Saturday, January 8, 2011

A new inspiration

Well i just went thru nearly a whole month of nonstop gaming. AKA the MESA gamefest 2011. Literally nonstop day and night practice and matches. Well i asked for it really, i participated in nearly every damned game...but hey, at least we got best clan award and i got two golds personally, so yea, it was worth it!

Sadly though no prize money this year so looks like my dream axe is gonna have to wait some more... ESP finally released a 7 string guitar with a floyd rose...literally the perfect axe for me O_O. Its got everything i want in terms of features. Id have to ask someone to custom design an axe for me to top it O_O. Still no cash so gonna have to wait >.<

Ortho finally gave me his axe to fix. His bluebird :P, a yamaha super strat, bolt on, 24 fret alder body,maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. It also came with a floyd rose so it was a good chance to play arnd with a whammy bar xD. The poor thing had thru quite a beating, but me and dad managed to bring it back into playable condition. the frets were beyond our repairing skills (they had grooves where the strings touched,clearly a noob was playing this axe before me) as that wud require an actual guitar luthier to somehow take off the fretboard or replace the neck as a whole.

Now here is where the important part comes in, see bluebirds fretboard is a lil less round compared to kinki and the floyd rose had a much flatter string height arrangement. I cud literally just sweep my pick across the strings and id be sure it made perfect contact every damn time O_O. It was so damn easy....no wonder those pro players look like they are just moving their hand up and down >.<. So there it was. the reason i cudnt sweep 5 and 6ers that well. It was my guitars flaw.

So i practiced a bit on bluebird, really got the feel of how the arpeggios shud flow. and then applied it to kinki. I tried to keep as little contact from pick and string as possible, it reduces pick attack so it immediately sounded smoother too. usually id hit the strings on the side and my sweeps were more like i was just muscling my way across...yes my arm actually got cramps after a few hours of that :P

Now ive adjusted it so me pick just scraps off from the top of the strings...this was basically how i did 3 string arpeggios before anyways. But i reapplied it when i sweep across the coiled strings. Now i can sweep across 5 and 3s at almost the same speed. Very pleased indeed ^_^. Now what i have to focus on is the pick height as it glides across rather than the force i apply to the pick when i muscled across before (cos diff strings provide diff resistance ). Sometimes i miss the strings but with practice that problem can be fixed ^_^. And i believe the .11 gauges where never meant for me, just too thick, im going back to thinner ones, they offer more ease in picking and sweep and ofcos since they are more flexible u can be more expressive XD.

6 still remains an issue simply becos it makes a THUNK sound when i hit the six as i go up O_O. I am still not exactly sure why it happens but maybe its cos i slam the string too hard when i fret it with my left hand. Or maybe my pick hits it too hard. see .11 gauge is meant for drop tunings but i am using D standard right now so the 6th is a lil loose, maybe that's why. Not sure but some days the sweep sounds like it shud...some days then the prob is i don't know what exactly i did to make it sound good O_O... sigh its in these times i wish i had a good teacher...but i spose only a few ppl here wud find arpeggio shredding appealing in the first place. Its one thing to hear it and think its cool, but totally another to find it so cool u wanna play it and actually pull it off.

But i feel im on the right path, i feel like im just a few steps away from mastering arpeggios O_O. Just a few more weeks... a few more! xD

Oh yea i went back to my old alice pick. But i smoothed the faces of it with sand paper, its normal design is to have a bulge that says alice.. so i shaved them both sides off and make it more like a traditional pick, i smoothed the edges just a lil to remove the jagged edges, the result of my older more unrefined playing. With the sandpapering the pick had a kind of roughness and texture that i kinda dig, looks better and its easier to hold on to now too. The best thing abt this pick is how the tip still remains the same as when i bought it, the dunlop stubby wore of in a matter of weeks. Amazing how some random chinease company makes more rugged picks compared to the world leader of it :P. Well Ultex wud be more resistant but it has a crappy shape so i don't care x].

Now im gonna try focusing more on fast alternate picking some more as i think im always giving my practice time to sweeps (hey i cant help it they sound sick x] ). My palm muting got a bit better lately so i think it shud make my life easier for shreds.

Right then, lot has been said, that's it for now, oh and for all the readers who just happened to be reading this blog besides me, happy new year too ^_^.

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