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Guitar talk: acoustic, bass, classical, twelve string? You name it! Pt II

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matthewr said:
The other thing I am very keen to understand more is how my ear works (or rather doesn't). So when I first started playing guitar I couldn't tune it at all (i.e. by comparing pitch across the strings) Now, after years of playing, I sort of can.

Similarly I have an ear training app on my phone which plays the I-IV-V-I chords to establish the key and then plays (at level 1) one of the first four notes in the major scale of that key and asks you to name it (do, ray, mi or soh). So it's basically trying to teach you relative pitch. I do this and get, consistently, about 65-70% correct.

So clearly I am not tone deaf (which would give a 25% result) but I also know that any vaguely musical person would find this farcically easy. So what, if anything, does that mean? Am is just not musical enough? Or do I need to keep going and practice more and eventually I will get it?

I can already hear you all saying "**** it, it doesn't matter" but I would give anything to be more musical so I keep plugging away trying to improve but not really getting anywhere.
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Justin did a good series on interval training a while ago. I thought it was great because he put it the context of songs that you probably know - here's the 1st part of 5

 
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saturn9 said:
Hmm. Thought I understood the first post but I’m a bit lost here. I’m off to buy a dunces cap. :(
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There aren't a lot of familiar examples of songs in a modal frame that I can think of, but how about the sound of say She's Leaving Home? The harp and strings come from the idea of modes rather than a minor key. McCartney was trying to invoke the sound of the distant past, which he would have been familiar with from folk songs that his older family members sang. As @Tony L says he would (almost certainly) have known nothing of the theory. ;) Losing My Religion is perhaps another.

Try this
https://ledgernote.com/columns/music-theory/musical-modes-explained/
 
The modes of the major scale also each have a "feeling" to them as well. So there is one that sounds "spooky" and gets used in horror films all the time and so on. This guy has a bunch of modes for guitarists who are not actually an undiscovered Miles Davis type videos if you poke around his channel.
(Not for people who know this stuff but as *cough* "improving" guitar player I have found his channel useful).

News from my flat: if I play a single chord on my acoustic my visiting Mum says "that's lovely". But my reverb and delay drenched TOWERING SONIC CATHEDRALS OF GAIN on my Strat get a "Is there anything on iPlayer? LIke a new episode of Midsomer?".

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matthewr said:
The modes of the major scale also each have a "feeling" to them as well.
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Absolutely! It's quite possible to describe these in modern form but it can be hellishly complex and really stupid. That's why, as far as I know, that jazz musicians use the modal description as a 'simplification', for the same reason I suppose that we invoke the minor. Ultimately they're the same notes after all, it's just the order in which they're played!
 
matthewr said:
News from my flat: if I play a single chord on my acoustic my visiting Mum says "that's lovely". But my reverb and delay drenched TOWERING SONIC CATHEDRALS OF GAIN on my Strat get a "Is there anything on iPlayer? LIke a new episode of Midsomer?".
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You are obviously not playing it loud enough. Either that or you need a full wet/dry rig.

PS I love the one miserable ‘no-FX purist’ who keeps getting his comments read out on TPS, the last one after Dan’s bewilderingly complex personal pedalboard build video last week; “...if you learned how to play guitar you’d not need 17 identical sounding overdrive pedals!”...
 
Tony L said:
You are obviously not playing it loud enough. Either that or you need a full wet/dry rig.

PS I love the one miserable ‘no-FX purist’ who keeps getting his comments read out on TPS, the last one after Dan’s bewilderingly complex personal pedalboard build video last week; “...if you learned how to play guitar you’d not need 17 identical sounding overdrive pedals!”...
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For once I can agree with you, I think! The daft ****. He's not understood that Dan is mainly shaping the tone at unity gain - multiple gain stages, each at lowish gain, rather than wham, bam in one go...
 
matthewr said:
The modes of the major scale also each have a "feeling" to them as well. So there is one that sounds "spooky" and gets used in horror films all the time and so on. This guy has a bunch of modes for guitarists who are not actually an undiscovered Miles Davis type videos if you poke around his channel.
(Not for people who know this stuff but as *cough* "improving" guitar player I have found his channel useful).
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That's an informative video.

Depressing once you start to get a glimpse into the volume of stuff that you didn't know even existed in the first place :(
 
-alan- said:
That's an informative video.

Depressing once you start to get a glimpse into the volume of stuff that you didn't know even existed in the first place :(
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There's loads on his channel that as beginner / intermediates will find useful. He's a bit dorky but his videos are well put together and he gets to the point relatively quickly.
 
Tony L said:
You are obviously not playing it loud enough. Either that or you need a full wet/dry rig.

PS I love the one miserable ‘no-FX purist’ who keeps getting his comments read out on TPS, the last one after Dan’s bewilderingly complex personal pedalboard build video last week; “...if you learned how to play guitar you’d not need 17 identical sounding overdrive pedals!”...
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I am almost embarrassed to tell you that I do have a wet dry rig! Mostly because I accidentally ended up with two amps so it seemed the obvious think to do if you watch too much TPS. My pedalboard goes fuzz > [overdrives] > looper > split. And after the split one half goes into one amp the other into delay / trem + verb and the other amp. What I would say about playing around with wet dry is that it does sound awesome and it's lots of fun to mess around with but makes much more sense with a big, deep plate verb and/or some funky dotted 8th delay sound. But really I like mostly just a bit of 65 spring or a little slapback and as funky as I get on the modulation front is occasional harmonic trem so wet / dry is a bit meh.

So overall my conclusion was that I bought load of stuff to create a Frankenstein blackface and if @Yank just give me his pre-CBS Deluxe (IIRC) all would be well in the world :)
 
gavreid said:
For once I can agree with you, I think! The daft ****. He's not understood that Dan is mainly shaping the tone at unity gain - multiple gain stages, each at lowish gain, rather than wham, bam in one go...
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Yes. I have two low gain overdrives and the same orange Benson preamp Dan has on his board. I can spend all night just fiddling with different combos to get different tones and level of breakup. What I would say is you can almost certainly get all the same tones for fun for much less £££ with a copy of Bias FX or similar.
 
^ I don't really think you even need that to understand Beato.

Using his own term of choice - he's just a bit of an A-hole :)
 
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