In 1963 though, he was just a kid with almost no money. What he did have, though, was a father that was willing to help his son achieve his dreams. Brian and his father scoured the neighborhood for materials. Someone that lived near them was throwing away an old 18th century fireplace mantle, made of mahogany. It was worm ridden in some places, but they were able to shape a neck out of it. Next they planed some oak to be a fret board. The inlays are mother of pearl buttons they collected. The body is semi-hollow, being made of oak with a thin sheet of mahogany for the top. Next he made a tremolo with a knife and some motorcycle springs. He then found some old shelving plastic and used it to "binding" material, the outline around the body that is popular on Les Pauls.
He bought some pickups, but rewound them himself. He also sealed their pots to protect the pickups from microphonic feedback. This was important because he wanted to include a way to cause feedback on purpose. His dad had enough electrical engineering know-how to help him achieve this. He could then induce it at a whim, instead of walking in front of the speaker hand hoping it worked like Clapton and Hendrix did. I personally did not know his guitar could do this, but now it makes so much sense. There's this part in the solo of "We Will Rock You" that I used to characterize as "the guitar coming back and eating itself", but now that I am older, I realize its the self induced feedback that he designed to be in the guitar. Its genius.
It took him and his father two years to make the guitar, and now its given the world 40+ years of pure, epic, awesome rock. The guitar now is a legend, and has been named "The Red Special".
I referenced BrianMayGuitars.co.uk to make sure I got the details right, and claim no ownership of the story.
Day 18
Today was a Sunday, so that means I had an audience while practicing. I still have a lot of work to do on making Everlong sound really nice, and it is very hard to do an arrangement all by yourself without having a way of switching from clean to distortion. Which, I can do do with my real amp, but the game amp not so much. During "Learn-a-song" it will change automatically for you, as if you have a road crew. No such luck in real life.
My girlfriend played some more of her favorite games and then shocked me with playing Smoke on the Water :) I thought she had learned that in school band, but she said she once had an acoustic. She had never gotten to play around on a electric with some nice distortion to it, so she had a lot of fun. I have several times thought about buying an extra guitar to keep at her place so I could practice over there. When I have the money, I think I'll need to get a practice amp so she can play the guitar whenever she wants to as well. She has no PS3, so I can't loan her Rocksmith.
I loaded up a metal band in session mode, the "classic" one, I can't remember what its called right now as I type. Just a week ago I had listened to it, and just could not achieve any type of mellowness with the band they presented. Now, though, with palm muting, I feel like I can at least jam with a metal band. Speaking of Palm Muting, I have heard of people using palm muting on acoustic before, but my mind just could not wrap around what or why people would do it. I decided, since Sundays are kinda crazy anyway, to load up an acoustic simulator and see how it sounded. I then played bayou, cajun sounding music for about 20 minutes. That's the sound palm muting on an acoustic does. Cajun blues. My repertoire of genres is increasing
Almost 1/3rd through the 60 day challenge, and I am very happy with my Rocksmith experience, I've learned things that even if I stopped using Rocksmith today, would be skills for playing guitar that I'd use the rest of my life.
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