The New Tone Thread

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I do like flame and quilt top guitars, but I have to agree it looks out of place on an SG. The black/white/cherry thing holds true for me too, especially the cherry. That's just classic.

Jeff Tweedy came out with a signature SG, with a trapese-style tailpiece and a nice-looking set of features. But it's this weird shade of blue. True mixed emotions about that one.

Even though they're kind of ridiculous, I always look twice when I see one of those 3-humbucker SG customs. The lead singer from Alabama Shakes plays one, and I have to say that she somehow makes it sound awful. I don't mind their music, but when I've seen them do the late-night talk show circuit, I'm usually appalled at her guitar tone. Sister Rosetta Tharpe didn't have good tone from an SG Custom either, but she gets a pass because she was doing it 50 years earlier.
 
Greg_L said:
Hey let's start a club.
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J said you had it covered. :laughings:

Personally, I think that stuff detracts from the chances of coming up with anything musical or original. It's like having a map of allowed brush strokes or colours when you're painting a picture. They may help to unlock the fretboard a bit, but they're completely useless if you want to come up with anything emotive. You hear the emotive lines singing in your head, you don't happen upon them wandering down well-trodden and understood paths. I think the modes are a waste of time. If you want to do something strange and interesting, use the melodic minor or harmonic minor scales, or modulate between the two with a whole-tone run. If you follow those mode maps you end up disappearing up your own arse, like Yngwie fucking Malmsteen.
 
Bubba po said:
J said you had it covered. :laughings:

Personally, I think that stuff detracts from the chances of coming up with anything musical or original. It's like having a map of allowed brush strokes or colours when you're painting a picture. They may help to unlock the fretboard a bit, but they're completely useless if you want to come up with anything emotive. You hear the emotive lines singing in your head, you don't happen upon them wandering down well-trodden and understood paths. I think the modes are a waste of time. If you want to do something strange and interesting, use the melodic minor or harmonic minor scales, or modulate between the two with a whole-tone run. If you follow those mode maps you end up disappearing up your own arse, like Yngwie fucking Malmsteen.
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I mostly agree. First off, I do not have it covered. I somewhat understand how it works and why, but so far I've found that very very little of it actually applies to my kind of music. It does allow me to find different stuff that works, but hardly any of it sounds worth a shit. It may work but I sure don't wanna use it. Much of it does tend to sound very neo-classical yngwie metalish, which is garbage. My problem and reason for trying it out is that I think my solos are too much the same. I know the 5 minor pentatonic boxes and a major scale. I know some Ace Frehley and Johnny Thunders licks. I can only do so much with that. It would appear that's about as far as I'm gonna get.
 
Greg_L said:
It may work but I sure don't wanna use it. Much of it does tend to sound very neo-classical yngwie metalish, which is garbage. My problem and reason for trying it out is that I think my solos are too much the same. I know the 5 minor pentatonic boxes and a major scale. I know some Ace Frehley and Johnny Thunders licks. I can only do so much with that. It would appear that's about as far as I'm gonna get.
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Exactly. In any case, it's not about playing the "allowed" notes of a scale or mode one after another. If it was, then there wouldn't ever be any melodies. You have to take it somewhere, give it some drama and direction. You have to make a statement with it, otherwise you're just linking riffs and licks together. It's the hardest thing. The holy grail. The best solos are poetry - that is, the fewest notes used to convey the maximum amount of emotion. And keep the fucker short, too. :D
 
Thought that would be the reaction and I do largely agree with you both! I do generally find it helpful though, I find it helps generate ideas that are beyond what's in your muscle memory. I also find that when you have a melody going around your head and you have to find it and work it out it does normally comply to a particular key!

Back to guitars, I have seen PJ Harvey playing a three pickup Gibson. Thunderbird I think. Now that's a cool guitar.

Edit: here it is. Looks expensive.
http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/80/a3186bb78afd4b7697a1ce2911cfb0d9/l.jpg
I think that might be from one of the V shows. If so, I was there!
 
JDOD said:
Thought that would be the reaction and I do largely agree with you both! I do generally find it helpful though, I find it helps generate ideas that are beyond what's in your muscle memory. I also find that when you have a melody going around your head and you have to find it and work it out it does normally comply to a particular key!

Back to guitars, I have seen PJ Harvey playing a three pickup Gibson. Thunderbird I think. Now that's a cool guitar.

Edit: here it is. Looks expensive.
http://a2.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/80/a3186bb78afd4b7697a1ce2911cfb0d9/l.jpg
I think that might be from one of the V shows. If so, I was there!
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LOL - upskirting. Was there a guitar in the picture? I missed it.... :D
 
I LOVE PJ in her monster and quiet modes. Let England Shake is superb albeit quietish.
 
rayc said:
I LOVE PJ in her monster and quiet modes. Let England Shake is superb albeit quietish.
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She's just one of them incredibly creative people that's willing to experiment a lot! She's done loads or grunge, punk, classic rock, pop and now loads of theatrical stuff too.
 
JDOD said:
Thought that would be the reaction and I do largely agree with you both! I do generally find it helpful though, I find it helps generate ideas that are beyond what's in your muscle memory. I also find that when you have a melody going around your head and you have to find it and work it out it does normally comply to a particular key!
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Apologies - I got the wind in my sails a bit, back there. I sometimes feel that knowing too much works against my creativity, that's all. I work harder on my licks, bends and vibratos more than anything else, these days. They are, after all, the expressive bits. :D
 
Bubba po said:
Apologies - I got the wind in my sails a bit, back there. I sometimes feel that knowing too much works against my creativity, that's all. I work harder on my licks, bends and vibratos more than anything else, these days. They are, after all, the expressive bits. :D
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No worries, long rants from northerners always make good reading "eh, bhae-gum, whin'ah wuh'a'lad" etc.

- anyway, check this remix:

View attachment SP2 Remix 1.mp3

Re-tracking the wah, retracking the lead and sorting the drums out throughout.
 
JDOD said:
Thought that would be the reaction and I do largely agree with you both! I do generally find it helpful though, I find it helps generate ideas that are beyond what's in your muscle memory. I also find that when you have a melody going around your head and you have to find it and work it out it does normally comply to a particular key!
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I do appreciate your help with all that modal crap. I don't wanna seem unappreciative because I do genuinely appreciate it. And your sliding paper trick is easy as pie. What I'm discovering, well I've always known, there are two things that really hold me back sometimes.

1) My library of licks. I just don't have enough lead guitar influences to have ever learned any licks, chops, techniques, etc. Every guy I know that likes hair shred wankery, or the classics like Hendrix, Beck, etc, are all way way better than me at leads. It's natural. When you're influenced by lead guitar players, you're gonna absorb some of that shit by default. I'm not influenced by that. Never was. I don't have that kind of foundation. I'm already as good or better than most of my guitar influences. Your mode stuff has opened a door for notes and note selection, but I'm just not liking the way most of it sounds most of the time, and like Bubba said, it feels weird using a map instead of instinct. My toolbox of instincts is very shallow though.

2) Just basic technique. I can practice this, but I don't. My speed and alternate picking from string to string isn't that great. I rely on a lot of pull-offs and legato stuff because I'm just not that accurate. I'm fine with that because I like that smoother kind of sound better than rapid fire notes, but I'd like to be better at being faster if need be. I don't know how to practice for that stuff so I don't.
 
Greg_L said:
I do appreciate your help with all that modal crap. I don't wanna seem unappreciative because I do genuinely appreciate it. And your sliding paper trick is easy as pie. What I'm discovering, well I've always known, there are two things that really hold me back sometimes.

1) My library of licks. I just don't have enough lead guitar influences to have ever learned any licks, chops, techniques, etc. Every guy I know that likes hair shred wankery, or the classics like Hendrix, Beck, etc, are all way way better than me at leads. It's natural. When you're influenced by lead guitar players, you're gonna absorb some of that shit by default. I'm not influenced by that. Never was. I don't have that kind of foundation. I'm already as good or better than most of my guitar influences. Your mode stuff has opened a door for notes and note selection, but I'm just not liking the way most of it sounds most of the time, and like Bubba said, it feels weird using a map instead of instinct. My toolbox of instincts is very shallow though.

2) Just basic technique. I can practice this, but I don't. My speed and alternate picking from string to string isn't that great. I rely on a lot of pull-offs and legato stuff because I'm just not that accurate. I'm fine with that because I like that smoother kind of sound better than rapid fire notes, but I'd like to be better at being faster if need be. I don't know how to practice for that stuff so I don't.
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Its alright - I know you appreciate it. Suppose, for the sort of music you play its like and answer to a question you didn't ask or a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If all it does is give you a framework to come up with a riff to fit over a chord sequence, then that's useful to me!

My mental "library of licks" (good phrase) isn't that great either to be honest but I think I must have learned more lead than you when I was yonger. When I was about 16 I bought the tab book (Hey, it was 1997!) for Metallica's Black Album along with AIC, Pearl Jam's Ten, AIC and Soundgarden's SuperUnknown (my mate had Metallica's Ride The Lightning). I spent quite a lot of time on these learning as much of them as I could. I've tried to use the techniques and variations of the licks and stuff and they "mostly" worked but I didn't know why it only worked most of the time and what the problems with it all were. I had to learn a fuck load of stuff for the band I was in last year too which really increased my lick library (that's what happens when the song writer is a fucking classical composer) and at the same time finally started learning musical theory. Which is when I came up with that paper sliding trick to help myself learn faster.

I've memorised the paper sliding now so can apply it fairly easily on the fly. I don't think it makes you less creative 'cos once you know the rules you can then break them as you see fit. You can just get to what you want more easily, wherever you are on the fret board. Its also made my memory for licks much better - learning that solo by that bloke from Anderton's didn't take me very long 'cos all of the patterns were familiar.

I'm not sure that I do "practice" that much. Although I do have a series of warmups I do if my hands are cold - I run through the 7 scale shapes for the 7 modes, but moving around the neck to keep them all in the same key (it just sounds more pleasant that way), and play them in different ways - ascending, descending, hammers, pulls, alternate picking every note etc. Which is probably quite good practice actually. I'm still shit at string skipping though.
 
JDOD said:
Its alright - I know you appreciate it. Suppose, for the sort of music you play its like and answer to a question you didn't ask or a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. If all it does is give you a framework to come up with a riff to fit over a chord sequence, then that's useful to me!

My mental "library of licks" (good phrase) isn't that great either to be honest but I think I must have learned more lead than you when I was yonger. When I was about 16 I bought the tab book (Hey, it was 1997!) for Metallica's Black Album along with AIC, Pearl Jam's Ten, AIC and Soundgarden's SuperUnknown (my mate had Metallica's Ride The Lightning). I spent quite a lot of time on these learning as much of them as I could.
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That alone is miles ahead of me. I didn't have that. I didn't have those influences and I'm not sure tab books existed, nor would I have bought one. I had records and tapes and fast-forward and rewind. I had Circle Jerks and JFA. Ramones and Johnny Thunders. Black Flag and Husker Du. DK and Misfits. None of that is traditional lead guitar stuff and there certainly are no books teaching one how to play Too Drunk To Fuck.

People have told me that my own hardheaded punk background has irreparably stunted my musical growth, and they're right. But even still I wouldn't have it any other way. When I hear what "musically matured" people are doing, I'm just glad I'm not that.
 
Greg_L said:
There certainly are no books teaching one how to play Too Drunk To Fuck.
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haha, probably not. In the absence of guitar lessons or any friends that could play - tab books seemed like my best bet! I did teach my friends afterwards though.

Oh, that remix I posted a couple of posts back, post #12156 just has an adlibbed solo on it at the end. Its very instinctive, so still just doing what feels right at the time. But I don't stray far from "the map". As I said - just gives you a wider area to just be instinctive within.
 
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