Guitar stuff you didn't understand back when...

Dexter Inferno

Dexter Inferno

Serious error
Just thought about this the other day... there were a few songs and music I'd listen to or try play without it sounding right back then, but later finally understood why.

Some examples:

CCR - plenty of the bigger hits John Fogerty was playing in D standard tuning while his brother was playing in E standard. This one took me years to figure out. Think it was seeing him play a show when he did his "comeback" tour sometime in late 90's early/2000's when he was allowed to play his own songs again. He must have been one of the first guys to tune down like that as well I'd imagine.

Stones - back as a 15 year old novice guitar player in about 91 or so I had no idea about the open G tuning. And at that time I only had a floating trem Strat, so needless to say I did them the hard way. Years later when I got a Tele I realised how much easier those songs are to play in the right tuning. :lol:

Couple of Floyd ones.... that sound at the startt of Take It Back from The Division Bell... I had no idea what it was. Thought it was some synth of some sort. Nope. It's an Ebow on an acoustic guitar!! Bloody brilliant, and I didn't actually connect the dots until they released The Endless River. :embarrassed:
Also, his lead sound for a lot of songs is uncopyable without a rotating speaker (or simulation thereof) in parallel with the regular amp setup. That's been the case since the early 70's.
And, the "screaming seagull" sound on Echoes was apparently a wah pedal hooked up backwards. Had no idea that would even work, but hey.

Plenty of others I'm sure. You do pick up a few things as you get older and have access to the internet... :wink:
 
There's a clip online of someone in the neighborhood of Carl Perkins who didn't realize that the guys he heard on the radio were using slap back, so he developed this ridiculous finger picking/hammer on technique that sounded amazing. I've misunderstood a lot of guitar stuff, but none of my misunderstandings yielded a cool outcome.
 
Chicken Man said:
There's a clip online of someone in the neighborhood of Carl Perkins who didn't realize that the guys he heard on the radio were using slap back, so he developed this ridiculous finger picking/hammer on technique that sounded amazing. I've misunderstood a lot of guitar stuff, but none of my misunderstandings yielded a cool outcome.
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Interesting. I'd imagine a lot of players were quite confused at that time when people started getting creative in the studio. Especiallt rhose who had never been inside a recording studio. There weren't much available in terms of fx pedals back then.
 
Speaking of tunings.... Hey You from The Wall used what has been called the "Nashville Tuning". I could find the right notes on the guitar but it never sounded right. Wasn't even aware of the concept until I got on the internet many years later. Also, I got used to discovering who actually played on certain songs. On that tune that's Gilmour playing the fretless bass. Which in hindsight makes sense, as Waters has never been a great player....
 
Dexter Inferno said:
Interesting. I'd imagine a lot of players were quite confused at that time when people started getting creative in the studio. Especiallt rhose who had never been inside a recording studio. There weren't much available in terms of fx pedals back then.
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I don't even think it was pedals back then--just a tape trick. My dumb friends and I had some myth about how to get distortion before we learned it was just a pedal, and I'm pretty sure the first time I played bottleneck, I was fretting with the thing.
 
For me it was Sabbath songs with the very deep chugga chugga!!!

Into the Void - C# Standard
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath - C# Standard

Did not know Iommi used a Treble Booster to drive the front end his amps. Something Brian May did as well.

I often wondered about early live Scorps with Uli Roth. He made that Strat sing through a Marshall. Almost seemed like he ran 2 fuzzs together to get that sustain.
 
Jason Isbell and Sadler Vaden usually play songs where if Jason has a capo on the second fret Sadler is playing standard. I noticed that on some live clips. Cool orchestration choices that way.

Gilmore used that dolphin/ghost wah scream thing a couple times on the Wall as well, most notably on Is There Anybody Out There. There's a couple videos on YouTube of folks demonstrating it. Let's just say it's utter chaos :grin:
 
Tried for 24 years to play Never Going Back Again by FM. Drove me crazy until years ago I covered it and decided to put my nose to the brimstone and devote to it. Found out it was tuned CGDGBE and had a capo at the 7th fret. So me pedaling on a fretted G was not going to get me anywhere.

Soon I found myself in love with the world.
 
Knox in Box said:
Tried for 24 years to play Never Going Back Again by FM. Drove me crazy until years ago I covered it and decided to put my nose to the brimstone and devote to it. Found out it was tuned CGDGBE and had a capo at the 7th fret. So me pedaling on a fretted G was not going to get me anywhere.

Soon I found myself in love with the world.
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Stuff like that is why we buy more guitars. Yeah, I'm sticking to that story. :embarrassed:
 
Doubling and tripling guitars to get a heavy sound. Use to wonder why I couldn’t dial in certain sounds. Zakk Wylde in one of his studio interviews talked about it. Tried it out on my looping pedal, and there it was.
 
We've talked about this before, but like many others I started with campfire chords and then moved on to barre chords. As a relatively novice guitar player I always struggled switching between barre chords and lead lines. Until I figured out how to do the thumb-over thing instead. As a beginner, it took me about a year to learn barre chords properly, but maybe ten years to unlearn. Once I got it right I found it a lot easier to play even simple rhythm guitar parts.

Another thing: Years, and years ago, my wife, then girlfriend, took up playing the piano and she got some learning material. So naturally we got to talk about chords and stuff, but the real eye-opener was how you play inversions on the piano. On the piano it's just as much about economy as it's about voicings, but the thing is that it easily translates to guitar, and I use it all the time when recording. I rarely, if ever, double track anything as I prefer inversions or simply single notes to support a certain part.
 
DinoMikeSr said:
Doubling and tripling guitars to get a heavy sound. Use to wonder why I couldn’t dial in certain sounds. Zakk Wylde in one of his studio interviews talked about it. Tried it out on my looping pedal, and there it was.
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DinoMikeSr said:
hEre’s an example what I was trying say above.

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When done right, 3-5 guitar tracks, can result in a heavy rock sound. But, if you overdo it with too many guitar tracks, like Billy Corgan on the later Smashing Pumpkins albums, it can take the oomph out of the song.

I wish I could make a better contribution to this thread, but I don't know anything. I don't know what I know. I don't know what I don't know. I was blessed with a good ear, but zero formal training, nor music education. I just do it, often getting it wrong.
 
jrockbridge said:
When done right, 3-5 guitar tracks, can result in a heavy rock sound. But, if you overdo it with too many guitar tracks, like Billy Corgan on the later Smashing Pumpkins albums, it can take the oomph out of the song.

I wish I could make a better contribution to this thread, but I don't know anything. I don't know what I know. I don't know what I don't know. I was blessed with a good ear, but zero formal training, nor music education. I just do it, often getting it wrong.
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I haven’t recorded only looped them in on a pedal. I’ve gotten 2 to sound good.
 
I hate public speaking so bad, and am so naturally shy that I'm ironically good at it. What I consider overcompensating actually turns out to be somewhat entertaining. Had to do monthly retirement briefings and training sessions at my old job and had good reactions.

Still had super anxiety going in. Not much of that in my job these days.
 
I thought you had to grunt really loud or go “ewwwWWWWW!” (with rising intonation at the end) when playing anything on guitar or it didn’t count. Especially like a chord or at the end of a really bluesy lick.

It wasn’t until i started playing with other people that they said “please stop that” and “you do knew we can hear you?”

I was mortified.
 
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