Lesson 27 Tuesday 9th July 2013

I was looking forward to this lesson as I was taking my new (to me) electric guitar with me to see how it works and how it sounds.

My teacher informed me on what some of the parts do and their names.

1 & 2 It has four pick-ups which work in twos and they are called Humbuckers. I was informed that single pick-ups can have a hum at the end of the note so they put another pick up next to the first and this takes out the hum.

3 There is a switch at the bottom which you can switch from single pickup to the double. This is because the single pickup has a different sound to the Humbucker so you get both sounds in one guitar.

4 The switch at the top has three settings for the pickups. The switch set to the top will play the top pickup’s only (1). The switch set to the bottom will play the bottom pickup’s only (2) and the switch set to the middle will play both.

5 This is the tone and volume control for the top pickup (1).

6 This is the tone and volume control for the bottom pickup (2).

When you have both pickups on you can adjust both pickups independently.

The guitar sounded OK but you could hear some crackle because of dust inside which can be cleaned out.

The neck goes along the whole body with the mahogany sides glued on which I think they call a through neck.

My teacher has agreed to clean up and restring the guitar for me which is great.

Now if it only had the Gibson Min-ETune on it, then it would be perfect for me to learn on. 

I am very pleased with the guitar and have been very lucky to get hold of such an instrument.

For my lesson I used my new electric guitar. I started off playing the Radiohead song “Street Fighting Spirit (Fade Out)”. On the new guitar it sounded more like the real song, well apart from the duff notes or right note played in the wrong order and at a much slower speed. I do think I have improved though and I know it probably only takes me five attempts to sort of get it right rather than ten.

As we were using the electric guitar we looked at lead guitar techniques and what they look like.

The first was the hammer. This can be shown in two different ways on TAB.

This is where I play the third G string on the fifth fret and while the note is still ringing I put my finger on the same string on the seventh fret.

The next was to slide.

This one I have done before and in this example is playing the G string on the fifth fret and keeping the pressure on I slide up (up is going closer to the body of the guitar) to fret seven.

This can also be shown as a slide up to seven then back down to five on the same pluck.

Next we looked at Pull off.

Now this is not a technique for imitating the Jimmy Hendrix simulating masturbating with a guitar.

This is the reverse to a hammer where you play the string on fret seven then as it is still ringing out lift up your finger and the sound comes from the fifth fret.

This can be combined with the hammer and is shown like this.

The last technique was the bend and release.

In this example I am going to bend the string up towards the sixth string so that the sound goes up two frets to the sound of fret nine. This is called full. There is also half which is one fret. One and a Half which is three frets and two which is four frets.

The release will be whatever fret to release off to.

In this example it is back to fret seven.

The teacher showed me how you could incorporate all of these techniques which looked very impressive. I did have an attempt but got myself all twisted in knots.

I asked for advice of what amp to get as an electric guitar without an amp is just a very quiet guitar, which my kids probably would like when I am trying to practice when they are watching “Adventure Time” on the TV.

The one that was advised would be a Marshall MG15R but with the reverb. There were some reasonable priced ones second hand and new. As it is my birthday coming up soon I think I will ask for cash so I can club it together and get myself one of these.