I think I've finally done it this time guys. I have been unable to play for about 2 weeks now, but the good news is I'm going to my chiropractor on Monday.
Ive played guitar for many years now, but I started playing bass about 2 weeks ago (picked up a cheap washburn xb100 from craigslist) and I just went to town on it, which in hindsight was really really stupid. The action on this bass was ridiculously high and still is after lowering it to the max without fret buzz. I was belting out all my scales and stupidly I kept playing when I felt pain, though I naively believed I was developing my strength. Well, long story short, I strained the crap out of my left hand, wrist and forearm. Almost all of my pain is back in the forearm tendons, bottom part of the arm near the elbow. If I play for more than 15 minutes it feels like fire ants are biting the soft part of my forearm and the area gets warm to the touch. I believe this is a classic case of tendonitis, but I my doctor will tell me for sure. In the meantime it is beyond frustrating to not be able to play your instrument after a hard days work, it's something I look forward to now. Hope this clears up soon.
What is the advantage of this program over free programs such as audacity? One I see is that is gives you notes/chords being used in a section, not sure if audacity can do this or not.
Anyone a fan? I am constantly blown away by Rush's early albums, and I love finding little gems such as this on youtube. Also, diagnosing Alex's smashed finger as "mental retardation" is hilarious.
So I've played about 35 hours of Rocksmith according to my Steam. In my opinion, it is not a great learning tool the way it is advertised. Can you learn some things from it? Yes, but the way it is advertised is completely false, I highly doubt its the "fastest" way to learn the guitar. That being said, the game is fun to play, although I have had a hell of a time with latency issues and so have a ton of others, so be careful of that. Depending on what you are into, you may or may not like the amount of songs available. One thing I believe makes it a worthwhile buy if you find it on sale, the amount of real pedals and amps that you can simulate is amazing, I spent many hours just playing backing tracks in the background and using different combos.
The arcade "exercises" don't seem to be more useful than doing actual warm-up exercises. Learning songs can be a pain, I found myself looking up tabs and learning the song THEN playing along to Rocksmith, which should tell you right there the system is flawed. If the game had tablature for the songs it would be a step better.
TLDR: Not a great learning tool though the game is fun. I still believe the "fastest" way to learn guitar is old-fashioned hardcore practice, despite Rocksmith's claim.
I was listening to YYZ and the scale used sounds like Harmonic Minor. I've found a pretty good tab, and the guy states the scale used is called "Spanish Phrygian". He said it is phrygian with a raised 3rd. Is this essentially the same thing as Harmonic Minor? The raised 3rd in a phrygian scale would be the same as a raised 7th in the Aeolian scale, which means Harmonic Minor. I just want to be sure I'm thinking about this correctly. Are both of these scales essentially the same thing, or is this a particular mode of Harmonic Minor?
I know what you mean, I've cut my fingers before and it makes playing impossible until it heals, and the more you play with it the longer it takes to heal! Right now I'm realizing I need some lighter gauge strings for bending, because I've been practicing bending for quite some time now and I have the strength to do it but I constantly tear into my calluses from bending so much, I ordered a few different packs.
I've pretty much always used slinky's, and I tried a pack of those new slinky's with a cobalt alloy, and man those things are ridiculous to bend as I am now figuring out. They do have some amazing tone and sustain, but damn.
@Heyman, great playing, I sure wish I started playing as early as you have. You seem to have an amazing grasp of theory, I hope you post more often because from reading your posts so far I have learned a thing a two, and definitely picked up a few things I otherwise would have overlooked.
Again I'm turning to Rush for more and more songs with rhythmic intention. I've wanted to start a Rush thread but I fear there wouldn't be much interest in it. The more I listen to their albums the more appreciation I have for what they've accomplished over the years, and from a technical standpoint it is simply incredible that its only three guys that are pumping out so much sound. I had to watch several live videos of Alex playing Limelight to really get the progression down correctly, as the tabs aren't 100% accurate, but piecing together 2 or 3 versions of the tab and watching Alex play it I've learned how to practice the progression and solo correctly, and after breaking it down I realized this is much harder to play correctly than Alex makes it sound on the record, at least for me anyways. Troy Stetina has written some great articles about the music theory behind their compositions and I've found it very useful for figuring Alex's mode of thought in writing the composition.
I had the same type of injury, though it was work related. Numbness and tingling all over my left arm, weakness in that arm, terrible pain in my shoulder and back. Ended up having to get a surgical fusion done, was not fun. To the poster with the shaking forearm, this is most likely fatigue, especially if you are just starting out. You'd be surprised how much physical strength you need to develop in your hands and forearms before you can really grip hard and fret properly for long periods of times. I have a hand exerciser thingy, whatever the hell they are called, its like a spring, wrestlers and lifters use them to strengthen their hands. Don't over do it though, its easy to injure yourself. Like Adam mentioned, if the pain becomes continuous and serious, don't take chances, get some medical advice from a doctor. Pace yourself!
That's some tight playing Will, I will definitely look out for more vids by you. Triads have definitely opened up some things for me, I've been focusing way to much on these giant chords with odd voicings that I forget to start small. I'm working through "Freewill" by Rush at the moment, the speed and constant time changes are bit tricky but I'm slowing it down and picking it up fairly well. I think its related to our topic, because I think Alex Lifeson is an amazingly well rounded guitarists in his ability to lay down both backing rhythms and lead, though I suppose you have to if you are in a power trio. His use of triads and a couple of inversions in the above mentioned song are definitely a good work out for me at the moment. I was also glad to notice right off the bat he uses a descending F lydian run to start off the jam. I knew there was a reason for practicing modes!
Hah! I never looked at the video before now, it is awfully robotic looking. Really suspicious claim to practice only 3 hours a day for over a year and develop speed like this....impossible. And bringing up Cobain? Dude wasn't known for his guitar skills that's for sure. He wrote some good tunes though.
Awesome video! This is definitely what I was looking for, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. I gotta get away from the TV screen and really double down on this stuff. Thanks for the advice.
Lately I've been looking at how Dave Matthews plays, and good god, he plays some monster voicings. I know a lot of people think its cool to hate on Dave Matthews, and I suppose I can take most things in stride since music subjective, but listening to the first few albums again after a long break, the guitar work on there is complex. The reason being he composed his songs to include the entire arrangement of the band, not just writing "guitar" parts, and this makes a lot of sense when looking at the chords he chooses to play. He stated that whether you played the song solo, or with the entire band, the song would be unmistakably the same song.
As far as Jazz goes I'm looking into Charlie Parker's Now's The Time and also Billy's Bounce.
What makes a good solo? Sometimes its all about who is backing you up. I suppose they call it "comping" in jazz. I know a lot of folks are beginners and its all about scale practice, left/right-hand technique, chromatic exercises, picking exercises, ect. My question is how many hours do you guys devote to chord practice and study? I've gained a phenomenal interest of late in rhythm and what it can do for you musically. Really my goal here is to be a musician first and a guitarist second. I want to speak in a musical language that can relate easily to a pianist or a saxophonist.
I've been looking at Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead lately, and what he talks about in terms of playing rhythms. He said he listened to a lot of jazz, and tried to emulate what pianists did for Coltrane in terms of backing him up. He wanted to do the same for Garcia, so he got to work. He plays a lot of different chord voicings and inversions, and I'm starting to go down that route. I'm currently working out of a jazz rhythm book by Mel Bay and one of good things about this book is it teaches you chords starting out Major, then minor, 7ths, 9ths, and so on, but shows you movable patterns and their inversions, with at least one voicing to start out, a 3rd in the bass (1st inversion), then 5th in the bass (2nd inversion) and goes from there.
Sorry for the wordy post, not expecting many bites, just a bit bored. Cheers!
Tommy A. Take the "https:\\www" out of the link, so just youtube.com/insertvidhere, and there you go. We need to update the sticky on this forum but I don't believe anyone active has the ability to do so, I ran into the same problem, its somewhere in the sticky but needs to be moved to the top.
Awesome guitar btw, and good job for being only a year into it, keep it up man, you'll be a shredding in no time with 2-10 hours of practice a day, wish I could say the same for my practice routine!
"The great thing about learning is that no one can ever take it away from you." -BB King
There you go brother, those 25 years can't count for just nothin', you've bound to have learned a thing or two out there that will probably pop up during your practice. The "aha" moment when you form that bridge between two ideas will probably turn up during your practice. You probably know more than you think you do!
The forums haven't been very active of late, that is true, but the thread about PB not responding seems isolated enough to me, I've not heard many complaints from paying subscribers. It is one thing if you don't pay for the lessons and post videos here and don't receive much input, but I imagine if you are patient and are a paying subscriber you will get the feedback you are looking for. Again, these are online lessons and I'm sure he has a lot of paying students sending in videos. I think I paid for a month of lessons and ended up getting a whole lot more than what I paid for in conventional lessons in terms of shear CONTENT.
The nature of the online lessons are its going to be a slower process than what you would otherwise receive if you were in a studio with a live teacher.
My suggestion is that you can try doing a bit of both, subscribe for a lesson here and there from Pebber, get some great info, and take weekly lessons (or whatever your schedule and wallet can afford) from a live instructor as well so you have that instant feedback in addition to what you'll get from Pebber. There is also an unlimited amount of free information out there, being a self-taught guitarist nowadays is a lot easier than it was 30 years ago with amount of resources available. In the end, even with an instructor, its probably 90% of what the student puts in himself, tons and tons of unrelenting practice. Good luck friend!
I've been going through the first few pages of Mel Bay's Rhythm Chord Guitar System and I wanted some feedback if anyone had had some experience with this book. I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions about this particular system versus something like the CAGED system. So far, I have seen a couple of shapes that are the same or similar to the CAGED system.
Heya, nice thread! I have seen some Ewan Dobson's stuff, he is really something. While its on my mind, I was recently looking into some of Tommy's influences, and digging into some old Chet Atkins and Jerry Reed songs, and man was I totally blown away, in terms of technique, Chet Atkins is definitely a good one to look at. Back on the Candy Rat side of things, again one of my favorites Antoine Dufour, and one my favorite guitar jams, JERRY'S BREAKDOWN!! I thought this was a cool video, a bit silly but still an amazing rendition of a challenging song.
I really like this guy, this is one of my favorite compositions. It is dedicated to Dominic Frasca, I bought one of his albums a few years back but I'm not sure what he is up to nowadays (regarding Frasca).
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