matonanjin

btw, I remember thinking how shocking it was to see Tommy with an electric.

It is from the cruise. I was there!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!😮😎 And it was amazing!

Coincidentally, Josh Smith just released a new TrueFire course: My Guitar Heroes. From TrueFire: ”'BB King, Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jimi Hendrix, Danny Gatton, Cornell Dupree and Steve Cropper have all greatly influenced my own sound as I'm sure they've influenced many other players. In this course, I'll show you a few key techniques and approaches that I picked up from each one of them. These 7 men changed my life. I hope I can pay it forward in a little way by turning someone new onto them' In this course, Josh will first introduce his heroes to you and describe why he found them so influential. After each discussion, Josh will then present a performance study illustrating those influences in a musical context, over a backing track. A breakdown follows every performance and Josh will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches in play"

I don't mind telling you guys I am sorely disappointed in you! 😡 All this time, almost a year, and no one has posted this!

We, my wife and I, first saw Josh Smith (and met him) on the Keeping the Blues Alive at Sea Cruise. He is one awesome guitarist. On the cruise we bought his cd, Inception, and after the cruise toured around the Florida Keys for several days. The CD was on nonstop in the rental car! The title cut is a beautiful guitar instrumental. As the title states Josh Smith has a new Signature Guitar, the FlatVI. Josh is probably fairly well know for his raving about his Chapin T-bird. In his article in February, 2019, Guitar Techniques he states, "The second I picked it up it was like, 'I was waiting for this my whole life'". I have to assume the new Ibanez is modeled after it. I'm not a T style guy so Josh's new sig axe is not on my radar. But if you are it may be on yours? Josh talks about it here: Back to the cruise! At the artist get together I told Josh, "I have an odd request. Would you autograph your Guitar Techniques article?". He agreed:

@Plantsman13 how could you have walked "on too many previous posts"? Thanks for your input.

I'm not sure why you need the metronome if you are playing along with the song. When the song starts you should be able to tap your foot, or however you get the beat, and then play along with that beat. But if you want to be able to get the tempo, to set a metronome, perhaps to work a lick or section, there are ways. First, most metronomes will have a "tap tempo" mode. This allows you to, as the name suggests, to tap a button on the metronome with the beat and then the metronome will set itself to that speed. On my Line 6 POD 500X the button is just called "TAP". On my phone app, "Mobile Metronome Pro", there is a button that says "or tap tempo here". You may have to consult the manual for your metronome to find out how to start and stop it. But the concept is the same. You start the metronome counting and then after a time period stop it. The metronome counted the beats and the number of seconds you had it count those beats. The metronome does the math and then gives you beats/minute. Lastly, you can just time it yourself. Do it the way we healthcare people always used to count heart rates before it, like everything, went digital!🤔 Remember the nurse or healthcare person holding your wrist (palpating) and looking at his/her watch? Tap along to the song and count and time yourself. Count the beats and then, depending on how long you measured, convert it to 1 minute. If you counted 23 beats for 15 seconds, multiply 23 by 4 and you have 92 bpm. Count 31 beats in 10 seconds? 31 x 6 = 186 bpm. Are you listening to metal?😁 The longer you count for the more accurate it will be. At least 15 seconds for most accuracy.

Jay, you will find them worth the wait. But, yes, you want to get started. good luck to you. Anytime you have a question, or frustration, post here. The are a lot of helpful folks here always willing to answer/advise. Even if you don't have a question, post and let us know how you are progressing.

@Oldjock completely off topic, admittedly, but what is your background that you taught CPR? (So did I)

So after a judge granted Gibson bankruptcy protection, much of their problems due to an acquisition feeding frenzy, they acquire another company? I'm not saying this is a bad acquisition. At least it is core guitar/music company unlike some of consumer electronics businesses Juszkiewicz went after. But I wonder what Gibson's bondholders and other lenders are thinking right now. I wonder if the bankruptcy trustee had to approve the purchase.

Congratulations on the new 335! You can't go wrong with the classic blues guitar. Enjoy it for a very long time.

Barb is my wife😉

Well, you clearly have your priorities jumbled, Mike😮😉 Skip work and pick up that beautiful guitar! As others said, I love the back. And the sides! Enjoy that guitar a long time!

Thanks, @Triple-o!!!! If ever there was a song that can described as fun!!!!!!!!

Yes, @Oasis. Exactly what @Wim VD1 recommended. The first 10 or so sessions of Learn and Master Guitar are the basics of learning guitar you will need for any type of playing you will do. Then with session 10 Steve starts to specialize. Session 10 is fingerstyle, 13 is blues, 15 is rock, 18 is jazz, etc. I would suggest you finish at least session 10. At that point you can decide if you 1) want to complete all of L&M G; 2) switch over to the Fingerstyle course, or 2) continue in L&M G and start on the Fingerstyle course working it concurrently (if you have the time to do both). Good luck to you! Keep us appraised of your progress.

@Ionut let me think on the G chord and get back to you. Hopefully, someone more qualified than I will get back to you in the meantime. Regarding the A chord, I have seen it played so many different ways that I have come to the conclusion that if it works for you, Great! In fact, for any chord, I think a lot of people agree that if it rings out clearly and the fingering works for you, that is the perfect way to play it! My philosophy has become, "If it works and doesn't spook the horses, perfect!" My own journey with the A chord is somewhat illustrative. I started out fingering the chord with my 1, 2, 3 fingers. I played it for a while as such. But then I started L&MG and saw where Steve taught it fingering 2,3,4 and especially with my chubby, little fingers that worked so much better. But then I went to my weekly jam and one of the guys suggested, "Have you ever played the A as a barre?" He wasn't talking about the full barre chords you are going to learn in sessions 7 and 8. He played it with a "mini-barre" barring the 4th, 3rd and 2nd strings with his 3rd finger. And I did that for a while. I'm a blues guy (or wannabe). Blues uses a lot of 7th chords. And you have learned the A7 open chord. But I recently learned an A7 using that mini-barre A chord with my 1st finger and then adding the 3rd finger on the 3rd fret to make it a 7 chord: A fun little quick A7 chord and now when just playing the A I use the mini barre and play the 1st string open.

Mandy, we all are so saddened to hear about your loss. It's always difficult to hear this but especially so with it occurring to someone that is such a valued member of our guitar family. When the time is right you will pick up the guitar again. Until then we are all here for you.

@filipmo, glad you're back to playing and good luck on getting back to it. Of course, the first place I'm going to direct you is Steve's session on Pentatonics, Session 11 Gibson's Learn and Master Guitar, is about the pentatonic scale. Having nearly completed the course I can tell you it is the best thing that I have done for my learning guitar. And session 11 is representative of the quality of the course. Outside of Learn and Master, a lot of us use TrueFire courses to complement our studies. Almost all TrueFire instructors are top notch, at least all whose courses I have purchased. Jeff McErlain is one of the most popular there and he has a course dedicated to your subject, Pentatonic Deep Dive. I do own this but haven't opened it yet so I can't comment. Anther one that looks interesting to me is 50 All Purpose Pentatonic Licks You Must Know by James Hogan. I don't know anything about this course or the instructor. And I don't know how much theory about Pentatonics there is (or how much you want) or other general knowledge about the scale there is. Or is it just rote learning of licks. But it is on sale right now for only $5! A couple of the Truefire instructors have held quarantine YouTube lessons over the last pandemic lockdown months about the Penta Scale. Jeff, who I mentioned above, and Corey Congilio both have. Searching their names combined with the word "Pentatonic" in a YT search should return those lessons. If I recall Jeff had a 3 week series on it. Keep us updated on your progress.

@ShadowBoxer86 I am similar to @Eracer_Team-DougH and the Gary Hoey course; in that I don't know when I'll be able to give a report. I haven't even unpacked it yet! And, oh yeah, I did gave Santa a suggestion of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2019 😁

And I just picked up Robbie Calvo's Rhythm Craft. It looks really interesting and covers rhythm in a lot of different genres. It seems like I always just look at blues stuff and this is going to be more broad based. "In this new course we are going to learn the art of great rhythm guitar playing in a variety of popular styles. For each genre we'll be looking at standard progressions, typical rhythms for that style, chord vocabulary and some stylized tricks of the trade. We'll look at making simple chords sound more interesting by adding additional voices. We'll take simple chords and invert them to add variety and movement. What is a slash chord and why should you care? Well, when you see and hear how easy and powerful changing a bass note is under your chords you are going to beg me for more! I'll give you a multitude of ideas on how to create great overdub or second guitarist parts for your band or song arrangements. Think about the layers and textures created in the studio by bands like Def Leppard, Boston, or even Eric Clapton. The studio session cats all know the secret to how smaller guitar parts layered together create amazing arrangements in pop and rock music and I'll show you how. Rhythm Craft is an easy and concise musical approach to making you the rhythm guitarist you should and will want to be. I'll even throw in some great applied harmony and theory as we go along which will open doors and windows for you in such an enlightening way. Let's get cracking on this course so that you can take your Rhythm Craft to a groovy new level " I repeat, for $5?

Yep, @Eracer_Team-DougH. What have you got to lose?! Well, other than the $5.🤔 And you're probably getting tired of me talking about the cruise, but we saw Gary Hoey for the first time there. We had never even heard of him before then. What an awesome player. I hope that you will report back on how he is as an instructor.

Steve often says "Learn All You Can". And on more than one occasion we have talked on here about TrueFire courses as a means to that end. TrueFire currently has what they call their "Rhythm Jamboree" sale in progress. Lot's of their great courses on sale for 20% off. Go have a look. What I always find interesting at TrueFire sales are their "$5 Downloads". As the title implies the course is only available as a download. There is no option for a DVD version, But the normally $29 course is available for $5. I just picked up Rob Garland's The Guitarist's Pentathlon for that $5. During the sale the sale items rotate every hour. So it doesn't hurt to check back routinely if you're hoping for a particular course to go on sale. Happy Shopping!

Bryan, what a great analogy to the Ford/Chevy/Dodge loyalty these guitar conversation show. You and I, and probably only a minority of other rural members on here, can appreciate the passion some of these arguments in those coffee shops can manifest. (btw, I'm in the Ram camp lol) And Bryan and @William Nelson I had never heard of Bourgeois before. Thank you. And @Tom M I am still really drooling over the Martin EC. I also came really close on one, a used one, at a local store here. Used but mint. I just delayed too long and missed it.

People begin to learn guitar and more often than not, at some point, want to record themselves. There are different motivations for this, to record a song to share with a friend, to share with an instructor for critique, to post on a forum such as this. If for no other reason, I think most will agree it is educational For me that first self recording was that, educational. And every bit as depressing but we are not going to go on that tangent! Whatever the reason may be, a post usually follows asking how to get started. And one of the revelations during that conversation is usually that one needs two things: an audio interface and a digital audio workstation (DAW). Hopefully this will help the new student to recording find the first half or this equation, the audio interface. Sweetwater just published: 9 Best Audio Interfaces Under $500 Shootout – Take a Listen! Hopefully, in the not too distant future perhaps someone will find and post a similar "shootout" comparing the DAW's.