Having a great time relearning and fingers are no longer sore, unless I push it really hard
I now have 2 guitars from a local Luthier who has moved here from Canada and it is great to hook up to my Boss ME-25 and plug in a one of a kind guitar to practice.
I’m busy practicing scales, chords and inversions, all of which are allowing me to learn the neck because I don’t stick to a single position and have found that I can get the same result just by exploring the neck within a key.
This morning I was playing around with the Am pentatonic scale (I know, it’s an easy scale, but it’s helping me learn the neck ) and I played a couple of diads which sounded nice. I jumped onto the interweb thingy and found that what I thought was a 4 chord is actually an inversion of a 5 power chord and it suddenly made sense why it sounded good. The D4 I thought I was playing is actually an inversion of a G5, but with a D in the base, so it became a G5/D. This was a bit of a revelation and made me explore more. I could play an A5 on the 6th string and also a A5/E on the 5th string with the E in the base. Exploring this was a lot of fun and I’m sure I learned a lot just by playing around with a 1, 4, 5 A minor progression, by playing with my discovery (Am, Dm, Em which became A5, D5 and E5 but with inversions thrown it to push my learning of the neck and scale deeper).
Anyway I’ve attached a photo of my 2 babies and wanted to let you know that this journey has become way more fascinating than I remember.
I just wanted to say Happy New Year everyone and I hope your musical journey takes you where you want to go this year
I’m having a blast learning and I’m afraid I have GAS now. I started with a little VOX Pathfinder, a ME-25 and a Ricky look alike (with double humbuckers).
But now things have reached a whole new level.
I have:
A Ricky lookalike
A Strat style custom with gold foil pickups, very P90 ish
A Reverend Trickshot
An Ibanex S621QM Dragon Eye Burst
A Boss ME-25
A Boss SD-1
A Sonicake Noise Gate
A Sonicake Reverb
A Joyo D-Seed Delay/Modulation
A Joyo Zombie MKII
A 1 x 12 Cab
The Joyo amp has allowed me to use tube tone, and put the delay and reverb in the effects loop. I have the SD-1 into the front of the amp.
Just a quick follow up. I’m having a blast and seem to have a serious case of GAS. Along with the hardware, I’ve been playing around with Cakewalk and grabbed the S Gear plugin, so I don’t have to hook up my amp and pedalboard when I want to have a quick practice session. All in all I’m in guitar heaven at the moment and am learning steadily.
Here are a couple of photos of my gear as it stands at the moment. I honestly can’t see me buying anything else in the near future because I’ve got all bases covered. There are obviously a lot of Wants on my list of gear, but no actual necessary items; unless of course you guys can think of anything
I’ve also refined my pedalboard so that I have an ampless setup. It’s super portable and I can get a ton of tones with this board. I can go from the board straight into my DAW as well
The guitar parts are from pedalboard directly into audio interface then into Reaper. No effects were added inside the DAW. This setup could easily plug directly into a PA without the need for an amp and cab. One guitar part is panned left with full chords and the second guitar part is panned right and just using triads. There is a third guitar part arpeggiating the chord progression.
Since November I’ve had an amazing time and hopefully will continue to progress. Justin’s lessons help a lot and I have a guitar in my hand every day now
I can’t get the YT video link to embed. Old man syndrome LOL.
Hi, it’s been a while, but I’ve still been practicing and loving every day. I’m reaching a plateau, but still progressing even if some days it doesn’t feel like it. I managed to grab Reaper which I find easier to use than Cakewalk and paid for the home user option, because I’m using it daily now.
My practice routine has evolved into something where I can see measured gains and know I’m improving little bit by little bit because of the regular increase in bpm.
I use a drum track in Reaper to practice to and play certain riffs and chord progressions that I originally found difficult to even get through without a beat at all, but now can play at a steady bpm to the drums which really makes it sound like I’m making music.
I play everything at the same bpm and switch between them one after another. This gives me a steady indication of progress. There is a short list below of some of the things I practice which involve alternate picking, string skipping, triplet feel, triads etc. Once I’ve gone through it I then continue to learn a song I’m working on.
Crazy train riff - great for getting fingers warmed up.
Crazy train chords - this is a great progression for triads and I switch between the riff and the chords back and forth to get my hands moving. This is also another great way of learning triads because once you know what the triads are you can try different inversions to increase your fretboard knowledge.
Sweet Child O Mine riff, because this involves string skipping which is great for right hand training.
A play a triplet sequence using Em pentatonic scale starting on the 12th fret. Once you get this rolling you can do it in any key and again helps you to learn the fretboard.
The classic Steve Vai non musical finger independence sequence.
Another sequence 2 notes per string using pentatonic scale 3 strings ascending, back one string and up 3 strings, back a string etc. You can also do this in reverse starting on the high E string. You can also mix it up by using hammer ons and pull offs as well as alternate picking. Also try switching positions adding slides to get you to the adjacent position.
The thing I like about this is that you set the bpm start the drum track and away you go. You can spend 15mins or a couple of hours doing this and I’ve seen steady gains. One thing I’d say is that if you do each one for a short period and switch between any of them without missing a beat it gets your fingers moving all over the fretboard. I might cycle though a few of them at a time. Take a break and then do it all again in a different order.
I also then just noodle (learning the fretboard) or work on a song. Again, you can slot this in as needed.
Nice to read your update Carl, it’s always good to tweak your practice to keep it spicy and interesting and, more importantly, whereby you can notice your progress more tangibly.
Good luck and much fun with your ongoing work! That new PRS is gorgeous!
