I wish I could, I’ve made some attempts, owned 4 guitars. Just couldn’t do it. I’ve decided to be a fan of other musicians instead. I follow local bands, people I actually know quite often. Maybe I’ll get another guitar and give it a try again. I even had guitar lessons when I was about 10; At the time I didn’t see the value. How stupid I was.. Keep on rockin!!
Mod note by Iain on the start of this thread: Play the guitar? Harmonica? Kazoo? Discuss your breakthroughs and woes here. As always be polite, it is official policy here that all instruments are equal. Back to the OP @Malisky: I've been playing on backing tracks for the past hour or two, started at 120 bpm, ended up at 160 and I feel better now. Guitar therapy works 99% of the time. I was in a mean tune after digiclass today 'cause this specific teacher just... Uh! Fuck it. It's become clear to me that no matter how old I get, most authoritarian figures and me, whichever that might be, will always clash and I'm not even sure why. I'm not even trying to clash with them. They go off by themselves. I mean, it's ridiculous. I don't know and I no longer even care to know what I say or do, that triggers them. Their problem. In the meantime, I'll be getting better at playing guitar.
Eighths or sixteenths? Trips or tuplets. String skipping? That'll make you pick hand ache like a bastard.
I can't sweep... yet. I play moderately fast though. I feel good playing dublets at 160 bpms and can play even faster, but just for brief fill-ins. My pick hand needs more practice. I tend to tap or pull when things get faster instead of picking it all the way. Much easier... and lazier. String skipping is a mofo but I love its effect. Sounds proclassical. I don't do this so often though. I don't know. I just jam. I don't always notice what I play tbh. A mix of things.
I'm the same. Mostly jam and stick to bluesy pentatonics. Sweeps and arpeggios are a bitch. Had a guitar teacher almost 30 years ago show me an excersise where you down pick a triplet, skip a string, and the up pick another triplet. He said it would build strength in my pick hand and... well... 30 years later I'm still struggling with it. Sigh... more unrequited dreams.
I'll never get my head around how guitar players do it. I've tried to have someone show me how to play a single chord (don't remember which one) and I found it impossible to hold down a particular string without fouling the others. My fingers simply don't bend like that.
Come on! It doesn't matter if you don't play superfast like Buckethead. It'd be cool to be able to play as fast as him, but I prefer Hendrix and Gallagher. Most of the songs and solos I like are not so crazy fast after all. Everybody's got their own tempo and style. I like tricks such as dynamic and natural harmonics, bending, sliding chords, palm mute picking, etc. You know, playing with sounds. You can't create so much texture to a sound when you are speeding away. I haven't really practised sweeping. At least not for long, before I gave it up. I might try again at some point, but right now I'm just not feeling it. When a song has complex instances of arpeggios I even give the pick a rest and play with fingers. It feels more natural. That's what really hurts my picking hand mostly, because it's different on classic guitar where the distance between the strings is bigger than on the electric one, where I have to make tiny adjustments to play the right strings.
I had that attitude towards sweeping until I tried learning to play jazz I still suck at jazz but at least I can kind of sweep. Six string arpeggios aren't that useful, to be honest, unless you're playing Yngwie. It's all in the pick orientation.
Oh, it takes a ton of practice even before you get used to holding the guitar right. At first I was crouching over the guitar and couldn't sit straight as I should in the first place, because I was self taught and didn't really think it was important. Then I learned to sit correctly (it took me a few years to admit I had to take it seriously), but I had problems playing standing up. I thought it was impossible to play standing. Then I learned to play while standing up, with the strap really tight and over time I loosened it a bit and then a bit more and then moved around more and now I look less than a nerd when I play standing, but I still feel much more comfortable playing tough songs while sitting. I don't know how the other one's do it, but when I'm learning a new song, I'd rather be sitting. In front of my computer. With the tab opened.
I find the picking part of the sweep easier than muting the previous note so it doesn't bleed into the arpeggio and sound like a full chord. They teach you to finger each note individually, instead of performing a "chord." That's supposed to keep each note from ringing. This also assumes that you executed the note correctly in the first place.
You talkin' about palm muting? That is easy, I used the base of my hand where the pinky is cause it is thick and fleshy enough to mute all the strings at the bridge to keep them from ringing out when distorted.
No, sweeping through the individual notes of a chord without hearing them ring together. Here's Buckethead... only regular sweep picking is too easy for him, so he taps while he's doing it. He's a dick.
Play the guitar? Harmonica? Kazoo? Discuss your breakthroughs and woes here. As always be polite, it is official policy here that all instruments are equal.
Whoa... we got teleported. I was like, "Hey, look, a musician's thread. We were just talking about that." Took me a solid 90 seconds to catch on.
Which was exactly what I was thinking! So much so that I thought for sure that @Malisky had started the thread from the get-go. But then I thought I would have remembered had it been called such, but maybe not. Hence the 90 seconds it took me to work through it. I'm just glad I got there. Quarantine has been dulling my brain lately.
Kind of odd to equate the two in most other ways, but if I understand right, the idea of sweeping is reminiscent of what Charlie Parker started in the 40's and Coltrane perfected by the 60's, playing through a riff quickly enough to form a chord without two notes ever actually playing at the same time. Very cool stuff, conceptually speaking.
No doubt. But Coltane and Bird didn't play guitar. Sax only plays one note at a time. Like the human voice. Guitar and piano are loaded with landmines.
You may be right. Check out the piano at 2:55. I forget the guy's name. He was a virtuoso, but he can't hang with Coltrane on this one. Though most contribute that to the insane chord and constant key changes in Giant Steps. It's considered the ultimate jazz badge of honor to be able to improvise over these every-other-bar changes.
I bought a gob iron and couldn't even play that. I gave up after a day. I reckon that was long enough to learn to play like a master... wasn't it?
