Caelumamittendum’s Guitar Blog

This topic has 36 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 16 years, 7 months ago by Caelumamittendum.

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- April 1, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Hello and welcome everyone!

The reason for doing this…

A couple of weeks ago I presented the idea of adding a blog/log section on the forum, where people could have their own blog/log/thread. By posting this I am not questioning the speed at which ideas go through the system, but my own eager to do this prevents me from holding back any longer.

I got this idea from a danish site, a drummers’ site, where they have a dedicated “blog”-section on their forum. those blogs could typically be about your setup, your playing, your new gear. People post their videoes, what they’ve been practicing and readers can comment and give critique and what not.

The reason I wanted to start this is simply that I lack self discipline. I cannot just sit down and practice scale run on scale run or some other technical stuff. Sure, jamming along, having a good shred once in a while and just generally fooling around is something my self discipline (or lack of) can handle. However, without that very needed self discipline it takes so much longer to learn something than with a dedicated practice session. So, basically I needed something to give me a push in the “right” direction. I don’t think I’m the only one that feels this way…

…so, about my lack of self discipline.
…so, I signed up for a Premium Membership on InfiniteGuitar – just for a month to see what the site had to offer, and most importantly how it would affect my playing. This signing up forces me to play, as it would otherwise be wasted money. A lot of people ask me: “do you really want to pay to play guitar?” and my answer will always be: “yes, if it “forces” me to practice. I want to play guitar and I want to be good at it. This site helps me in providing good lessons and I pushes me in that right direction.” (Thanks, IG!).

Quoting the drum site:
Here is a quote from http://www.trommeslageren.dk, which states their intentions of the blog section. I have translated it somewhat roughly:

This sub-forum is not for the regular general discussion, but the intention is that every user (who wants to) makes their own thread (you could use the title-bar to state your name, so we all know who’s blog we’re reading.) Remember that there’s only one thread per user allowed.

The idea behind this is that you write your practice notes and the likes in the log. In this way others can follow exactly what YOU’re practicing, how you’re progressing, just as others can give you good ideas and suggestions.

About me:

Enough with all the inapplicable talk. Here’s the real deal.

My name is Benjamin Storm and I play guitar, to the big surprise of all of you. I am currently 19 years old, and I have had guitars in my life since I was about 13. I used to play football, but got a pretty bad knee injury, which totally put me out of the game forever, so I decided I would find another hobby. For some reason that became guitar playing, though I had never really had an interest in music. I hear quite a lot of guitar players around saying how they’ve been playing since they were 4,5 or 6 years old. Unfortunately I have not had that privilege.

My first chord was a D.
After I got injured I had been thinking for a couple of days about starting to play guitar, so I had of course found some basic instructions on the internet on how to play the guitar. So I sat without a guitar and tried holding my fingers the way it was presented on the internet site. Later that week I asked my mom: “Can I get an guitar?”. I geuss it was sympathy due to the knee injury that led her to say: “sure.”. We looked in the used section of the news paper and found a pretty cheap Fender Sierra Vista acoustic guitar. I had read that Fender was supposed to be good, so it seemed a fair deal. I bought the guitar, took it home and played the D chord I had been practicing.

The following years went by with playing Nirvana, later Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam. I then got my first electric guitar, a Hohner, from one of my dad’s friends. He also gave me his old amp and a blues overdrive pedal. He didn’t play the guitar anymore, so he felt I could have it. Nice bloke. About a year later I got my Yamaha AES800.
I used to play a little with a guy from my class who got a severe concussion and also couldn’t play football anymore. It was nothing serious, but it was quite fun, though we had no idea about what we were doing.

Two years after I got my first guitar I went to an “independent boarding school for upper secondary students” (dictionary…), where young people dedicated to music attends. You live there for one year. You don’t have to be anything special to be there, you just have to be lucky. By this time I was still into Alice in Chains, but more bands like Dream Theater and Pain of Salvation. I didn’t play as much music as I would have liked, mostly due to me being a ***** about it, as all we ever played in the “teams” were pop and funk. This day today I would have been more interested, of course. There were not many metal heads at the school, but I had a few jam sessions with a drummer who was into Planet X and such. Nothing much, but it was alright. Most importantly I got to practice guitar seriously at this school. We had every evening off and a lot of free time (which I honestly didn’t take enough advantage of), and I would sometimes go into one of the rehearsal rooms and sit there for an entire evening playing through John Petrucci’s Rock Discipline.

These last 2½ years I have been very busy with school, which means I haven’t had time to practice properly, and I admit to have totally neglected it. With my lack of self discipline everything I had learned pretty much went down the drain. It comes back fast though, and I’ve always been a “fast learner”, so that’s really an advantage. These past months I’ve been trying to get back into the game, trying to play more and more guitar. And it really pays of.

My gear these days:

Guitars:
Schecter C7 Diamond Series (old model with Floyd Rose)
Yamaha Aes800
Fender Sierra Vista

Besides that I still got the old Hohner (Strat copy) and another acoustic (12 string Takamine Jasmine) – sorry for the bad pictures:

Effects:
Boss GT-6
V-amp2
Boss DS-2
Electro Harmonix Small Clone Chorus
Crybaby Wah pedal

Amps and stuff:
I recently sold my Marshall “rehearsal” amp, which was a MG30DFX, so now I’ve only got my half stack, which is a cheap Laney MXd120H.

I don’t use that much as I’ve now plugged my pedal board through my computer, just for the ease of recording, which I’ll post a picture of later.

other stuff:
Besides the above I got a digital Yamaha P140 piano:

A Behringer B-1 Microphone and a Behringer Tube Ultragain Mic100 Pre-amp alongside it.

Some of the above stuff I got at birthdays (single pedals, Mic, etc.)

What I plan on doing here:
The problem with me is that I lack some of the basic stuff. I know my tapping well and I know my legato alright. My alternate picking has become rather bad through the last years of not playing much. I know my theory for my needs (chords, scales, harmonies), as I’ve still been able to keep that up as it does not necesarily have anything to do with playing. Lately I’ve been working on arpeggios and sweep picking, which suddenly led to a neglection of my alternate picking in regular runs and gave me the idea of using economy picking.

Anyways… I plan to write in this blog every time I go into/I’ve gone through a dedicated practice session (be it 5 minutes or 2 hours), write what I’ve played, maybe record/Video it, let you hear it and comment on it etc. All unserious practice (picking the guitar up and playing some ****) wont be included. I will write dates, time, year etc. to keep a fairly good view on development. I hope this will take me to the next levels of playing.

Have fun!
It has taken me a pretty long time writing this, so I won’t start of with anything about practicing, but I will leave that to the next time I post.

I hope this inspires you to go and make your own thread if you feel like it and see the benefits of it.

Finally:
Feel free to ask questions about whatever you want!

/Ben

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Replies

- April 17, 2008 at 7:46 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Yeah, I do know what you’re saying about feeding on the melody, and I actually did think a bit about it before recording, but decided to just have a go and do whatever I felt like.

That said, improvising and learning to improve is so much more fun than actually learning specific techniques, and that’s probably why I’ve been neglecting the latter so much.
- April 17, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Gollum
Member

When I was first learned to improv solo/play I learned really quick that if I just make sure I kept in the groove and played within the scale nobody would know that I had no clue what I was doing! It was great! So always know that you don’t have to stress on finding something “imaginative” in order to play something people will find interesting.

I’ve always found it funny though, that many players get caught up in trying to “invent” while trying to improv. Very rarely can a player play something “new” during an improv part. Even when you yourself are playing something you’ve never known yourself to play, odds are it’s built on some of the very same mechanics used in something else, or it’s a blending of things already in your arsinal. This is why early on in a guitarist’s learning you can hear thier influences, because they’ve learned that band’s songs and have been building a mechanics set based off those songs. So when they go and write something guess what comes out? Varried versions of the same stuff they’ve already put in.

So with that being said I think being a good improv player isn’t as much about how much you can “think” of while playing, but how well you know your playing and can tap into the skills you have at a moments notice.

Also, you’re not as bad as you make it sound. A little rough, but nothing that couldn’t be ironed out VERY quicky with some work.

Fun Story:

One of my few truly inovative moments was during a guitar lesson me and my guitar instructor were going back and forth copying licks. He would play something and then I’d play it with a variation, then he’d play it with another variation, and so on and so forth.

Well he did a run ending on the 7th note on the 12th fret, and when I did it I ended on the 2nd note on the 14th fret (Em, he was on the D string, I ended on the E string) and without even thinking abuot it I reached my right hand across the upper horn and then behind the neck and squeezed the neck with all I had in order to bring that 2nd down to the 1st.

My teacher was in awe and said “what was that?” and I said “I have no clue, it just made sense” and we spent the next 10 minutes working on that technique, which I still used all the time when I’m playing up high and want to bend down or get some note warble. I’ve never seen anyone do it, and neither had he, but it sure is cool and is useful to know.

That’s one of the few times I truly created something in the midst of an improv session. Most other things I just consider variations of a theme.

Keep the stuff comming man. I like your style and would love to hear more stuff as you progress.
- April 17, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Yeah, I know what you’re saying, man! Thanks for the the replies. Everything will definately help 🙂

I’ve always had the feeling that when learning to improvise, you’ll be “thinking” in the start of learning this new addition to guitar playing, but as you’ve done it more and more you learn to “think” less, and just play from experience (while still improvising and also being “innovative”).

I don’t know if that made sense, but if it did: is that at all a wrong way of getting into improvising?
- April 18, 2008 at 3:53 am
Mike Edwin
Member

Definately not, in my opinion anyway. (edit; by that I am agreeing with you)

I think it was Charlie Parker who said ‘ you need to learn it so well that you can forget it ‘ or something like that. Which is probably the best advice an improviser could hope to get.

If its a set of chord changes, a melody or a particular lick or phrase. Before you can truly improvise on it, the information itself needs to be a part of you. So that you can draw on it as easily as when your speaking.

I mean, we don’t have to think about the letters in the word ‘guitar’ before we say it.. we just know instinctively. The same applies if someone asked you to spell it. Chances are you would just blurt out the letters.

When improvising, generally you will be restricted to your current musical vocabulary. So the better you know ‘ the things you know ‘ the easier it will be to draw on those phrases and ideas at short notice. Also, the more you can do with a simple phrase the better. Take an 8 bar phrase and try and turn it on its head. Play it up the neck, then play it backwards. If it were an ascending passage for example, try playing it up the neck then continue the second half from an octave below.

Sax players do this alot.

Say it was just a Cmaj9 arpeggio over two octaves, ascending.

C E G B D C E G B D.
play it like this
C E G B D C then drop to the E an octave below and continue E G B D
or skip an octave and keep going up.
or a variation.
C E G B drop an octave D C E G B D.
Also experiment with different rhythms. Play it in triplets or 8th notes or a mixture or swing it or don’t.

ect..

The more you can do with one idea, the more you can use it spontaneously while being creative.
- May 5, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

WAHEY! I got my new guitar today. I exchanged some screws and bolts, as they needed replacement. I put in another spring in the back, to help the FR system a bit (worked wonders). And now I’m putting on some new EB strings and will adjust those in a minute.

Expect some playing and some pics up later tonight.
- May 5, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Sean Conklin
Member

Congrats bro! Looking forward to the playing and pics!
- May 6, 2008 at 11:58 am
Caelumamittendum
Member

Hey.

I’ve had some problems with the Floyd Rose being very instable, even though I added that extra spring… It’s the usual “When I use my whammy, my guitar goes out of tune”-problem, which I don’t really know how to solve. I will block it for now, but if anyone has any good idea as to how to solve this, please do say so 🙂 (Would an original FR be better than the “licensed under…”?)
- May 6, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Mike Edwin
Member

This may be a silly question. But does the guitar have a locking nuts? I would assume so.

FR’s can be frustrating. I spent alot of time working out how to stop mine going out of tune.

Anything from rotating the springs to trying different brand of strings can help.

I found the springs were the most important aspect though. Sometimes if you have a couple new springs and one that is a bit older. That old one needs to be in the middle, since its going to return at a different rate to the newer ‘tighter’ springs. So maybe take them all out and inspect them for any sign of wear and stretching.

Strings should be worn/played in before you start stressing them out with a whammy bar too. So if you restring the guitar I would say give it 24 hours of play before expecting the FR to do its job perfectly.

Beyond that. Check out these sites.
http://www.imuso.co.uk/directory/guitar-lessons/floyd-rose-trem.htm
http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/floydrosetremolo.htm

Mike.
- May 6, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Hey.

Yeah, the guitar does have well functioning locking nuts.

Indeed, FR’s can be frustrating. I exchanged the whole FR system on my 7 string some time back – but I was stupid enough to just put in the exact same “licensed under..” brand, and not an “original” or schaller. So the problem remains the same, though not as severe as on my new guitar.

I found another “stronger” spring, and put two of those on the outside and one in the middle. The problem is still there though.

Sure, the strings are quite new, but at the rate it drops and falls out of tune it seems to be a FR problem and not a string problem. I’ll give it a couple of days and then maybe take it to the local guitar shop to let them have a look at it.

I did email another rather large guitar/instrument shop and ask whether there was anything to do about this (which of course there is, I’m sure). However there answer was: “There is nothing to be done about it.” – not a very good answer, if you ask me.

When looking at the FR you can quite easily see that it doesn’t go back to the same parrallel-with-the-body position it derives from. The tuning has gone quite flat and therefore the bridge angles away from the guitar, if you understand what I mean?

I have searched the internet for an answer to my problem, and I have come across those two sites before – good sites, but it doesn’t really solve my problem. They say how it is supposed to be set up, but even if I follow those strictly, it doesn’t stay in tune when using the whammy.

I read on some other forums, that buying a new original Floyd Rose might help, but I’m not sure about that, though I could easily do the guitar surgery myself, it would be a waste of money if it still won’t work.
- May 6, 2008 at 2:14 pm
InFlames
Member

hey. what kind of guitar is it? it could just be the floyd rose is junk lol. alot of “licenced” floyd rose trems iv seen are junk.
- May 6, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard as well.

It is a “Wolf” custom/one of a kind model thingie… Will take pictures in two minutes.
- May 6, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

The guitar feels a bit lightweight, but plays quite nice. Great low action (similar to my 7 string at least…), but it doesn’t feel like an expensive guitar, but it’s all good for what I need it for. The PU’s sounds nice, and I can’t really hear a difference between them and then the DiMarzio Air Norton and D-Sonic. Those on this one, the Wolf guitar, is Wilkinson pick ups…I know nothing about those though, but they sound fine to me.
- May 8, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

‘Ey Guys. I haven’t really had much time to play the new guitar, but I just took a couple of minutes of fooling around with it and recorded it. It’s just me playing random **** anyways, but at least it’s a video and shows off the guitar somewhat…

Also…There’s no backing track.

http://s23.photobucket.com/albums/b359/King-of-loss/?action=view&current=TestingNewguitar.flv

Sorry about my mouth being open all the time, and the hair all over the place…haha 🙂
- May 10, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Sean Conklin
Member

Cool stuff Ben!

So you enjoying the new axe? I like it a lot. Love the wood!

Random critique: Try relaxing and slowing your vibrato a bit. Seems a little tense at some points in that clip.

Thanks for sharing. Keep it up bro! 🙂

Sean
- May 10, 2008 at 11:30 pm
Caelumamittendum
Member

Thanks for watching and looking at the pics. I’m getting more and more used to it, and it’s getting nicer and nicer to play. I have to get used to the no-dots fretboard.

Yeah, sure, thanks for the critique. I have a lot of different areas to work on, but I constantly find myself telling myself I’m too tired or too busy to practicy properly. That said, I do have the time, I just don’t feel like I have the time.