76

(19 replies, posted in Acoustic)

I found some good (and cheap) picks in my store. They are standard rounded edge triangels with a surface of small diamond shapes that gives it a sandpaper feel. This heavily reduses the picks urge to turn (and point to your knuckles insted of to your strings).


Unfortunately I don't now their name, and they are not marked with anything but thickness. A hint though is that they are colour coded, a speciffic thickness is alway the same colour (I bought a bunch of purple, black, orange etc. and tried out wich I liked best).


Another tip is to NOT let the pick stick out to much. The smaller part you stick out the lesser leverage the pick gets to twist out of your grip.

/Missen

77

(3 replies, posted in Acoustic)

Hi Pat!

I'm a rookie and one of my recently frustrating problems was the muting...

My friend played the proclaimers "500 miles" for me with that short chunk, chunk sound that Satman describes. I instantly hated him for being able to play it so good and close to the original.

When I playd it with muting I got either full ringing chords that died completely when i "palmed" them (didn't sound good), or I got all chunk and no chord tone at all.


A couple of days later (and deadly frustrated) got the hang of a mute by mistake. I strummed the chord and accidently in the motion muted the strings with my lower arm (the fleshy part just over the hand). Tried it more and got it working real fine.


I put my lower arm kind of in line with the strings, strummed a bit higher towards the neck and muted with wrist/lower arm. The real trick with a good mute is to get the chord sound out clear but not let it get to a full rich ring before you mute it.


When I got the hang of the mute my plying got to a completely new level, you can do so much with the mute.

Hope this helps, and good luck!

/Missen

78

(3 replies, posted in Electric)

I don't know if you have seen this site:


<a href="http://chordfind.com/" target="_blank">http://chordfind.com/</a>


There you can see quite a lot of combined chords, didn't see your B/C thoug...


/Missen

Hi!

I'm really a rookie myself but maybe my thougts could be worth something...  <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_razz.gif" border=0 alt="Razz">


I don't think classic or standard accoustic make so much difference. What I should think about is the choises between nylon strings, metal strings, acoustic or electric guitars.


The nylon stringed often have a wider neck and the strings are MUCH kinder to your fingers (the metals eat your fingertips for a long time before you get thicker skin). The metal strings however gives the gutar a richer, crisper sound.


Electric guitar amps sometimes has an accoustic preset that make the guitar sound as a standard accoustic. The electric guitar is often easier to play (you dont have to use the same force to press the strings) BUT then again, less effort dont build up and train your hand/fingers as much.

An electric in accoustic mode is not able to give you the rich sound of an accoustic (simply because there is no resonace box, its a dead plank)


I own a Tanglewood accoustic and an Ibanez electric. I use the accoustic for 90% of my training time, because its harder and thus give me more training.


My personal opinion is to start with a metal string accoustic, because that's the hardest you can do. If you master that one you can change "down" to any of the others with relative ease. It's harder to learn on an electric or nylon string and then try to go "up" to an accoustic metal string.


So you should analyse what you want to do with your guitar and choose accordingly.


There are also accoustics with built in microphones, but I can only se the use of that if you play live or in a band and need to pump up your volume. Also think about that the electronics cost money, so a guitar without mic for the same prize should be a better guitar.


Hope that was any help...


/Missen

80

(14 replies, posted in Acoustic)

Hi!

Excuse me for being an overexplaining prick... But there is one thing that isn't explained here that made me confused when I started reading tabs. The 0 means that you strike an open string (no frets preesed) so the correct way to tab an open string G should be:


e--3--

b--0--

G--0--

D--0--

A--2--

E--3--


Because the open strings b, G and D should be strummed. If you follow the TAB above it's still a G chord but without strumming the open strings.

/Missen

81

(14 replies, posted in Acoustic)

Hi!

Don't know if this can help you, but it helped me get some understanding of the chord building. Found the link here on chordie (thanks to someone...).


If you figure out av geometric shape for one chord you can move the figure to get the right geometric for any root note.


<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_building_grid" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_building_grid</a>

82

(242 replies, posted in Chordie's Chat Corner)

Hi!

Im from a small town called Oskarshamn on the east coast of Sweden. Turning 40 next year and have been playing for almost 4 months now.

My 4 yaer old son have made me a master of the song "Born to be wild" by Steppenwolf. He saw the movie Herbie - Fully loaded, where that is the background song when they race. So now I have to play it every time he races his toy cars...  <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_biggrin.gif" border=0 alt="Very Happy">


Alvee33, can you send over some good singel malts? They are WAY too expensive in Sweden. I have some good ones but I can only buy them when Im abroad so I get them tax free...


/Missen

83

(19 replies, posted in Acoustic)

Hi there!
Nice to see another guitar wannabee in midlife crises  <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_razz.gif" border=0 alt="Razz"> I'm turning 40 next year.
I had the same problem as you. Bought a real cheap guitar in a food market for 500 SEK (Swedish crowns) which should be about 40 £. It was almost unplayable and the strings really ate my fingertips off.

BUT I have always wanted to play and the piece of wood woke my interest. Went to the music store (there is only one) in my small home town. Agony and pain to go in to the young guys in the store and ask for some advice. The guys were everything that I didn't expect... They helpt me big time, and when they understood that I was a comlplete rookie with a music knowledge of about 5 chords they almost competed in teaching me easy licks to try out on the guitars. Ended up buying a Tangelwood for about 170 £ and I love it. They had another Tangelwood for around 700 £ and sure, maybe its a bit better than mine, but not enough to match the prize.

Now I've been playing since cristmas (about 3 month) and I have swore to myself (and my wife) that im going to be decent guitarist. She looked a bit sore when I took my return tax-money and bought an electric Ibanez RG but she'll get over it (she's a bit tired of the smoke on the water intro).  <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_biggrin.gif" border=0 alt="Very Happy">

I visit my new young buddies in the music store almost every week (always need som new picks or something), trying out expensive guitars and learning stuff from the former frightening guys...