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.

Guitarcade Spotlight:Scale Warriors and Day 26

Guitarcade Spotlight: Scale Warriors

Scale Warriors is a scale practice game that focuses on you playing the notes in different orders and different amounts.  Every enemy of a type has the same patterns to them, so eventually you can combo kill them without even needing to see where they are standing.  Each successful note has your character jumping to the enemy and punching or kicking them to the next note.

The game takes its inspiration from the old 8 bit era beat'em ups like Double Dragon and River City Ransom.  The bad guys are a gang that has wronged the players, and you must proceed through "stages" where you fight regular bad guys and eventually special "boss" fights that have extended scale sequences.

I really wanted to like Scale Warriors, it was probably my most looked forward to game in the Guitarcade.  I am a scale playing nut, so I thought I'd play the hell out of it.  The reality is that I have not, as of yet, played a lot of it.  The Scale Racer game, to be spotlighted later, is better at teaching scale shapes IMO, while Scale Warriors is made for improving your general note playing abilities, and developing muscle memory patterns.  I think they have the games listed backwards when it comes to recommendations, I think Scale Racer should be first, and then you do Scale Warriors after.  As I learn new scales, I will use this game more, I think.

Day 26

I did quite a few things outside of Rocksmith today.  Last week Rocksmith got a lot of new Oasis songs to play, and there's one included with the game already.  I've seen that Wonderwall is made much easier by having a Capo, so I went today and bought a Capo.  It is really weird for me to own a capo.  Growing up, the Capo was this thing you got in your "starter" kits, but never knew exactly why to use it.  I don't remember a single friend ever using a capo.  So the fact that I know why to use a capo makes me a bit happy.  Also, if you have read this, I bitched about a lot of songs I want to play are in E Flat.  My brain actually lit a few sparks, and I had this question: If I tune E Flat, and use a capo on the first fret, isn't that being in E now?  So I shot the question to Google, and I was correct! You can, indeed, do that.  All the more reason for me to own a capo.

I'm working on going backwards through my scales in a musical way.  I can walk up and down my scales pretty easily, and I can make music with them and all that, but going from the B string to the G is just not as smooth as when I go the reverse way, or when I do E to A in the Pentatonic minor.  So I don't really need Rocksmith for that practice, I watch Yogscast videos on youtube and just absent mindedly practice this, committing it to muscle memory.

I also bought a 70's tastic looking journal and some colored pencils.  My brain works better when I write things down.  You can tell me a whole list of groceries 5 times in a row, and ask me to repeat it once, and I'll probably get 2 or 3 right.  My brain just doesn't store info like that.  I write the list down, and I'll be able to tell you, probably in order, 3 weeks from now, the entire list.  So that's what my journal is going to be, Skypp-notation on chords and scales.  Oh I have books, especially bass books, that talk about all this too.  But writing it down will help me out immensely.  Maybe it would help you too?  Try it out.

I did get some session play in at the end of the night.  Probably about 30 minutes?  I don't know, time flies when I'm in session mode.  Still, well over an hour of practice and guitar-study today.