If you love going in circles or spiralling around, effects pedals are your best friends.
… tempting, tempting… 
You mean experimenting with sound can make going around in spiralling circles a more pleasant experience?
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That’s a good song list Mark. I’m also working on the U2 song, and wish you were here and Free Fallin’.
How did you make a hybrid strummer and Jones version of Complete Control or did you find a lesson on that?.
Ian
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Oh, that is pretty easy. I just try to play the trickier parts (Jones), but if I can’t, I default to the easiest (Strummer)
More seriously, I think in the early days of The Clash, studio producers would use tracks of Jones playing all the bass and guitar parts, so I’m not even sure that Strummer is playing on the original single recording. However, on stage, Strummer used to do his trademark intermittent jerky strumming on this song. Here’s an early demonstration: Complete Control 1977. I also believe that there are multiple guitar tracks on the recording, which makes it a challenge, so at times I just do what Strummer did to get through.
I have the original 45 vinyl.
I am also leisurely learning Greensleeves, but Justin’s arrangement of it doesn’t sound quite right to me. Where he has an F chord I prefer an Am, so that’s how I’m playing it.
There are also a few fragments that I currently like to play ad nauseam:
- Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult (arpeggio motif)
- Ramble On, Led Zeppelin (introduction) *
- The One I Love, REM (opening riff)
I do play other songs, but I am trying to focus on the material mentioned above and in my previous post. That constitutes my present agenda.
And now for something completely different…
I’ve seen that most of us in this community play sitting down, watching the fretting hand pretty closely. Me too, but I recently took it a bit too far. I got into the habit of lying back in a reclining swivel armchair while playing. This chair is a bit cocoon-like, comfortable, great for dozing off in, but terrible for playing guitar because it pushes the elbows forward. This caused me to bend my wrist back hard to fret, and as a result I’ve done some damage to the tendons on either side of the wrist joint.
Consequently, I’m trying to spend more time standing or walking around while playing, keeping the palm of my hand more or less in line with my forearm. I have a tall music stand so that if I need to follow chords, whether on paper or laptop, I can easily read them without stooping.
I learnt that both playing standing up and playing without looking are easier than expected. The approach to take in each case is to just do it.
I nearly always used to play bass standing, trying to eyeball the audience, whether real or imaginary, rather than my fingers. At first, this was deliberately intended to hide the fact that I was a beginner. One trick I employed was to stand at the very edge of the stage, lean back and hold the guitar neck forward. That way I could keep an eye on both my fretboard and the upturned faces of the girls in the front row. Killing two birds with one stone, you might say. Or maybe killing two birds with one’s tone.
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Thanks for the info about Complete control and who played on the recordings. I always wondered el whether Paul Simenon actually played bass on the early recordings because he was very new to playing bass when he started in the Clash. It never occurred to me that the guitar parts might have all been done by Mick Jones. But at least Strummer had already been playing guitar for quite a while (101ers).
I have the original 7” of White Riot, although it’s not my favourite Clash song. I was pretty young when I bought that one.
I only got to see the Clash once in Southampton. I was underage and begged my sisters friends to go with me so that I could try and get through the door without the bouncers looking too closely at me snd spotting I was underage. I did get in. I would have been heartbroken if I hadn’t. 16 years old. It was just after the London Calling album came out. The most hilarious thing was that my dad was picking us up at midnight. The clash came on really late and played a very long set. My dad arrivés and just walked in to the gig - can you believe it - in his pyjamas and slippers. How embarrassing can that be for a teenager, especially as I was getting on well with 2 really nice girls!!! My sister and I still laugh all the time about dad seeing the Clash in his slippers.
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That’s a great story. I cannot begin to imagine the depths of your teenage embarrassment.
The Clash were my favourite band. I consciously copied Paul Simonon; even doing a few gigs wearing a pair of army issue overalls. I may have a photo or two somewhere. I bought The Clash albums and singles more or less as soon as they came out, except for Sandinista and Cut The Crap. I played that first album to death.
I saw them on at least one occasion, because I remember Strummer bumping into me as they left the stage. The reason I can’t be sure whether there were other times is that I was at Eric’s several nights a week, and nights blur into one another.
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So, about Greensleeves. I’ve always liked this tune - probably associating it primarily with ice-cream vans, which play it in both Australia and the UK. I suppose that I therefore have quite a deeply embedded sense of how it should go. Now, Justin has the chords thus:
Am / G / F / E /
Am / G / F E Am /
C C/E G/D G Am F E /
C C/E G/D G Am E Am /
whereas I prefer:
Am / G / Am / E /
Am / G / Am E Am /
C / G / Am / E /
C / G / Am E Am /
Some might say I got the F out of there. Effectively, I am lowering a note on the fourth string by a semitone, from F to E. I am also playing more notes of some chords, raking my plectrum over them rather than fingerpicking. This converts the C/E and G/D back to C and G, respectively.
I found a couple of other arrangements on Ultimate Guitar. My interpretation is somewhere between them and Justin’s.
One thing that appeals to me about Greensleeves is the structure, or the way the phrases repeat. There are typically four phrases and they occur in this sequence:
1 2
1 3
4 2
4 3
1 & 4 start lines, 2 & 3 finish them. It’s neat. Each phrase is played twice, in a pattern that has a binary feel to it.
Which, in a rather contrived manner, leads to the software and hardware I’m using at present. I’m documenting it here near the beginning of this log mainly so I can later see how much has changed. It’s probably of little interest to others, but I’ve added some detail in case anyone is looking for similar aids.
The Software Setup
- Cakewalk (DAW - has a free tier) It’s a DAW, and does what most of them do. So if you know about DAWs, no explanation necessary. If you don’t, they are probably something you should research. It’s too big a subject to cover here.
- TH-3 (a guitar effects plug-in - included free with Cakewalk) It emulates lots of cabs, amps and effects devices. I quite like it, but I am tempted by the bigger, fuller, shinier paid-for THU version, because I never seem able to get exactly the tone I want.
- Natural Metronome (Android app - freemium) I’ve tried a few metronome apps. I haven’t yet found one whose sounds I like. I kept this one for its simplicity.
- Ultimate Guitar (website - has a free tier) This site has chords and tab for about two million songs. There’s a lot of duplication of the more popular songs, so you can choose between interpretations. There is a nifty autoscroll feature. I run it on a laptop light enough to sit on the music stand. In my account, I’ve ‘favourited’ more than fifty songs I want to play. This makes it easy to switch from one song to another.
Three Hardware Setups (in descending order of preference)
- Computer
- Presonus Studio 24c (audio interface) Very good and trouble-free.
- Presonus Eris E3.5BT (monitor speakers) Also very good and trouble-free.
- Combo Amp
- Line 6 Micro Spider (old practice amp) I don’t like it because of the rough sounds and difficulty of use.
- Headphones
- Nu-X Mighty Plug (headphone amplifier) I accidentally snapped off the jack plug trying to pull this out of the weirdly angled socket of my Strat. I didn’t like playing through headphones much anyway.
- Sennheiser HD450BT (headphones) These are OK, but the ear pad covers are disintegrating. For comparison, those on my AKG 140 headphones are still intact after 50 years of wear.
Connecting to setups 1 or 2
- Swiff Audio WS50 (transmitter and receiver) Nice to use, when I remember to charge them. Otherwise, I use a conventional 3m cable.
I just remembered, there are some other progress markers to mention. It appears I’ve completed another of Justin’s courses without realising it - Guitars, Amps and Effects - though all I did was watch videos. Over the weekend, I decided to have a quick look at the Practical Music Theory course that Nicole mentioned. The first two grades are free. I jumped to the quiz at the end of grade 2 and had no trouble answering all the questions. It was more like 20% theory and 80% guitar knowledge. I was expecting questions like ‘name three types of minor scale’, ‘how do they differ?’, etc. I don’t think I need to enrol in further grades.
Well, that’s that, then. I’ve covered fairly meticulously what I’ve learnt so far and how I’m set up for further progress, so I doubt I’ll be posting quite so incessantly from now on. Unlike politicians, I’ll need to actually do something worthwhile to be able to have something new to talk about.
Incidentally, I’ve also become concerned about the time I spend on this forum, when I could instead be learning new songs or techniques. Same for tones; I try dozens of tones, don’t really find anything exciting or appropriate, and before I know it, there’s another couple of hours gone by. Actually, I have an observation about tones: after listing to a few dozen presets, trying them out on different songs, I start to get kind of numb to them, and unable to decide whether I like any. Does this happen to anyone else, I wonder.
I was going to finish there today, but…
Stop Press.
It seems that Greensleeves is getting all my attention at present. I wondered about the best way to record the changing modifications I’ve been making to Justin’s version. All I need is legible, easily-updated tablature for acoustic guitar, formatted for a landscape laptop screen.
I did a bit of googling, downloaded MuseScore, and dived in. I managed to figure out a few things, though I am not adept with the editing yet. It seems hard to change the duration of a specific note in a chord, or even to just delete it. I’m sure these things are possible and I’ll figure them out in time. And, yes, the software setup I published yesterday is already out of date.
Here’s the tab (the site wouldn’t accept a PDF 
, so it’s a PNG image):
It is intended to be repeated, so it doesn’t run up to finish on the high Am as Justin’s does. I guess I can always improvise that little run-up as a flourish just before I stop.
When I first fell in with the notorious lute family, I am pretty sure that we used the spelling bar in relation to chords. I was aware of the alternative barre but it seemed a bit pretentious back then. Nowadays, I see that barre prevails. I’ll go with that, since it reduces ambiguity.
As for bars per se, I’ve made a couple of minor improvements to my Greensleeves tab - taking out the bar numbers, shortening the final bar, and adding a repeat symbol to it. In this way I learnt a bit more about editing in MuseScore too. I have updated the image in the previous post.
I wrote out the alternative chord sequences I found for Greensleeves. Here’s the page from my notebook:
I started keeping records of song recordings in this book on 5 May 1987, having bought the book on 5 April 1974 and never used it. Am I meticulous about dates and such? Sometimes.
I am still focusing on Greensleeves. Occasionally, I try to play it hard and assertive, at other times soft and plaintive. I am aiming to focus on the sound and not how successfully I get my fingers in position. I think my visual bias has always been a hindrance in music. So I’m doing something about it.
Having discovered there is a feedback section of the forum, I started to suggest that the Justin organisation rethink how they teach my bugbear, transcription, but halfway through composing my submission I paused, thinking I’d better check to see what else is on offer.
The result is that I am now doing the Ear Training course. I may just focus on this rather than the intermediate grades, for now. I’ve completed module 1, and think I can vocally alternate between G and A (3rd and 5th fret on the 6th string) but I am not entirely sure. I’ll keep trying.
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Getting an ear for pitch seems to involve developing an all-round sense, including the ability to hum or sing a held note. To get an idea of where my natural vocal range is, I began ahh-ing at G2 (6th string, 3rd fret) and found I could go to A2, then D3 and G3 (4th string 5th fret) quite well. Beyond G3 things were getting uncertain. In the other direction I got down to B1, but couldn’t hold it. C#2 seems fairly stable.
Later, I felt what I had to do biomechanically to hold a high note, and it was C4 (middle C). C#2 to C4 is a range of just under 2 octaves, so no Pavarotti, but maybe enough to work with for guitar transcription. I feel like I’m assembling a transcription toolkit. This makes me happy.
According to Wikipedia, my range is bass rather than baritone, but I’m not sure I trust that.
I used the app Vocal Pitch Monitor for my pitch tests. I also played my acoustic guitar into it and was amazed to see how perfect the intonation was, right up to the highest fret. I did this setup myself - that’s why I’m so surprised. Happy about that, too!
On the subject of apps, I ditched Natural Metronome once I found that the Fender Tuner app has a metronome too. I’ve also got Easy Voice Recorder to capture any fleeting promising guitar parts I might come up with, and MightyAmp which controls my (now broken) headphone amplifier.
I’ve continued to audition guitar tones in THU. I found a couple that were interesting and made a note of them. My free evaluation period is about to run out any day now, and still no decision made.
I discovered something fascinating during my pitch testing: if I pluck the high E string on my acoustic and quickly mute it, I still hear the note. This is not subjective, the pitch monitor app shows it too. What’s happening is that the high E string sets the A string resonating at a harmonic of the same pitch, E4. Less audibly, it also sets off the low E string at a harmonic at E5, and the B string at B5.
Similarly, the B string sets off the low E at B3 and the high E at B5. The A string sets off both E strings at E4. How have I never noticed this before?
Here are all the open resonances I could hear (P&M = pluck and mute):
Str.
1 E P&M B5 E4
2 B B5 P&M B3
3 G P&M D5
4 D D5 P&M A4
5 A E4 A4 P&M E4
6 E E5 B3 E4 P&M
TL;DR: minimal progress on five different fronts.
This week I took delivery of some cheap no-name Chinese luthier tools. I’ve done an acceptable job so far of adjusting the action and playability of all three of my guitars without any specialist tools, so this is me going to the next level, maybe. I’ll be measuring the action and relief on both six-strings and seeing whether a clear plan of action is indicated.
Quick update: the action scales on both the fret rocker and action gauge ruler are completely useless. No attempt has been made to make them accurate. I’ve learnt my lesson; I’ll buy more expensive proper ones now. The notched straight edge fits both my strat and acoustic and shows me the neck relief is almost nothing, so no further truss-rod adjustments are called for. I also did a rock test. I found the acoustic has one high fret, the 20th, but I never play in that area. The strat was perfect. Well done, Fender. The fourth element in the bundle I received is a sanding block for fret-levelling. I didn’t want one, and don’t intend to use it.
So, I probably won’t do any more setup work until I have a reliable action ruler.
There’s not much to say about Greensleeves. I may be playing it incrementally better than last week; I’m unsure.
My trial licence for THU expired and I am not convinced I need it, but would have liked a bit more time to find out.
I’ve been trying to write out tab for the way I play the introduction of Ramble On by Led Zeppelin. I’ve got into a mess with it. I don’t know whether I’m playing offbeats or a combination of odd time signatures, or what. I gave up.
Meanwhile, I have found a simple way to quantify my skill at identifying intervals. It is a webpage that @math07 linked to in a forum discussion about ear training: https://www.guitartrainingstudio.com/interval-trainer/
I do not yet know whether it builds, or merely quantifies, skill.
Of 100 tests I got 31 correct: so right now I’m a 31% student. I wouldn’t like to show that to my parents. I’ve bookmarked the page and I’ll come back to it to see whether I improve over time. There’s certainly room for improvement, but I do wonder, with a starting score like this, whether I’m a lost cause. How much of a handicap has this been in my musical development?
I’ll start a table:
EDIT: no I won’t; I’ll start a chart! see next post.
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Here are my ear training test results to date:
Asc 0-12 (all intervals from 0 to 12 semitones, ascending)
I flatlined over two days. This interval set includes the easy root note (ie., no interval). I’d expect to get all 7 (approx.) of them correct. Guessing randomly on the other intervals, I’d expect the same number of correct tries. Median score 38; improvement on chance 23.
Asc 5 7 12 (5, 7 or 12 semitones, ascending)
Thinking that I might be taking on too much at once, I reduced the number of intervals from 13 to three (4th, 5th, 8ve). I should get 33 right anyway, with random answers. Median score 56; improvement on chance 23.
Asc major (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 or 12 semitones, ascending)
I’ve switched to Music Interval Identification Ear Training because I though the interval sequence was being repeated. And now I’m beginning to think there are patterns in these tests, too. Pareidolia? 
Median score 49.5; improvement on chance 35.5.
Desc 1-12 (all intervals from 1 to 12 semitones, descending)
This brought me down to earth 
It’s much harder to identify descending intervals, the names for them feel reversed, and there is no easy 0-semitone option on this new website. Runs 6 and 7 were with headphones. Median score 29; improvement on chance 20.
Desc 5 7 12 (5, 7 or 12 semitones, descending)
With headphones, runs 1, 3, 4; without, runs 2, 5, 6, 7. I began to forget the sounds during the longish pause between runs 4 and 5. Median score 66; improvement on chance 33.
Desc major (1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 or 12 semitones, descending)
With headphones, runs 2, 3, 4; without, runs 1, 5, 6, 7, 8. I’m noticing that if I am wrong, it is often by only one degree now. Median score 46; improvement on chance 32.
Mix 1-12 (all intervals from 1 to 12 semitones, ascending and descending)
Without headphones. Median score 37.5.
Mix 5 7 12 ( (5, 7 or 12 semitones, ascending and descending)
Without headphones. Median score 69.
Mix major (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11 or 12 semitones ascending and 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10 or 12 semitones descending)
With headphones, no runs; without, runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. I started this training pattern out of sequence. Median score 60.
Summary of the last couple of days:
- Greensleeves
- Ear training by singing
- Ear training by app
- One, U2
- Wastelands (Lydian Wastelands?)
My playing of Greensleeves is becoming cleaner and nicer on the ear. I know it by heart now, and feel free to improvise different endings to stop on. While the difficult pinkie stretch to F# is coming along well, the change to the C chord, with the pinkie on the third fret of the first string is neither clean nor timely.
I am surprising myself by my apparently growing ability to hum a note and play it, sometimes with the hum preceding the pluck. I’m not going to push ambitiously on this, because at present it is a nice surprise, whereas the next thing…
Ear training with the website I mentioned above has become dull and discouraging. I’m not, even at the best of times, very interested in exercises like scales and repeated chord changes, possibly to my eventual cost, and ear training reminds me of those. The yawn-factor increases while the rewards remain minimal. The chart in the previous post, which I’ll continue to update, tells the monotonous story.
As an antidote to such tedium, I tried playing along to One on my acoustic. For some disturbing reason I kept losing the beat. Maybe the guitar simply drowned out the song on the laptop?
And then I found myself playing Wastelands, originally a pre-AFS bass solo. The band tried to make something of it in the early days, but it soon got culled and I don’t remember ever playing it live. A few years later, I recorded a synth version.
Here’s what I find interesting. When I wrote the original bass line I just mucked around with notes until I could play what was in my head. It has lots of dyads in it, which give clues to its key, and the chords go:
G Bm A Bm
G A Bm A
The prominence of G and the presence of Bm might suggest it’s in the key of G major. However, it uses the note C# rather than C, suggesting it’s in Bm. So here’s my question: does a song in Bm that starts all its lines with a pretty emphatically stressed G qualify as G Lydian: G A B C# D E F# G?
P.S.: Modes were completely unknown to me until three or four years ago. I doubt their utility in helping anyone play or write anything, but that could just be my curmudgeon speaking. Does anyone care? Or is this just more jargon (Mixolydian, Phrygian - for God’s sake!) to convince novices that there are esoteric things they’ve got to (pay to) learn? I’m sceptical.
Ignoring the pachiderm in the vestibule…
During my teens it used to be quite common for others in my age group to venerate guitar maestri like Clapton and Page. My tastes were more basic and poppy, and I found these discussions a bit above me. Such discourse seemed to belong to people far more serious and knowledgeable about music than I.
So, recently, feeling that I had maybe missed something, I decided to listen to the entire Led Zeppelin canon, one album at a time, specifically to see what all the fuss was about. Having now done so, my conclusion is that the band had a couple of great tracks on each album, but most of the material is unremarkable - or at least it does little for me. Still, two good tracks per album across a career is better than most.
Meanwhile, I’ve been picking up a few Page riffs from:
- Ramble On (actually, I always liked this)
- Kashmir (same, another instant classic)
- Living Loving Maid (not my sort of song, but a fun riff)
- Misty Mountain Hop (such an intriguing three-triad loop in a four-beat pattern)
And that leaves such classics as Stairway, Lotta Love, Immigrant, Levee, Dog, Hills for later exploration.
Now back to the large quadruped…
Ear training proceeds. Oddly, I seem to go through phases of recognising particular intervals more easily than others, only for this to shift around. Just lately, it’s been the discordant major 7th that stands out, whereas I’ve gone backwards on the perfect 5th. Otherwise, there’s not a lot to add, particularly as the outcome is still far from determined. It aint fun. I’m sticking with it. I’m cautiously optimistic.
Did you do it all in one sitting??? That would have been a Zepathon:
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I didn’t know it was a thing! I am now ashamed to confess that I took breaks; I did it over three or four days.
Coincidentally, the Sydney Marathon took place here today. It passes within 200 metres of where I live. I toyed with the idea of taking my strat and practice amp down to the route and serenading the runners. Didn’t though.
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I’ve noticed that after hearing the second tone in an interval test, I’m already forgetting the first. Consequently, I tend to rate a high-pitched ascending pair as a large interval, and a low-pitched ascending pair as a small interval. Will this effect reverse on the descending texts? It may be too soon to tell, because so far they are turning out to be much more confusing.
These interval tests are literally soporific. So I went back and did Justin’s Grade 1 test. I scored 65%; the wrong side of the bell curve, it would seem.
1 - 4th 6 - oct 11 - oct x 5 16 - oct
2 - Oct x 5 7 - 4th x 5 12 - 4th 17 - 5th
3 - 5th 8 - oct x 4 13 - oct x 5 18 - 4th
4 - 4th 9 - oct x 4 14 - 4th 19 - 5th
5 - 5th x 4 10 - 5th 15 - oct 20 - 5th
So that is Grade 1 of Ear Training completed, Grade 2 started, and Grade 3 dipped into.
I think I need to refine my list of reference songs, even though I’m not tracking ascending intervals just now:
- Jaws (du DU…)
- Frere Jacques (fre-RE…)
- Somewhere My Love (some-WHERE…)
- Oh When The Saints Go Marching In (oh WHEN…)
- Auld Lang Syne (should AULD…)
- The Simpsons (the SIMP-sons…)
- Star Wars (dee DAH…)
- In My Life (dee DAH da da da dum…)
- My Way (and NOW…)
- Star Trek (ooh OOOOOH…)
- Take On Me (take ON…)
- Octave - Somewhere Over the Rainbow (some-WHERE…)
In other news: Greensleeves and Heaven are sounding better. Not so sure about One, though.
EDIT: I’ll start adding descending reference songs here too…
- Für Elise (dee DAH dee DAH…)
- Three Blind Mice (three BLIND…) *
- Hey Jude (hey JUDE…)
- Shoo Fly Don’t Bother Me (shoo FLY…)
- Born Free (born FREE…)
- Tritone
- The Way You Look Tonight (some DAY…)
- Minor 6th
- Major 6th
- Minor 7th
- Major 7th
- The Lonely Goatherd (high ON A HILL…)
* Although what initially comes to mind is the first two notes of Promenade, from Pictures at an Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky.
Well, I’ve been chomping at the bit with Grade 2 of the Ear Training course, but I’ll try to follow J’s advice and spend a week consolidating what was covered in Grade 1 before taking the test in Grade 2. Thank heavens that I have my other ear training tests to keep me busy (never thought I would say that!).
One promising incident at the weekend: I heard a drain gurgling at the same time as a passenger plane flew overhead. They were in unison. I think this is the first time I’ve ever recognised a harmonic relationship in a non-musical context.
Background noise and tiredness reduce how well I can identify intervals.
I’m consolidating some opinions about ear training. If they bear out over the duration of this learning process, I might write them out. Here’s an inflammatory teaser: I think there’s a bit of self-congratulatory rubbish talked about ear training. More to follow.
Some better quality luthier tools are on the way. When they arrive, I will have a look at my acoustic’s setup. I’ve managed to get an extremely low action and perfect intonation, but at the expense of fret-buzz when I play hard on the lower-pitch strings. Maybe all that’s required is a bit of one-sided bridge height adjustment. Thank you, 1960s designers of the Eko Ranger, for putting an adjustable bridge in this guitar.