I Found a Cool Site I Wanted To Share

I’ve been looking around for other guitar sites and blogs recently, partly in an attempt to generate traffic for this one, but more to see what’s out there. There isn’t much, but I have found one really good one so far. Rob Hampton of Heartwood Guitar Instruction in Seattle has an awesome site. There’s a link to the main page, and a link to his blog in my blogroll, but here’s a couple of links to some neat stuff you can find there.  Free Tabs and Chords – Free Online Lessons.  I don’t generally go overboard with doing promotionals for folks, but I’ve barely begun to scratch the surface of what’s available at this site. Cool site Rob.

Alternate Picking: It sounds easy enough.

As you may know if you have read any of the previous posts I’m currently working on learning “Far Away” by Nickleback. I don’t have it up to speed yet, but I did get a tip that made a huge difference in both how easy it is to play and how good it sounds. It sounds deceptively simple to do too, but it takes a good bit of practice. What is it? If you read the title you know. It’s alternate picking, meaning that if you pick the first note in a downward direction you pick the next note in an upward direction and alternate back and fourth without ever picking two consecutive notes in the same direction.

I noticed that it was my right hand more than my left that was getting in the way of playing the sixteenth notes at the beginning of “Far Away”, so I asked a friend of mine who’s been playing much longer than me what I was doing wrong. He only had two suggestions. First, anchor your hand by either placing the back of your palm lightly on the bridge or by planting your little finger on the pickguard. Second, practice alternate picking. I find that if I do the second one I automatically do the first one because it’s darn near impossible otherwise.

So, the next logical question is how does one practice this technique. There is only one answer. One plays scales. If you can’t be bothered with playing scales I’m afraid you’re going to have to find another hobby because guitar is going to be mighty dull for you by all the accounts I’ve heard. It won’t be easy at first either, especially if you’ve gotten into the habit of picking the next note in whichever direction you happen to be going, but it’s a necessity to get those sixteenth notes to sound right, and once you begin to get it it really works wonders.

I recommend beginning with playing a major scale in sixteenth notes over and over concentrating just on the picking. Go slow at first and just make sure you have the technique correct, then begin increasing speed slowly. Once you are making progress try playing other scales or the same one in other positions on the neck. Here is the tablature for a G Major scale to get you started.

An Impromptu Late Night Songwriting Session

I called my friend Chip (pictured above with the six string) at about 8:00 PM last Friday to ask if he could help me with some work I’ve been doing on my house. I only needed a few minutes of help some time within the next two or three days, but Chip was apparently bored that night and he suggested that I should come get him so we could do some recording with my new equipment. Then he could just crash here and help me with the house in the morning. This, to me, sounded like a pretty good plan. If you’re wondering why I would go pick him up it’s because his truck gets something like 8 mpg. I also sort of wanted to assess the situation in person with regard to steeling him from his wife for the night. (She didn’t seem to mind.)

By the time we got back to my house with all Chip’s stuff it was a little after 10:00, which is about the time I figured it would be at the outset, but it was a Friday night so we planned to stay up late. Chip had a finished song he wanted to record, but by the time we got set up, fooled around with the Nickelback cover I’ve been trying to learn and jammed for a while we wound up working on something entirely new that had initially just been a vague idea. We wrote lyrics from about 11:00 PM to 1:00 AM. I couldn’t tell you which of us wrote what at this point, but it was a whole lot of fun. Of course it’s the kind of thing that’s fun in retrospect. At the time we were agonizing over every word.

Once we had lyrics that we were happy with we set about recording. To our chagrin we discovered that we didn’t have a patch cord that would fit out keyboard. Now this keyboard has a history. It’s a little Casio from Wal-Mart. I bought it in about 1985. We needed one for something at the time. I don’t even play keyboard, so Chip wound up with it some time about 1990 I would guess. Then time passed until some time this year Chip discovered that his father had the thing and that it still worked. He repossessed it. I sort of feel bad about his father not having a keyboard now. I said to Chip “Dude, you took your dad’s keyboard?” But to tell the truth I think his dad has several backup keyboards, and even more guitars, and it does come in handy sometimes. Anyway, end result: we wound up with the (22 year old) cheapest keyboard you could buy at the time miked into the input board. Believe it or not it didn’t sound half bad. (I know you don’t believe it.)

We recorded the keyboard, and the bass first. We had already figured out a melody and a bass line during the initial jam session. I’m not sure how many takes that took, but it went pretty quick. I played bass of course. We had decided previously that this would probably be for the best given how well I play guitar at this point. Then Chip laid down the vocal and rhythm guitar tracks over that. It was kind of rough, but I cleaned up the bass and mixed it the next day and although the end result sounds a little eighties-ish, because of the keyboard mostly, overall I was really happy with the way it turned out. So now you know how I spend my Friday nights.

Choosing Strings

First let me say that this post applies to metal strings only. I don’t know anything about classical guitar strings except that they are generally made of nylon. If you are entirely new to being around guitars you might not know that you should never try to string a classical guitar with metal strings. You will likely warp the neck. I know that probably seems obvious, but after posting this I thought it was worth going back to mention it. Now, on with the post.

I recently broke an E (1) string. How I broke it is kind of an interesting aside so I will tell the whole story. It all began because I love the band Nickleback. (You may see where this is going already.) I was riding with my girlfriend in her car when “Far Away” by Nickleback came on the CD changer, and she made the following suggestion. “You should learn to play that one.” I was in fact thinking the exact same thing at the time since it’s one of our very favorite songs, so the next night I looked up the tablature* and proceeded to begin tuning my guitar down a half step. This, of course, is how I broke the string.

It was about eight o’ clock at the time so all the music stores were closed, and I had just bought the guitar a few weeks ago, so of course I didn’t have any replacement strings. I was mildly distraught because I had already missed a night or two of practice that week. (I try to play for two or three hours every night.) I was also faced with a puzzle. I didn’t really know what kind of strings were on my guitar to begin with, and I sort of wanted to upgrade anyway, so what type of strings should I get? I’m going to end this post by telling you what I decided on, but first I’m going to give you a couple of things you should consider when choosing strings. There really are only a couple.

The first is sound, the second is playability. One might think of playability as “What will it do to my fingers.” Thicker strings sound louder and clearer on an acoustic guitar, but they are also harder to play. Therefore choosing strings, like anything else, is a compromise, and also like anything else there are people on both extremes of the argument. Stevie Ray Vaughan, for instance, used heavy strings. If I didn’t know that to be true I would have said was impossible considering the amount of bending he did. The story (urban legend?) goes that he had to use some kind of spray on plastic skin on his fingers to keep from shredding them. I haven’t confirmed that, but I can almost believe it. On the other extreme I know a guy who strings everything, acoustics and all, with Ernie Ball Slinky electric guitar strings which are, well, slinky. Of course he amps the acoustic (a fairly nice ovation), and it sounds OK.

So, what did I pick? I went with Martin M550 Medium Phosphor Bronze strings which were in fact a little harder to play than the lighter ones I had, but man do they sound good. In the end it’s really just a matter of personal choice. What kind of strings do you like?

*I would post a link to the tablature, but I got a weird ad just now when I went to the site. If you google “Nickleback Far Away Tabs” and look at version 4 on the first site you get that seems to be pretty close to the correct tab, but I can’t really recommend going there given the nature of the pop up I just got.

Choosing a First Guitar

I play an Epiphone AJ-100CE Acoustic-Electric Guitar (pictured above). I just bought it, and a number of factors contributed to my choice. You may have already guessed that one of the primary factors was price. I would like to take this opportunity to say loudly and clearly that I don’t think there is anything at all wrong with choosing an inexpensive starter guitar to learn on, so long as you keep some of the other factors I am going to discuss here in mind. To my notion buying a $1200 Martin to learn how to play on is a bit like wearing a black belt to your first karate class.

That being said, there are factors more paramount than price. For example I chose an Acoustic-Electric because I play by myself a good deal and I also play bass so I want to be able to plug in and record myself playing rhythm and then overdub bass lines. Here are my criteria for choosing your first guitar. This first part applies to all the categories listed below equally. Read the reviews if you are buying on line. If you’re going to the local music store take someone with you who knows guitars, or ask the sales guy. Yes, he’s selling you a guitar, but he probably also plays one and he won’t generally steer you wrong about something as basic as whether or not the thing will stay in tune. In either case take it to someone you trust who knows guitars as soon as you get it and be sure you can return it if that guy tells you it’s awful. By “Someone who knows guitars” I mean a serious musician, not somebody who’s likely to tell you that you need the $1200 Martin. The rest of these are listed in order of importance.

1. Good machine heads. / Stays in tune: There is nothing more grating to the ear than an out of tune guitar.

2. Does it fit your application: This one should be fairly obvious. If you are buying a guitar you should know what sort of music you want to play and what you want to do with it. I would add however that personally I don’t recommend learning initially on an electric guitar. (By “I don’t” I mean the guy I ask about such things doesn’t.) They are more difficult to keep in tune, and if you can play an acoustic well you can play an electric well. The inverse does not necessarily apply. That’s just an opinion.

3. Good fretboard / action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard) / Bridge: A high fret or a low bridge will cause fret buzz. If the action is too high you’re fingers won’t like you much. The action is generally a compromise based on what you want to use the guitar for. My guitar for instance has a relatively high action because I intend to play rhythm parts and strum it almost exclusively. The other thing to watch out for is frets that are just painfully sharp or high or misaligned. One particular “as seen on TV” guitar is known for this problem. I won’t use the guys name but his initials are Esteban.

4. Does it sound reasonably good: How do you answer this question? Well we have staying in tune and most of the major defects out of the way, so really all you have to do is listen to see if you like the sound. Have somebody play it for you.

5. Price: If you are a seasoned player you will probably want to swap five with six here if you have the money to do so, but no matter how much money you have I don’t recommended buying a really expensive guitar to learn on initially. You may decide you don’t like playing.

6. Does it sound really good: This will (obviously) be a matter of money. The $1200 (or the $6000) Martin Gibson or Fender will sound really really good, but my Epi sounds just fine, particularly if you amp it up, and Yamaha, Ovation and Squire for instance make similarly priced instruments that sound as good as mine or better.

One last thing. If you are selecting a starter guitar for a child your selection may be limited to 3/4 scale or even smaller guitars because a full sized one is just too large for a small child to play. All the same criteria apply except that I would put even more emphasis on price and essentially disregard number six. The fact that I spent approximately $200 for a guitar and a case practically guarantees that I will wrestle it down and learn to play it. There is no such guarantee for a child. Keep it under a hundred bucks if it’s for a kid is my advice.

A Brief Introduction

This blog is going to be a fun, informal, chronicle of my quest to learn how to play acoustic guitar. It will also contain stories and glimpses of my life that are related to music. To learn a little more about me you can read the About the Blogger page. Most of this post is included there as well.

I should probably let you know that I am not now nor have I ever claimed to be a professional musician. I played bass with a four-piece country band in local clubs for about four years in my early twenties (long long ago in a galaxy far far away). In all honesty I probably know about as much about playing a six string as I do about flying the space shuttle, so if you came here for tips on technique don’t expect more than what I can hand down from other people. I’m sure there will be some technical posts here and there as I learn new things, but frankly, if you play fairly well, I’m here to learn from you. Although this blog is primarily targeted at beginning guitarists, everyone who is even remotely interested in guitar, or music in general, is welcome here. There will probably be some posts about playing bass too.

Any technical terms used in the posts will be linked to their definitions.