-= Building a Guitar from Scratch with Absolutely No Woodworking Experience =-

@ Rodman  So much of you post is parallel to my current place in my guitar journey.  Love the Championships and playing RS, dedicate typically an hour a day.  Want to improve my speed, fretboard / scales knowledge and I can't remember songs for crap.  Our brain is trained to play RS. 

I also decided this year to focus on learning to record tracks, so I am down for the Cover Song participation.

Also want to give @ Mikson  and @ cacahuate51  a run for the top spot, maybe even pull a win on occassion.

11 hours ago, cacahuate51 said:

Ah cool I didnt know about that! That does sound like fun and interesting to hear others renditions! I'd be open to the idea for sure.
Also very neat that you got your daughter to sing I'm sure that will be a core memory for her!

Thx, and great you are in - we start next week - YAY!!!! - you´ll see it´s pure fun. Jap - as my own singing is........................ let´s say unprofessional - maybe i can get her to do one or another from time to time - but be warned - i´m gonna do vocals frequently cause i remember that being fun and getting better even there quickly....

11 hours ago, cacahuate51 said:

Damn! ignition should add the scared reaction, I'm gonna have to start practicing more now to keep up with you.Thanks for sharing!

I dont think I am competition anymore with @ craxed  joining us. That man is a beast.

 I also have a feeling @ drand  @ Satinuke  and @ Vodka  will all be moving very soon to advanced aswell. More competition, this year will be very interesting and fun!!

Ah... you you!!! 😉 The week you will be scared i´m opening a good bottle of rum/tequila 😉
About the beasts out there ... they only become scary when they compete week after week 😉
 

7 hours ago, robolechuga said:

@ Rodman  So much of you post is parallel to my current place in my guitar journey.  Love the Championships and playing RS, dedicate typically an hour a day.  Want to improve my speed, fretboard / scales knowledge and I can't remember songs for crap.  Our brain is trained to play RS. 

I also decided this year to focus on learning to record tracks, so I am down for the Cover Song participation.

Also want to give @ Mikson  and @ cacahuate51  a run for the top spot, maybe even pull a win on occassion.

Yay. Great you are in, too - next week it all starts again ;).
Hah - for my shredding practice - in that case that you are interrested in such things, too - i am gonna create CDLCs of the speed practicing lessons i am working on. I´ll keep you updated.

Rod.

 

greetings from the austrian mountains

 

14 hours ago, cacahuate51 said:

Ooh interesting I never heard of this song or the remix. The song I have heard is "heaven is a place on earth" by belinda carlisle. I like that song more tbh, wonder if its on igntion 

Edit: oh snap it is! and i just saw you recommended it on ssl aswell and your ratings (intermediate). Seems like if you are a begginer heaven aint the place for you.

This Is the one 
You know the rule stick a thick beat on It put a fittie In to sing, It you have a hit
 

15 hours ago, cacahuate51 said:

Damn! ignition should add the scared reaction, I'm gonna have to start practicing more now to keep up with you.Thanks for sharing!

I dont think I am competition anymore with @ craxed  joining us. That man is a beast.

 I also have a feeling @ drand  @ Satinuke  and @ Vodka  will all be moving very soon to advanced aswell. More competition, this year will be very interesting and fun!!

Don't worry. I will stuck in Intermediate for 45-48 years. So we'll never meet 😄

Incredible results @ drand ! 

On 2/10/2025 at 5:35 PM, Rodman said:

2) what i am extremely bad in is converting my playing abilities into just playing a song out of my head - i don´t know any 🙂
And here we come back to the acoustic thing. A few years ago i started a just for fun side challenge in the championships mainly with @ diceslinger  where whoever wanted to join in did a cover on a song one of the contestant called. No rules - just post a vid or audio of your cover - everything counts - plain acoustic, plain bass, add vocals, add drums, use a background track, do a full studio recording with a band - all is great. No winners - or shall i say only winners - no losers. That was so much fun and we got better so fast in putting covers together and also recording stuff.

I am thinking of a reboot on that - as i am planning to learn a song (easy version) every week anyway that year - if ANYONE is interested to join in i´d love to have a go again here.

Here is one of the last ones we did 4 years ago - i did that with my daughter.

So if anyone is interrested shout. Or even - call any song you´d like to play!

Rod.

That seems a really cool idea.🎸

Right now my gear is my old bass, my even older acoustic guitar (with a crack made when my daughter stepped on it whan she was 3) , a pitch pedal and a new 5 string fretless bass that I'm still trying to grasp (it was an old desire 🤣).

And I am a total noob in recording (no gear), so I don't know if I will enter without a tutorial on recording  and/or some basic gear 🤣

On 2/10/2025 at 8:43 PM, Willyam said:

Any chance there are some cdlc for those? i personally would love to also play songs not in English 

There are almost none portuguese bands 😢 (I only found Moonspell, but they sing in English) a few brazillian (Mamonas Assassinas, Engenheiros do Hawaii) and spanish (Heroes del Silencio)

There is a CDLC in the championship history from Xutos & Pontapés: https://www.mediafire.com/file/ky0vcotakb8sf05/Xutos--Pontaps_Homem-do-Leme_v2_p.psarc/file

I usually note down songs and bands that I like and search for CDLCs, so there could be others that I didn't search or find.

Some updates/improvements (it started with that, but diverged and almost forgot) 🤣:

 

Forgot to post my class 😞

Small improvement

 

Not much better, too fast for me to sight read.  

5 hours ago, Vodka said:

Don't worry. I will stuck in Intermediate for 45-48 years. So we'll never meet 😄

Incredible results @ drand ! 

Thank you @ Vodka ! I have to try hard to keep up!

For this one I had to learn a lot of new chords and having to work through using too little and too much pressure at the same time and sounding like crap. Still trying to be more mindful of tension when I play, it feels like a big beginner hurdle.

I found some good tips like instead of squeezing together the thumb and index finger to make the barre chords, pull the fretboard with the left hand and push the guitar body with the torso to apply even pressure to the chord, don't even need the thumb and sounds better. That helped a lot with fatigue.

There is a part that goes from A, G#, to F#m to C#m7 that is so fast I can't get it. 

Trying to learn theory so tried just playing along with the track for a bit. Not my favorite music but it's nice to dive in and find out what makes a song a hit or just the intention behind things like how using these major7 chords makes a song sound very 70s-80s retro, how resolving a sus4 chord with a major chord is a common idea (F#sus4 to F# chord here). Very interesting week for me, a lot of guitar and production tutorial videos for this song to learn from.

Even downloaded Reaper to start learning how to record so I can play with @ Rodman  when I become a rock wizard lol

Might be maxing out here

Yep no improvement on the rhythm tonight

On 2/10/2025 at 9:35 AM, Rodman said:

2) what i am extremely bad in is converting my playing abilities into just playing a song out of my head - i don´t know any 🙂
And here we come back to the acoustic thing. A few years ago i started a just for fun side challenge in the championships mainly with @ diceslinger  where whoever wanted to join in did a cover on a song one of the contestant called. No rules - just post a vid or audio of your cover - everything counts - plain acoustic, plain bass, add vocals, add drums, use a background track, do a full studio recording with a band - all is great. No winners - or shall i say only winners - no losers. That was so much fun and we got better so fast in putting covers together and also recording stuff.

I am thinking of a reboot on that - as i am planning to learn a song (easy version) every week anyway that year - if ANYONE is interested to join in i´d love to have a go again here.

Here is one of the last ones we did 4 years ago - i did that with my daughter.

So if anyone is interrested shout. Or even - call any song you´d like to play!

Rod.

Ok, did the chorus of the Bryan Adams song.   Ha ha

 

11 hours ago, Vodka said:

Don't worry. I will stuck in Intermediate for 45-48 years. So we'll never meet 😄

Nah, If you play consistantly like you have been, theres no doubt in my mind that you will be in advanced. You got this!
 

13 hours ago, AndreCardoso said:

That seems a really cool idea.🎸

Right now my gear is my old bass, my even older acoustic guitar (with a crack made when my daughter stepped on it whan she was 3) , a pitch pedal and a new 5 string fretless bass that I'm still trying to grasp (it was an old desire 🤣).

And I am a total noob in recording (no gear), so I don't know if I will enter without a tutorial on recording  and/or some basic gear 🤣

Nonono - that´s no excuse 😉

You don´t need anything but headphones even for the simple luxury version of your home recording studio 😉 -
1) put these on and have a metronome playing (there are free online ones and YT tracks) or have the backround track you desire to use playing.

2) You might have your professional mic in your hands already right now (cellphone!!!) - these are more than enough. So record all the tracks you like - send them over to pc (Whattsapp web to yourself is the easiest way, or cable or email or cloud)

3) grab Audacity  https://www.audacityteam.org/  (easiest, still powerfull) or Reaper or any Mixing Software you like, load your tracks, mix them (volume adjustment at least) and export.

4) Upload anywhere you can present to us (i personally use youtube)

Or if even that is too much - just click record on your cellphone and do a singletrack with your acoustic (and your voice 😉 )

R.

 

53% not so good 😅

9 hours ago, Rodman said:

Nonono - that´s no excuse 😉

You don´t need anything but headphones even for the simple luxury version of your home recording studio 😉 -
1) put these on and have a metronome playing (there are free online ones and YT tracks) or have the backround track you desire to use playing.

2) You might have your professional mic in your hands already right now (cellphone!!!) - these are more than enough. So record all the tracks you like - send them over to pc (Whattsapp web to yourself is the easiest way, or cable or email or cloud)

3) grab Audacity  https://www.audacityteam.org/  (easiest, still powerfull) or Reaper or any Mixing Software you like, load your tracks, mix them (volume adjustment at least) and export.

4) Upload anywhere you can present to us (i personally use youtube)

Or if even that is too much - just click record on your cellphone and do a singletrack with your acoustic (and your voice 😉 )

R.

to add to that 

Most DAWS (digital audio workstation) aka audacity reaper garage band ( used to come free with macs) etc come with a metronome. So make sure to read the manual on which ever daw you use. like mentioned previously, reaper is the one that will allow you to do pitch shifting if you set it up correctly, and it has a 2 month trial for you to test it out. So perhaps by learning that daw youd be killing two birds with one stone. I personally don't use it but maybe its a good option to keep in mind.

Like Rodman said, audacity is free and it looks like they have updated the interface which is good cause it needed it badly.

The rocksmith cable works to record on a lot of daws (maybe all of them) So you would atleast have a decent clean signal if you wanted to do fx on the computer. If you had amps maybe the best option is just record with your phone (since you said no recording gear) microphone like rodman mentioned. If you dont theres plenty of free guitar amp vsts out there and pretty decent just look on yt.

actually now that im writing this, if you have decent speakers you could probably just go in rocksmith to the amp section and play around/ record with your phone. OR if youve ever recorded rocksmith gameplay then just use the video in the daw (most daws support videos) 

You can upload on soundcloud for free (there's a limit of tracks but if you run out of space, which i dont think you will, you could just create a new account). By uploading on soundcloud you would just need a audio file meanwhile on youtube i believe you still need a video, which would just be another step.

9 hours ago, Rodman said:

Nonono - that´s no excuse 😉

You don´t need anything but headphones even for the simple luxury version of your home recording studio 😉 -
1) put these on and have a metronome playing (there are free online ones and YT tracks) or have the backround track you desire to use playing.

2) You might have your professional mic in your hands already right now (cellphone!!!) - these are more than enough. So record all the tracks you like - send them over to pc (Whattsapp web to yourself is the easiest way, or cable or email or cloud)

3) grab Audacity  https://www.audacityteam.org/  (easiest, still powerfull) or Reaper or any Mixing Software you like, load your tracks, mix them (volume adjustment at least) and export.

4) Upload anywhere you can present to us (i personally use youtube)

Or if even that is too much - just click record on your cellphone and do a singletrack with your acoustic (and your voice 😉 )

R.

Ok, so starting the noob questions 🤣

I already had Reaper (when I tried to use the bass to find notes by ear on songs), but found it confusing and worst of all had a huge delay between playing in the bass and hearing the notes.
Is there anything I can do about it (delay)?

So installed Audacity (seems friendlier 🙂 ) but can't capture the audio when playing Rocksmith (Windows). Also tried using Windows game recording (captures the screen, but also no audio)
Is audio exclusive by application or Rocksmith interferes with it?

Finally tried recording on the phone, but it picks up more the string buzz on the fretboard than the audio. And trying to play a meter away from the PC screen I miss  notes because I can't read them 🤣

The best results were recording my acoustic guitar with the phone while hearing the song on headphones, but my playing skills on acoustic are very rusty and had to try to play along based on a chords file that I found on the internet (and discover what is an F/A and a Dm/F 🤣).
And it occurred that I could maybe play Rocksmith with an acoustic pickup. Is it possible/doable?

I think I had an amp for the bass in my parents house. Maybe it's time to find out if it's there and still works  🙏

1 hour ago, AndreCardoso said:

Ok, so starting the noob questions 🤣

I already had Reaper (when I tried to use the bass to find notes by ear on songs), but found it confusing and worst of all had a huge delay between playing in the bass and hearing the notes.
Is there anything I can do about it (delay)?

So installed Audacity (seems friendlier 🙂 ) but can't capture the audio when playing Rocksmith (Windows). Also tried using Windows game recording (captures the screen, but also no audio)
Is audio exclusive by application or Rocksmith interferes with it?

Finally tried recording on the phone, but it picks up more the string buzz on the fretboard than the audio. And trying to play a meter away from the PC screen I miss  notes because I can't read them 🤣

The best results were recording my acoustic guitar with the phone while hearing the song on headphones, but my playing skills on acoustic are very rusty and had to try to play along based on a chords file that I found on the internet (and discover what is an F/A and a Dm/F 🤣).
And it occurred that I could maybe play Rocksmith with an acoustic pickup. Is it possible/doable?

I think I had an amp for the bass in my parents house. Maybe it's time to find out if it's there and still works  🙏

that vid should help you out

ah that blows, you used to be able to  windows R and record rocksmith thats how i did the majority of my playthroughs on yt.

so if your phone doesnt pick up good by your speaker, although it should, just connect the rocksmith cable and set it up in audacity here:

you wont be getting the rocksmith tones so dont have rocksmith open, but you will get a decent clean signal.

Also if you arent getting a signal with the rocksmith cable might be that you need to play around with your cable/ move it around  (atleast that happened to me)


https://i.postimg.cc/dVnqBQkm/Screenshot-2025-02-13-133400.png

make sure when you record an play you dont go red or the audio file will distort and be squarish like the one in the pic (unless thaats what you are going for)

i also opened up bandlab which might be more userfriendly than reaper or audacity just to get a feel for a daw

https://i.postimg.cc/QxQNFJjz/Screenshot-2025-02-13-133300.png


it has its own library of instruments (albeit not the best) but it might be an easier stepping zone). You can use it with your phone aswell which is pretty neat. And it has its own walkthrough simple tutorial of the software

Since it is its own software the limitation is you can only use their synths and vsts. Which is why reaper or another daw would be more suitable but once you learn one daw most daws become a bit similar (they all have their own advantage/disavantage).

Maybe i am overwhelming you with options xD but yea just not a fan of audacity (although it does have its uses just like any software). I personally use ableton which there is a free trial...however it does cost alot so i wouldnt reccomend it. fl studio offers free time updates which is good. anyways going off topic just pick a daw and stick with it
 

On 2/12/2025 at 12:21 AM, cacahuate51 said:

Damn! ignition should add the scared reaction, I'm gonna have to start practicing more now to keep up with you.Thanks for sharing!

I dont think I am competition anymore with @ craxed  joining us. That man is a beast.

 I also have a feeling @ drand  @ Satinuke  and @ Vodka  will all be moving very soon to advanced aswell. More competition, this year will be very interesting and fun!!

@ cacahuate51 bro i cannot solo lmao, i only go well in riff oriented songs, but i'm getting there. I think september/october i will be starting to reach advanced levels (soloing 6/7 rating songs)

15 hours ago, cacahuate51 said:

Nah, If you play consistantly like you have been, theres no doubt in my mind that you will be in advanced. You got this!
 

There's no a chance. This week I can't even reproduce my prev good result! I'm trying "and again and again, and on and on!"

And unfortunately I fail.  And sounds like a crap among other things. I always get something like this:

Can't even feel my fingertips. 

I really glad to see @ drand  is going up and up. Amazing!