The Musicians Thread

[Pred]

The EVH looks the best of the two. Though personally I wouldn't want a Floyd Rose on a guitar.

[Pontius Pilate]

They are a pain in the ass when it comes to tuning and setting up. But once you've got it the way you want it, it's great. There is a hard tail version of both I think, but they just don't look right to me.

[TornadoShaun]

I'd agree about Floyd Rose. I don't think I'd want a guitar without one now, even if I bought another Fender Strat it'd have to have a Floyd Rose. I used to have a Highway 1 Strat and soon sold it on because it wasn't very comfortable to play. I'm an Ibanez Saber man all the way. Only gripe I have with them is that they can sound a bit tinny, but it can be avoided when you sort your effects out.. but they are just so comfortable to play, lightweight etc

Very well designed and eye catching guitars. My other electric is an Ibanez S540 FM in Purple tiger-stripe.

[Pontius Pilate]

I've got 2 fender strats (one with single coils and another with humbuckers). Unfortunately the one with humbuckers hasn't played quite right ever since I got it. I really should have returned it. The truss rod is loose, if you tap that neck you can hear it rattle about. I love my other strat though. Had it for years! My band is quite heavy, I always get funny looks when I pull out a light blue strat on stage.

I've also got an OLPMM1F (basically a music man axis copy) which is fun. I used to have an epiphone dot too which I liked, but I had to sell it as I was in serious need of cash.

[TornadoShaun]

They are nice things to collect aren't they. Expensive to do so mind! I've got three at the minute, the two Ibanez Sabers I mentioned, and an Ovation Celebrity Electro-acoustic.

I've also had the Highway 1 Strat, a Fender 12 string acoustic (I forget the model), a Kramer Vanguard (flying V), an Ibanez JEM 7DBK (Steve Vai signature series), an Ibanez RG something or other - think it was an RG550. Also a Jackson DK2 Dinky, and when I first started it was on one of those Squier/ Fender Stratocaster packages.

So I've played on alsorts of makes and shapes and sizes but the latest addition tops the lot

[Pred]

If I ever get another guitar it'd probably be a Strat. Before I got my Jag I wasn't really interested but listening to a few Rush albums has changed my mind.

I'm getting ahead of myself as I only got it a few weeks ago. Yesterday I was even looking at effects pedals.

[Victor Mildew]

I'm a bit of a fender convert of late since I bought my highway 1 telecaster



The maple neck and jumbo frets are just so damn nice to play.

[Pontius Pilate]

I would never buy a guitar with a rosewood fingerboard. I just love maple. I do like the darker sound that rosewood generally brings though.

[Victor Mildew]

My riviera ( ) has a rosewood board and its still great to play but I love the smoothness maple gives you.

[Pontius Pilate]

That looks awesome. I loved the sound of my epi dot. It was quite unique, sounded completely different to my other guitars. Trying to control feedback was quite a task though due to it being a hollow body.

Always loved Dave Grohls gibson hollow body.

Most guitarists look at me funny when I try and describe why I prefer maple necks. I find guitars with a rosewood fingerboard and a painted/finished neck at the back (les paul style) less comfortable to play on. And even though maple necks have a finish on them too, it just feels smoother and less "sticky"?

It's possibly all pyschological.

[TornadoShaun]

I couldn't disagree more about jumbo frets and a thick neck. It was the main reason I sold my Highway 1 Strat. Having tried both maple and rosewood - I prefer rosewood. I believe my Saber 540 has a maple neck with rosewood fingerboard and the s9870 has a "Honduras Mahogany/ Bubinga" set-in neck (i.e. not replaceable with another neck) with Ebony fingerboard (fancy!).

The Ibanez Saber series all have thin necks, this one on the s9870 is just beautiful to play, you can just glide over it.

I was always interested to try out a Tele though but never got around to it. I was always under the impression they have a snappy kind of sound to them which I imagine would be nice for playing meaty riffs.

If/ when I get the money the next guitar on my want list is an Ovation Double Neck semi-acoustic. One neck has 12 string, the other 6. I think they stopped making them recently though and every time I've seen them on eBay they've been fetching around the £800 mark

For now I'm going to try and concentrate on learning a few more scales and practise just experimenting cool licks with them to improve my improvisational soloing. I don't know about everyone else but I've been playing a pretty long time, self taught but I have been guilty of kind of sticking to what I know. Sometimes when you're not really in the mood to concentrate you just want to blast out some riffs or something and while that's fun it doesn't progress your skill as much as learning new things.

[Green Gecko]

The best way to improvise is to join a band that doesn't want to (a) be famous or (b) ape another band, have zero rules and not play 12 bar blues or ACDEG or the pentatonic really any other pattern.

Then keep doing it for at least 100 hours.

You'll either go complete crazy, come up with something original or, preferably, both.

Also, use a bad guitar. Then a good one.

[TornadoShaun]

The best way to improvise is to join a band that doesn't want to (a) be famous or (b) ape another band, have zero rules and not play 12 bar blues or ACDEG or the pentatonic really any other pattern.

Then keep doing it for at least 100 hours.

You'll either go complete crazy, come up with something original or, preferably, both.

Also, use a bad guitar. Then a good one.

Been there, done that on all three counts. Was in a rock covers band in my early 20s - I'm pushing 30 now and don't play in a band anymore, I was rhythm guitar/ backing vocal at the time. I started out playing a crap Squier Stratocaster which I learned basic chords and a few basic licks and riffs on.

It makes logical sense to buy a cheap guitar first, incase you don't take to it. It takes alot of time and practise to get even half decent at playing any instrument. Alot of people give up really easily when they realise they don't sound like Steve Vai after two weeks. IMO above all else.. you just need to have a love for music and enjoy playing and that will give you the will to carry on even when you sound like a strangled cat.

[Green Gecko]

Was in a rock covers band in my early 20s ... I was rhythm guitar/ backing vocal at the time.

I'm talking about an original band. Here you have little or no incentive to lead or improvise within the band.

Best thing is to deliberately run a project where the whole point is to not plan what you're doing and make everything up as you go along. I.e. a jazz band. That's how I got from classical recital just to just making up stuff as I go along, although it probably took two bands to get there - a more traditional blues rock band (but all originals), and then a rebellious band where the only goal was to have fun and see what happened. The only rule being, we never predicated what to do until after the music had already done that for us. Everything was born of improv and continued to be improvised in our live gigs as well.

It's hard to hold down and it can be very stressful as you might not feel like you're getting anywhere but it's worth it for the many fleeting moments of creative awesome where you hit something that sounds totally different. And in my case, no matter how horrible it sounded sometimes, it's that which got us gigs and kept the band going, because there was always something new around the corner.

[smurphy]

I've never been amazing at improvising, but I've really fallen out of the loop lately. With our old drummer we'd occasional just play while recording, and see what happened. I used to play some really cool stuff back then, same with songs where I hadn't written anything interesting for a section, I'd just make it up as I went. Since then been playing more guitar than bass, and it's been a while since I've played original music in that vein and I am just gooseberry fool at it. Last night I wanted to turn my volume down during the parts I didn't already have down because what I was playing was crap.

[TornadoShaun]

I'm not sure we're on the same wavelength here and I'm not sure I even follow what you are trying to say but I wasn't even referring to projects. I was simply referring to wanting to be able to make up my own solos as I go along. For that you need to learn your scales and learn them all over the fretboard in order to be able to link those patterns of the same scale up and experiment with new licks and such like. In short this will enable me to write better lead guitar which I like to play

On another note, I don't think you have to be in a band to be creative. I make up my own melodies and such just jamming in my room. Also just because you are playing cover songs doesn't mean you can't be creative either. Pro artists themselves don't necessarily perform songs 100% the same every time they play. Obviously you are playing a song that you or someone else has already written, but there is wiggle room for doing different things such as adding extra licks, experimenting with additional vocal harmonies, maybe adding a medlee or something... whatever works.

Also there's an argument that a band environment is not a great ideal for improvising solos and doing whatever you want.. when you play in a band you play to entertain others. If I go to see your band I don't really want to see a bunch of guys who are just 'going with the flow' with no real plan of what to do. I don't want to hear horrible. I want to see and hear a good well rehearsed set. Even more so if I've paid money to see you.

[Green Gecko]

I'm not saying you have to be in a band to be creative at all; I compose stuff by myself whenever. What I mean is being in a band with the purpose of jamming to make new stuff up gives you a lot to spark off of and bounce around within the band, and there's some pressure to keep it together with a good rhythm/bass section, and developing a quick ear for resolving dissonances and moving in and out of rhythm to keep it interesting. And from this experience you can learn to improvise - I'm just sharing my personal experience, it's not the only way.

In that band we performed the stuff we had rehearsed and developed but which was originally arrived at through constant improvisation and an intuitive selection process, listening back to recordings and autonomously remembering what was exciting and working on that. If something isn't memorable or it was too complex to reproduce it probably wasn't that great; a good groove is more easily retained. Of course if we literally just made stuff up on stage it would have been gooseberry fool. By not closing the doors on a particular tune though we were able to continue developing the music or switching between variations we had essentially rehearsed through iteration. That's how a jazz band works.

It's a highly experimental approach but if you're looking to improvise I think a jam band is one of the most supportive ways you can do that, as you can take a step back, move in and out of the mix, imitate or play against each other; not all the creative responsibility and decision making is on you and you can critique each other as to what works and what doesn't. You have to have a strong willingness to make mistakes and learn through trial and error. Sometimes the easiest place to start is just chaos.

Yes you can be creative in a covers band. What I said was you have little incentive to improvise as it's basically easier to consistently perform the track faithfully, and you're still locked into whatever the rhythmic and harmonic structure of the song is. Especially if you're doing it for money or because you enjoy playing the music faithfully.

Also you can be in a band without the aim to impress an audience, that's what I mean by a project band. You do it for musical development and not in the interests of money or notoriety. That's what we did and why I was surprised we got every gig I put a demo out for; it worked. We never actually intended to play any gigs. Some people can't see the value in that but that exemplifies exactly my point: most people play in bands to ape another band or be famous, which is a shame because it's an environment where improvisation can thrive the most. Improv is usually the last skill people really get particularly good at once they can already recite most music they want to, and it's the hardest skill to learn because it requires really interacting with the music and a lot more problem solving skills.

I'm joking about the horrible stuff. We wouldn't perform that. That's the kind of stuff that stays relegated to underground Brighton seafront at 6am in a punk studio full of abandoned fridges and televisions, dribbling Whiskey everywhere while you roll around on the floor making whale noises with your trem. I wouldn't wish that on anyone... but I would never have learnt how to make whale noises if I hadn't allowed myself the freedom to arrive at that.

[Victor Mildew]

I spent about an hour fully cleaning up my Riviera last night, It looks so bloody nice again

[smurphy]

I'm not sure we're on the same wavelength here and I'm not sure I even follow what you are trying to say but I wasn't even referring to projects. I was simply referring to wanting to be able to make up my own solos as I go along. For that you need to learn your scales and learn them all over the fretboard in order to be able to link those patterns of the same scale up and experiment with new licks and such like. In short this will enable me to write better lead guitar which I like to play

I think you are on the same wavelength, you're just not completely getting what GG is saying. Being able to come up with stuff on the fly isn't about knowing your scales inside out (not to me anyway), it's about knowing your instrument, knowing whatever tuning you're using and knowing what will sound good within the song. I barely know a thing about music theory. Sure I've studied it a bit, and I know which note is which on my fretboard if you give me a second, but I know maybe two scales. Chromatic, and some other one. And I'm not being modest about how educated I am. In the peak of my bass playing, however, I could tell what every note was going to sound like before I played it. I could hear a sound, and get the same note first or second time. I could make up 'bass solos' on the spot. They weren't always amazing, but they almost always fit within the song, and I could use recording to write them into proper music.

And I'm not that good. I've been playing bass for about 4-5 years. God knows what stuff I'll be able to after ten or fifteen. Follow music theory or don't, but either way play your instrument often and learn it well.

[Green Gecko]

Pretty much. I only know major, chromatic, melodic minor, blues... I've even forgotten the minor scale. Or I've figured out some other way of doing it...

I can say I know my instrument and I can mostly predict what something is going to sound like. Whats strawberry floating great is zoning out in a band you haven't rehearsed in for months or even years.. Or with people you've never played with before, and music that's somehow still musical comes out of that, and the dynamics of that make it completely different.

E.g. http://soundcloud.com/tbsbrighton

That swelling bass.. The overall vibe.. And the variations that are slowly born out of the Milonga motif. I love that I will never play that stuff again as the form is established through the moment of the music.

Instead of just reciting scales or patterns, or a set song, you're really making music. Something that's just captured in time but that is devised in the moment. I think that's very special. It's the practice of playing in earnest and taking risks and making mistakes that improve your ability to improvise IMO. Not just practising scales. It's more emotional than that.

Maybe I'm just romantic or I do all that a lot more intuitively than I give myself credit for.