4 Fender Noiseless pickups, S-1 switch, and a Gotoh chrome plated heavier bridge with a solid brass baseplate and allen-adjustable brass saddles. It's a truly unique guitar but looks perfectly normal.

The HH is an American Deluxe HH QMT Tele with a maple top, belly cut, contoured neck heel, S-1 switch, ebony board, and locking tuners. It's one of my very favorite guitars to play.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

Funnily enough one of my easiest playing guitars…and im
Just a sucker for Tele bridge pickups…

 

[FuzzyAce]

@Ed DeGenaro
I love that blue one.

 

[Ed DeGenaro]

@Ed DeGenaro
I love that blue one.

Heres the brother…
Buckets, whammy corina body and neck a Flying T

 

[Life Eats Life]

Heres the brother…
Buckets, whammy corina body and neck a Flying T

View attachment 17014

 

[Eagle]

Gonna learn some bass …


If I’m splappin’ n’ poppin in a few months I’ll be rotflmao

Ok what about the rest of the half hour practice?

 

[TSJMajesty]

I've been trying to get a few alt-picked solos down for a long time. I've been able to get 16th note passages up to about 150~ish bpm, but they start to get sloppy around that tempo. So I really started focusing on my picking, and noticed my string changes get erratic at about that speed.

Like, instead of keeping a straight-line, back-and-forth with my hand (think- the same motion as when you shake someone's hand), and just a slight backwards pick-slant to get over the next higher string (assuming that next string is an upstroke), I start to do whatever it takes to get over that string. And my motion gets out of control, along with the next set of notes on the new string getting all out-of-time. And missed strokes. (I hate missed strokes! )

So I've walked things back to a very comfortable speed, and really zeroed in on keeping that motion correct as the tempo increases. It's really helping!

Starting on a downstroke:
3 notes on D string, with a slight backwards slant,
5 notes on G, during which I move the slant forward
5 notes on D starting with downstroke, switching back to a backwards slant, then
3 notes on G string, and the riff continues.

It's this riff from Home, if anyone's read this far:

It's at 88 bpm. Yeah, crazy-fast I know, but it's this personal quest I have!

It's always the same thing: You have to burn that muscle-memory into your brain at slower speeds, so the motions remain consistent at the higher tempos.

That's what I've been working on, taking a break to massage my hands!

 

[TSJMajesty]

Anybody else ever experienced a "hole" in their tempo 'comfort zone'?

Like, as I slowed things down per my post above, I find that around 100-120 bpm, I struggle more to keep notes even (picking), than when at higher tempos.

I suspect it's in that transition zone from where we switch from "walking fast to running," which I've read somewhere, is a phenomena similar to how our legs work. Idk, but it seems to track.

It affects my right hand picking, but at the faster speeds my picking gets more fluid/even, but then my left hand starts to get sloppy.

I guess if I want to tighten things up, I'll have to stay in this weird zone for a while. I use Ozz Guitar's trick of building speed by playing a lick 3x's @ half speed, then twice at regular.

Just wondering if that affects anyone else?

 

[la szum]

Working on it. But it doesn't seem to be working.

 

[Zodiac]

Working on reducing my beer belly. My addiction to Newcastle Brown ale has got WAY out of hand

 

[JCW308]

Right now I'm working on finishing up programming the Kemper Player for all of my instruments. I have five guitars and will use one bank each (in the first set of banks) for each guitar. Five presets each with gapless changes is fine for me.

 

[Stone]

Still working on Jamie's crying
Found out that yes im not tone deaf and that song isn't exactly Eb tuning, it is just shy of being tuned a half step so have to use my ears as opposed to the tuner on my FM9
and the B string has to be flatter than usual due to how he does some chords,
Ben Explains it here (time stamped)



And this part Here in the song is where its important to sound In tune (also time stamped)

 

[FuzzyAce]

Nothing so far this week. Barely picked up my guitar since Sunday.

 

[Byrdman]

Still working on Jamie's crying
Found out that yes im not tone deaf and that song isn't exactly Eb tuning, it is just shy of being tuned a half step so have to use my ears as opposed to the tuner on my FM9
and the B string has to be flatter than usual due to how he does some chords,
Ben Explains it here (time stamped)



And this part Here in the song is where its important to sound In tune (also time stamped)

A lot of his tuning on the songs are this way, in-between E & Eb. I'm working on You Really Got Me right now and its the same way too. The other band mates know it so I'm playing catchup. Lucky for me, I'm playing rhythm guitar on this one and all the other VH songs, so I have it a little easier. The other guitarist is a huge VH fan and can play them in his sleep with all the fills, runs, etc.

 

[TSJMajesty]

and the B string has to be flatter than usual due to how he does some chords,

It's good for guitarists to understand that, because of Equal Temperament, you can never have an open E shape, an open G, and a D shape chord all perfectly in tune, meaning, the third perfect relative to the root, and the same for the 5th.

But, I think I've come pretty damn close (I have a great ear for hearing the slightest note in a chord being out-of-tune), between the compensated nut on EBMM guitars, and the tuning offsets that I copped from Cooper Carter, and I can get all 3 of those chords shapes to sound very very close.

All cents flat:
E's 2.3
B 4.35
D 0.4
A 2.1
G is 0

They may not sound good w/o a compensated nut, however (Cooper also uses EBMM guitars.)

 

[Sascha Franck]

compensated nut on EBMM guitars

Are they compensated the same as with "feiten-ized" nuts?

 

[TSJMajesty]

Are they compensated the same as with "feiten-ized" nuts?

Idk what that is.

But this is what it looks like.

 

[Sascha Franck]

Idk what that is.View attachment 18105But this is what it looks like.

Oh, so this is more like the Earvana nuts - hence compensated on a per string base. The socalled "Feiten Tuning" (developed with Buzz Feiten), as used, for instance, by Tom Anderson and in some Washburn guitars, is just compensating the entire nut slightly.
Didn't know EBMM guitars had this - and I actually applaud them for it,