"I went down to their rehearsal, and he brought me up on the stage, and he let me play the guitar—the guitar that he built with his dad [the “Red Special”]. I couldn’t even believe that I was touching this instrument! He was so kind and so warm, and for who? This kid, you know? And I played his guitar, and it sounded like Steve Vai. Then when he played it, it sounded just like Brian May. It was very apparent to me that his tone is in his fingers and his head"
At first this just looks like admiration for a fellow guitarist, but there is deeper meaning in this quote. See, there is this "quest" to get certain "tones" just like famous guitarists. People will pay 100's even 1,000's of dollars to sound like certain people. Cap10 Anderton from Youtube once said "Cobain's sound is easy to get. You have this spectrum with Kurt Cobain on one end, and Brian May on the other" It is well known that people can get close, but it is super hard to get a sound like Brian May's sound. They point at his home made guitar, referenced above, and his use of a coin as his pick as contributing to his sound, making it impossible to copy. Many guitarists know that Brian May is one of the "holy grails" of tone. So here is Steve Vai, on purpose, basically saying "don't believe that tone bullshit, when I played it I sounded like me..
Its a wonderful lesson to take to heart. Stop chasing tone. You'll get close, but a lot of it is the player. In the bass world there was a similar thing. Michael Manring idolized Jaco Pastorious. He said he spent half his waking hours trying to play like Jaco, but there was always these imperfections in the sound, the strings not ringing just right, or the bass vibrating just a little off. For years he practiced and practiced, trying to get these flaws out. He said that one day he realized that the "errors" were him coming through. These weren't flaws, this was his body's tone, his finger's touch, his mind's detail, and he learned to embrace that in his playing.
The only people expecting you to sound 100% like someone else are people that do not have the experience of trying to not sound like themselves. Be yourself, let yourself shine through. People will know what song you are playing, and they'll hear you in that song too, if they can't appreciate the time and effort you put into learning a song, then don't sweat it... or hand them the guitar and say "show me how you would do it better"
Day 16
As I type this, my fingertips on my left hand are still numb. I guess that's a step up from sore. Still no blisters thankfully. I spent almost all of today playing "Everlong" by the Foo Fighters. I learned the main parts from Rocksmith, but figured out how I wanted to play it by watching some solo versions on Youtube. Rocksmith, at least on lead, gives you the slightly higher pitched version that sounds slightly awful by yourself. Generally, live, Foo Fighters play this song with 3 guitarists and a bassist. The "lead" version is all nice when you have a rhythm section backing that up, but if you're playing by yourself, I suggest you watch how youtube acoustic arrangements are done. Of course it doesn't hurt to learn it how they present it in Rocksmith, you never know when you'll be playing the song with a partner. I'm still sloppy on the buildup to the chorus, but people would recognize the song if I played it.
For the first time since I started the game, I hooked up to my actual amp instead of just playing in game. My stereo's speakers are pretty good, aside from the "feel" of it, I did not think I was losing all that much playing inside game. Besides, in game I can switch my tones very quickly and easily. Playing through a real amp again though, it felt really good. The sound was deeper and much more full. It made me really want a high gain metal distortion style pedal though, because my Marshall isn't set up for that sound. I really really want a Fulltone OCD variation made by EHX called "The Glove", but honestly my Marshall gets close, and its not like I have another amp somewhere. So I should probably look at getting pedals for tones I can't get with my regular amp, and #1 on the list I guess would be an EHX metal muff, probably the pocket version since I like the sound of it over the "micro" and think that the full sized one is over-complicated for my needs.
Tip of the Day
There are several ways I could go from a clean to heavy tone for Everlong, but I'll share the simplest that requires no footswitching or extra pedals. This works on Gibson instruments with the usual 4 knob config. I take my treble/lead/bridge pickup, put tone at 10, and put the volume about 3. this lets the treble ring cleaner(though not 100% clean) and also more quiet. On the Rhythm/neck pickup, I max the volume knob, and I roll back the tone to about 5, this gives it a very crunchy distortion. I play the quiet parts of the song with the switch on lead, then when I do the chorus, I flip the switch to rhythm. It is almost like have a dual channel amp.
EDIT
Adding pocket metal muff video
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