Cabrel's 'Je l'Aime à Mourir'. ;/ There's a good YouTube tuto and easy arpégio, the guitar part's in the bag, I'll learn some words now even if I'm not singing.
Due to many things (finishing a major project, weather, riding mates being indisposed) I've had time on my hands.
I saw a Paul Davids vid about Bossa Nova with Dominic Miller and decided to learn Girl from Ipanema. Rick Beato's vid is perfect to my ears (except 2nd last chord in 1st section, G string should be 1 fret down).
I'm really pleased, and can get through it at 75,% speed. Only downside is all the finger style is making the tips of my right thumb and fingers split and the jazz chords have sprained my left thumb making it painful to play and means I can only brake with the right, which nearly caused a tumble today
Ooops - my mistake - it's the B string that's flattened, changing it from an Am6 to a D7/9b. But you knew that...
mate came over today with his quitar and practice amp so we could have a bit of a practice with me on my bass, and also for me to try and learn a bit more guitar. he tried explaining some chord shapes to me but theyre still a bit of a rabbithole to me, so many variations and im still confused by them all. i also struggle with accidentally muting strings i shouldnt because of my finger positions, especially C chord.
he advised for now just try and learn the proper open chords, A and E shape bar(re) chords, and practice power chords for a bit of fun, main thing being practice muting the E string when the power chord is on the A.
one thing i noticed was the difference between his practice amp and my bass amp, which i was happy just learning guitar through, save space and all that. cant remember what it was now (something something cube?) but it made me think that as it was so small i could probably get away with a dedicated guitar amp too for a proper guitar sound.
so....... any recommendations for a small guitar amp? not too expensive as my main focus is and always will be bass.
thanks
If you want tiny, but sounding real I have a Vox Amplug (like a chunky jack plug) which I wire with 3.5 jack cable into my Minirig speaker. The whole thing can fit in your pocket but sounds really good - according to people who look around to see where the sound is coming from.
Other brands make similar things.
Roland micro cube?
Something like a positive spark mini is tiny, loud enough for bedroom play, and comes with all the effects you'll ever need.
My smallest amp is a blackstar fly 3, tiny but surprisingly good for practice. In-between that and my larger amps I have a voxac4..only 4 watts and looks like a child's suitcase, but it's still far too loud for the house when fully cranked. Which it deserves to be given how nice it sounds.
Try some. Those Cubes are pretty good. I like the Fender Mustang range, they do Fender amp sounds really well as you might expect and the other models are acceptable. I use the 65 twin model (think Jeff Buckley halleluja) for picky stuff, the Bassman model for rock n roll and the British Watts model (Hi-Watt) for lots of things just varying the gain.
so....... any recommendations for a small guitar amp
Depends how much you want to spend, yamaha thr series are really highly rated, positive grid spark if you want loads of built in effects that can be controlled through a phone app. I think both of those have electric, acoustic and bass modes, so can be used as a mobile practice amp for both electric and bass. Otherwise I think a lot of guitar amp brands produce a "desktop amp" nowadays so select your favourite brand if you have one and look at what they offer.
I mostly played bass.
Now I mostly play guitar.
I really like my vox modeling amps. I've got an older one a vt50 and a more recent av50. They sound very similar. I thought the newer one would sound miles better, the reverb is a bit different . The text of it is much the same.
£100 second hand, not massive , can sound like most amps and a selection of effects to fiddle with. They have a built in attenuator so are fine for bedroom practice, or with a bassist and drummer with it turned up most of the way
I got a positive grid amp, the spark mini, for Xmas.
Positives - it's tiny, like 6x6x6". Plenty loud enough for bedroom playing, battery powered which lasts ages. Links to phone via Bluetooth so you can play along to a song through one sound source which is grand. Can also use it as a Bluetooth speaker.
For the amp settings it is endlessly customisable. This is good and bad. I don't really know what I'm doing and the settings are a bit overwhelming - you can choose from about 25 amps, hundreds of pedals and effects jobbies, which is great but I don't know what most of them do so it's all trial and error. You can partly rely on others for this though by searching eg "link wray rumble " in the app and someone, possibly lots of people, has likely made settings to suit the song and saved them - annoyingly though you can take those settings and tweak them, unless I'm being thick.
All this Customisation means that whenever I turn it on I spend quite a while fiddling with the amp instead of playing. I also feel like it's not super easy to get good clean sound. I'm mostly an acoustic guy so still don't have lots of hours using it.
Andertons have some videos about the positive grid stuff which shows it off.
I have a katana and those positive spark earphone things and I concur that there are just too many options. Depend what you are after obviously, but most of the sounds I want can be coaxed out of a 'normal ' amp with a tube screamer
I'm going to be having a big slim-down of stuff shortly. I'm off to Gardiner Houlgate (the auction people) to drop off a few things that I just don't use. Things like my lovely Mesa Boogie Lonestar Special amp, my 'spare' Strandberg, a 1951 Harmony lap slide - and probably my Quad Cortex. All amazing things that I've realised I don't need - or worse, don't even 'need'. I can probably do all of my guitar-related playing, live and at home, with my Tonemaster Deluxe Reverb and a couple of the guitars I own. Shifting guitars is complicated as there are a few that are top sentimental value, plus a couple of Fenders I can't sell as they probably weren't meant to leave the building... But hopefully enough that there'll be a bit of space, and I'll have a bit of pocket money for the summer. (I did bid on a sixties Gretsch last week, so I've still not learned my lesson... and I do still 'need' an ES330...) 🙂
Nobody needs an ES330 when then there are ES335s. 😉 The 330 will be twisted, the deck height and action will mean it needs a neck reset, it'll feedback - there you are, do feel better about not owning one now. 🙂
Thanks. I'd 'settle' for a 335, but it would have to have P90s... I currently have a fully-hollow PRS SE Hollowbody and have realised that I never play nearly anywhere loud enough for it to feedback, so I'm still a 330 shopper...
Recently purchased a Gretsch Tennessean (Just like George’s Shea Stadium guitar). It’s possibly the most fun guitar to play I’ve ever owned. It has low output hi lo tron single coils that have the twang. I put a Mastery bridge on it and even with heavy Bigsby use will not go out of tune.
I've got a Duncan P90 that is humbucker format, works well with a tube amp but not so well with modeling amps so I don't use it much. I like the looks of the ES 335/0 but that is trumped by the simplicity and playability of bolt-on-neck flat-plank guitars.
I’m very aware that I tried not one, but two Epiphone Sheratons back in the day but found them too cumbersome. So I may find my dream ES330 and discover the same…
I do really like my PRS SE Hollowbody, though again, I had a US one (that I never should have sold) but never played it as it was too ‘nice’.