Snatching Minutes

 Working on Technique

I thought at the start of this week I would have plenty have time to practice and had whole days scheduled to write and play. In the end, I managed four practice sessions of around an hour each. That's just the way things go sometimes, but I have to do my best and plough on.

I continued to work through the Truefire course I mentioned before. I've been paying alot of attention to my technique which I'm constantly trying to improve. A few years ago I managed to relax the death grip I often had on the fretboard, but its the right hand that I'm concentrating on now.

I think it was a Rhett Schull video I watched a few years ago that got me thinking about how I anchor my right hand on the bridge when I'm playing lead. I'm not sure when or why I started to do this, but I think it was in the mistaken belief that pivoting my hand on it would be easier, but I suppose the friction of it is quite limiting. Now I'm working on having my hand floating, which is how everyone else seems to have been doing it all along. It's been hard at first, but the more a practice it, the better I become. 

At the same time I'm working on playing with the plectrum with less force. I've just been hammering guitars for years, I think in the belief that the harder I physically played them the better they sounded. But it's not true, the attack on the notes hasn't sounded right and the over-use of force makes it harder to play fluently.

Finally, one thing that I always suffered when playing Strats was striking the pickguarg when playing lead/single note work. I think this is because every other guitar I've played has had a raised bridge and the height has meant this doesn't happen very often. Once again, this is inefficient movement - I'm moving the pick too much and wasting energy. With more work and concentration I'm making progress with this too.

I've moved onto the next piece in the Truefire course, Funkified Blues. I'll continue to practice the one I was doing before too. There are five in the course in total and it would be good to have them all memorised and able to be performed (to whom I don't know!).

Bringing down the gain

Only a small point, but I've been running the Deluxe Reverb at 7-8 the last few weeks and rolling off the volume on whichever guitar I've been playing. With both the Strat and the Jaguar it gives a great driven sound, but backing off the vloume isn't completely satisfying - I perhaps need to think about treble bleed to preserve the top end.

I've now backed off the gain to 5, which is giving a very nice just-on-the-edge-of-breakup clean sound to the lead playing, and with my softer right hand technique is giving a more rounded sound than I was used to.

Pedal sales

I've used Reverb before, and this last week I've sold my Boss RC-1, RV-6 and DD-8 pedals. I'd assembled an eight pedal board, but the reality is that I'd never be playing live and for recording at home I can get very good delay and reverb sounds with my Universal Audio OX. The RV-6 was purchased before I had the Deluxe Reverb and needed some delay to use with the Tiny Terror. Meanwhile the DD-8 is a nice pedal but I get my digital delay sounds with the OX, and I don't have use for the more trick algorithms it has. The RC-1 I never really got on with, I'm not really interested in looping.

YN Journey

The sale of the pedals will fund some upgrades for the YN Strat, and February should see the purchase of new tuners and a new bridge.

I'm starting to get a feel for this instrument. Playing it and the Jaguar back to back this evening, it's clear that the pickups on the Strat are not of the same quality and don't have a very pleasing bottom end at all. Replacement pickups will be the last thing I'll buy, after all the other upgrades and possible refinish have been done, but I think they will have a significant effect.

I'll also need to have another look at the setup as I think the neck might have moved a little over the last week. Not surprising now it's finally had some strings on it for the first time in three years.

I hope I'll get more chance to play this next week although I think it could be tricky - I have a very busy week ahead.