Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with guitar

Can we earn money through our online guitar lessons?

Gomez_in_the_South — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:14:46 -0800

Is there a way to earn revenues through our guitar lesson videos online? Myself and a couple of friends create guitar lessons which are currently posted to Youtube. We enjoy helping people to learn the guitar as well as the positive feedback we get.

We would enjoy it even more if we could earn some revenue from our efforts. Most of our lessons are based on popular songs. We show the chords and will play the first few notes of each section of a song.

Are there any services where we could post our videos and get some income?

We're based in South Africa so the Youtube partner program isn't an option for us. If we were in the US/UK would we be eligible for the Youtube partner program? I remember that Justin's videos were temporarily suspended quite a while ago but he is obviously very active currently.

Help me fix my G string!

metajc — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:55:57 -0800

Can I get my guitar fixed so that my G string is in tune with the other strings both when fretted or free-ballin? I have had a Hondo Deluxe Series 750 electric guitar since 1993. I bought it for $80. It's probably an awful guitar but it is now a part of me. I've never had or wanted another electric guitar.

The problem is the G string sounds in tune with other strings when it's played open but off when fretted. If I tune it so that it's in tune when fretted, it's out of tune when open. ACK!

I've asked a good guitar store tech if he could fix it and what the problem was but he wasn't sure.

It has pretty "normal" tuner posts, little hooks for holding down the string at the head, a plastic nut, and Dimarzio bridge that pulls the strings to the back of the guitar ... action is perfect. It's like a strat.

How do I get that G string in tune? If it's too hard to tell, please direct me to some guitar maintenance websites where I might learn more.

Gift for a Bossa Nova Guitarist

alms — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 20:28:55 -0800

My Secret Santee is a Bossa Nova Guitarist. Help me find a couple of CDs that will surprise and delight him. Yes, I know: previously and previously.

The problem is that my Santee is a not a newbie looking to cut his teeth on the highlights of Bossa Nova. He's a professional (albeit not always well-paid) Bossa Nova guitarist. So, we're not looking for greatest hits, but something obscure and amazing in Bossa Nova or a related genre, by an artist he may or may not know. It could be an oldie, or something cutting edge.

My budget would probably cover two or three CDs.

Thanks in advance!

Help for a musically challenged future guitar player

nokry56 — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 17:25:56 -0800

Want to learn to play the guitar. Recently discovered the guitar I have is classical, not western acoustic. Can I still learn how I want? And other questions from a non-musical dreamer. I picked up a 1984 Garcia classical guitar. It was free so I can't complain, but I was somewhat disappointed when I realized it wasn't what I envisioned (steel string Western). I'd rather stick with what I have than investing money into another hobby I'm not fully committed to, but if I have to, I have to.

Here are my basic questions, which I haven't been able to find a solid answer on.

-Eventually I want to buy a steel string acoustic, but for now can I learn on this guitar then easily transfer my knowledge over to a Western style if I enjoy it as much as I expect?

-Should I use a pick? I know I COULD but is it proper?

-Do you strum on a classical or just finger pick one string or something?

-Will the beginners course located here work for learning how to play? The lessons seem oriented towards a steel string, and I'm not musical enough to know if it matters. What particular things should I look out for that I'll have to do differently with a classical?

-I plan to buy a kapo. Are there different kinds for steel strings vs. classical?

Any other advice/lesson sources, thoughts, explanations are welcome. I know nothing about music but am pretty motivated to learn the guitar.

Guitar ID?

fire&wings — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 04:35:54 -0800

Guitar identification... Photos here and here. What is that? Person playing it is Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead if it helps..

Screech

frankly mister — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:18:07 -0800

That guitar bend technique where, with distortion on, you bend a string up to meet the pitch of an adjacent string...what's that called? Is there a specific name for this technique?

Here's a few examples:

Pavement - Grounded

Kings of Leon - Sex on Fire

Pixies - Hey

Identify Music Please

weapons-grade pandemonium — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:56:27 -0800

What is the music playing here? Who is the guitarist?

Others like St. James Infirmary?

Baby_Balrog — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:53:25 -0800

My band does a great cover of St. James Infirmary Blues. What else should we do that's in the same vein? Here's a bozillion .mp3s of St. James so you can get a feel for it. It looks like it's been categorized under pre-war blues. It sounds great - we do it as a three-piece... guitar, banjo, fiddle with three-part vocal harmonies. It plays well on the fiddle - what other tunes capture this kind of dark, painful sound in a blues way that translates well to string band?

Help me be a standup guy ... with a guitar.

lpsguy — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:20:44 -0800

Help me be a standup guy ... with a guitar. Okay, so it's been a little over two years since I started to learn to play guitar. It's going great. I'm progressing. I still love it. As a matter of fact, it's going well enough that my teacher asked me to play with her at a restaurant where she regularly gigs. Cool. I'm up for that. I was a standup comedian for a while so stages are not a frightening place for me.

Here's the rub: I just realized I've never played standing up. Yep, in two years of practing and even jamming with friends, I've done the whole thing sitting down. This week I threw a strap on the guitar, stood up and whoa, the whole thing was different. I had real trouble.

So ... help. Any tips to make this transition swift and painless? Or do I just have to play standing up a lot? Anyone else encounter this? How did you overcome it?

guitar tuning for kids

memebake — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:38:18 -0800

Can people recommend diagrams and electronic guitar tuner gadgets to help a 12 year old tune a guitar? My nephews have all the kit needed to become an awesome boy band (well, once they learn how to play, anyway) but currently the thing holding them back is that the electric guitar is always out of tune and no-one knows how to tune it. They have an electronic guitar tuner but it is totally crap and just seems to give random advice when you try to tune.

So, can anyone recommend:
1) simple instructions, understandable by kids, on how to tune by ear (e.g. what note is each string supposed to be, where do you hold the strings down to tune each one against the next, etc)
2) a decent electronic guitar tuner that actually works and is simple to use

(because even if you have (1) down, you still need (2) to get at least one of the strings right, to tune the others relative to it)

Printable instructions are preferable to videos, thanks.

Where to get guitar tab files for iphone app?

metajc — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 19:12:10 -0800

Where can I find .gp4, .gp5, or .ptb tab files (preferably free) ... because they work with this awesome guitar iphone app thing I just impulse-bought! Although, if there is an amazing outlet, I'd pay a membership. Don't want to buy them piecemeal though. So, there's this iphone app that downloads ".gp4, .gp5, or .ptb tab files" (which I'd never heard of before today) and then runs them through this awesome little visual and audio synth player so you can watch (and hear!) the fingering fly by.

The app comes with a few default songs/tab files but also hints that you can find these files somewhere online and provides an interface for downloading them from Google. Unfortunately, my Google-fu fails at finding any new files and the support chap at the app's maker said he was ethically bound against pointing me in any one direction or something -- though he did learn me the names of the filetypes, above. If you've ever looked for lyrics and guitar tabs online, you know it's one of the spammiest hell holes next to the second-hand beanie baby market / pr0n portals.

I'm really just looking for some Kinks, Bowie for now ... if they happen to have Duane Denison's secrets out there, Skip James, bring it! I'd love to see this thing crank through some Robert Johnson or John Fahey or something.

I just wanna slappa da bass while people in clown costumes swing around me.

tylerfulltilt — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 17:46:57 -0800

I play bass guitar. I'm not bad at it. In fact, I'm quite good. How do I get auditions to start playing for touring musicals and the like? (and do I stand a chance?) A little backstory: My wife decided to audition for a community theater production of Rent. Which got me thinking. Why don't I try to land a spot playing bass instruments in a show? The only problem is that I have no contacts. Google searches for auditions don't turn up much. How do I get started doing this? Do I need to get representation? Do I need to just know people? I have no idea where to begin with this.

And for those of you with experience, here's a brief rundown of my abilities. Perhaps you can give it a quick look and tell me If I'm being deluded.

+ : I'm very experienced on my instrument. I've played in live situations before. I've got very good technique and a great sense of tempo and rhythm. I can play really any style. I know a little theory and I can read tab, chord charts, and sheet music. I'm mostly experienced with electric fretted and fretless bass, but I can play an acoustic upright, both pizz. and arc.

- : Never actually played in a theater production before. But everyone has to start somewhere right?

You got me so I don't know what this song is

TimeTravelSpeed — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:06:39 -0800

Help me identify a song I heard briefly on the radio. I'm pretty sure it was Van Halen, and I think it might have been "Got me goin" but with a long Joe Satriani-like intro solo. However, all the renditions I've found online have no such intro, so I'm second-guessing myself. The intro was ~30 seconds long and was melodic. There's a long finger-tapping bit which plays around with different arpeggio scales followed by a few seconds of silence and electric guitars launching into a recognizable intro to a famous tune that I just don't remember now.

Sub-question: what other finger-tapping solos are fun to play on guitar? For example, "Hot for Teacher" by Van Halen, "Digital Love" or "Aerodynamic" by Daft Punk, etc.

Ima let ya finish but what kind of guitar are you playing?

cazoo — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:51:08 -0800

Taylor Swift Filter: Did anyone catch Taylor Swift on last nights SNL? I'd like to know what kind of acoustic guitar she was playing. I believe she used it twice, in the opening monologue and then for her musical numbers.

It looked like it was made of Hawaiian Koa wood. I didn't get a good look at the headstock to see the manufacturers name but maybe someone else caught it. Thanks.

Sorry, I don't have any pics.

Strobe Tuners

otherwordlyglow — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:11:22 -0800

I need help buying a strobe tuner for a gift. I know nothing about them. My husband has suggested that he'd like a strobe tuner for his guitars (he plays bass guitar primarily but also acoustic and electric guitars). From what I can tell, they seem awfully expensive. He even suggested that they were probably too expensive to get as a gift but perhaps there's something used that I can find on eBay or elsewhere? That would be fine. I'm aware that there are software-based tuners but he's a gadget guy and would prefer a device.

So first, are there decent inexpensive (under $150) strobe tuners available for retail? And if not, what should I be looking for in a used one and where? Since I have zero background in this item, I'd like some general tips on what makes a good strobe tuner.

I can hear the ocean

uncleozzy — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 06:48:01 -0800

You are not my amp tech, but maybe you can help me diagnose the source of a strange noise on a brand new guitar amp. Yesterday, I got a tiny tube amp in the mail. After letting it come up to room temperature, I plugged it into a cab (yes, with the right impedance) and played away. No problems at all; made some really nice sounds, by the way.

The next time I turned it on (an hour or two later), there was an awful static noise--sort of like rushing water, or waves crashing--even with the volume all the way down and no guitar attached. Playing through it produced pops and crackles and unpredictable volume changes, and the static continued.

It's got 2 12AX7 tubes (and a funky setup--V1 and one triode of V2 are the preamp, and the other triode on V2 is the power tube). Best I can tell (which is not saying much), they both look normal, glow a healthy orange, aren't microphonic.

Now, the head is brand new, so there's a really good chance it's going back to the vendor as defective, but out of curiosity (and future diagnostic needs), what could the problem be?

Needed: Guitar Nut for small childs guitar.

yfatah — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 07:50:52 -0800

I found a kid sized guitar in the trash the other day and it's missing the nut. The neck at the the nut measures exactly 1 1/2". The E string to E string length would be 1 3/16". I've checked all the guitar nut sellers online and no one seems to have a nut that measures this size. Do I need to just get a blank nut and do the slots myself or is there a seller I'm missing?

Going to 11 not necessary.

cmoj — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 11:32:57 -0800

How best to stay on beat, then find out how I sound to an audience. After playing guitar and singing for years, feeling pretty pessimistic about my ability I set my laptop (MacBook Pro) to record on its built in mic while I played a set's worth of material. Hey! I'm not bad at all, except my rhythm isn't so solid here and there (which I already knew.) If I can work that out, I'd be considering performing, which I've always wanted to do.

The thing is, a metronome doesn't help me. The flat tick. tick. tick. tick. isn't groovy at all, and ends up confusing me. I want to be able to make drum tracks that I can pipe either into an earbud or through a PA or whatever I'm playing through. I might even want to put in a rudimentary bass line. I could do this in garage band or anything similar, but what are my other options? Are there solutions that would let me (I'm not sure how to say this) queue up another few measures if I wanna keep soloing or do an extended outro?

The other part: How can I record myself in such a way that I'd have the best idea of how I'd sound to an audience? Will a 4-track recorder and a mic across the room do it? Will a mic through adapters give me significantly better sound on my MBP?

I wanna shred you up!

sprocket87 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 07:14:12 -0800

Looking for recommendations of modern indie rock artists that aren't afraid to shred & solo - on the electric guitar, not a Casiotone. I'm a major music fan with tastes all over the board. For the past couple years I've been super heavy in the indie world. Much of what I've been listening to is quite, shall we say, "eclectic", and very experimental. I've noticed that prominent use of the guitar seems to be languishing in such music. It's present, yes, but subdued, scrubbed through a sea of effects, and diluted either into a wash of supplemental melody or a wall of noise. The Moog solo has replaced the guitar solo - and though that isn't a bad thing per se, I want to get back to my roots, so to speak.

I feel like I'm ready to go through an electric guitar rennaissance. I miss the riffs, energy, and lead of yore. Few 90's alt songs were lacking a decent solo, and I really miss that.

So, what can you recommend? I'm NOT looking for "classic" examples of solo-centric bands (classic rock, 90s alt, metal, etc). I've got plenty to choose from there (though, for examples' sake, Pink Floyd fits the bill nicely - really experimental music that employed guitar solos masterfully, yet weren't a silly shredder hair band either).

I'm looking for recent/up & coming bands that aren't afraid to turn the amps to 11 and bust out some righteous solos, or, at the minimum, that use the guitar in a technically impressive fashion, instead of just a yawn-inducing strum box.

Note: I'm not just looking for loud, power-chord-weilding indie bands (Glasvegas, Pains of Being Pure at Heart, etc). I love this stuff too, but I want to hear some riffs, man!

Examples:

The White Stripes (their older, more guitar-centric stuff - Ball & Biscuit, etc)
Apollo Up! (This is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about)
Some B.R.M.C.
Alberta Cross, a little
Eh... can't think of any others at the moment?

Don't feel that it has to be restrained to a certain genre, per se, but I'm not looking for pure metal (Uneath, Skeletonwitch, etc). Like I said, lots of easy choices there. I'm looking for more eclectic, indie-oriented groups that incorporate heavy guitar lead into their music.

Thanks!

Live bass guitar looping - how DID he do it?

monster max — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 15:01:33 -0800

A little while back I heard a bass guitar player with some kind of amazing live looping set-up - what on earth was it? I keep wondering what he was doing. All I could see was that he was grabbing (sampling) things he was playing, as he was playing them (ie while he was continuing to play), using foot pedals of some sort, and then incorporating those loops into the rest of the track. Amazing. But how?

Printed Picks Please

signal — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 08:58:10 -0800

I need a reliable guitar pick printer. I need to get around 10.000 guitar picks printed with a logo + URL. 1 color on each side, logo on front, URL on back.
There's a bunch of people who offer this service online, but it's hard to figure out who's legit and who's less than. I'm in Chile, so they'd have to ship internationally.

Where to get a list of guitar pick-up electrical characteristics?

mhjb — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:25:22 -0800

Where can I find a reference chart of the electrical characteristics of common electric guitar pick-ups? Guitar pick-ups have an inherent resistance, capacitance, and inductance. For simulation purposes I need a reference chart listing these values for common pick-up types. Data for individual pick-ups is fairly easy to come by, but I'm looking for a single resource with many different types.

For anyone interested, this question was inspired by the first schematic on this excellent webpage: Rangemaster.de

Acoustic guitar string shopping

crookedgrin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 13:31:21 -0800

Where should I buy high-quality acoustic guitar strings online? Also, suggestions for brands of strings? I'm an experienced guitarist with a really nice acoustic guitar (a custom cedar-top/mahogany John Allison six-string, if you must know). The guitar is built for very light gauge strings; I usually use D'Addario extra light (10-47). I'm tired of buying strings one package at a time from Guitar Center. Anyone know a good (i.e., cheap) place to buy them online, ideally without having to buy a whole crate of them?

Also, any acoustic guitarists have recommendations for awesome, lesser-known strings that I should try out?

VST for Linux?

Squid Voltaire — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 15:26:55 -0800

What do Linux people do for realtime music effects? I used to play around with AudioMulch and a whole bunch of sweet VST effects on my Windows machine, and it was great. You know, stuff like Transverb and the like.

Now I use Linux, and while there are a host of advantages, there is no VST (something about the license from Steinberg, I think?). In fact, the DAWs I've used (Audacity and Ardour) don't seem to be set up for effects processing at all.

I'm assuming that you are meant to do you effects processing upstream, and chain it into the DAW at the last step (I use JACK, so this wouldn't be a problem) but that's just a guess. So...

A) What do Linux people do for digital audio effects? Is there maybe a nice converter or emulator or something I could run that will let me use my old windows stuff?

and B) I presume that there's some sort of program that takes in audio, runs it through an effect, and spits it out again, right? What is it? I use Rarkarrack, but that's only good for a certain number of effects (and is also impossible to spell).

Any advice?

"I got all five senses and I slept last night..."

Inspector.Gadget — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:06:35 -0800

Soundtrackfilter: Please recommend to me mostly-instrumental, sometimes dark, contemplative soundtrack albums (or even compilations or regular albums) in the vein of Michael Andrews' work for Donnie Darko or Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd's soundtrack for Mysterious Skin. As you might imagine from me citing Donnie Darko, I'm also open to soundtracks with a considerable 80s synth cheese element - even better if the songs are tweaked a bit a la M83 to not be so cheesy. Anything on the brooding <> inspired spectrum is especially welcome. As a point of reference, I very much enjoyed the recent movie Brick and would like to find soundtrack or ambient songs that capture that sort of "pieces fall into place, and it's awesome/terrible" feeling.

Thanks in advance, hivemind! My guess is that anyone with broad exposure to ambient, modern classical, guitar-based instrumental, electronic shoegaze, post-rock, etc. albums is sitting on at least a few recommendations.