Gibson SG History and Day 04

I grew up around 80's hair metal because I had older sisters in the 80's.  My bathroom constantly smelled like hairspray(I can't drink anything with too much vodka in it because it reminds me of hairspray smell).  The music I found obnoxious was full of pointy, neon guitars, but the stuff I ended up liking was many times played on a Les Paul.  By all standards, I should have grown up loving the classic Les Paul guitar made famous by Slash, Joe Perry(Aerosmith), Steve Clark(Def Leppard).

However, there was another influence on my musical tastes: my uncle.  It was my uncle who introduced me to Highway To Hell, by ACDC.  Later, it was Black Sabbath that firmly established me in the heavy riff-verse that fueled my teenage years.  Both Angus Young of ACDC, and Toni Iommi of Black Sabbath, played the Gibson SG, and later when I wanted my own guitar, it was the practicality and styling of the SG that endeared me to it.

The history of the SG is pretty strange.  In the late 1950's, the Les Paul was seen as old fashioned.  It was a tree trunk around your neck, unlike the hip, new Fender Stratocasters that the new rock legends were playing, particularly Buddy Holly.  In 1961, the Les Paul got a new look.  It got a slab, double cutaway body.  The extra "old fashioned" accents like the body binding and flame top were done away with.  You had what we call "The SG" body, but at the time it was only called a "Les Paul".  The outdated Les Paul, of the original styles, were being sold cheap in pawn shops.  A lot of the new guitarists of the time bought these cheap Les Pauls before they got famous, and continued using them after.  This brought the popularity back, and in 1968 the Les Paul was re-introduced, and the SG finally got its real name.  As you can see, its hard to divorce the SG from the Les Paul when you're talking about history.

Some people that are associated with other guitars actually have had SG's in their stable.  Clapton and Hendrix are known Fender faithfuls, but both had SG's too.  Clapton has the famous "Fool" SG he used while in Cream, and Hendrix played a White "Les Paul" SG with 3 pickups in his last few years, during many of his television appearances.

Day 04

Ok, today I started on the Tone Sculptor missions.  If you read about the first day, I pretty much went into and started messing with that from the beginning.  With these missions they basically just have you put effects pedals into your tone settings so that you can get familiar with what they all do.  The descriptions are short and I generally agree with what they say about them.  I think they did the overdrive, distortion, and fuzz lessons out of order.  Many effects are tweaks to other effects or are related closely to them.  I would have liked to have seen this explained.  Still, for a beginner it is a good way to check through all the effects styles.  In the pre-game era I had to do this by going to the big rack of Boss pedals and just trying everything while wearing dinky head phones at a Guitar Center.

I took a break mid-session to have dinner, and I found something out that was pretty cool.  The sign that I should take a break was that I got a "play the Guitarcade game" as the next mission.  I was ok "oh, I guess that's all the pedal stuff for now", and I went and ate.  I had turned off the game, watched some youtube, and came back to the game ready to play the Guitarcade... only that mission was replaced by the next pedal mission.  It turns out, the game doesn't think you should just power through a lot of missions in one particular area, it is going to divert you and slow you down.  I actually think this is pretty cool.  For a beginner, going through all the pedals quickly is just going to get you confused and not commit stuff to memory.  So far it has always defaulted to the Guitarcade, because after about 3 or 4 more pedal missions, I got a suggestion to go to the Guitarcade as a mission again.  All work and no play makes jack a dull guitarist.

I played the Shooter game...  I feel like I want the strings in reverse order.  Did not have much fun in it till I put the pick down and used my fingers... but that's kind of cheating because I need to force myself to use the pick... I'll get to this game again later.  The Duck shooting game that I next tried was super fun.  I'll do more thoughts on the games and the Guitarcade as a topic later.

I decided not to power through all the pedal missions.  For about 30 minutes I went back to the jam session.  I got into the 8-bit Nintendo style bands, put some super fuzz on my guitar, and tried to copy some old Ninja Gaiden/Mega Man songs in riff form.  It was very fun.  Learning songs is still not fun for me at this point, and I've learned more in the jam sessions than I have in years of playing solo or reading theory.  I highly recommend new players to ignore the songs till you have your feet... unless of course its fun for you to learn the songs, then by all means do it.

TIP OF THE DAY

At the main menu, hit select.  At your path screen, if you click "X" on your path, your mission list will come up.  They don't really spell that one out for you in game in an easy to find area.