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.

Spotlight Guitarcade: String Skip Saloon and Day 41

String Skip Saloon

String Skip Saloon is a game where you play a bartender/owner cow-girl.  Bandits have decided to raid and destroy your saloon, so you have to defend it by shooting a pop-cork gun at them to knock them out.  Each "lane" of bandits is a string on your guitar.  You pluck/pick/play the string to make the cow-girl fire in that lane.

This game is a take on a game I had never known about or played until a little over a year ago.  It is called "Tapper" and the reason I know about it is because it was the video game character bar in Wreck-it-Ralph.  In that game you pour and sling beer down the counter tops to the awaiting cowboys.  The sounds are very period correct, and the game is almost exactly what you'd expect from a game inspired by Tapper.

String Skip Saloon helped me immensely... kind of.  The game did not help me learn the strings, though since I was a bass player before, I had practice with that sort of thing already.  What the game got me used to was the way the game presented the lessons and songs.  In traditional music, the top string is actually the bottom string.  Meaning, "high" "top" string is your highest pitched, skinniest string, and your "low" or "bottom" string is your thickest, deep bass string.  Counter intuitive to beginners, but "normal" for anyone that's used sheet music or tabs.  The way the game is set up, like Guitar Hero where the notes fly toward you, having it a mirror image of your guitar is easier... if you're new.  String Skip Saloon helped me learn an alternate view of notes and schematics and get "used" to it.  I flipped the strings on screen, that IS an option, so it would feel familiar, but it made the actual song and lesson thing harder.  So you'll just have to figure out which is best for you, and String Skip Saloon can help.

Changes I'd make?  I'd allow the strings to be switched for JUST this game, instead of having to switch them for all the lessons and songs as well.

Day 41

I have said before that because of my written word habits, I record just about anything interesting I might not remember later.  I came across one of the recordings when I was practicing power chords.  It was a clean recording, but there was a part where I continued through the chord into a sort of lead phrase and it sounded great... I stopped for some reason and didn't continue and went back to the chords.  I could not remember how I played what was recorded there, but it caused me to get to experimenting.

I'm working on moving in and out of chords while playing some lead.  I'm trying to get it all to sound like it all fits.  I know a lot of it is timing, but it is also getting the phrase right in the amount of time before you have to go back to the chord so that you don't sound like you put a halt on the song.  At least, that's what is going through my mind as I work on and try to get it working right.  Its much easier to do when playing some chugging metal, because the distortion will carry you through.  With a clean sound, its much harder, and so that's what I've been focusing on.  The more I get into chords, the more I want an acoustic.  Rocksmith has an acoustic modeling amp, so that's a help.

Once again, and I can't emphasize this enough, Power Chords are wonderful for practicing this.  Don't turn your nose at them.  I can go back and forth to them easily, and it really gets my confidence up.  Once you're physically prepared for this kind of play, you can then move on to using other types of chords.  They can easily be stepping stones, and they sound great and that's encouraging.  They help me and so I can only assume they'd help you.

I guess I have not had a huge "break through" in a while, and I'm not sure if this is good reading or not.  Playing both rhythm and lead in the same song might not be an epiphany but it is a real skill I'm practicing along with chords.  My pieces are getting better though.  My phrases are matching up and I'm sure what I play can be confused as music.