More Jamming

So just finished another jam session, as usual i was sorely lacking behind, really should have practiced some songs beforehand aye :P. Oh well the actual point was to test out his effects pedal, an MXR fullbore distortion. Now that. thats the shitz

Plug that into my rather crappy amp on the clean channel and i get a bone grindingly deep crunch for a rhythm tone. Crisp, clear, deep and noiseless O_O. It was quite amazing how one single pedal could alter the sound so much, the built in noise gate was also kinda fancy as it quieted down needless string vibration and hiss noises. But the pedal was good with the gate turned off.

I can see how i can make my rather sad excuse for an amp cud be made useful now. Buy a proper effects pedal and tone, well don't have to worry about that factor of my playing any longer thats for sure xD

Though to be fair a proper amp would still make a better sound. Even the clean channel of my amp adds some coloring, and its not good coloring either.

Still it would be irrelevant if i manage to get my hands on the zoom multi effects pedal. Can record directly to the comp, and i have the option of using its built in preamp. Meaning i can plug it into any speaker system and not necessarily a guitar amp.

And i s'pose i want a marshall mini amp too now, check it out on google the MS 4. Cutest little amp ive ever seen, and makes a killer sound, so perfect for carrying around to friends places for jam sessions, my current one is a bit too big for that which is ironic as its too small for any size of gig as well. My what a worthless piece of hardware i should think. I play the thing on a volume setting somewhere between 1 and 0, the sound literally explodes like a flash bang at higher volumes as if it were just asking the neighborhood to call the police. Yamaha, wait... all of you small amp makers, should really have put this in mind.

Well thats all there is to say right now, oh yea working on some higher level guitar techniques, some of them i can only do for about 30 seconds before arm cramps O_O. Its back to pain again. This time its finger joints, forearms, palm muscles...well basically everywhere on my arm besides the tips of the fingers.

So now working on learning some more mainstream songs too, to make jam sessions a little more entertaining....kinda lame to go over and play stuff and they go like...so what are u playing? and im like okay this song from this band...and they are like, oh cool never heard of em. sigh

Thats it for now. ciao

New strings, thicker and stiffer- part 2

Well interesting turn of events, i was fiddling around with the guitar after i took a cat nap in the evening, the sound was still crap in E flat tuning, too much noise, then i thought lets try going down to drop C just to see what happens... couldn't believe it, this time the strings properly held the tension and the noise just... disappeared, i cud finally play stuff like bullet for my valentine properly, (on the super slinky strings it felt more like spaghetti at anything below E flat tuning) .

Its a good thing Paget doesn't use much effects, i cud cough up a similar sound to him. This is rather and interesting turn of events, now i can play all the heavy metal stuff ive wanted! xD. Though one little prob, i wish the heavy C string was thicker, as it is a further step down from the standard C tuning, so that string particularly is a lil wobbly. Every other string is just fine though.

So moral of the story, always use the appropriate string gauge, not thicker, not thinner :3

Otherwise, beware the noise , spaghetti and moar noise D:

New strings, thicker and stiffer

So today i went about setting up new strings into kinki yea. This time got ernie ball regular slinky, thats like a notch thicker than the previous super slinky set I got the guitar with. Oh yea and a gig bag and a white guitar strap too.

Anyways kinda accidentally i unscrewed the bolts holding the tune o matic bridge O_O, well thats what i get for poking screw drivers into screws just to see what happens, anyways took out the bridge itself along with the screws from the bridge...and then i realized i didn't really know the original height the bridge was set up on ahhaa xD. Big whoops there but well it was set too low anyways, the strings did hit two frets on the at 1 to 4th fret. So spend the day tweaking around with the height while keeping the strings on, cos lets face it, if it was too high it would be really hard to play on the higher frets.

Eventually i figured i didn't exactly use the thinner string's first few frets anyways, and the higher frets for the thicker strings, so had the bridge set up in an angle accordingly, i recorded some of the crap that was coming out of the amp (yea well its too noisy to call music i figure) and well i could not register any fret buzz in there any longer from any string at any point after a couple of tweaks.

I am still sure the strings are higher up from the fretboard from before, that much im sure.

And about the noise, yea, apparently the bridge is kinda flimsy, its built like an old day gibson tune o matic bridge, and in the case of mine the holding wire seems to have rusted, very irritating. Read up google, would give u a better idea of what i am talking about.

Anyways due to the wobbly nature of the pivots and such i think it reduces the sustain of my instrument even if it didn't contribute to the noise.

Also the new strings i attached were giving me a hard time as well, as they were fresh they made quite a bigger sound, now this is nice in a way, less effort to make more sound, now problem with this way of thinking is also that it produces more noise too, sigh. I hate this amp more than my old acoustic. At least it made a sound its supposed to >.>.

Oh and a note to all of u other guitar players. try not to set the neck or bridge pickup too low, that somehow makes more noise too, fancy that eh?

So right now i am almost wishing i didn't restring my guitar, i feels like a diff instrument almost. The thicker strings are a bit harder to play on, but more importantly they have this sticky nature and my fingers had a lil trouble sliding around on them, thats very annoying as i like to slide and bend a lot in my playing. Oh well cud always play the heck out of it and wear out the strings so it would be good like the old ones :P.

Oh and got me two new picks just for the heck of it yea, dunlop delrin 0.4 and a dunlop tortex 0.88. I kinda love the pink delrin, its the thinnest and easiest pick ive used ever. It lets me play more effortlessly as i have to worry less about my right hand movements as the pick changes shape when i attack a string too hard or when i try to slide the pick from string to string yea. No need for wrist and finger twitches when transitioning string to string almost.

Said all that i still use the other picks, they still have a faster response and well a thicker tone i think, might just be my imagination because it feels like i actually picked a string properly with the other stiff picks i own.

The last matter of the day, gig bag and guitar strap, not much to say about the gig bag really, its just a bag to fit a guitar in :P. As for the strap, ah, now i understand why all guitarists play worse one stage compared to studio, its frikking hard to play with the strap on O_O. Maybe im doing it all wrong but right now i feel i have to wrap my wrist and fingers all around the neck to reach the fretboard O_O. Like i suddenly lost 75% of playing skill when i stand up to play ._. . Well its interesting in a way, gonna be fun learning guitar all over again just to play standing hahha xD

I spose thats all thats to say for now, gonna be jamming with another friend like tomorrow maybe. And this time we are gonna jam to some actual metal yea x]. The songs we agreed to practice on are into battle (my fav metal song of all time and half the reason i want to play guitar is just to play that one song ) and dread and the fugitive mind too.

Now i have tried to play dread and the fugitive mind before. I gave up trying to play that one song cos the beginning riff..... well...i don't really understand how whats in the tabs translate to what im hearing in the song at all. Oh well he knows how to play it, he can teach me, my problem solved then :D.

Jamming

So i went last friday to my teachers place, and we jammed, well that was the first jam ive ever done, was horrible at improvisition but hey, it was fun, it was the closest thing ive felt so far to playing in a band. Its a lil bit more demanding compared to solo playing as u have to sync to the other player as well.

Maybe this week id be going too, who knows anyways back to practice bye for now.

Gear limitations and pain again

So now that ive begun playing guitar a bit more thoroughly again as time has finally slowed down for me a bit. And yet again my fingers have started shedding, literally. My middle finger now has three layers of skin ripped off from the tip, and well all four hurt a lot yet again. Its not even half as bad as when i started, back then i had to stop playing to relieve pain. Now i cud simply go through it mm. Another thing the muscles at the back of my hard are really stressed as i have moved on to sequences that makes me stretch my fingers over the fretboard. But ive been told that with regular basic practice the muscles wud get stronger just like body building in gym makes one stronger mm.

Besides this i realize my distortion really is a limitation now besides being a sore to my ears. Now to do some arpeggios and such i need to be able to do pull off and hammer ons, both are finger tapping techniques, no picking to make the sound. Now the problem is in a clean setting u cannot hear the tapping sounds unless u bash the guitar or something :P. And with distortion when i do play the arpeggio as fast as i shud it just makes noise, no im not playing badly, i noticed even when i play one single note its half sound and half noise. So at high speed all i am hearing is noise. I am into metal and other extreme stuff but even i dont like ear splitting noise, this is utterly impossible without better gear, sigh, oh well better get back to practice. There are always stuff i can practice with just the clean setting anyways

Tone is what matters

So ive got the hang of the major scale and was just doodling around on the drive setting of the amp. Well i only had 5 knobs to work with really, including the volume and tone knob of my guitar yea. Anyways after a lil tweakin with the bass and treble i managed to get a pretty cool roar for a rhythm distortion, it sounded so great i was intending to learn a good rhythm guitar song just to play ha! But today i woke and played it just didnt seem good at all, like there was something missing, went and tweaked a bit and again aha! i laike... i get the feeling im gonna end up being a tone nut, gonna be fun looking back at this post after i buy hundreds of dollars worth of effects pedals and amps in search of that sound that is perfect. Hey im no yngwie malmsteen, he knew what he wanted. Me? im not so sure what im looking for right now, gonna be a lot of trial and error and got it right and wake up the next day and hate it moments in the near future O_O.

Besides that still learning the basic theory of music, and sometimes the note sequences i have to play are a bit tricky as i have to spread my fingers across the board and also slide down to the lower string without losing the beat yes, im glad i did a lot of basic finger exercises on the acoustic guitar before this. If i cud advice any newbie guitarist even now, it wud be to practice only basic sequences and chords so ur arms and fingers and even ur mind get the hang of the instrument, after a couple of months of that ud realize u can play any song you want with minimal time spent on the learning.

Finally an amp

So i got my first amp yesterday, spent the whole day tweaking it to remove the noise and fuzz, (it was a used amp, got it off some dude who was selling it). Now its fine really. Its the Yamaha GA-10.You wud get the amp as part of the yamaha guitar starter kit that comes with a guitar and tuner and other essential gear needed for someone starting out yea.

As for its performance, the clean setting sounds like its an old radio :P, the drive is kind of like a classical rock instrument, not much settings available just treble, bass and volume so hard to adjust the overdriven tone. It kinda sucks actually as the drive mode is kinda noisy and irritating to the ears, and me personally am not used to the sensitivity of the drive so i kinda add to it with my bad playing haha.

So yea since yesterday i have started playing electric guitar for real. Its freaking awesome yea though the amp utterly fails, its enough for me to know what im playing so its fine for now. Had to reduce my picking force drastically and smoothen out my note rhythm and finger co ordination to stop any noise occurring or a wrong note (yea with the acoustic i was used to really thick and stiff strings so now these electric guitar strings bend way too easy in my hands and produce the wrong note).

But after a couple of tries i was able to get it right and today its fine really. Im still a bit rough but hey just a couple hours into playin the instrument right? :P

And a friend of mine is teaching me musical theory from scratch, it would seem i missed a few essentials while playing acoustic as i was too into covering songs back then. So yea yesterday learned the notes in western music, and the major scale. Ill get specific with the major scale on another post, its all in paper for now hah xD.

Anyways with just the major scale the fretboard makes a lot of sense to me, i sing so im not a total musical idiot. Now i can finally make the guitar play what i want rather than guessing some random notes hehe. Will get into the details in another post, right now im just anxious to get back to practice, thats all for now