It’s a funny old world that’s for sure. While some of the population seems hell bent on preserving their youthful good looks, brainwashed by the shallow whimsies of Hollywood`s plastic people, or even their own vanity; the world of the guitar is steadfastly running in the opposite direction. There is currently no botox available for guitar – but Keith Richard’s dermatologist is down at Gibson and Fender charging big bucks to mess up your axe with an old flask of tea, an ashtray of fag-ends, a rusty chisel and a dirty old palm sander!

Let’s face it,  guitar design remains predominantly trapped back in the 1950′s -and in this world change is a suspicious and malignant blight that the the guitar stoic must resist!

We’ve had a look at modern materials here, but accepted wisdom holds that concepts such as old, vintage, traditional and classic are the foundations upon which tone, sound and greatness are built.

Indeed, the Fender custom sheep, sorry shop, have taken it upon themselves to introduce the Road Worn(tm) series – guitars that come pre-loved, pre-stressed or what have you!

You can of course do it yourself, but in reality there is no substitute for time tested, genuine, cut your teeth, on the ciricuit wear and tear.

Some fellers on ebay have been pre-loving their guitars and putting them up for sale but the results are often a little over cooked. One guy even dragged his Strat’  body behind his  I-roc – man he must just hate guitars.

These, on the other hand, are in fact rather tastefully replete with all the realistic accoutrements of a life spent gigging out on the road.

Gibson have also released a series of worn and aged pseudo-vintage guitars but at some seriously high price levels – you’ve got to ask yourself is it worth it when you could just wait 20 years, become a great player, save the money and gain your wear and tear the real and the hard way.

The interesting thing about the world of guitar is the way in which the old and the new harmonise, where difference and innovation fuse with tradition.

Cheers,

Jake Edwards

Gibson citation custom approx $33,000

Gibson Jeff Beck `54 oxblood approx $8,200

After the nuclear war there will only be cockroaches and Keith Richards!! So let`s get practicing…with  some general tips that you oughta bear in mind when you want to get all Zen on your fretboard.

1. Cultivate a desire to try and achieve excellence. But do so on your own terms!
When your lazy friends are down at the bar setting the world to rights you could stay at home beginning a journey to set either your own world on fire, or, even set the real world on fire. Progression naturally requires a level of dedication but don’t kill yourself – find the pace that suits you . It is NOT a race, just a journey. Excellence does not necessarily equate with conventional ideas of virtuosity – you may want to cultivate your skills as songwriter like Noel Gallagher or George Harrison for example. If you aren’t sure in which direction you`d like to go just watch the river flow – it`s no big deal.

2. Set yourself goals  – both  sensible  & unattainable.

Set yourself some goals and schedule your practice and try to STICK to IT.
Perhaps consider two goals:

A.
An aspirational one such as becoming as good as Jeff Beck (insert your favourite guitar maestro here) but also,

B.
A realistic, realtime short term goal:
for example “In six months I will be able to play Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry”.
Remember though it’s the journey not the destination that counts, a guitar is for life not just for Christmas if you want to go anywhere with it.

Don`t use your aspirational goal to beat yourself about though. Expecting to be able to play like (insert your favourite guitar maestro here) is akin to expecting to replicate the Cistine Chapel Ceiling on the interior of a ping pong ball – it’s a long hard difficult road walked only by those with a unique, god-given gift…you CAN begin to unlock that gift in even the smallest ways.

3. Find an environment that really works for you.

It may be outside beneath your favourite weeping willow or it may be in  a quiet corner of your barn – make it as comfortable and as appealing as possible with few, or no distractions or interruptions.
If you can and you are serious about progression try to practice alone in a silent area. Also get the right chair, I`ll sometimes find myself thirty minutes into a jam session only to realise  I`m curled up like a pretzel with a `dead` leg that feels like someone else’s! …no good man!

4. Make it easy…

…as the playing will initially be hard enough make it easy by using the tools that help. Buy the best guitar you can, buy a decent tuner and invest in learning materials that suit where you want to take your playing. Read this blog for more advice on the learning tools available. There is a veritable cornucopia of new digital practice tools such as the Ovation iDea guitar,  the Fretlight guitars, Loopstation pedal or Fender G-Dec amplifier.

5. Develop Routines and excercises

Start off with an easy rewarding warm up work before moving onto your structured learning path (or course) – this may be a couple of songs you really enjoy, so write them down,  and maybe singalong if it helps you relax. When you fist begin to play you may find a great deal of tension in your wrists, fingers and arms; try to learn to relax – it may take some time to lose that whole “stiff as a board”, heavy feeling but it will ultimately pass.

Remember to breathe properly and don’t fight the guitar – relax INTO it; if that makes sense.

If you are finding the wealth of learning materials at your disposal somewhat confusing, if you’re finding it hard to join all the dots don’t fret – take a step back and relax. Everything is interrelated and will ultimately become clear. There is no one method, way or route. Frustration will be gnawing away at your toes like a hungry dog – use it as fuel to try and figure things out.

If you are struggling to figure out musical theory then have a look at playing a piano because the piano keyboard is in a sense one single long guitar string and may help you clarify some of the more confusing parts of musical theory.

Another idea is to write, or using stickers the actual corresponding notes along the top of your guitar neck; and maybe on the fretboard itself using marker pen. Only do this if you are happy with bastardising your guitar…

6. Join a band – the fastest way to learn is from other more competent players. Use your ears and your eyes, ask questions, never be intimidated. EVERYONE was once a beginner and it’s a healthy tenet to try to always consider yourself a beginner, no matter how good you may be because there is no end to the guitar – it’s an infinite lifestyle decision.

7. It`s never too late to start and whatever happens don’t give up. If David Geffen isn’t ringing you up don`t worry. The journey is usually far more interesting than the destination anyway.

8. Make mistakes and every now and then try stuff well outside your usual playing boundaries. Experiment as much as possible and try unusual positions. Try sliding chords around or even moving them across the strings. Be unusual, be unique, be yourself, break the rules, do what you want.

9. If your fingers, hands and wrists are hurting then stop awhile and rest.]

10. Enjoy using effects and guitar toys but don’t fall into the trap of letting them do all the playing for you – one day you`ll  want to be at the stage where you compliment the effects and not vice versa.

11. Reward yourself afterwards with something you enjoy like “icecream”.

12. Try and listen to the right records for a start but don’t limit yourself to the world of guitar. Choose your poison for example  saxophonists Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk and Miles Davis play some fantastic lead lines.

13. Adopt a meditational approach to your playing.

The nature of sound is infinitely associated with consciousness and there are interesting listening exercises you can perform.

Acoustically, a note perceived to have a single distinct pitch in fact contains a variety of additional overtones.

If you listen very carefully to just one note and work hard to train your ear you will begin to hear more than just the fundamental – try spending some time just playing single notes – what you hear most clearly is the fundamental (sometimes called the first harmonic) but it is accompanied by several frequencies known as partials, by several harmonics, overtones and undertones – try and hear them. You’ll need to concentrate though.  Some people like to think synaesthetically whilst playing and try to see different notes or chords  as different colours.

If you would actually like to experiment with sound colour have a look at

1. Metasynth – mindblowingingly powerful sound painting tool

2. Audio paint – FREE

Have a look at the book “Zen Guitar” by Philip Toshio Sudo – it’s about motivation and fulfillment, not technique.

14. Most importantly – make sure it’s fun.

I hope that this helps you to create an environment where you can engage with your guitar in a more philosophical sense and in a way that will inform and aid your learning – after all when you stretch that string you’re stretching your life!

Cheers,

Jake Edwards

Call me old fashioned but the only thing I`ve ever thought was a great romantic, gothic and truly bluesy use for used guitar strings involved a tall tree, and a precariously balanced stool to dance with the devil upon…for a short while. Emo huh?

Or maybe I`ve just been listening to too much Beck Hansen…for awhile there he was definitely throwing down some Dylanesque skills both lyrically and instrumentally. I draw your attention here to Beck`s rough house cover of Dylan`s Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat in all it`s steampunk lo-fi, harp-dog magnificence. It`s great but covering Dylan is a bit like trying recreate Picasso with your local painter and decorator…scruffy!

With the rerun shows
And the cocaine nose-job
The daytime crap of the folksinger slop
He hung himself with a guitar string…

Anyway if you head over to Wear your music.org you can help out a large range of charities whilst decking yourself out in the old guitar strings of the famous.

Some of the guitar playing artists featured include Buddy Guy, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton, Derek Trucks, Gregg Allman, Keith Richards, Les Paul, Pete Townsend, Peter Frampton, Steve Vai, and Slash. Let`s presume they clean these things first. I completely dig Clapton and all, and I grew up in the same village – you can read alot more about him here, but I`m not sure I want his microbes.

IF on the other hand you think this kind of thing is just a little too emo or skater boi and just not damn bluesy enough then why not throw your strings in the trash and give some money to charity anyway.

You have to ask yourself though what really happened to PUNK and ROCK and did Sid Vicious really have to die so the bourgeois could listen to Fall Out Boy?

Before Fleetwood Mac turned into a prog-rock-pop outfit they produced some awesome guitar based rock and blues music and I recommend having a listen to their album “Then Play On” from 1969. The band featured the combined and unmistakenly powerful guitar talents of Danny Kirwan and Peter Green.

Green`s unique tone from reversed pick up magnets in his neck position pick up combined with his distinctive hummingbird vibrato and Kirwan`s tremelo, sense of melody and song based approach to composition certainly gave Fleetwood Mac something haunting.

Compare this with the characteristically fragile power and awesome vibrato and unique phrasing of Paul Kossoff with Free featuring Paul Rodgers – probably the best white voice in rock music. With a guitar in his hands Paul Kossoff has got it all and you can hear inspired timing in free-fall, nuanced accents, soaring string bending (in reminiscence of Hendrix, and Albert, B.B., & Freddie King too…), razor tones and birdflight melodics.

Finally have a listen to another understated and under-rated blues guitar giant in the form of the melodically and stylistically incandescent Mick Taylor with the Stones who seems to combine a sense of timing, phrasing, and melody in a way aeons beyond the usual; fluid, stylistically overloaded, leagues of tone, emotional, exciting, uncomplicated and thoroughly meaningful all within the context of the song structure. Mesmerising. It`s Bobby Keys on sax`.

Cheers

Jake Edwards

As a follow on from my post here on being unusual, having something unique and not running with the crowd I thought it might be good to run a short list of unusual guitar related ideas. Being unusual really, really helps stylistically. Here’s a few interesting players off the top of my head!

Keith Richards – 5 strings only and G tuning – D, B, G, D, G (high to low)
Django – predominantly two  finger playing style as other fingers were badly burnt
Robert Johnson – almost supernatural physical technique beyond the horizon
Mississippi John Hurt – earthy brown-dirt piedmont picking souds like  molasses, treacle and golden syrup
Charlie Christian – pioneer of amplification
Jesse Lone Cat Fuller – one man band blues-folk player who invented the Fotdella bass machine
Jeff Healey – Being blind the guitar is played on his lap
T bone Walker – played behind his head, with teeth and before Jimi
Jimi Hendrix – uses teeth, lighter fluid, art-destruction, plays behind head,  attacks amps and heavy feedback
Jeff Beck – one of the early feedback pioneers, also uses unorthodox approach to neck-scales-tremolo etc
Frank Zappa – watermelons in easter hay and shut up and play your guitar – theme from the 3rd movement of sinister footwear
Stevie Ray Vaughan – uses half step down tuning
Eric Mongrain – a highly melodic tapping style (see also Kaki King for a percussive style)
Jimmy Page – used a violin bow and a theremin on occasion
Alvin Lee – completely unique English sound and style  – live, using a drumstick for a right hand, incredible
Johnny greenwood,  Adrian Belew, Reeves Gabrels – completely insane sounds
Robert Fripp – loops and frippertronics
Frank Gambale, Alan Holdswoth, John Maclaughlin – jazz fusion of various degrees
Paul Ubana Jones – mind blowing and unique style
Fred Frith – avante garde un-guitar playing
Richie Havens – open D tuning tour de force
The Edge -underrated master of skeletal arpeggios soaked with melodic feeling – redefined rock/pop guitar sounds
Adrian Legg – idiosyncratic individual picking style complemented with technique and taste
Son House – unimaginably authentic individualism

So, do what feels best even if it`s unusual and strange!

Do what suits you.  Do what you like. Use your limitations to your advantage & if you only know a few scales – there`s no limit to what you can do – explore them fully in all senses.
You dont have to be blind, crippled or named after a fruit, but it might help…a little.

Here are some pictures of me practising underwater, great for making those  leagues below sea-sounds.
Later this week I`ll be travelling to the earth`s core to conduct electromagnetic, heat exchange, tone experiments.

Personally, Ive got my Strat` set up with the bridge in a unique way that should leave the guitar out of tune. It came about through an accident where I ripped the unit out of the body years ago and the tremsetter fell apart. It`s now become part of my overall style…it`s great.

Cheers, Jake.