matonanjin

I'm thinking this is a very intersting topic/potential discussion for a new thread, Neil. Beyond the scope of just tonight's Live Lesson? In any case, you first?

Mike, I can't answer about Gibson QC. I haven't dealt with Gibson for a couple years now nor really heard anything. But if you are considering a PRS I can not rave about their QC enough. And if you want the closest to a LP in tone and similar feel look at their model called a McCarty 594. Ted McCarty actually left Gibson and consulted with PRS to design the guitar. The 594 refers to the 24.594" scale length, a nod to LP scale length, and the pickup selection switch has been moved to horn to be more familiar to LP players. I don't own one and it will be a while before I buy another guitar, just buying the Santana. But if I look at another one the 594 will be the top of my shopping list. Every review I've read raves about them. One I read said the 594 is the guitar Gibson would make if they had continued improving the Les Paul. Enjoy shopping!

On his Blues Cruise last year JB has a one hour session with Norm of Norman's Rare Guitars. Joe has sold guitars through there, probably most notably his prototype signature Les Paul. Joe talked about the collection and a lot of the ones he played on stage during his two shows. He spent quite a bit of time talking about his (not sure what year) Gibson Flying V "Amos". With all the Les Pauls Joe owns it seems he has a real soft spot in his heart for Amos. On the stage with him and Norm JB had two of those bursts, one of which was a '59. Norm valued it at about $425,000. As you said Doug, he has quite a collection of those old Les Pauls. They're not all worth 400K but valuable. And he has a lot of old Strats, Teles and 335s. To put a pencil to his collection and try and add up would make one pause. But JB plays them. He's not afraid to take them on the road (and on the ocean) and up on stage. They are not in a glass case.

Hi everybody! I'm here. Officially, legally?, I'll be here in a couple days. I'm finishing up the play along songs at the end of 16 over the next couple days but since I had logged in thought I would pre-announce🤔 Like Neil, I am doing some review. I've gone back and am restudying pentatonic scales. I have the patterns down but just can't seem to get the location of the root note for each box ingrained. I'm going to keep reviewing until I do. And many of us have used Hal Leonard's book on Barre Chords to complement our studies on that. I have found that book and am working the exercises. I am going to go through all of those until I get through "Layla" toward the end. But I digress. Wish me luck on getting up there in the "dusty" area of the fretboard!

Thanks for posting. Keeping in mind Keith's slogan is "helping you get the most music with the least gear", he did make some very interesting points. Most such videos encourage us to get one each from the familiar food groups: Strat, Tele, Les Paul, 335, etc. Keith, on the other hand, made some valid points for not doing so. There is one point that I think he made that is undeniable. With one guitar one becomes forced to "Knowing the guitar inside and out". I am so guilty of not doing this. Probably the one guitar that I have owned that I learned the best was my Les Paul. And I sol;d it. Another one was, "When shopping for guitars we are not practicing guitar". But...............have you seen the new Martin SC-13E?!?! Gotta go!🤔😁😉

I've been a fan of Keith William's 5 Watt World for sometime now. I'm not even sure how I found out about his channel. His "Short History of..." is really interesting. He just put out a video "10 Channels to Watch Right Now 2020". Some of his recommendations are probably familiar to you. Some probably aren't. One of them (I can't remember his name now) Steve recommended on here. Anyway, if you have watched everything on Netflix and Prime, like my wife and I have, here are some suggestions. The guy and the end of this, from the First Nation's Reserve, is awesome and I am going to check out some of his albums.

Since I first heard about it, to attend the Chicago Blues Camp has become one of my bucket list items. And it is fairly high on the list. A week of playing guitar and learning blues in my favorite city?!?! How could it not be high on my list? Predictably, the camp has been cancelled this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the camp can not take place the organizers are offering video lessons by the camp instructors. One chooses which of their instructors you want to get video lessons from and then you receive lessons on such Chicago Blues Classics as Big Boss Man, Killing Floor, Key To The Highway, Stormy Monday. Dust My Broom and others. I won't offer any more details; just click on that link for more information. Other than I will add that a portion of every tuition goes directly to the Blues Foundation Covid-19 Blues Musicians Emergency Relief Fund. All I have to do now is decide which musician I am signing up for. I'm thinking Johnny Burgin. No, maybe Billy Flynn. No. Wait! I saw Joanna Conner on the blues cruise and she is awesome. But she is teaching slide, so no. Well, but wait. I've thought about starting slide maybe now is the time! But what about Dave Spectre?!?! Maybe I'll eventually decide who I'm going to get my lessons from. Go take a look and let us know if you sign up.

@Limatje great job on getting this far in L&MG! Steve has said before that after one gets past session 10 it's appropriate to start "specializing" and bring in outside learning materials in whatever genre is your passion, be that fingerstyle or jazz or blues. "Specializing" is my word, not Steve's, but you know what I mean, I'm sure. So the short answer is "yes". Since Blues is your interest, and mine, it would make sense after finishing 13, the blues session, to start the Blues Spotlight course. My only very minor concern is that bending, and a few other techniques such as sliding, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc., are a big part of blues. Especially bending. I haven't started the Blues Course yet so I don't know how much of this he covers in the beginning of the blues course. But this is covered in your next session of L&MG, Session 14, "Giving Your Playing Some Style". But this is a very minor concern, as I said, and if you are going to continue working session 14 in L&MG concurrently I would say "go for it"! Good luck and keep us posted on your progress!

As Greg ( @gotto) said, one can never have too many backing tracks. In that spirit, I thought I would share one. I'm doing so because #1 this one is, IMHO, really cool, and #2 it's in Eb minor that you don't see very often. (although most of us have software to change the key) Want to get out of A minor blues for a change?😉 Guitar Techniques Magazine provides 4 free backing tracks every issue and this is from the March issue. It's not a copyright infringement! Jacob Quistgaard provides the jam tracks every month. You can go to YouTube and download most of his jam tracks. You can get this one here. The one for download on YT provides some tasty soloing by Jacob at the beginning and, of course, you need to either stream YT to jam to it or convert to mp3. Here it is for you ready to go. I've subscribed to Guitar Techniques since shortly after starting to learn guitar. So you can imagine how many I have collected. Plus many others I've acquired. If there is a particular genre, key, speed, etc. you're looking for let me know. Maybe we should think about a jam track exchange, of non-copyrighted of course, of some sort? Enjoy! GT292_01_BluesJamEbm.mp3

Greg, you are correct: One can't have enough backing tracks. I shudder to think how many I have. I know I have hundreds, probably far more. But I think, I'm almost certain, at some point I'm supposed to do something with them. Beyond just collect them😮😉😁

Get them free here. I have not downloaded them yet myself or sampled them yet so I can't comment on their quality. But coming from Sweetwater I have to think they would be fairly good. Nor do I know genre, speed, keys, etc.

@Linders, welcome back and good luck to you. Keep us posted on your progress.

You all know I'm a PRS fanboy. Or you should know it from my very recent NGD post😉 Or failing that look at my signature.😮 I have also had the pleasure of meeting Paul Reed Smith himself in person once, totally by coincidence, when he held an event at the Chicago Music Exchange. I got the impression, based on this very brief conversation and selfie opportunity, that he is a classy guy. This message below, I feel, largely confirms that impression: "We believe music is a powerful force in the world, and we hope that, in some small way, the stories we are sharing now are a source of comfort, inspiration, or just good old distraction for you." Watch it through to the end for a link to PRS artists that are providing us lessons, free or paid, and concerts, or just reaching out to fans, during this quarantine or lock-down. What PRS calls "Music Unites". I have watched a couple of these and if not hugely educational they were each, at a minimum, a fun distraction.

@Randy120 Thank you! Can there be a better example of "Win/Win"? Something that will potentially give us that mental hygiene break so many of us desperately need right now and at the same time something that could improve our playing?! I say that second part because I have heard so often after we get to a certain point in our learning the process that is going to accelerate our progress more than anything else is "getting out" and playing with others. Of course, in our current environment we can't "get out" so this could possibly be the next best thing. My Wednesday night jam buddies and I keep saying we are going to do this but we haven't. We have to. For my buddies we have been talking about an app called Jamkazam. Please understand. I am not recommending this. I haven't used this yet and so can't recommend it. Theoretically, it seems like a great idea. But living in the country with a ridiculously slow connection my mind immediately goes to lagging and buffering and how could it work in a jamming environment. there is a discussion about this over at Blues Guitar Unleashed and it seems there are problems with connections speed and also something about finding your group and joining in. If anyone on here has any experience with Jamkazam let us know what that experience was. Or if you have done any quarantine jamming with other Guitar Gathering members or anyone! tell us about it!

Compressor Pedals may be the pedal one that is the most confusing to set up and use properly. At least it was for me and I still, from time to time, have to refresh my memory on what the different adjustments are for. This video from JHS pedals does one of the best jobs I have seen of explaining how to set one up. There is some fluff in the video. He takes quite a bit of time at the start describing the history of compressors. I found that interesting but you may want to fast forward to the actual "meat". He also spends some time describing his and competitor model examples. He is very candid about recommending his own, of course. And at the end is some time talking about albums that used compression and his playing guitar. But still, if you are new to compressor pedals, I think you can get a lot out of this.

@Tom M, I agree. That's why I enjoy them. "So much good stuff" in every issue and almost no advertising. And no articles about personalities or in-band fights, etc. Just lessons. I have multiple piles of them and I'll never get through them all. So it really is somewhat silly to resubscribe. But just as an example, in addition to working S16 that I'm on, I have decided to go back and revisit Pentatonic scales. (I'm also revisiting barre chords but that is another story😉) I went back and pulled out Guitar Techniques two part article called "Pentatonic Boot Camp". It ran in the December, 2015, and January, 2016, issues. I am using it each day as my warm-up. Guitar Techniques is expensive, especially for those of us on this side of the ocean. But I cancelled all my other subscriptions, Premier Guitar, Guitar World, Vintage Guitar, and others. I think I tried them all at one point. GT is the only one I read anymore.

Everybody, thanks for the comments/complements. As you would expect I just love playing it. And Henk, "Smooth"? I saw what you did there😎

Sometime ago I tried a PRS Santana at the Chicago Music Exchange and was shocked. I was devastated. The neck felt like a tree trunk. Until then I was sure that, at some point I was going to play a signature model of my guitar idol. So recently I went into our local PRS dealer to try a PRS Special Semi-hollowbody. And on the wall was this Santana. I thought why not at least try it again before trying in the other one? And I don't know why but the neck felt great! I don't know if my preferences have changed. Or has my playing progressed a little to where I am adapting? Or just this particular neck isn't quite as chunky? (Or, possibly most likely, I am rationalizing so I can have my Santana?) And it played and sounded amazing. Anyway, the PRS Special Semi-hollowbody never came off the wall😁😉 2014 PRS Santana 10-top Charcoal Burst!

Maybe you are. Maybe not. But this was at least an interesting discussion and the results somewhat surprising to me. It is not a scientific study and purely the opinion, based on listening, of these four guys. But I often watch Rick Beato's posts and also his posts with Rhett Shull and Dave Onorado. They are often educational and usually entertaining. I changed to 9's on several of my guitars a while ago when I started working on bending. But I did it with the attitude of "but I'll change back to thicker ones after I build up finger strength". I was almost apologetic when I posted anywhere about it. And certainly I was of the Stevie Ray Vaughan school of thought that thicker strings equate to greater tone. What was interesting about the video, among other things, was that pre-SRV most rockers were using 9's or even 8's. I never knew this. The results of this little mini-study at least has me rethinking my going back to thicker strings. 1) What strings do you all use? 2) What are your thoughts on the results of this? 3) Has it changed your opinion of what string gauge to use? Why or why not to all three questions.

This just adds a little to @Eracer_Team-DougH's post to include other musician's. 😁 Banjo players. Accordion players. It's just a joke! 😉

We know one person that will unquestionably come out the other side of this pandemic just fine!!! 😁😉😂

So will I! Barb, Dave see you there! Ron

Disgustingly cute😉😁