The NC-AV rule started out as the No Crap-Ass Videos rule but that sounds a wee bit more elegant if the acronym turns into NO CAVE as in if you start playing and can't finish it then that's a cave and that sucks. Falling in a gig isn't being tough, it's being a dumb ass who didn't plan it through.
Playing tonight felt good as it was hammering hard and it's conceivable but unclear that I maybe hammered it hard enough to break a speaker. That'll suck if I did but it was ferociously blazing while it happened.
After hitting it on one groove, the thinking after it stops is, dayum, got to find me another one of those but that's where NO CAVE kicks into it. Take the win, sit yer ass down.
I (cough) didn't do that as the Godin sounds so deliciously beautiful when you turn off distortion and let it get like a Stratocaster. There are some very simple moves you can make that sound as Hendrixy as you would ever want and those are gorgeous without distortion. Play a note, hammer down on the third above it and pluck the fifth beside it. Repeat that a couple of times and then step back down from 7-5-3-1. That will sound as Hendrixy as you'll ever want and you can use it all over the place. I'm constantly using hammer-downs while I play lead. ('Hammer down' is when you make a note sound by 'hammering' your finger down on it without plucking it.)
That little bit was just for short in dancing with the idea of groove hunting but then NO CAVE kicked into it so sit on down.
The reason for a little bit techie is that I was asked after I played, um, how de fug you do dat. He wasn't screwing with me as we talked a bit and he's been trying to figure how do I get going with this bass. I got it in a pawn shop a few months ago so what should I do. Should I memorize every scale in the Musician's Bible of Impossible Scales. Do I need to need to know every mode (e.g. Dorian, Mixolydian, etc) to play. My answer is that for what I do, I did not memorize much of anything.
What I did do was play over and over and over and over but it was next to the record. I never got tab sheets and, in fact, think they are abominations. I wanted to learn from hearing rather than from reading. This was kind of a dumb idea but it may have made me more sensitive for listening in general. In part you do have to train yourself as it's easy to let a bass just be bass while you focus on the singer. After you listen more, you'll hear both. You'll notice the organ is a Hammond B3 because you know that sound. It's not so much that you'll identify instruments but rather you will hear all of them and not just the singer as in these hellbound TV shows that focus on nothing else.
If you're going to learn to read music then do it. If not then don't screw with it in memorizing tabbed leads someone else transcribed and then act like you're Satriani. In fact, guitar tablature is like musical Ebonics for skinny white guys. Coincidentally, the popularity of guitar tablature follows almost exactly the increase in shredding (i.e. few, if any, of the guitarists who made rock happen used tablature).
There's the old joke about the guy who asked the New York cabbie how to get to Carnegie Hall. The driver is an old bluesman who just turns to him and says, "Practice, practice, practice."
I have lived by that one more than any other thing in music. I caution this is an extremely difficult way to learn as for a long time you'll have no idea what you're doing but you keep practicing and learning. It's a bitch but it will come. I find musical knowledge in my head now that I didn't even realize was there. What will come from this is a style that's absolutely your own as the only influence it's ever had is from music rather than people telling you rules. (Zappa dropped out of the College Conservatory of Music after only six months)
As far as I know, there's only one rule you can't break: you have to know where the notes are on the neck. Even if you want to do everything strictly by feel, you still need to know that much or you'll grab a melon or a boob and not be sure what you're holding. If the latter, you are in a serious hurt as maybe you get three steps and maybe you don't.
I don't know the musical terminology and never did. For me there is a general scale and there are the notes 'in-between' as in the notes not in the scale and those are the blue ones. Playing a scale is fine as in Do-Re-Mi but what if you stick something between the Re and the Mi. Anyone's mind will follow it as we're monkeys and we have to figure things out. That doesn't belong there and your mind shoots to it.
Maybe 'going in-between' is only for dragons, their riders, and jazzmen ... and you. Once you know where the notes are, you'll know where 'in-between' actually is and you can use that. You'll learn how as you play with it. This note doesn't work ... but it kind of does ... so what I do with that. Answer is to play it again until it does make sense or chuck it if you find it doesn't.
Get the Mel Bay Chord Book. You don't have to know what all of them are but you do have to be able to find them. Also take a look at one on theory as you'll at least get some idea of progressions from that.
Don't go to the Creative Songwriters Ball as learning how someone else writes songs does you not one damn bit of good because that only means you'll write songs like they would write. It's also a substantial reason for avoiding learning too many covers as there's a good chance you'll lose track of what you were trying to say in the first place.
Try to get away from 4/4 and play with other time signatures if you can hack it. Pink Floyd will show you 9/8 all over the place. Maybe that's good for what you do ... or not. What's best for you is try it and find out.
Do listen to the best. I have no intention of playing flamenco but listening to Voodoo play it, along with a great many other aspects of his music, is inspirational even if only for the purity of it. That his precision is so impressive while at the same time his music stays so humane is something that applies to any style and he is brilliantly brilliant at it. A large part of the reason is he isn't 'at' anything. This is what I do and now I'm going to do it. He will never say brilliantly; everyone else will but he won't. He's impressive in a great many ways and there are many things to learn from him.
I do regret that I didn't take at least a few lessons as that would have saved a lot of time in learning mechanical stuff and it would also mean I could explain things better than I'm able.
Screwing around with alternative tunings is largely a rat trap. It would be cool to tune down to E flat to play "Little Wing" native as it can't be played just like Hendrix did it if you don't. However, expecting your audience to sit about while you twang, twang, twang tune and re-tune your guitar is more than optimistic (hot tip on that: it sounds awful).
If you can't tune quickly, get an electronic tuner. They're cheap, incredibly reliable, and the batteries last for a hundred years or so. There's just no excuse for dragging an audience through your tuning.
If you learn the notes, those will reveal the keys and then you won't have to look for a capo to know which key you're playing. I've always thought using a capo was lame as it's a fast way to change keys but it cuts off notes you can play because the ones behind the capo become unusable. In my view it's like hobbling the instrument.
Sorry I can't be more helpful but I suspect you'll hear much the same from any self-taught musician as we don't know the words, that's why we play.
All these are opinions and you'll get a different set from someone else. That's cool, tho. Talk to people, it's all learning.
Playing tonight felt good as it was hammering hard and it's conceivable but unclear that I maybe hammered it hard enough to break a speaker. That'll suck if I did but it was ferociously blazing while it happened.
After hitting it on one groove, the thinking after it stops is, dayum, got to find me another one of those but that's where NO CAVE kicks into it. Take the win, sit yer ass down.
I (cough) didn't do that as the Godin sounds so deliciously beautiful when you turn off distortion and let it get like a Stratocaster. There are some very simple moves you can make that sound as Hendrixy as you would ever want and those are gorgeous without distortion. Play a note, hammer down on the third above it and pluck the fifth beside it. Repeat that a couple of times and then step back down from 7-5-3-1. That will sound as Hendrixy as you'll ever want and you can use it all over the place. I'm constantly using hammer-downs while I play lead. ('Hammer down' is when you make a note sound by 'hammering' your finger down on it without plucking it.)
That little bit was just for short in dancing with the idea of groove hunting but then NO CAVE kicked into it so sit on down.
The reason for a little bit techie is that I was asked after I played, um, how de fug you do dat. He wasn't screwing with me as we talked a bit and he's been trying to figure how do I get going with this bass. I got it in a pawn shop a few months ago so what should I do. Should I memorize every scale in the Musician's Bible of Impossible Scales. Do I need to need to know every mode (e.g. Dorian, Mixolydian, etc) to play. My answer is that for what I do, I did not memorize much of anything.
What I did do was play over and over and over and over but it was next to the record. I never got tab sheets and, in fact, think they are abominations. I wanted to learn from hearing rather than from reading. This was kind of a dumb idea but it may have made me more sensitive for listening in general. In part you do have to train yourself as it's easy to let a bass just be bass while you focus on the singer. After you listen more, you'll hear both. You'll notice the organ is a Hammond B3 because you know that sound. It's not so much that you'll identify instruments but rather you will hear all of them and not just the singer as in these hellbound TV shows that focus on nothing else.
If you're going to learn to read music then do it. If not then don't screw with it in memorizing tabbed leads someone else transcribed and then act like you're Satriani. In fact, guitar tablature is like musical Ebonics for skinny white guys. Coincidentally, the popularity of guitar tablature follows almost exactly the increase in shredding (i.e. few, if any, of the guitarists who made rock happen used tablature).
There's the old joke about the guy who asked the New York cabbie how to get to Carnegie Hall. The driver is an old bluesman who just turns to him and says, "Practice, practice, practice."
I have lived by that one more than any other thing in music. I caution this is an extremely difficult way to learn as for a long time you'll have no idea what you're doing but you keep practicing and learning. It's a bitch but it will come. I find musical knowledge in my head now that I didn't even realize was there. What will come from this is a style that's absolutely your own as the only influence it's ever had is from music rather than people telling you rules. (Zappa dropped out of the College Conservatory of Music after only six months)
As far as I know, there's only one rule you can't break: you have to know where the notes are on the neck. Even if you want to do everything strictly by feel, you still need to know that much or you'll grab a melon or a boob and not be sure what you're holding. If the latter, you are in a serious hurt as maybe you get three steps and maybe you don't.
I don't know the musical terminology and never did. For me there is a general scale and there are the notes 'in-between' as in the notes not in the scale and those are the blue ones. Playing a scale is fine as in Do-Re-Mi but what if you stick something between the Re and the Mi. Anyone's mind will follow it as we're monkeys and we have to figure things out. That doesn't belong there and your mind shoots to it.
Maybe 'going in-between' is only for dragons, their riders, and jazzmen ... and you. Once you know where the notes are, you'll know where 'in-between' actually is and you can use that. You'll learn how as you play with it. This note doesn't work ... but it kind of does ... so what I do with that. Answer is to play it again until it does make sense or chuck it if you find it doesn't.
Get the Mel Bay Chord Book. You don't have to know what all of them are but you do have to be able to find them. Also take a look at one on theory as you'll at least get some idea of progressions from that.
Don't go to the Creative Songwriters Ball as learning how someone else writes songs does you not one damn bit of good because that only means you'll write songs like they would write. It's also a substantial reason for avoiding learning too many covers as there's a good chance you'll lose track of what you were trying to say in the first place.
Try to get away from 4/4 and play with other time signatures if you can hack it. Pink Floyd will show you 9/8 all over the place. Maybe that's good for what you do ... or not. What's best for you is try it and find out.
Do listen to the best. I have no intention of playing flamenco but listening to Voodoo play it, along with a great many other aspects of his music, is inspirational even if only for the purity of it. That his precision is so impressive while at the same time his music stays so humane is something that applies to any style and he is brilliantly brilliant at it. A large part of the reason is he isn't 'at' anything. This is what I do and now I'm going to do it. He will never say brilliantly; everyone else will but he won't. He's impressive in a great many ways and there are many things to learn from him.
I do regret that I didn't take at least a few lessons as that would have saved a lot of time in learning mechanical stuff and it would also mean I could explain things better than I'm able.
Screwing around with alternative tunings is largely a rat trap. It would be cool to tune down to E flat to play "Little Wing" native as it can't be played just like Hendrix did it if you don't. However, expecting your audience to sit about while you twang, twang, twang tune and re-tune your guitar is more than optimistic (hot tip on that: it sounds awful).
If you can't tune quickly, get an electronic tuner. They're cheap, incredibly reliable, and the batteries last for a hundred years or so. There's just no excuse for dragging an audience through your tuning.
If you learn the notes, those will reveal the keys and then you won't have to look for a capo to know which key you're playing. I've always thought using a capo was lame as it's a fast way to change keys but it cuts off notes you can play because the ones behind the capo become unusable. In my view it's like hobbling the instrument.
Sorry I can't be more helpful but I suspect you'll hear much the same from any self-taught musician as we don't know the words, that's why we play.
All these are opinions and you'll get a different set from someone else. That's cool, tho. Talk to people, it's all learning.
No comments:
Post a Comment