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Post by delb0y on Mar 27, 2024 14:37:02 GMT
Been thinking about this, on the gypsy jazz stuff I, too, use a Wegen. It certainly makes me play more Manouche. So I guess there is something in different picks.
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Post by delb0y on Mar 27, 2024 13:27:08 GMT
Over in the bluegrass / flat-picking world a lot of very good players swear by them. I suspect you have to be of a pretty good standard to be able to benefit from what these picks offer (although I've no idea what that is). Ah that wouldn’t be me then. How come Norman Blake and Doc Watson were such great flatpickers without a £50 pick then? It wouldn't be me, either :-) I think those guys, along with many others, would be great with any pick. But maybe (I have no idea) had they also had a Blue Chip pick they'd have been even greater. Who knows? Maybe it's all in the mind, but that little psychological boost maybe the way to get an extra 1% from an already brilliant musician. Maybe it's not all in the mind and these picks really do make a difference - if only one has the ears to hear it, or the fingers to take advantage of it. I certainly don't have the ears - hell, I can't even tell what chord I should be playing half the time, and not long ago I recorded a flat-picking piece with each of my guitars and afterwards I couldn't hardly tell one from the other. I do tend to subscribe to the school that's it's (almost) all in the fingers. But there are players with great ears who undoubtedly can tell the difference. Of course, that then begets the argument if the audience doesn't have equally great ears then how do you get across that extra 1%? I recall once I bought a Yamaha Pacifica telecaster style guitar as back-up to my Strat. That guitar had the fastest, easiest playing, neck that I'd ever come across on a guitar. I could play things on that guitar that I couldn't play on any other before, or since. But I sold it anyway. I don't have a quick enough musical mind to take advantage of such a speedy guitar. But there are some that do. And I guess a speedy pick would be good for those guys, too. I'm 80% thumb-pick now, but I won't be buying a Bluechip @ $40 !! Derek
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Post by delb0y on Mar 27, 2024 11:01:22 GMT
Over in the bluegrass / flat-picking world a lot of very good players swear by them. I suspect you have to be of a pretty good standard to be able to benefit from what these picks offer (although I've no idea what that is).
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Post by delb0y on Mar 27, 2024 10:43:51 GMT
There was a thread on here a while back and, IIRC, some of our esteemed colleagues were tempted, and were going to report back. I wonder if Blue Chip do a thumb-pick? Although, at the rate I get through thumb-picks (they become loose, and thus no good) I wouldn't want to pay more than a pound or so for a pick. :-)
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Post by delb0y on Mar 21, 2024 11:15:06 GMT
Wasn't Robert Johnson around in the 16th Century ? There is an old tale about a musician who hung around with Robin Hood that some people say was known as Robert Johnfon. Apparently he (backed by the Merry Men) recorded a song for Robin and Maid Marion that was so popular it went to the top of the charts and stayed there for eight hundred years. Luckily, for Johnfon this was before streaming. An eight hundred year reign at Number One is estimated to garner just £23.50 on streaming services.
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Post by delb0y on Mar 18, 2024 19:55:58 GMT
Well done, Leo. A cracking song, and the jazz ending sounded fine to me. Top quality project from all involved.
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Post by delb0y on Mar 12, 2024 21:05:36 GMT
Can't beat a Telecaster! Hope all is improving on the health front.
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Post by delb0y on Mar 9, 2024 8:38:08 GMT
What scorpiodog said, Larry. It is those undamped strings causing the issue, and all those micro movements that SD alluded to are indeed the answer. One mightn't be deliberately damping strings as one would in, say, Travis picking, but we all still do a lot of almost unconscious string damping - a point we reach after years of playing. I have/had this problem in extremis on my gypsy jazz guitar. I even showed it to Francis, one of our ace luthiers on this site. He did suggest a solution to try next time I change strings, but in the meantime I am simply paying a lot more conscious attention to damping strings as I play that guitar. On the other hand, this resonance can also be a good thing - and this why your Fender should probably not be assigned rhythm guitar duties only. If you're playing single note lines out of chord shapes - I don't mean picturing the shapes, but rather actually holding them down ( hold, say, a C chord and keep it held down whilst you pick Frere Jacque) then those resonances may well be "in tune" and give your unaccompanied single line tune some "free" accompaniment! Listen to the bluegrass players when they're playing on their lonesome (as they say down in the holler) for many examples. That's why those guys love their big old resonant dreadnaughts and pay a lot of money for the good ones. Derek
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Post by delb0y on Mar 8, 2024 15:54:03 GMT
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Post by delb0y on Mar 8, 2024 13:03:06 GMT
I bid on a Tanglewood TW73 parlour but it went for twice what I bid :-(
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Post by delb0y on Mar 8, 2024 9:55:55 GMT
I recalled reading this, and just found it again: Work and Worry (whoever that is) talking to Stefan Grossman. I love Ton Van Bergeyk, but it sounds like even he couldn't get it right sometimes:
W&W – Was your perspective that with someone like Ton Van Bergeyk or Lasse Johansen, these sort of guitar-monster European players, that the playing and the arrangements would speak for themselves, and that you didn’t have to fuss so much over the sound of the recordings?
Stefan – No, we tried to get the best sound possible, always. In the studio, the problem was that the guys who played the real intricate arrangements, they could never play them from beginning to end, so you needed to have a good editor, whether it was me or Nick, who could cut it up and put it together.
So perhaps the secret is simply multiple takes and some editing!
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Post by delb0y on Mar 8, 2024 8:06:41 GMT
The serious answer is one has to play the tune hundreds of times, so much that it is totally ingrained and that one can almost have a separate conversation whilst plucking the piece. This can, of course, take weeks and months, but does give you the benefit of knowing the tune so well that you can add all the subtleties in - dynamics, tone variations, etc.
This, I assume, is what professionals do. As they say, amateurs practice until they get something right, professionals practice until they never get it wrong.
Alas, I usually get so excited when learning a new tune that I set up the phone within an hour of making it through the piece for the first time, press record, and play...
About a month later, when playing the tune at a much better standard, I look back at what I posted and say to myself: "Why didn't I wait? Next time I'm going to wait!"
But, invariably, the same thing happens the next time.
I suspect that we all (or at least those of us that suffer from this - some here clearly already do the following) simply needed to practice more.
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Post by delb0y on Mar 6, 2024 14:52:28 GMT
I used to play a lot of rockabilly, but I don't think I ever read a book that was purely dedicated to the style. I tended to take the country guitar style that I already had (a traditional country style, more akin to the Bakersfield Sound than anything modern), my Travis Picking, and the Chuck Berry sound and I mixed them up and out popped rockabilly - which I guess is pretty much how it started anyway. There a few great albums that pretty much give you everything you need - Carl Perkins Greatest Hits, first Stray Cats album, Brian Setzer's Rockabilly Riot volume 1, the first Elvis album, etc That said, there is a chapter (a short chapter) in one of my favourite books from the 1970s (replete with flexi disc) called Nashville Guitar by Arlen Roth and there's a longer chapter in an absolutely outstanding book Best in the West. I do have a DVD by Paul Pigat that is dedicated to Rockabilly Guitar and I recall it being great, although it's years since I watched it. He also did one on Travis Picking which, in it's own way, is a key element of Rockabilly. I find quite a bit of the modern style is too drenched in echo for my liking, but it's fun to play. One of my better tunes on YouTube is when I took a rockabilly backing track from a guitar magazine CD and played some Charlie Christian licks on top of it: I do link to an explanation video, so if there are any licks you like you can grab them. Derek
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Post by delb0y on Mar 5, 2024 14:00:28 GMT
Hi Vinman
It might be very slightly bigger than what you're after but there's a lovely Yamaha LJ16 (secondhand) at GAK. I keep my eyes out for these as one day I could well be tempted! Could well be worth a strum when you're in the shop.
Great news re. the lessons, too. What sort of tunes are you playing?
Derek
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Post by delb0y on Feb 26, 2024 7:52:15 GMT
Nice playing guys. Your D500 seems a fair bit louder than your friend's guitar. Thanks :-) Yes, I noticed that, too. Never thought about before when we're just sitting jamming. It may be the players, too. Chris plays with much more finesse than me, so it may be a slightly louder guitar and a much louder player.
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