The tech of Fender vs Gibson and day 15

Like a sports team rivalry, a lot of new players are going to come across fans that are very argumentive between the 2 guitar heavy weights in the industry; Fender and Gibson.  To a lot of non-guitarists its just going to be a style war.  Fender looks like they have 1950's car styling and Gibson has that old guitar look to them.

Gibson has been making guitars for 120 years, and they go back to the era of mandolins and banjos, and a lot of their guitar designs were based on that.  Many of their newer designs, like the Flying V and Explorer, were ways of combating Fender's success in the 50's and 60's.  Fender came in and said "we can do it modern".  Their guitars were light, they were based on ease of play in "modern" music, and weren't shackled by an old legacy.  So you have the "old vs new" thing going on too.

The real, applicable choice between the two brands comes down to sound.  There are really two distinctive sounds that come from choosing Fender or Gibson.  That is "single coil" vs "Humbucker".  Even today, with new types of pickups, they are described in these terms.

Those are single coils.  This is what Fender traditionally used.  We have wrapped magnets that are aligned in a single coil.  They are bright and very well defined.  Hendrix in his early years favored these, and Clapton in his later years favored them.  They have a crispness to them.  From a technology standpoint, they do have a problem, the 60 cycle hum.  When these coils are powered differently(adjusting the blend), you get a hum sound.  This hum is the sound of alternating current going through the coils, and it happens in more than just guitar pickups.

That is a Humbucker, patented by Gibson.  There were ways of eliminating the hum before, but Gibson's design is the mainstay of the industry.  Without going into too much detail, it is two coils wired in reverse polarity, so that one side's 60hz hum smashes into the other side's reverse polarity 60hz hum, and you basically get no hum.  You also get a darker, less crisp sound from the pickup.  It is a matter of preference on if you find that a down side.

Hendrix played Woodstock with single coils, but Clapton did much of his work in Cream with a humbucker.  Heavy metal is often associated with the dark sound of a humbucker, unless you look at Iron Maiden.  Jimmy Page's most used guitar live is a Les Paul with humbuckers, but recording he preferred a telecaster(an earlier Fender guitar using single coil).  So there's a famous trap where some knucklehead will talk about Page using Les Paul, making it the ultimate tone, and maybe even playing a song for you so you can hear... and its a telecaster on the recording.  You can get close enough with either to do the kind of music you want.  There's nothing wrong with having a preference either, just watch out chasing popular guitarist's "tone" because that can be a money pit.

Day 15

Ugh.  I am not a tall person, which means I do not have long arms.  This has not bothered me much with bass guitar(whose scale is about 10 inches more than a regular guitar) because I tend to play up near the neck.  In Motown, you want that thicker, rounder sound that comes from playing near the neck.  I rarely, if ever play near the bridge.  Well, in palm muting, my right hand is basically married to the bridge so that I can get the right sound.  This means new angles for my left hand, because palm muting also works best at the farthest end of the fretboard near the nut.  So my arms are extended, my wrist is at a new angle, all this meaning I have sore arms all the way through.

Its a good thing I like playing metal inspired riffs.  I've done over an hour of just that today, despite my arms aching.  Palm muting is such a game changer for me.  I can go back and experiment with EVERYTHING I've ever played.  Ever home-grown riff, every hacked together "song" I have ever done, and add palm muting.  I have done lots and lots of just muted sweeps to add percussion and keep timing, and now I can do actual palm muting.  I'm looking at what works where, and what sounds good, and I'm still working on getting my technique down.  This feels like "learning guitar" to me.  Sorry to maybe be a downer to any new guitarists, but learning guitar hurts.  There are ways to minimize things hurting, and definitely it hurts less if done "correctly" but there's no doubt about it, you're going to ache, get blisters, and get tired.  Its those that soldier on through it that get stronger and are able to do it.

That's not all I'm doing today though.

I'm working on songs.  I am still having problems learning songs using the game's interface though.  I think I am going to just have to use the Riff Repeater option to slow down and learn parts till I'm fast enough to play it normal.  The main game likes to dumb down the sounds in parts that I suck at, and then at parts where I'm almost 100% on, they keep it dumbed down, and I'm like "quit treating me like an idiot because I don't have the solo down, I've got the chorus, I've done the chorus, you've seen I can do the chorus 100%, stop adjusting the chorus already" and it gets my head all angry and next thing you know, I fuck up the chorus.

With one of the songs I'm working with, I'm getting the most known parts done using the riff repeater, and then going on youtube to see some "how to do" videos on other things, because sometimes I can see things better watching hands play the song, than just looking at notes coming at me head on.  So I guess that's a suggestion for Rocksmith 20XX.  Include videos of people playing the song, because sometimes that helps.