Quote: NicholasJacquet wrote in post #200

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I finally got sick of waiting for the day when I would bowl a 300 on this cover in order for me to feel ok moving to upload it...there are a few parts that are a bit to quick for me to hear in my head (so I "cheated" through them)...I need to practice more...but I am sick of playing this tune and without a vid to stick a knife in it I wont feel somewhat good about it...and feel some sense of closure

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I love the song. Definitely one of the best non-Randy Ozzy songs.

Personally, if it was me I'd be really happy with myself for recording the earlier version (microphone distortion aside). The problem with the later video (although your technique looks way better) is that it's hard to distinguish your guitar over the one on the record. If you have the heart to do it again, I'd be interested to hear you play along with a backing track that omits the guitar line.

Hey - have you switched from right to left handed playing?

Here's my cruddy variant of "Magellan's Maze" by Buckethead. Disclaimer, I did hear of Pebber before I heard of BH, but I heard this song and thought it was a great rhythm excersise, so I made it a daily routine to practice it. A week or two ago, I listened to myself hitting the 2's and 4's between the powerchords at 110 BPM, and realized I'm very rhythmically challenged, so I've practiced getting that part down decently. What I liked about this song is the tabs are out there so I can isolate parts of the song and make excersises on my iPad, and the kind folks of the Internet had a backing track I could use in GarageBand.

Listeners, beware, I've contacted the manufacturer and asked what I can do about the guitar going out of tune so easily, so I've given up on tuning it constantly.

Fans and listeners, beware, I use it for practice, so I don't play it note for note at all. I.e. I don't even know the riff that starts about 1 minute in, so I just rage my way through it. It's a riff I like a lot, though, but I've made a point to not reward myself with cleaning it up until I've got the other parts down. Missing the easy parts in the beginning like the open notes is probably what happens when you get nervous anytime the record-button is pressed!

What Cliff and I talked about in another thread about fingers getting sluggish is evident at the octave-riff in the end. They didn't want to play at all and motions spun out of control. It pissed me off and I made what felt like a giant effort to hit the notes on the last run. You can also at the end see the stiff-arm you shouldn't use when playing. I'd prefer to use Sarod-picking over it any day. I even have angle the stiff-arm to squeeze the last drop of energy out of it, so the tones aren't very clean. I'm thinking of training the Sarod gradually for those parts. It's a work in progress. A reasonable goal to play this one clean at 135 BPM before the year is over. It's at 135 BPM here. The original is 145 BPM according to the tabs.

Video:

h ttp://tinypic.com/r/9llleh/5

(had to separate the "h" from the "ttp" above to get the link posted, sorry about that.)

Hey Tom, once I get to my computer I will definitely check it out. I love seeing music examples, recordings and compositions on top of all the forum "chit-chat".

As far as your tuning woes go; try a bit of graphite dust on your nut under the strings and at the saddles. You will be amazed! (Any hardware place should stock it, great for sticking locks!) Also, if it is a floating bridge check the spring tension on the trem and/or the knife edges on the trem, as these have an impact on where the strings return to after a bend/dive/warble...

Hope it helps!

Cheers, my virtuoso friend said politically correct that "it's not perfectly played" (he's too kind!) but also that he didn't see "any direct errors on the technique and ergonomics", so I'll keep practicing and hopefully we shall see some improvements over the months! It bothers me that I tend to bend the strings inadvertently, like you can see the A-string often getting bent. That's not a good habit as it changes the tone. That said, I've been at it a few months, so it should be ample time to get rid of bad habits like that.

About that graphite dust, I take it the idea is to crate some extra friction so it sticks and keeps from turning too easily? I'll have a look for it unless ESP has some good simple suggestion -- like adjusting a screw -- because I'd be out of options if ESP comes up empty.

Hey Tom,

I don't know the original, but this sounded pretty damned good and tight to me. Nice work! (My wife and younger daughter liked it too.)

I could be wrong, but I think the intention of Scott's idea is to lubricate the strings at the nut and bridge. I have a guitar where the low E tends to stick a little at the nut. Usually a wide bend will free it up. One way to tell if this is an issue is to depress and then release the offending string between the nut and the tuning head. Having done this, check the pitch of the open string. If the pitch has changed, then it's sticking at the nut. If that's the case, I'd guess the nut needs filing a little. (I haven't gotten this done myself for my guitar, and I wouldn't be comfortable with a DIY job.)

Thanks, Cliff! I'm working on getting the rhythms down on that song. It's fantastic practice for that. Keeping a rhythm going is quite a challenge (for me!) I'd encourage everyone that doesn't do it already to record themselves and put it out there. You discover quite a lot of things about your playing by watching it, and there's the good folks of the Internet to provide feedback with more experienced eyes -- and I must say, the atmosphere among people on this forum is a big contrast from what I've previously experienced around guitar-players in the pre-Internet era.

I'm going to look a bit closer at the guitar today and try get an idea about this intonation stuff. We were very drunk this weekend when my friend asked if the guitar had had intonation done, and I remembered that just now. Guess I'll become quite the guitar mechanic if something's off on intonation! (So I hope it's not.)

I made a video of my "mobile training center". The webcam cost me $20 and the production quality of this video will take you back to the 90's, but it shows the app I use for the electric guitar and how I run it together with a tabbing-app. It shows a bit how you can mix and mute channels, speed up/down, and isolate sections for repeat playing. There's tons and tons of tabs and you can of course load it up with tabbed exercises and whatever else you'd like. You could with a third-party tabbing software make a whole daily practice routing in it that you play through.

h ttp://tinypic.com/r/2vl66g4/5

(I split the "h" from the "ttp" in the link again.)

Finally locked in a groove for big tuplets and sarod picking!@!@! I amost fell over I was so excited @ 1:30 Could not beleive that it came out of me (-:

As long as you are happy with yourself, I suppose that's great. You do need to get your levels figured out, it's almost inaudible.

From what I heard, I think I might encourage you to go back, take a critical listen and honestly evaluate. Good luck.

Quote: Tom wrote in post #208

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I made a video of my "mobile training center". The webcam cost me $20 and the production quality of this video will take you back to the 90's, but it shows the app I use for the electric guitar and how I run it together with a tabbing-app. It shows a bit how you can mix and mute channels, speed up/down, and isolate sections for repeat playing. There's tons and tons of tabs and you can of course load it up with tabbed exercises and whatever else you'd like. You could with a third-party tabbing software make a whole daily practice routing in it that you play through.

h ttp://tinypic.com/r/2vl66g4/5

(I split the "h" from the "ttp" in the link again.)

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I decideded I am going to start branching out muciscally, so I learned the first little bit of this Astor Piazolla composition this morning (-; Yes I know its not perfect yet...I just wanted to show off the new tune I am going to be learning. Its actually Primavera portena BTW

Here is an old buddy who is way better than me playing it in its entirety...WHat its suposed to sound like (-:

Very cool tune.

Here's what I've been practicing all weekend, also not yet perfected. It's Black Star played at half speed, but to the point where the solo begins. I've tried to take on board Ursin's point about vibrato, at least in the places where I remembered to and didn't fall back on old habits.

I was so pleased with myself yesterday for getting (more or less) the right notes played at the right time, that I neglected to notice how out of tune many of the bends are. I'll be working on these this week. I've noticed it's one thing to practice bending in tune in isolation, quite another to do it while playing a song...

Don't know about other softare, but Logic Pro X has a tuning window that stays up in realtime and shows what note your playing. Something like that could be good to have on the screen when practicing the bends.

Hey guys! I have been pushing really hard over the last few months on making my technique as consistent as humanly possible. Lately I've been focusing mostly on my left hand (which I'm still in the process of fine tuning). My practice led me to a certain lick in Dream Theater's Overture 1928. I can already play this lick at full speed pretty easily but I decided to slow things down 50% with the drum machine and make sure my left hand is performing up to par. Efficiency and consistency are the name of the game here and if you guys can help point out things I might be missing out on it would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Joel - I can't see anything here that is bad. I'd say it seems extremely efficient and consistent. Very nice work.

Hey guys, upped the tempo to 75% of full speed. I also decided to show my proficiency in scalpel picking too. I first did scalpel picking with a pinky anchor, then scalpel picking without a pinky anchor, and then I kick in to my usual techinique afterwards. I find that keeping my scalpel picking up to speed keeps my hand loose and in good shape so I practice it often.

Edit: Wow my room is a mess.

This one looks/sounds good to me too. Breaking from a strict reproduction of the song, can you reverse the pattern and play it ascending? Can you play similarly structured patterns in the other modes/positions?

I had not considered moving this into different modes at all. That's a really good idea, I'll get cracking on it. Thanks dlraben! I can play it in reverse but decided to only practice in descending since that is a weakness in my playing.

Hey Joel,

I found your 50% speed vid really inspiring. After watching it, I realized my fingers were lifting off the fretboard way too much, so I've been working on that ever since.

Watching it again, and comparing it with your 75% version, I think I can see some differences. It seems to me in the faster version that your pinky and third fingers are not so curved at the knuckle. It seems like you might be relying more on the pad of the pinky rather than the tip at this faster speed. Also, it seems maybe the third finger is coming away a little bit too much as you move to the lower strings.

Not a big deal in itself, but you were interested in knowing about consistency, and this seems to me to be a difference between the two version. (I *think* - a bit more difficult to say for sure when watching the faster of the two.)

Thank you for the feedback Cliff. I can clearly see what you're talking about in the sped up video. I'll be more conscious of it when practicing at that speed to fix that.

I know this thread is for people to post their own videos but just had to post this little video i came accross.
The Great Shawn Lane

Shawn's playing and technical ability is literally terrifying, there is nothing like it at all. He left way too soon :(