MVega

Easy: First Suicide album. For guitar-oriented... not as easy. It's a toss-up The Modern Lovers. Television's Marquee Moon The first three Velvet Underground albums

You mean Steinberger? Well, considering the real Klein Steinbergers sell for thousands of dollars, I'd say ... yep! I'm not too hopeful about this guitar. But I've been meaning to build myself a Klein-type guitar for years, just haven't gotten around to it. This guitar would provide me a lot of shortcuts -- I could use it to make a template for the body, which is about 80 percent of the work of building a guitar (I'd buy a new neck) .

All the more reason to make certain your guitar is set up properly. If you're fighting against neck bow and high action, it's just going to wear you out. And especially as you get older, it can injure your hand. The lower the action, the easier it is to make the barre chord without having to clamp the neck. I also like guitars with a zero fret for this reason -- much easier to play (it's like playing with a capo).

Arg! I found this: http://xuqiumusic.en.alibaba.com/product/910242676-200006289/OEM_Klein_Headless_Electric_Guitar.html?edm_src=sys&edm_type=fdbk&edm_grp=0&edm_cta=read_msg&edm_time=realtime&edm_ver=e I'm tempted. Very tempted.

First step: Check the neck relief and action on your guitar. It doesn't take much to make a guitar really difficult to play. Take a capo, put it on the first fret, hold the low E down with a finger on the 14th fret, then use spark plug gauges to measure the relief at the sixth fret or so. The distance between the string and the fret wire there is the relief -- 0.25 mm is a good distance (could be more or less depending on the neck radius). Adjust the truss rod if needed. After that, adjust the string height at the bridge. The nut is a part of the equation too -- if the nut slots are cut properly, they'll make barre chords on the first frets really difficult. (Take the guitar to a tech is you don't feel up to making these adjustments.) Once you're certain the guitar is properly set up: Make sure you're playing without tension -- do a checklist of your body, starting with your fingers, your hand, your wrist, etc -- up into your shoulder, neck and back. Make sure the entire chain stays really relaxed. That should help keep your hands from becoming fatigued. Also, check the bar you're making. You shouldn't need a lot of pressure at all -- maybe try focusing just on the bar for a bit, figuring out the exact amount of pressure you need.

Hard to give percentages. I'm 140 hours in, starting from the beginning of November (although I only switched to the lead path in late December -- so probably 90 hours or so on Lead). Nearly all of my time is spent in one of the Learn a Song iterations -- the Riff Repeater and Learn a Song for the new songs I'm working on. Every three or four days I'll do my Nonstop Play List, which is up to about 15 songs now and about 45-50 minutes of play. I'm mostly working through the catalog of official RS1 and RS2014 songs plus the few DLCs I bought (less than 10, since most of the DLCs don't interest me). At this point, I've learned 25 of the official RS songs, and continue to work on 15 or so (using Nonstop Play). I've started working on some of the CDLCs too, but I prefer working through the official catalog first. The CDLCs are like the candy after eating my vegetables! Once in a while I'll hit up the Lessons section (I'm not a beginner guitarist, I'm at the intermediate level -- one of those people who should be a better guitarist than I actually am). Every now and then (every 2-3 weeks) I'll wank out in Session Mode for a few minutes. But without any real-world chord progressions, that gets frustrating really quickly. I'd be more likely to use it if they gave us a heads-up about the next chord to come. And if the progressions actually stuck to the same key, instead of shifting about randomly. I see no point in Score Attack, but I'm not in this for the competition. Guitarcade sucks, I don't bother with that at all anymore. Maybe if they give us a god mode and cut out the long load screens between rounds.

How about converting .dat files to psarcs? Is there an easy way to do this? There's a couple of songs in .dat format I'd like to have, and who's to know if they'll ever be converted by the original charters?

I'm looking for suggestions for slower songs that have already been made into CDLCs. In the official RS2014 set, there seem to be only two -- Love That's Gone and For a Fool. Now, I like to rock out as much as anyone. But on faster tempo songs, either the speed is beyond my current ability (I can play them, but still make too many mistakes at 100% speed) or they're just too easy (power chords) and therefore not all that interesting in terms of learning new techniques. Slower songs aren't necessarily easy -- in fact, a slower tempo permits some interesting guitar work. I really love the chord changes for For a Fool, for example. But I would never had known about either of these songs if it hadn't been for Rocksmith -- and I'm sure there are many many more songs out there that I don't know about. So how about it? Any slow/mid-tempo CDLCs I should check out?

(double post... the site's still a bit buggy :eek: )

I find it useful to do a couple of rounds of DD in the Learn a Song section, just listening to the song and the guitar part, studying the highlighted positions without the pressure of having to concentrate on all of the notes. If DD is done properly -- that is, if the highlighted positions are correct -- then your fingers will always be in the proper position no matter what happens at higher difficulty levels. (Although I think it would be helpful if the chords are marked at the lowest difficulty, even if we're not playing the full chord yet).

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I recently switched from nylons to the Dunlop Gels (XH size), they work best with my fingers, they just stay in place. The nylons became too dull-sounding. Tried the Tortex, but they just spin on my fingers. A lot of it depends on your fingers -- if you sweat a lot, you'll need one type, it you don't, another may work better for you.

You have to be careful about the Squire line, because the parts are sized differently from other Fender guitars -- everything just a bit smaller, I think. Maybe that's changed wtih the VM line? So make sure you get exact specs. You could replace just the saddles --- slap some GraphTechs on there (if they make bass saddles). Otherwise, that's just a standard type of bridge, a simple slab of steel. It's what made Fender Fender...

I've wanted one of these for a long time: http://www.edroman.com/guitars/Klein/images/Klein-500.jpg Here's a clip of Lou Reed playing Heroin on his: Damn it! Now I'm all hot to get one of these... I just discovered there's a kit available...

It'd be great to have warmup tracks -- fingering exercises, especially, that we can run through for 5-10 minutes before getting into playing songs.

Right now? It's my Steinberger SS-2F http://steinberger.com/SS2F.html I've ALWAYS lusted after one of those Gretsch fat bodies....

I've been in a few bands, but here's one of my favorites:

Try hanging a weight on the bottom of the strap. It won't take much to rebalance the guitar. Your fingers can't move if you have to hold the neck up at the same time.

Nice list, indeed! Do you know the Black Key's Chulahoma album? It's my favorite of theirs, some of the songs on that are really hypnotic.

I'm one of those "played for years, never got very good at it" types, so I'm sticking to the Lead parts right now. But that's also because I really don't like the whole Lead and Rhythm path thing. It's guitar. Just give us all the arrangements in the same place, please. That's why I hope to find songs by bands with a single guitarist (who doesn't overdub his leads) -- that way we get to play the entire guitar part for the song. I realize this is pretty rare though.

Yeah, I gave right away, just a bit though, budget's kind of tight.

Ah the plot thickens... because I checked the version I have (comes from a collection called Rockabilly's Gravest Hits) -- and it's the downtuned version as well! But it's clearly not right. You can tell by the sound of his voice in the song -- he sounds way too much like Elvis. Seems to me the real version is on the Best of Eddie Cochran. Here's another one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc_p6uUS86o (You can probably guess I'm pretty excited by the prospect of getting some rockabilly into my fingers!)

Check out this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDFslybnkJk This version's definitely in A -- watch his hands (even though he's faking it) -- He's playing it the way the tab's written. I'm not sure how you'd be able to play the riff in a different key, unless you retune the guitar. Here's another verison on youtube (link below) -- it's still A, maybe a wee bit off, but it could be the audio conversion that does this. BUT: I just found a THIRD version -- and that one's clearly in G! I'm guessing that's the one you have -- ditch it! It's wrong! Listen to his voice when he's singing --it's clearly been retuned. A lot of old records seem to have tuning or speed issues - something got screwed up in the transfer process, I think. At least, that's my theory -- it explains a lot of songs that aren't in A440 tuning but shifting just a little higher or lower. To me, it makes sense to re-tune the mp3 file to bring it to standard tuning in a case like that, where it's off by a half-note or less. To me that's a sign the transfer got screwed up. But this song's definitely supposed to be in A and the version you have was retuned to G. (I'll go check my copy too, it's on another computer) And here's the WRONG version:

Smithys is still up and running, right? So what's really need is a place to organize/find CDLCs? I look at this as an opportunity to do it right.