If you can, avoid promoters like the goddamn plague. Every single one I've met is a scumbag. A lot will depend on the area you're in. If you're in a large metropolitan area you might succumb to "pay to play" type gigs which really blow for a guy who's just starting out. The establishment will basically ignore the fact that you don't have any fans yet and will make you sell 60 tickets or so and charge you the difference of what you don't sell. If that's the case, find other people that are gigging and ask them where they play. Chances are at least one of them will know of a couple places that pay a straight $5/head or whatever and won't rake you over the coals. Open Mic nights could be really good for a one man act too. Of course if you live in a more rural area and/or pay to play isn't a problem then you shouldn't have too difficult of a time finding places to play.
What do you guys think of virtual amps? You know the VST plug-ins and such. I recently hooked my guitar up to my computer/stereo system and I think it sounds great.
Native Instruments makes a good one called Guitar Rig. They are awesome for versatility purposes, messing around with different sounds and effects and whatnot. You can get some decent tones out of most of them and they do well for heavy rock type situations where the guitars are distorted all to hell anyways. They are not a substitute for a good tube amp in terms of warmness and dynamics. All those beautiful harmonics and the feel of a 12 inch power speaker are impossible to reproduce with software. I mess around with them, record some ideas, experiment with strange tones but I'd never ever call a virtual instruments my "main rig". Give me a 5 watt tube amp and a guitar cord and I'm much much happier. I really like Native Instruments KONTAKT software which is virtual keyboards and a whole lot more sampled instruments. Most people can't possibly own a grand piano, rhodes e piano, mellotron, and a hammond B-3 with a leslie. Not exactly like the real thing but a good MIDI controller and interface and you have all the keyboards you want for a 1000 different songs.
Guitar Rig is good, I just had the opportunity to work with Eleven Rack and it's good, Amplitude is shitty. A lot of the tone you get depends on the DI you use. Straight into the little pink record thing on your computer's CPU is not going to get you the same sound that a good DI will, so keep that in mind. I use these programs more for ease of practice than recording. Real amps are pretty much always going to sound better.
About sightreading: I've been working at jazz guitar for the past couple of months, as I need to play in the Jazz Ensemble at school to get a music minor. I've become pretty okay at sightreading, but outside of just "read more," is there any way to get better quicker? I always feel like I'm only reading to the point where I memorize where everything is for a specific piece, which hinders my reading progression because from then on I'm just playing by memory. Apparently sight reading is a "big part of the audition," which is why I'm a little concerned. Any tips?
I've been playing guitar for well over 19 years, I own several and have an acoustic as well and I play the mandolin too. I have learned several play styles from punk to blues, some metal and folk and some classic rock.
I have guitar port from line 6 http://line6.com/guitarport/. It sounds pretty damned good and you can play around with alot of different amp and effect set ups, plus you can download whatever guitar players set up for whatever song.
Cool, I know a bit about this. Unfortunately, the biggest thing *is* "just read more", but there are a few tips/tricks that can improve your sight-reading, or at least give you more bang for your buck in terms of practicing. First, always practice your sight reading with a metronome. Now, you should always be practicing with a metronome anyway, but it is crucial for sight reading practice, because when we're reading things for the first time, there's a really strong tendency to be loose with the tempo. Also, it will help you resist the urge to go back over something when you get it wrong. Don't do that; you can't do it in an ensemble setting, so don't practice like that. If you can, I'd recommend setting your metronome to stress the first beat of every bar, so that if you stumble, you're forced to keep up, or skip ahead to stay in time, since that's what you're gonna have to do if you flub in an ensemble. Also, metronomes provide a good metric for gauging your progress; look at the piece you're about to play. What's the lowest meter division it has (smallest note value)? Know what tempo you're normally able to sight-read at, and set the metronome accordingly. Try to push this speed up. Next, you don't necessarily have to "read more", but you should definitely be "reading different". The standard recommendation for practicing sight-reading is to never play the same piece twice. It's great to be learning pieces, but that's not what sight-reading is about, it's about your ability to recognize patterns, read ahead, and hear the music before playing it. This way, you'll never have to deal with the problem you have now, which is not knowing if you're sight-reading or playing from memory. This will force you to sight-read all the time, with no risk of memorizing. Since you're applying for a Jazz ensemble, I'd recommend reading your way through a few real books, because (assuming it's not a big band you're applying for) those are the tunes they'll likely be asking you to sight-read during your audition, and it never hurts to be familiar with the audition material. I'd also recommend "Melodic Rhythms for Guitar" by William Leavitt, as it's an excellent sight-reading exercise book. Also very good for practicing sight-reading on guitar are violin study books; they have a similar range as a guitar, and have plenty of great studies that'll make most anything they give you in jazz ensemble look like a joke. Another couple tricks, which I'm sure you have heard before, but bear repeating: Always look over the piece before you play it. Only total amateurs fail to do this, and I guarantee that your profs will be watching you for it during your audition. Things you should be looking for: -Time signature and key (duh) -Smallest note duration (as seen before, so you know what tempo you can take it at) -Accidentals throughout the piece. Since you're going for a music minor, I think it's safe to assume you have a decent theory grounding. In this case, ask yourself what the accidentals are doing, are they just embellishments, or do they signal a key change? Mentally prepare yourself so that you expect the key change there; if you hear it i your head before playing it, you're more likely to play it right. Also, remember to mentally change key signatures. -Look for "chunks", parts of the piece that you can just file as a single piece in your brain, like scalar runs or arpeggios, ad note what they are. Think to yourself "ok, there's a C major arpeggio in 2nd inversion in the third bar, followed by a scalar run, still in C from E to B". And Bam! Suddenly a bunch of black on the page is stuff you already know intimately. And, if possible, practice your sight-singing, so that, eventually, you'll be able to simply hear the piece in your head as you read it. If you can do that, you're far less likely to make mistakes. Finally, just make sure you're also practicing your reading in terms of comping (chords and rhythmic variations); you're a guitarist, and that makes you a rhythm section instrument. Also, in all likelihood you'll probably do fine; most jazz guitar students can't read for shit, so you're probably far ahead of the curve. Good luck!
Is it a note for note type of thing or are you just given a chart to go off of? If it's just a chart I'd suggest getting a book of jazz standards and doing a new one every day. Be open in your selection of chord voicing and relax a little bit. Just because the chart calls for a m7b5 or an augmented chord, doesn't always mean you need to play every note in that chord. You have to account for the other instruments in the ensemble and a lot of times they'll cover any notes in the chord that you choose to omit. Keeping it together, playing smoothly, and sounding good is much more important tha doing a mad rush to try and cram in every specific thing that you see on the chart in front of you.
Thanks for the advice guys, I read it right after you posted and forgot to say thanks. It's actually helped a lot just whizzing through the couple of guitar books I have, so hopefully this audition'll be a piece of cake. I also wish this thread would be more lively, but that's like asking for the boobie thread to be updated every day.
I started playing bass about 6 weeks ago and I'm loving the fuck out of it. I just started lessons and I jam with my roommate who plays guitar sometimes, but I'm wondering if anyone here knows of any other tools I can use to get better. Someone told me you can buy albums where the bass is taken out, so you can add your own... anyone know about that, or anything similar? If so, any specific recommendations?
I'm assuming here you're pretty much brand new to the bass and playing instruments in general, so bear with me as I give you some advice that seems like I'm trying to bullshit you. I'm not. Buy this book. You'll laugh, but really: there's a ton of information about theory and basic bass playing that will help you improve a ridiculous amount when you're first starting out. The book has some really basic shit, but it's laid out extremely clearly, it's easy to follow, and everything makes perfect sense. Do it. Also, keep playing with people, and if you can, try to get them to play something with charts, such as a Real Book. You'll learn quickly how to move from one chord to the next just by playing and using your ears. You won't get this playing songs you already know, and it's harder to do when your roommate tells you what chords to play instead of just doing them on the fly. Your ears will thank you when, later on down the line, you can immediately play along to any song with ever having heard it before and with no practice beforehand.
Personally, I've always just practiced with headphones on, and played along to the tune. I mix it so that I get more of the original song in one ear, and my guitar in the other, so I can hear the differences a little easier. The real trick, I'd say, is learning how to critically listen to a song, and be able to really hear what it is that is going on in it. Then learn how to compare that with how you're playing it. I cringe at the number of people that just can't hear and reproduce what's being played in a song. "That's close enough." No, it's not. You're missing all sorts of subtle details in that lick that are what make it more than a simple 3 chord progression.
Well, I've decided I want to learn how to sing properly. I've never really done any real singing before. I don't know where to begin learning to sing. I realize a lot of it is how good your ears are, so I've been doing more ear training to try and get better. Any one have any resources for where I should begin on this? Any general tips would be appreciated as well. My musical background: I've been playing guitar for about 6 years now. In that time I've never been very serious about it, I just played occasionally for fun. Two years ago I also started playing drums casually. I'm just getting started on writing my own stuff.
Nothing will get you singing faster or better than a singing coach. Even a lesson a month from a mediocre music student at a local university will go a long way.
My girlfriend has and wants to sell a Troy Van Leeuwen guitar. It was an odd gift from her old job and has been used maybe 3 times. What I'm looking for is advice on selling it. Are Ebay and Craigslist the best routes? Or can someone recommend a better more guitar specific site? Or is anyone here interested?
She also has some pretty good fingering/positioning technique with her left hand. One of the biggest things about bass is learning to hold it properly. By that I mean, how your left hand (or right hand if you're a lefty) that hold the stings down is positioned. A lot of people play the bass with their hand wrapped around the neck of the bass, which is a terrible way to play - yes, you can still be an amazing player with poor positioning but you'll use less energy and be quicker player with proper position. Lots of people say that if you can play the guitar, you can play bass - while this is true, there are subtle differences between the two and to be good, you need to know them. Hand position is one of the skills that you need to learn early on, if you decide to change it up later, you'll be in trouble as it's incredibly hard to pull out of the habit. As for literature, my instructor has me reading Hal Leonard's Bass Method. It's a good book, starts from the basics and moves into far more complicated stuff (ending with a brief touch on slap). You will have to fill the gaps with actual sheet music but he does teach you how to read music (notation and such, not just tabs), which is a super important skill to have - too many people just know how to read tabs and it's not a healthy way to learn.
Actually you aren't supposed to play guitar like that either. My instructor, on my first day, told me to "stop holding that beautiful instrument like a baseball bat". Your thumb should never be hanging on top of the fretboard. Ideally it should be placed against the back of the neck and move perpendicular to the neck depending on position of your other 4 fingers.
Just in case, I'm gonna post some decent guitar tab sites. I'm sad that OLGA shut down. I'd been using it since I was 13 or so. <a class="postlink" href="http://www.guitaretab.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guitaretab.com/</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.mxtabs.net/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.mxtabs.net/</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/</a> <a class="postlink" href="http://www.guitartabs.net/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.guitartabs.net/</a> There are very few things I love as much in this life as sitting down with tabs to a song I've heard but don't know how to play, and working that shit out.
I'm glad that, being a guitar player, I don't have to worry about whatever this thing is that you're talking about, this "technique" thing. What is that?