When it comes to writing your own songs most people mess about with musical ideas until they fall in some kind of logical, musical structure. Most people will remember how they play their own songs, some may make a quick recording as a document and note as to how the song goes. What about writing the whole song down, chords, melody, rhythm and the whole structure? Why would someone want to do this? Once you can write down your melodies, chords and structure you will known exactly what goes in within your song. VEry useful for when you want to play your song with other people, or even just for yourself: It will make it easier to make changes in your songs, or in case something does not work, to see what it is that is not working.

 

When it comes to writing melodies guitarplayers can use tablature to write down the melodies: Find the notes you are singing on the guitar and write them down as you would do with for any guitartab. You can write down the rhythm underneath your tab, this so you will remember the feel of your melody.

Once you may have notated your song you may want to create different versions of your song, make variations in the movement of the chords, change the rhythm, maybe change the style completely. It is all up to you and because you can now see what is going on you are no longer searching for things in the dark.

 

Happy playing and hope to see you soon again.
Eddie

                                 Get the Process Started:

Most people who get introduced to playing guitar solos will start out with pentatonic scales or some other scales. Those scaletones will need to live somewhere, you can play chords yourself and play some notes in between the chords, this will help but it may be difficult in the beginning as you will need to maintain the rhythm of the chords while playing single notes at the same time.
An alterative to overcome this problem is to use backing tracks which will play songs (or part of songs) while you can focus on playing melodic ideas with a scale which will form the backbone of you solo.

A better idea to get those chords to play is to record the chords onto a loop pedal, then (while the loop is playing) jam your solo ideas over the looped chords. Why is using a loop pedal better than using backing tracks? You actually played those chords yourself, you created the rhythm and hopefully will have a feel to play over those chords.

                               Where Do We Go From Here?

 

Okay now you have your chords playing back to you and you can play some melodic ideas over those chords, how can you make those notes improve to make them sound like a music statement?

Playing Phrases is the answer. A music phrase is a short idea, a short melody or riff. Once you have one idea your goal is to connect that idea to the next phrase, in this way your phrases will become short, musical stories. Solos form little musical ideas put together. The better the melodic content of these short ideas are, the better the listener will be able to hear what you are trying to play. The typical beginner fault is to make the solo sound like “searching for the right notes”
Once you have the “right” notes, connect them with other notes to make the solos longer and more convincing.

Singing melodic ideas before you play is a good habit to play better melodic solos on the guitar. Try to make a habit of singing your notes, it will improve your solos and overal musical ideas.

 

Happy exploring, and hope to see you soon again.

Eddie

Sounds like a crazy idea eh? I know, but it does work. Let me explain: Ideally you should know the tone of your guitaramps in your head. If you know what they sound like before you play you will know what you can get out of them and how they will respond in any situation.

If you have a few guitaramps around plug in a radio into them and listen: Listen to how the controls respond while you listen to speech, change the settings and see what happens. Some amps may sound tinny, no matter what you do with the controls, others will change and give you a much better sound to the spoken word.

A guitar will respond differently, and your amps are for guitar, so really………
The radio-test is to give you in a nutshell what the general tone of your amp is like. If you have two almost, similar amps the differences may show up better when you listen to speech.
You can also do the test with music, but speech is quite good, as it is natural and not much has been added to the sound of what you hear.

What about plugging a mike into a guitaramp? You can do this, but the results are not great: You need to cranck the volume to get good results, not like with radio —radio will have its own volume control which works like another preamp, plenty of volume there, not the same with a microphone—-

Happy experimenting with the tone of your amp and hope to catch you soon again,
Eddie 

Happy 2014!

The Marshall JCM 900 may be well known as a guitar amp but it also works well for bass.
When you want to use the amp for bassapplication make sure you use speakercabinet which uses bass speakers.

Marshall is renowed for its distortion sound, you may wonder how does this work then for the bassguitar? Most bassplayers like to play with a clear sound.
The JCM 900 is a flexible amp in terms of tones, when you want to use the amp for bass you may want to dial in less treble. Boosting the midcontrol will give the amp more power, also add as much bass as you want.
The result? A mellow tone which can be as loud as you want. It may not be as deep as what people get from a traditional bassamp, but the sound is good enough to use in a bandsituation or for recording.
Give it a try to see what you think.

Happy playing and hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

Jamming may seem to be easy for the inexperienced: Play anything which comes to mind and job done? Almost, what about if you jam with others, and whatever you play needs to be good and solid for others to understand and work with?
The key to all jamming is: Be clear with your ideas, keep your ideas simple and solid at the same time, be able to put a rhythm underneath anything you play (the simpler your ideas, the easier this will be).

Most beginners will play an idea, next time this idea will be different, third time idea will be different again and not a solid as the first time. Why is this? Probably, because people cannot hear their ideas in their head before they play, a bit like thinking aloud while talking. Not bad, but do this when you are on your own, when you jam with others make sure you know your ideas. If you are only starting out, keep your ideas simple—logical, since your vocabulary and technical skills may be limit at the moment, but still, you can jam and should really—–

The advantages of being able to jam are enormous: You can generate ideas which may kick-start new songs, you will learn to vary your ideas and increase your vocabulary.

The danger of jamming is that you will enjoy it too much, and you will end up jamming, and jamming is the only thing you do. Not bad, but since time is scarse you may also need to keep time free to learn new songs and work on technique and other skills.

Enjoy your jamming and hope to catch you again soon,
Eddie

The Fender Bassman was one of the first amps Leo Fender designed when he started out the Fender company in the late 40s and early 50s. Fender kept the Bassman in their line of products until the ealy 1980s. Over time the amp was changed and redesigned to fit the needs of changing musical trends.
The Bassman 135 is one of the Silver Face series which also contained the 50 and 70 version.
The amp was orgininally designed to give you clean sounds at any volume level.

              Layout Controls and Channels:

The 135 is a two channel amp designed for guitar and bass. The Bass channel contains two inputs, one for high impedance- and one for low impedance guitars. Furthermore there is a Volume, Bass, Mid and Treble control. A small notch filter is there to add more bass to the overal sound.
The Normal Channel is of a similar layout with, again, two different impedance inputs and the same three controls of Volume, Bass, Mid and Treble.  The notchfilter on the Normal channel will add more brightness to the overal sound.
There is one Master volume to control the overal level of the amp.

Since these amps were designed to give you clean sounds, you cannot overdrive any of the channels by cranking the volume to create distortion (something you can on most Marshall amps).

The Basschannel has a more grainy character compared to the Normal channel.
The amp is a valve amp originally designed to be set-up with 6L6 valves.

 

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Eddie

The Marshall and Les Paul combination is renowed for giving you classic blues/and rock tones.
Using the Stratocaster through a Marshall JCM 900 will sound different, the tones may not be as thick as what you would get whilst using a Les Paul.

Bluestones are not all about being thich and creamy, some people use subtle tones for their chord-and improvising. The Boss BD-2 is a great companion to get some of those tones from the Marshall JCM 900.

Here are some guidelines as how to set up your JCM 900 (or any other Marshall amp for that matter) go for a clean tone, even while you play the strings hard, do not let the amp break up too much. Set up the BD-2 for a trebly tone, 12.15 will do (12.00 being tonecontrol set half way) while you keep the gain control down as much as you can tolerate. Open the gain too much and you will loose the subtle sound from the amp.
When you are doing it right you will get a bit of hair on the sound when you dig in your strings, chords may also give you a bit more dirt, but for the single string notes you should get a clear tone with added brightness. Adding a delay will add a bit of sparkle to the overal sound. Keep your delay out of the range of Slapback, go for glassy tones, but not too much as the sound will get too hollow and echoy.

As for guitars to use to get this sound, single coils may be your best friend. Humbuckers may be too powerful to give you the sweetness, but use this approach as a guideline only.

Happy experimenting and see you soon again,
Eddie

Learning to play the guitar on your own can be a struggle in the beginning: Your fingers may not be able to make those open chords sound clear, tuning the guitar properly may be beyound your abilities. At some point you may give up trying to do it all on your own and look for some help with the support of a guitar teacher.

A good teacher should be able to help you finding the right songs for you, songs you may like and you may also be able to play wtihin a short space of time. This will help you with your own motivation for learning to play the guitar.

Getting a  guitar teacher right from the start may help you avoiding bad habits you may later have to unlearn. Learning to play the guitar (and music) is just forming a new set a habits into your mind, and they can be learned quickly with the right guidance.

A teacher may make the learning of the guitar more enjoyable. He (or she) may know some shortcuts to fingering particular chords, any alternative fingerings which may be easier for you. Learning together is also more fun than just doing it all on your own.

A guitar teacher may help you making contact with other students, people you could jam with, share interests with and may be able to pick up tips from to improve your own learning experience.

A guitar teacher may be able to give you feedback on the performance of your amplifier and guitar. Your guitar may be easier to play once it had a proper set-up. How would you know? A guitar teacher may make you aware of particular issues related to your guitar. A guitar which sounds good and plays well will help you with your learning, it will albe be a joy to play and you will always be looking forward to pick it up to play. A must if you ask me, especially when you are starting out.

Hope to see you soon again,
Eddie

Most guitarplayer will start out with coversongs. For some people, this may be the only kind of guitarplaying they do.
When it comes to learing a coversong you can learn to play all the parts of the song as they are on the original recording. This may be a good measure to see how good you are as a player.
Once you can play a particular song you may want to look at playing that particular song in a different setting: If the original guitarpart is mainly strumming, you could look at picking. Will the song still stand up when you pick the chords? You may have to change the rhythm a bit. Will it make the song more mellow? Good, as this means you will now have another version of the song which you can play at occassions when energetic strumming may feel a bit out of place.
It may also be possible to play the song as an instrumental: You may play chord-and melody tones at the same time, and you may also have to alter the rhythm of the song for it to work smoothly.

Developing different versions of the same song you play will teach you a lot about what is possible with the given song, it will also develop you sense of style and playing ability. It will certainly give you feedback on what you can-and cannot do at the moment.

 

Keep experiment and enjoy the process.
Eddie

Sometimes learning solos of your favourite songs may be troublesome. Your technique may be lacking in skills, the solo may be too fast for your fingers to follow, you may find particular parts of the solo are hard to play. Often it helps just to play over the solo with whatever you can play, as long as it makes some sense with the chords. Playing over the exhisting solo will help you with the feel of the solo and song, even when the notes you are playing are not correct. It may also be motivating to play along with something you want to play.

When you work on your own guitarplaying, discipline may be an issue, you may also be impatient and struggle to see where you are going with the solo. Any good teacher can guide you with the process of learning (and playing) the solo.
It helps to keep an open mind to your own learning and guitar playing. If you really want something you will be able to play whatever it is you want to play, but it may take you time and you may also need to learn some other aspects of guitarplaying you may have overlooked before.

Keep at it and have fun.
Eddie