Gamers who play musical instruments

I bought this as my office chair and for the express purpose of being able to sit and practice guitar. It has worked out really well. The arms flip completely out of the way and having the ring under it allows me to my foot up so the guitar sits snugly on my leg.

I just sit on the floor, usually.

I use my office chair, but I do use a foot stool for my left foot. Makes it way more comfy.

I did just order a foot stool, but probably for the opposite leg than people intend. Thanks for the chair suggestions all!

Picked up a couple used guitar pedals on ebay and the first one got here today, a Pigtronix fat overdrive. I am having a ton of fun playing 90s grunge, lol.

Fredrik_S wrote:

In the spirit of the new year, I decided to actually sit down and figure out this whole "4th, 7th, diminished 13th" stuff on the theory side of things. I want to spend this year (or how ever long it takes) until I can understand this whole music theory thing. With that in mind, I went looking for some tools and I found two things that really work for me when it comes to learning this:

1. A book called "The guitar cook book". No other book has so simply laid out what all the intervals are, and how to find them, as well and as easy as this book does. I had to order it from France, but it wasn't expensive and I just had to wait a bit for it to get here. After 5 pages I now have a clear understanding of how to figure where the 3rd, diminished 7th, 6th and 13th, etc etc, is on the fretboard. Highly, highly recommended.

2. To practice all this I found an app called "Solo" (link to youtube video) made by Tom Quayle. It listens to your playing while prompting you to find 3rd, 5th, 7th from a root and once you have found the right note, it moves on to the next one. So for example: You ask the app to listen for 3rd and 5th's in the key of C. The app then shows a big C and under it 1, 3, 5. You have to play the notes in ascending or descending, OR random, order which forces the muscle memory of where those notes are in relation to the root.

Wish me luck! After two weeks of using these two things for about 30 minutes / day I can finally see how scales and chords are actually constructed. I have a long way to go, but after 30 years of just f*cking around playing guitar I figured it was time to actually understand it.

Based on your recommendation, I ordered the Guitar Cookbook and am really enjoying it. I am someone who loves playing scales and this is a great resource.

I don't know how much use of this is to a lot of people here, but Native Instruments has a bonkers sale on their expansions going on now. Usually these things go for $50 / expansion and now you can get 9 of them for $99. It's basically 7 free expansions for your Kontakt / Massive / Reaktor / Maschine or any other NI instruments you have.

https://www.native-instruments.com/en/catalog/9-for-99-special/

Anyone recommend any particular brand or model of wall mount hooks for hanging guitars by the neck?

Mixolyde wrote:

Anyone recommend any particular brand or model of wall mount hooks for hanging guitars by the neck?

I use these and they work great.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GtrKeeperSSBW--string-swing-cc01k-guitar-keeper-hanger-black-walnut

Fredrik_S wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Anyone recommend any particular brand or model of wall mount hooks for hanging guitars by the neck?

I use these and they work great.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GtrKeeperSSBW--string-swing-cc01k-guitar-keeper-hanger-black-walnut

Thanks!

Yes. I’ve used those in the past. They are great.

Funny story. When we sold and moved out of our previous condo, we were told that the guitar hangers had to stay on the wall. They would be considered a fixture and any fixtures in place when we showed the house had to remain. I was allowed to take my guitars with me, and that was good enough for me. The guitars looked good on that wall.

Fredrik_S wrote:
Mixolyde wrote:

Anyone recommend any particular brand or model of wall mount hooks for hanging guitars by the neck?

I use these and they work great.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/GtrKeeperSSBW--string-swing-cc01k-guitar-keeper-hanger-black-walnut

Yep, I'm up to 4 of them now. Work really well, can't complain at all.

Very recently I did this cover with my friend and choir director on piano. It’s a cool take on what I’m my mind is very much a guitar song.

I wish I could get rolling on an original song. For now here’s this cover...

Made a little repetitive electronic thing. Not sure if it's good or junk.

https://soundcloud.com/fredrik_s/afk

Fredrik_S wrote:

Made a little repetitive electronic thing. Not sure if it's good or junk.

https://soundcloud.com/fredrik_s/afk

It's cool IMO

Podunk wrote:
Fredrik_S wrote:

Made a little repetitive electronic thing. Not sure if it's good or junk.

https://soundcloud.com/fredrik_s/afk

It's cool IMO

Yeah. I love this! Very Parliament and Funkadelic feel but slowed down and chilled out. It’s funky AF.

My daughter has gone through and named all of my guitars. It turns out all the acoustics are boys and my lone electric is a lady. Why are acoustics boys and the electric a girl, you might ask?

"Acoustics have nuts," she says with a giggle.

Long time readers can guess which daughter this was.

You probably shouldn’t tell her, but electrics have nuts too.

Where are the guitar pics with name labels?

RawkGWJ wrote:

You probably shouldn’t tell her, but electrics have nuts too.

She has the bridge pins confused with the nut, but it was just so funny. My electric is a strat, so no pins. She named the all black strat Juniper, my parlor Martin Marty, and travel 3/4 martin Sasha(Alexander diminutive), and my dreadnought Big Jim.

It took me almost 30 years of playing guitar and fighting the urge, but I finally learned the chords to Freebird, so now I can be /that/ guy.

Lol, love it.

Next, Stairway.

Freebird is to the electric guitar what Wonderwall is to the acoustic guitar.

Anybody here ever play a melodica? I've been contemplating getting one for a couple of years, and hearing an NPR interview with Jon Batiste pretty much cemented it for me. The only problem is that I know next to nothing about them. Any recs?

RawkGWJ wrote:

Next, Stairway.

Been playing that one (poorly) since high school. Love Stairway.

sometimesdee wrote:

Anybody here ever play a melodica? I've been contemplating getting one for a couple of years, and hearing an NPR interview with Jon Batiste pretty much cemented it for me. The only problem is that I know next to nothing about them. Any recs?

First off, I know nothing about melodicas, but I do know Google-fu. I’m also fairly skilled in comparison shopping over the internet, and I have a lot of experience with buying and researching musical instruments. I LOVE that Jon Batiste has inspired you to try something new.

I’m going to do some looking around on the webs, and I will come back to this thread to give you my full report. Let me assure you that I’m not going out of my way for this. I love gathering info about musical instruments on the web. This is going to be a pleasure.

I’ll be back in a bit.

Appreciated

Right.

There are entry level melodicas that cost about $40.00USD. I wouldn’t recommend anything at this price point.

The mid level melodicas cost about $120.00USD. Suzuki and Yamaha both make solid melodicas at this price point. Honestly, this is what I would recommend. They are performance quality, and should last a long time. After about a year they might need some maintenance. You can easily learn how to maintain and retune them yourself, or pay for someone to do it for you.

These melodicas come in 32 key and 37 key variants. The 37 key melodicas have 5 extra notes on the high end. The 32 key melodicas are smaller and slightly more portable? If I was buying one of these melodicas, I would insist on one of the 37 key models, but whatever you prefer is fine.

This one has a hard plastic case
Yamaha Pianica, 37-note Melodica, Maroon (P37D)
This one has a soft gig bag
SUZUKI M-37C Melodion Melodica

The high end melodicas run from $500.00 to $600.00 USD. These are mostly made by Suzuki. They have 44 keys and an instrument cable input. The price is high, but so is the quality.

To put it into perspective, I own several guitars; acoustic and electric. All of my guitars retail at under $400.00USD. High end guitars typically cost between $1,200.00 and $3,000.00USD. I’ve never felt that I needed a more expensive guitar. If I had assloads of disposable income, all of my guitars would be super high end instruments. As it is, I’m a salt-of-the-earth guy, and I’m extremely satisfied with all of my guitars.

I hope that helps.

Last summer I bought a mediocre full-sized keyboard (an Alesis Recital). I wanted to learn piano but didn't have much to spend, so I got something minimally functional even if it was below the basic specs most everyone here recommended (the best I could get for $250 or so instead of $500+). Anyway, I'm glad I did! I spent a good long time trying to learn using Yousician, and I did learn some with that, but my real breakthrough came closer to last Christmas when I just got a good old fashioned book. It makes a huge difference to my learning process to have all the notes in front of me and to be able to play them at whatever speed I choose to play them (I do wish Yousician would, in addition to letting you tweak the speed, have a mode where the music would advance just as quickly as you hit the next correct key, which feels like it shouldn't be impossible?). For the last 4-5 months, I've had the book set up with my piano next to my work computer, and a few times a day I'll just take a 20 minute break to work on whatever the piece of music I'm trying to play, and work on that until I can play it without much trouble (and some of them I can still play from memory). And I just now finished the last piece in the book! Time to buy book 2.