Legendary: Appetite for Destruction Les Paul and day 53

Legendary: Slash's '59 Derrig Les Paul, AKA The Appetite for Destruction Guitar

Few people brought Les Paul back in "style" more than Slash of Guns N Roses.  Arguably no one has needed to bring it back since, as it has stayed one of the top guitars since.  The Les Paul has gone in and out of style as time passed.  It has looked too old before, and then became something that only pretentious rock millionaires used.  The story of Slash's Les Paul begins during the era after the 70's, when punk music had branded the Les Paul as gaudy symbols of wealth, and the flashy hair metal bands saw it as too old fashioned and apparently devoid of spikes and neon.  This can be seen in the picture below.  If you wanted to look the part, the B. C. Rich guitars of the time were the ultimate in boutique style.  Today they are overseas made budget instruments, in the early 80's they were the height of showing off.  Slash had other ideas though.

Slash's B C Rich guitars he eventually gave up

One of the big "we made it" memories with Guns N Roses was the day Slash brought home a Les Paul for the first time.  It sounded amazing.  The band played more jam sessions just to hear how well the guitar sounded.  However, by the time Appetite for Destruction was to be recorded, he sold it to pay his drug habit.  Slash claims that most of Appetite was recorded on B. C. Rich guitars, but when it came time to lay down the lead parts, they sounded horrible.  Their manager went out and found a Les Paul of the late 50's style, and brought it to Slash.  It had an amazing sound to it.  It turns out that this guitar was made by Kris Derrig, it is not even an original Gibson.  Slash has used this guitar on every album he's ever done.  He will do rhythm parts and small parts with others, but the Derrig Les Paul is his main guitar used for recording.

It shocks a lot of people to find out that he is not playing a real Gibson.  The deal was that he could keep Gibson on the headstock, and Gibson wouldn't bitch, but he was always call it a Les Paul.  Later Gibson would make copies and issue special "Slash" Les Pauls, but the "original" as Slash calls it, is only a replica made in the 80's.

The journey of this guitar is Legendary, but it has mainly stayed in the hands of Slash for decades.  What of that first Les Paul Slash had?  Its called The Hunterburst, and while not as famous, it has a very complicated story.  A story for another post at another time(maybe tomorrow?).

Day 53

Doing a big Guitarcade day since i'm playing sorta late at night.

Earlier in the day I did play outside of Rocksmith.  I was watching these interviews with guitar players where the interviewer asked about their techniques and stuff.  I have to say that every time I see Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top in an interview, and he's playing guitar, I learn something I use.  Just like Angus Young, Billy has this reputation for doing the same kind of "easy" blues rock over and over.  Billy was one of Hendrix's favorite guitar players.  Jimmy once said that Billy would be the next amazing guitarist everyone talks about.  I don't think many people realize the techniques he sneaks and works in.  Billy does tapping, he did tapping before it became a "thing".  Lots of people will crap on tapping as a cheap trick to sound shreddy and fancy, but if Billy Gibbons says it belongs in rock and roll, then it belongs in rock and roll.  Makes me want to study Dusty Hill a bit more and see what I can learn about bass from him.  All in due time I guess.

I really really like Scale Racer at the moment.  I think I always wanted to beat Rad Racer, but only ever got to the later tracks a few times... I probably haven't touched the game in a serious way in 20 years now that I think about it.  I really wish I'd push myself in Castle Chordead a bit more.  I keep wanting to stop before I get "too far ahead" of myself and haven't committed the chords to memory.  Maybe tomorrow I'll just go as far as I can get.

TV Yellow and Day 51

TV Yellow

This finish, more than any, made me raise an eyebrow when I saw it.  I would expect such a color from Fender, but not Gibson.  Fender used surplus car paint supplies, and did the whole art deco clean look.  Gibson, on the other hand, used stained and burst finishes that required much more time consuming, hand-crafted work.  So what is up with this yellow finish?

Well the hint is in the name.  TV Yellow.  The story goes that one of the Gibson people had visited the set of a medical drama during the 1950's.  To their amazement, the entire staff of the hospital were clothed in yellow scrubs and yellow lab coats.  It intrigued them, so they asked the people on the set.  They told him that the glare of the lights in the studio would smear and reflect weird into the cameras, which were all black and white at the time.  The Gibson guy knew instantly because they had the same problems with instruments used in live performances.


To a black and white TV, a yellow guitar appears as a very bright, white color.  Gibson went further though, and they established a yellow color that looked yellow to the naked eye, but would show the wood grain when viewed through a television camera, making it seem like it was a very high quality, time consuming translucent white finish on the instrument.

The days of needing the TV Yellow color are over, but enough musicians used them in the past that they are now considered a staple finish, especially for the more streamlined models of the 60's that Gibson came out with, including the SG body styled Les Pauls, the Les Paul Jr's, and Les Paul double cut Specials.

Day 51

Knockin' on Heaven's door is still going.  I'm doing what they recommend, and I've gone up about 10% mastery with it today.  I guess that's working?  I said I'd give the Rocksmith way of teaching songs a fair shake in these last 10 days of the challenge and so I'm sticking to it.  It really does not seem that hard of a song.

I looked yesterday at my Ubisoft account, an account so old it had a password I know I had not used since my Everquest days.  It says I have 3 games, but two of them are so old they aren't registering as games that the Ubisoft website can pull up lol.  I'm thinking it was Shadowbane that tied me to the account.  Anyway.  It says 9 hours played!  9 hours??!?  What the hell, I was past 9 hours in the first couple of days haha.  I have no idea how its reading it, but its reading it very very wrongly.  I know that I have not done all my 1 hour of playing inside Rocksmith, but I know from experience that I have waaaaaaay closer if not past 60 hours already.  I've spent entire afternoons, 3+ hours in session mode, especially at the beginning.

I am so excited about the future.  I do not see the 60 days being up as an "end" to the challenge, if anything I see it as a looming "its time to get down to business" thing.  I plan on taking up through the bass route, and doing more in the rhythm section of the game.  I'm going to put my nose to the grindstone learning 70's hard rock because it looks like I have a very good aptitude for it.  Sadly the non-Zeppelin 70's rock, but the power chord and blues rock, yes.  I'm already working Stranglehold, Black Betty, and Alright Now(by Free) into a combined melody.  This blog should continue, maybe not daily, but in some compacity.

Legendary: Lucy and Day 37

One of the most famous Les Pauls ever, Lucy was a red Les Paul Standard owned and used by George Harrison of the Beatles for many decades.  The most famous of the stories involving the Les Paul and The Beatles was that it shared the spotlight for The White Album.  Harrison had a song that he thought was great, but McCartney and Lennon were fighting too much to pay much attention to it.  They were saying it should be cut.  Harrison got angry and left the studio.  The next day he came back with the Les Paul and put it in the hands of Eric Clapton.  With Clapton in studio, the battling band was on their best behavior and created one of the greatest Beatles guitar-centric songs ever, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".

The history of this Les Paul goes back to before Harrison.  Rick Derringer owned the guitar, getting it in a trade for an amp.  Back then, Derringer says it was a particularly grimey looking gold top '57.  His dad repeatedly told him that it looks old and worn out, so when they were near the Gibson factory they had it refinished there.  At the time the Gibson SG's were popular in a translucent red, so that is what it was refinished in.  Rick later sold the guitar because he said the re-finish had totally changed the sound to something he didn't like, and it was at the shop that Eric Clapton bought it.  Clapton had begun using his Gibson SG for all his Cream music.  Shortly after, Clapton committed to using SG's for all the Cream related material.  Not wanting the Les Paul to live in a closet, he gifted it to George Harrison.  George said it reminded him of Lucille Ball, and so the guitar was re-named Lucy.

Harrison kept the guitar and used it through the rest of the Beatle's career, and when the band broke up he used it in his own solo endeavors.  The guitar was stolen in the 70's, and sold to a pawn shop.  It was sold for a small sum of money to an unnamed patron.  The sale was tracked, and the man was revealed to be living in Mexico.  Using a 3rd party, the guitar was negotiated for and eventually returned in exchange for a new Les Paul and some other music equipment.  Harrison kept the guitar close by his side for the rest of his life.

Day 37

Not a big eventful day really.  

I said that later my memoirs might turn out to be posts like today.  I did my warm up in Rocksmith, and then switched to my regular amp and practiced all my clean material, then played some bluesy rock, and finally cranked the gain and played some metal sounding stuff.  I did not get around to learning the Funk strumming like I was saying yesterday.  Maybe tomorrow.  I really don't even know the word for the technique.  It is kind of like Palm muting.  You palm mute "chug" and people will think "metal".  You do a multi-string slide and people think "blues".  So I really need to learn the basic technique of Funk.

I did get my bass out and make some winter time adjustments to the neck.  Georgia weather...

I need to re-organize my play area.  I've got some wall hooks I want to use to organize my cables, and I need to move my bass amp into the same area as my guitar amp.  Nothing discourages you from practice like a hassle.  

Self indulgence and Day 27

Warning: this is purely a post about gear.  It is a What If scenario of if I had all my money from my bass rig in my hand and went to buy guitar stuff instead, what would I have.  Some people are turned off about this sort of pie in the sky dreaming.  I won't be selling my bass gear, EVER.  Its just that its day 27 and I need topics to go in between my other topics.  So excuse me if I get self indulgent for a while, feel free to scroll down to the Day 27 memoir.

Well first I have to decide what to do about the money in my cabs.  Guitar cabs have the same advantage as sub-500 dollar guitars, they sell really well.  So the markup on them are less than bass cabs.  Also, they are smaller and lighter by their very nature compared to bass speakers.  Much of the money in my bass cabs are features that you just do not get in guitar cabs to amplify the price.  So, I am going to allocate my speaker costs 50% into the amp and 50% into the guitar.

The Guitar

Wait a minute, you may say, I thought you were into SG's?  Well I am, but fortunately SG Standards with the options I want are doable under $1000.  Plus, the last few years Gibson has been futzing with the pickguard, and I like the 70's "batwing" pickguards.  So used is where I'd go these days.  Also I have an SG already, so to get the most bang for my buck, I'm looking at Les Pauls.   I change which bursts I like all the time, currently I'm on a Caramel-burst or Tea Burst phase.  These Standard Premiums are being liquidated for a huge mark down as of this writing.  Flame top?  Check.  Binding? Check.  Pickup covers? check.  Trap inlays? Check.  No pre-installed pickguard, meaning I don't have "worm holes" in the top?  Check.  This is the picture of a Les paul that people have in their minds when they think Les Paul.

The amp

Blackstar HT20

For what I do, I think 20 all tube watts is what I need.  I would go with the 5 watt version, but I plan on using the clean channel for any heavy metal pedals I want to change the sound with.  I keep switching between wanting Egnator and Blackstar, but currently I hear so much good stuff about Blackstar.  Also, they were once employees of Marshall, so I'm not too far from my old fanboy self when I go for Blackstar.  An effects loop is a must, so the Marshalls of this price range are out.  I would get two of the 1x12 cabs they have for their HT5 series.  Each is rated at 50 watts, so I'm still safe.  I like having 2 1x12's for the same reason I did that with my bass, its just more versatile of a set up.  I enjoy being able to keep one at home, and keep one at a practice spot if I wanted, and use them both if playing outside.

And... I have a ton left over. There are more expensive Les Pauls, but what's the point?  That's my dream Les Paul right there.  There are 40, 50 and 100 watt version of that amp, but that means I'd go deaf before I have the natural tube overdrive I like.  Sticking with the premise, all being spent on music gear, I guess I'd go looking for my dream SG, which would be used and I'd still have money left over.  I'd have a "beater" SG and a fancy SG, I would have enough left over for a les paul studio.  Maybe a caramel burst Les Paul Studio pro so I'm not too scared to take a Les Paul to friend's homes for jam sessions.

And there's a lesson to be learned in that last sentence.  Well, that'll be another post for another day.



Day 27

I did lots of stuff today.

Aside from my warm up in Guitarcade, I'm adding the Chord 101 and Chord 102 practice tracks to the warm up.  I have a solid 45 minutes of "warm up" time in Rocksmith now.  I know as I type these up it might seem like I do less and less Rocksmith, but its not true, its just that its kind of routine at the moment while I work on chords.

I'm ending up with 2 separate journals. One is for theory notes, scale shapes, chord charts etc.  One journal is my song notation book.  Each song I put in here will have its chords, its key, and whatever information I need to memorize.  I will have different versions and strum patterns for them, and then set up my personal arrangement.  Why have a personal arrangement?  Well if someone asks you to play a song while they're just hanging out, they aren't looking for 5 minutes of lone guitar and no vocals.  They want the high points of the song that are recognizable, so this is the kind of "1 minute arrangement" that I want to come up with for requested songs.

I am practicing a very versatile song that I feel is going to help me with lots of my chord playing.  It is "Simple Kind of Man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the lyrics just rub the the wrong way.  I've grew up hearing this song and I know a lot of people that know the song.  The song is 3 chords, and you can do a very simple version, a version with advanced strumming patterns, and even a power chord arrangement over it.  There's also the version that most resembles what you hear on the radio, with lots of embellishments.  I am very good at going from C Major to A Minor thanks to Rocksmith, both of those chords are taught by the Chord lesson tracks, and also used fairly early in Return to Castle Chordead.  I'm needing to work the most on the G chord, which is new to me.

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.