Guitarists of Singletrack…

@guitarhero feel free to drop me something tomorrow or thu. The deadline was a) kinda tomorrow and b) completely arbitrary.

I wish I was good enough to participate in something like this ….. I can get my fingers to work (on my bass) to follow a tab now, as long as it’s not too complex, but I still haven’t put in the effort to learn any theory beyond basic major and minor scales and arpeggios, so being able to even identify what notes will work with a given key or chord let alone improvise around them is way out of my league.

I tried to follow that Rick Beato video a couple of pages back – I was ‘yep, yep, yep……what? How did that follow ?’ Must make the effort to see if he has some more basic ones, or any other resources you’d recommend?

Cheers guys for the bass info 🙂

@AdamT I had looked at Ibanez basses, I thought I was being a bit of a fanboi as I have two Ibanez electric guitars now and a few more RG’s and an original yellow JEM back in the day 🙂

Edited to add, the SR305 is a 5 string? Much advantage going for a 5 string. Basically I want to play bass on my recordings rather than use a keyboard. Well thats initially what I want, I am sure I will want to actually learn to play better 🙂

Just sent poor Adam another attempt, the last I promise. I hope you haven’t already spent time on the previous one, Adam (embarrassed smiley).

I tried to record the Bassbreaker really cooking but couldn’t hear the backing track even with headphones on max so the latest effort is with a Bassbreaker 45 at about a third volume. Greenback cab, Maxon 808 and a Telecaster. Recorded with a Shure SM58 connected to a PA which adds a little reverb because I forgot to turn it off.

Junior’s basses are long scale and mine short scale, Bazzer. I can’t cover four frets without moving my hand on his. Try both.

I wish I was good enough to participate in something like this …

Give it a go at some point.
I’m pretty certain I’m not good enough but its going up later. I’m sure there’ll be abuse/encouragement but heck I no more think I’m Hendrix than I think I’m Hans Rey, and that doesn’t stop me riding my bikes.
The main thing about trying this is it makes me realise what I should be doing instead of just noodling the same clichés over and over again. I think I said earlier on this thread that I intend to put something up on a regular basis. I’m sure I’ll get more advice and encouragement than putdowns.

@theotherjonv, go on…. Give it a go. I can always do a private render and send it to you.

but I don’t even know what notes will work with those chord progressions (others than the notes in the chords)

as AdamT mentioned you’ll get away with Am pentatonic – however this scale probably needs a health warning – far to easy to not progress past it as it will probably do 95% of what you want (yep, I know this from experience) 🙂

I’d also not worry too much about not being good enough, I’m far from professional (and far from good) but with supportive friends eventually got enough confidence to play live

Adam announced it as in Am and it only took a few seconds pentatonic noodling to confirm that worked so A C D E G. At various points to make it sad/bluesy I added F G# B. I might have bent to others but those were the ones I consciously added. Listen to my vid a couple of pages back and decide for yourself if they sound OK.

If you’re playing bass you can use all the pentatonic notes A C D E G at pretty much any time

The fifth of the root notes will also usually work when that chord is being played, don’t worry too much about all those m7b6(#11) if you’re on bass 😉

A fifth = E
D fifth = A
E fifth = B

Try the 3rd and 6th too, and the octaves of notes. The third and fouth bars of my effort in the vid are a similar melody at different octaves.

And trust your ears, it’s only a bum note if it sounds like a bum note. I’m intrigued to see what the others come up with.

Perhaps when we’re all done composer Adam will tell us what he had in mind and explain it in terms of scales that leave us even more confused than his chord sequence. 😉

I have/had literally nothing in mind for the individual pieces or scales or anything. 😀 I love hearing the other parts and it’s opened my mind a bit. Someone else suggested throwing in something slightly different to add to the challenge, hence the Eb thing in there. In the end I reckon you could probably play an Am pentatonic over the whole thing. This is a totally inclusive thing, so if you’re even half thinking about it, then please have a go.

Having noodled around with it (badly) my tip would be that the Eb is the blues note in the Am blues scale. So one relatively easy option is to play Am pentatonic and throw in that blue note whenever you hear the funky chord. That gets some nice colour in there.

@AdamT, file hopefully knocking on your inbox now. Limited myself to an hour to record, improvised 5 or 6 takes, then comped the best bits from each. Hope this isn’t considered cheating 😉

Yep. Got it @guitarhero. (Everyone… There’s a reason he’s called guitarhero! 😳)

Jesus. That’s making me feel better… ☹️

Dont worry @eddiebaby I’m a remedial guitar player 🙂

So even if it doesn’t sound that great, I think it looks really pretty (see below). You each have a lovely colour assigned. I made Chipps brown….cos I’m a huge kid….and he’s probably spent more of his life being brown than many of us :-).

Are there any last minute additions (cough @theotherjonv) I can pretty quickly whack stuff in now that it’s all set up and very happy to do so.

So far I have:-

Bazzer – Orange
Edukator – Shocking!
Chipps – The brown sound
Superficial – Cyan
Guitarhero – Red

Yep. One from me… just really nervous about posting. Play live and it gets forgotten soon enough. This is for posterity…. 🤓

I can’t find the time midweek but if you can wait till this w/e?

Yep. Can wait until the weekend, no problem.

I’m going to try and get it done tonight. Note I represent that absolute bottom end of guitarists, we’re here to make the rest of you look good 😉

Edukator – Shocking!

That bad… .

If I don’t reply to critical posts when it goes up it’s not because I’m sensitive/sulking, it’s because I’ll be down to unreliable 3G till Monday and perhaps beyond.

If I’ve already been sampled and re-mixed (due to not making mine long enough… :-)) does that make me ready for the Charts?

Signal chain for those after my ‘amazing’ brown tones… Homemade Cabronita into Samson USB speaker/interface things (rather good actually) via the Honk ‘n’ Drive amp on Garageband. The end…

So I am first and guitarhero is last, it must be in order of how good it is 😀

Still time for @TomB to show us all how it’s done?

Wrong TomB- the guitarist Tom is @Tom-B I think! (I have 2 guitars but too rubbish for this project!)

I’m out. Just recorded a few bars and this is not the tune for me. I’m really struggling to come up with anything remotely tuneful.

I’m really struggling to come up with anything remotely tuneful.

I think that’s the point, the chord sequence doesn’t lend itself to anything joyfully tuneful (though I’m happy to be proved wrong by the other contributions).

I dived straight in with two slides to a flat note (F# where you’d expect a G) and then a bend to perhaps a bit beyond Eb then a penta run down being going flat again.

I’ve finally finished the refret on that old Sigma Martin. The nut’s done properly but I hadn’t got a saddle high enough in my box of bits so it buzzes at bit on E and e. The jumbo frets make it a lot easy to play, almost electric easy except beyond the 12th fret obviously. I quite like the sound of it, jangly rather than boomy like some dreadnaughts. Here she is:

The strings were taken off a shorter scale guitar about five years back and are rather rusty if they sound less than bright. Now I just need to sort out some electrics for her.

I’m without recording stuff currently….we’re living in a motorhome…..stuff in various storage everywhere and no real idea where I’m going to locate a ‘studio’ yet as we’ve not got access to fast internet where we’re parked!

Not the you’re missing much, for someone that earns more from it for a living (or at least did) I’m awful 😂

I’ll try and get involved in a future one….I’ve got loads of ‘loops’ that I can donate as backing tracks too.

I’ve finally finished the refret on that old Sigma Martin.

Sounds nice. Always good to rescue something and bring back to life. Try thin strips of kitchen foil under the bridge, always worked as an intermediate term bodge for me. Building up the base depth with epoxy can work too.

The ordering is pretty much as the parts arrived by the way, so don’t read too much into that 😀. That said, some of them had bits that went nicely into little breakdown sections, so I might jiggle it around further with the addition of extra parts.

I completely missed this jam-by-proxy thing. Can I join? How do I get the audio over? Cheers.

Just had a happy hour or two adding a slightly more modest bass riff to the sequence, then a bit of a 6 string thing … I might even try a few bars of bass solo tomorrow. Great fun!

@root-n-5th – if you look back a page, you should find @AdamT ‘s original backing track and his email address. If you get a move on, you should just be in time… 🙂

Thanks, got it. Although having a play around last night brought very little inspiration. Am pentatonic is all I can muster. I’ll see what happens tonight.

The forum rock royalty gets a big up on Andertons today.

@chiefgrooveguru.

Just sent mine…..it was surprisingly stressful! I haven’t recorded anything that other people might actually listen to for some time

Just sent mine…..it was surprisingly stressful!

I chickened out!
I’m not in that good a place at the moment but guitar is how I unwind. Throw a few chords into a looper or get a backing track and widdle happily over the the top. Really keen to show you all my squishes (like chops but duller) but I was just getting more and more on edge.
Working from home is bad. Stagefright* from home is horrendous. 🙁

* I’d have said performance anxiety but I couldn’t handle the jokes. 🙂

I had two Barefaced cabs in to try out before Christmas – the 1×10 and the 1×12 and I was impressed enough I bought the 110… Great cab – and monster loud. Just the 1×10 cab and my 15W EVH lunchbox completely kept up with our loud and very active drummer. Really impressed… It’s a BIG sound.

@chipps was that with guitar or bass?

Guitar. It’s the Barefaced Upsetter 110 – I think they do a similar sized bass cab too. The only issue is that it’s so small, very few amp heads fit on top – and it’s so low to the ground (not that it matters to the sound) that all the controls are way down there….