You are the flaws and Day 16(edit: added video)

When asked about who was his biggest influence as a guitarist, the technical shredder Steve Vai said this about Brian May

"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

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.