Nadim from Barcelona

I’ve been a (mostly silent) member of this community for 2 years. Recently became more engaged after becoming a Blimmer. So I guess that it’s time for me to properly introduce myself.

I’ve been playing guitar for about 15 years on and off. My sister had bought me a nylon-string guitar for my birthday, with a 5-lessons voucher. I’ve never talked or thought about wanting to buy a guitar back then. I don’t know how she came up with the gift idea. But I fell in love with the guitar immediately. I took the 5 1-on-1 lessons and then continued following Youtube video tutorials from a really awesome guy and his assistant, the jedi master :smiley:. So you can imagine the memories that the video Justin made recently looking back to all these years brought to me.

One interesting thing is that my taste changed many times since I started playing. But I guess that’s normal. I’ve played a lot of Bob Dylan early on. But today I am not really into playing it (although I do listen to his music). One band that I never (nor I ever will, probably) stopped playing is the Beatles. Learned some classic crowd pleases once I got an acoustic guitar, then a few rock riffs when I bought my Epiphone Les Paul, but never seemed to learn complete songs. Just riffs. Eventually, this doesn’t last.

I’ve bought and sold a decent amount of gear along the years. I had a Fender Frontman amp when I started, then added a Vox Tonelab multi-effect pedal, got myself a distortion pedal, looper, you know how this goes…

I’m minimalistic (well, you kind of have to be when you live in Barcelona with its small apartments), so I always tired not to own too many things. Even when getting a new pedal or amp, I’d sell something else.

So, for the past 5 years, I’ve settled on a Yamaha THR (the black bluesy model). I still kept some of the pedals I had just in case I wanted to use them with the Yamaha. But that felt awkward. To me at least. And the pedals were always in the way so I put them in a drawer. You know what happens when you put something in the drawer… it stays there (at least for me :sweat_smile:). I ended up never using any of the pedals I have. Just the Yamaha THR.

But there was something missing.

The tones the Yamaha offered were very limited. I couldn’t bother plugging pedals into it. And practicing over backing tracks or songs was not very comfortable.

I was not inspired. So I put down the electric guitar about a year ago.

That was a blessing. That got me to rediscover the acoustic guitar and improve my acoustic blues skills and fingerstyle. I even started singing :smiling_face: (behind closed doors). Playing my Blueridge BR 160-A and singing is the thing I enjoy today the most. Being able to play Eric Clapton’s Hey Hey or The Beatle’s Norwegian Wood is something I never imagined. I love it.

I felt bad seeing the Telecaster and Les Paul hanging on the wall, their strings rusty. I always knew (and I think we all know) that one of the most important things is to be able to pick your instrument, and just play. So I started thinking on how to do that and made a drastic decision to sell all my pedals, my amp, and invest that money in buying a good audio interface, a guitar plugin, and a DAW. For me this was a Universal Audio Volt, Guitar Rig 7, and Ableton Live.

Yes, I know, this sounds counter productive. Buying software to be able to play the electric guitar more easily. But it made sense in my head.

I now have a setup that allows me to plugin my guitar (to the audio interface), choose the song, and jam. For every backing track or song I want to play/jam to, I have a saved project in Ableton Live, with the guitar tone I want to use for that song, with the right level and panning. One thing that always bothered me when playing over a song is that I needed to turn up my guitar to hear it well enough, but then I either couldn’t hear the vocals or the drums very well. Panning works wonders for this. I pan my guitar left if George Harrison’s part is panned to the right, and it all fits.

I don’t gig. So I don’t need hardware. Obviously I don’t think it’s the ideal setup, but it is the right setup for me at the moment. Currently working on the first complete rock song to learn: Let There Be Rock.

I’m very happy to be part of this great community. Looking forward to improve and maybe share my progress.

Nadim

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Welcome, Nadim.

I have two or three amps and a bass amp I only get to play through properly if I hawk them down to the local practice rooms … The neighbours really wouldn’t appreciate me cranking them up here. So I’ve been having a lot of fun lately myself with running through an interface, headphones on, and jamming along to tunes and backing tracks … The Don’s Tunes Spotify playlist, and its wonderful Whiskey Blues tracks are getting played to death right now :ok_hand:

It’s definitely an ideal setup if it gets you playing more :+1:

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Oh yeah. It’s also not possible for me to play with an amp once the kids are a sleep. So only olaying through an amp would give me very little time to be able to actually play.

Gotta check those out!

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Welcome aboard, Nadim! :smiley:

Or better said: great, you finally said hello. :sweat_smile: Enjoy the BLIM-ride!

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Hi Nadim from another fellow Blimmer and long term member here. Thanks for the intro, have you done the same in the BLIM Learn Together thread ? Look forward to sharing our Blues journey !

:sunglasses:

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Pardon my manners :smiling_face:

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Welcome, Nadim!

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Hello Nadim & Welcome to the Community!!!
I’m sure you’ll have a great time in Blues Immersion… have a lot of fun with it!
By the way… the “right” gear/rig is whatever keeps you playing… no judgement here, just appreciation of another member & his/her contributions to the group!!!

Tod from New Mexico USA

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Hello Nadim, welcome to the community forum. Enjoy the BLIM course.

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Hey @Nadim86

Great that you are introducing yourself here in the general community. I enjoyed reading your introduction above.

As the @TheMadman_tobyjenner mentioned previously maybe pop.a copy in the Blim “introduce yourself” section.

I am a long tine resident of Spain and am trying to get a study group together for people living in Spain and Portugal. See the link here:

https://community.justinguitar.com/t/iberian-peninsula-blues-study-group/326475/6

A space where Ideally everyone would be comfortable speaking in Spanish or Portuguese and some English.

No specific format or schedule as yet. Waiting to see if there’s sufficient interest at the moment.

If the idea of a smaller group study approach (telematicamente, por supuesto) interests you feel free to let us know by posting in that thread.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the immersion course and are able to get out of it what you want!!

Cheers!!
Jeremy

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Just have. Thank you both for pointing this out.

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Hi Nadim,
Welcome here ans good you got out of the shadow :smiley:
I wish you a lot of fun here and with me in the blim :sunglasses:

Greetings,Rogier

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Hi Nadim
welcome :smiling_face:
Have a great time in BLIM :sunglasses:

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Welcome to the community Nadim!

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Hello Nadim.
Welcome to JustinGuitar and this fantastic community. Please take your time to look around and get to know the wider space.
https://community.justinguitar.com/categories

We are a supportive and encouraging group of students and guitarists from across the world. Essentially, we are all here for music and to improve as players. We truly are a ‘community’. Members help and support one another and a friendly, positive attitude underpins this. We hope that all - young or old, experienced or new players - adopt and foster the pay-it-forward ethos that Justin personifies and embedded all those years ago when he started the website and forum.

Also, please make sure to read the community etiquette announcement for some important information and guidance.

Richard
:grinning:

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