There is a HUGE amount of info from S. Cal amp & guitar tech

[stubhead]

Boy, you read through this, it's like there really are some secrets still out there. Neil Young's exploding amp, straight necks....

http://www.tonequest.com/pdf_pubs/samples/TQRSep06_Proof.pdf

 

[mayfly]

I've  always set up my necks as straight as I could get them.  It's an old Rickenbacker trick - the 12 strings don't really come alive until you have the neck die straight.

This is pretty easy with warmoth pro necks - just set and forget.  For anything else though - get ready to keep tweaking it all the time!! 

 

[stubhead]

I know how to set them up as low as can be, but I've never had the need for it - if you were shredding solos for 5 hours a night, maybe. But I get the best tone out of any single note if the string bounces off the next fret up no more than once, and that's called "medium" action. Fender factory specs are lower than most reasonable people want it. I've seen a few of the special ones - Stanley Jordan let me fool around with his guitar for a little while, as did Steve Morse. Morse actually plays with pretty high action, he's just... Steve Morse. And Jordan has two entirely separate brains.

 

[JCizzle]

I know how to set them up as low as can be, but I've never had the need for it - if you were shredding solos for 5 hours a night, maybe. But I get the best tone out of any single note if the string bounces off the next fret up no more than once, and that's called "medium" action. Fender factory specs are lower than most reasonable people want it. I've seen a few of the special ones - Stanley Jordan let me fool around with his guitar for a little while, as did Steve Morse. Morse actually plays with pretty high action, he's just... Steve Morse. And Jordan has two entirely separate brains.

I was always curious about Morse's set up. That is surprising considering how mind-bogglingly fast that dude can pick and cross strings. He can alternate pick arpeggios faster than most people can sweep pick, and he has tone for days.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

The few pro guitars I've seen have had surprisingly high action.  As for straight vs. relieved for low action, techs and luthiers I've talked to and read things by are split 50/50.  A string's vibration isn't straight, so it would seem a neck shouldn't be.

 

[Super Turbo Deluxe Custom]

I wonder if high action is just a necessity for the touring to musician.  Phoenix to Miami to Vegas to Houston to Denver probably makes a neck move quite a bit.

 

[stubhead]

It's interesting that for all the tone freak's talk about nitro finishes and single-action trussrod tone, if you go through the signature models at Music Man, Ibanez, Fender and all, there's a whole lot of poly finishes and double acting truss rods. I don't know how much can be derived from that - even though artists typically say that they can walk into a store and pick up a signature model and it's "the same" as what they play, Morse and Steve Vai are pretty much still playing their very first prototypes, which probably weren't assembled at some anonymous Chinese prison factory... (you think?) Everything about sound and tone is so interrelated & there are so many ways to compensate one characteristic with another, the idea of "best" gets weird.

I don't even agree with some of the talk from this guy, at least for me being able to control some aspects of tone and volume from the guitars is important and I certainly DON'T think of "Neil Young" when I'm asked to name the 20 best-sounding guitarists... or 50, or 200... :laughing3: I do wish I had a full-time guitar tech AND a full-time amp tech traveling with me at all times, making sure they had enough racks of fans set up to give my pwecious l'il tweedie amp a good blow to keep it from exploding... I don't think the guy's even aware he exists at the same level of self-indulgent service as the guy who had to take the brown M&M's out for Van Halen! But then, I'm not a "Neil Young guy", you either "get it" - or not. If I had all his money I'd just write songs about how happy I was and how great it was to be rich - but nobody'd buy them. :sad1:

 

[Cagey]

I was always curious about Morse's set up. That is surprising considering how mind-bogglingly fast that dude can pick and cross strings. He can alternate pick arpeggios faster than most people can sweep pick, and he has tone for days.

Best teacher I ever had was a young studio-grade live player - a real Pete Thorn type - and his guitar(s) weren't necessarily anything special. His favorite was a Warmoth wreck that you'd never look at twice. But, you talk about being able to romp and stomp on the thing! Just incredible, and I'm not easily amused.

Thing is, one of his rules was you never play any faster than you can play accurately. You make a mistake, you slow down the metronome. Keep doing that until you can play without mistakes, then practice that way for a while. Then you can kick it up a notch. Follow that simple rule, and you learn how to control your fingers. Control your fingers, and your guitar can be all sorts of screwed up and it won't matter. You'll make it work, because you're in control. That allows you to have nice tone because you don't have to set the guitar up to where the strings are practically fretting themselves and sounding dead without artificial stimulation.

 

[Patrick from Davis]

If I had all his money I'd just write songs about how happy I was and how great it was to be rich - but nobody'd buy them. :sad1:

I think Joe Walsh beat you to it.  And I guess it did sell a couple of singles...
Patrick

 

[hachikid]

^LOL!

 

[JCizzle]

I don't think the guy's even aware he exists at the same level of self-indulgent service as the guy who had to take the brown M&M's out for Van Halen! But then, I'm not a "Neil Young guy", you either "get it" - or not. If I had all his money I'd just write songs about how happy I was and how great it was to be rich - but nobody'd buy them. :sad1:

To be fair, DLR did that to make sure they were paying attention to the details in his contract.

 

[JCizzle]

I was always curious about Morse's set up. That is surprising considering how mind-bogglingly fast that dude can pick and cross strings. He can alternate pick arpeggios faster than most people can sweep pick, and he has tone for days.

Best teacher I ever had was a young studio-grade live player - a real Pete Thorn type - and his guitar(s) weren't necessarily anything special. His favorite was a Warmoth wreck that you'd never look at twice. But, you talk about being able to romp and stomp on the thing! Just incredible, and I'm not easily amused.

Thing is, one of his rules was you never play any faster than you can play accurately. You make a mistake, you slow down the metronome. Keep doing that until you can play without mistakes, then practice that way for a while. Then you can kick it up a notch. Follow that simple rule, and you learn how to control your fingers. Control your fingers, and your guitar can be all sorts of screwed up and it won't matter. You'll make it work, because you're in control. That allows you to have nice tone because you don't have to set the guitar up to where the strings are practically fretting themselves and sounding dead without artificial stimulation.

This is precisely the one thing I took away from the one time I took lessons with a pro. To piggyback on what you said, it also programs your brain to know what it feels like to play something correctly, so when you speed it up, you (hopefully) play it faster and still accurately.

 

[stubhead]

Although, Morse himself says you can try to push the limits, in an organized way. I have his whole metronome system written down for my students, ummmm HERE it is!

Every day when you're specifically doing "speed exercises" you have to find your daily baseline tempo, that at which you can play an exercise perfectly. This can vary a lot, 15% or more - tiredness, a cold, lack of practice, it's not pertinent for this right now. Each exercise has a different baseline depending on difficulty too. I like to choose longer licks for myself, 16 beats with some string-crossing that loops back on itself is perfect because it keeps me interested. Anything works here, Al DiMeola started with threes and fours then moved to combined ones. Regardless, choose one exercise at a time to concentrate on. What Morse says, specifically, is:

“Play the exercise and alternate it with some scales or modes that you already know. Do this for five minutes at the baseline tempo, trying to play each note perfectly in time. Every five minutes, move up one bpm, and repeat what you just did.

After 30 minutes of this, you should have moved up 5 bpm from your baseline tempo. Remember what was the fastest tempo at which you could play all the notes perfectly. It may be your original baseline tempo, but usually you'll hit a higher number in a repetition like this. Now, take the fastest tempo and add 10 percent. Round off the increased number to the nearest setting your machine will display.

Play the exercise and alternate with scales at this increased tempo for five minutes, regardless of whether or not you are making mistakes. Turn off the metronome, and play the exercise one time perfectly, probably at a slower tempo. Now do whatever you want until tomorrow.”

Which ties in perfectly with what another of "my" guys said, John McLaughlin:

"Speed and fluency are a combination of two things. First and foremost, in your imagination, you must hear yourself playing in this way, or it won't happen for you on the fretboard. Secondly, be willing to attack the problem of inarticulation through work and application of exercises."

You have to believe that those 15 notes will fit into this tiny little bit of time.  :laughing3: But understand these guys don't even think of practice as "work" - it's more like breathing, to them. But understand too, when a person says "speed doesn't even matter, man - it's all about soul..." they better have some soul, because they have the chops of a potato chip.

 

[Cagey]

To piggyback on what you said, it also programs your brain to know what it feels like to play something correctly, so when you speed it up, you (hopefully) play it faster and still accurately.

Right. If you play it faster than you can do it accurately, then do that repeatedly, you inadvertently learn how to do it wrong and it sticks. You want to only know how it feels to do it right.

Typing is the same way. I'm a touch-typist from way back. Learned on typewriters with blank keys. I know when I've made a mistake without even looking. Unfortunately, you can't finesse those mistakes away like you can with notes <grin>

 

[swarfrat]

I was rather surprised to hear in a Phil Collen interview that he plays thick necks, 13's and low action. Not your typical shredder recipe. I don't think he has Billy Gibbon's Fibkin gene when it comes to his gear/setup/tone. He seems really down to earth and I don't see barrels of ink spilled over pursuing his tone in the trade rags.

 

[MikeW]

I was lucky enough to have some lessons from a local pro when I was a kid and the most enduring thing he told me was this: An amateur musician practices until he gets it right. A professional musician practices until he can't get it wrong.

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly. I've used the same sort of techniques with my students in the past and it seems to work well, as long as they're willing to work to be fluid.

 

[JCizzle]

I was lucky enough to have some lessons from a local pro when I was a kid and the most enduring thing he told me was this: An amateur musician practices until he gets it right. A professional musician practices until he can't get it wrong.

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly. I've used the same sort of techniques with my students in the past and it seems to work well, as long as they're willing to work to be fluid.

If only I had 12 hours a day to practice...

 

[stubhead]

And we the people don't even know what Morse or John Petrucci sound like when they're really going fast, huh? The audience is going "ooh those magic fingers" and Petrucci's thinking "hmm, what'll I have for dinner?" "Maybe I'll bench-press an SUV...."

 

[mayfly]

I was lucky enough to have some lessons from a local pro when I was a kid and the most enduring thing he told me was this: An amateur musician practices until he gets it right. A professional musician practices until he can't get it wrong.

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly. I've used the same sort of techniques with my students in the past and it seems to work well, as long as they're willing to work to be fluid.

If only I had 12 hours a day to practice...

Make time. 

I practice whenever I have a moment.  Grab 15 minutes over lunch hour and really work with a metranone.  Do it during that half hour after the kids are in bed instead of watching bonehead TV.  Do some quick exercises when the wife is in the shower.

Make time.  It all helps.

 

[MikeW]

I was lucky enough to have some lessons from a local pro when I was a kid and the most enduring thing he told me was this: An amateur musician practices until he gets it right. A professional musician practices until he can't get it wrong.

I think that sums it up pretty succinctly. I've used the same sort of techniques with my students in the past and it seems to work well, as long as they're willing to work to be fluid.

If only I had 12 hours a day to practice...

Make time. 

I practice whenever I have a moment.  Grab 15 minutes over lunch hour and really work with a metranone.  Do it during that half hour after the kids are in bed instead of watching bonehead TV.  Do some quick exercises when the wife is in the shower.

Mayfly is right, even if you can only steal 15 minutes a day, that's 15 minutes more than you played yesterday. And even if that 15 minutes is just spent on one thing (minor scales or open chord transitions), its 15 more minutes than you played before.

One interesting thing I like to do when I've hit a rut in my practicing is to turn on a movie on TV and try to figure out the key to the soundtrack. Then play along. It's great work for dynamics, attack and ear training.