Congrats James... I can already see improvement

lol

J/K by the way.

so i was doing this finger independence exercise and it is almost comical how bad i am at it. i can't even will my ring finger to move correctly. when i think to make my ring finger move my pinky does and not my ring finger. i have to look dumb as hell sitting here doing that.

Of course you're gonna look dumb wearing those damn finger puppets

There's no reason whatsoever a person can't switch to a lighter scale while they're starting out. It's only string tension and completely personal preference. You just have to set up accordingly and maybe cut the nut for the appropriate gauge you want to use, if that. It's not like there's some rule that dictates how much string tension is required for guitar players, and even if there were few people seem to be following it. In practice people are all over the map.

The only exception is screwing with a floating trem system if already set up for a specific tension.

reading more about it, this set up deal seems way more complicated than i thought. giving it a shot tomorrow though i think. don't have anything to 'block' the tremolo while i do it, but i think i can get close without.

I spent so long reading this whole thread to see if it was covered and now I can't remember the name of it. But has anyone any experience with that guitar learning video game?

i play it almost every night. has some pluses and minuses, but i overall really like it.

I have never played/seen this game, but can you tell me if it helps you play music better?

yes and no. it really helps with the coordination that i was/am lacking quite a bit. if you already play i am not sure it would help a whole lot, but it does adjust the difficulty level of a song automatically based on how well you are doing during a song. i am not remembering any of the songs i have been playing though which sucks, but i am going to go through the game again when i 'finish' it though, so hopefully more will stick. it definitely builds on small rewards to keep you excited about it though which is nice.

I think its cool that games like that exist. They seem to 1) Introduce people to music who might not have ever played before and 2) get people excited about music.


I did get a chance to play guitar hero a couple of years ago. I was fun and I understand why people liked it, but I thought it was kinda of waste because it was not explaining why your mistakes were mistakes. It would be nice if they create a game that gives you feedback ( kinda like the SmartMusic software) and helps you actually improve as a musician while still playing a game. Best of both worlds imo

So if my high E on my guitar and my .. uh.. G (? the high string on a 4 string bass) on my bass buzz at around the first three frets, set them on fire? take them in to get the action set?

Yes for the guitar, but unfortunately you can't do it on a bass and you'll have to burn it :/

one store said they can't do that sort of thing without putting new strings on

I'm not against that, because they both need new strings, but is that bull****? It sounds like bull****

so got almost finished with a bit of a set up. got it restrung and the back of the bridge was like super high off the face of the guitar and seemed to angle the strings down a lot. tried to adjust some of the bridge saddles up a bit and the neck to where i wanted but didn't help. broke 2 high e strings while trying to tune up and that is where i give up. not sure how to not have the bridge do that imo. oh well, i tried. will take it somewhere tomorrow or monday.

What gauge strings did you put on? It sounds like you put a set of 10's on a guitar that came with 9's from the factory. You want 9-42, not 9-46 or 10-46.

Edit: If you did put the same gauge strings on and the bridge is coming up, are you like trying to tune the bass strings an octave higher or something?

Buzzing at the low frets is usually a truss adjustment (especially if it just started happening). It can be done without changing strings (so can an entire setup), but I can 100% understand why they would want to start with a fresh set.

i got fender 9-42 (if that is the smallest to biggest measurement). i was tuning it too high it seems, but the string is resting on the high frets and doesn't play when tuned normally. i didn't mean to tune them high, i was just trying to get them off the fret board. the truss rod seems ok. it really seems like the back of the bridge is really high. not sure if it was like that before i started. here is a pic of it (minus the high e string).

seems high, and a bit warning sign was i couldn't even unscrew the tremolo bar back off. had to push down on the bridge to get it on or off. screwed the claw screws in, but didn't seem to make much of a difference to the bridge height.

now, there is a plate on the back that i was going to clean under/around that had 4 screws in it that i unscrewed. when i did, the neck came off. got it lined back up and screwed back it. was really careful in putting it back on, so i didn't think much of it, but i am hoping that isn't the problem.

Lol. That would have tripped me out if I didnt know that was gonna happen. What did you think when the neck came off?

i just about freaked. thought it was supposed to happen after, but still scared the hell out of me when it happened.

That sucks man. Atleast you tried to do it yourself. Maybe having someone else fix it for you is the best thing right now. I am sure you want a guitar that is playable and has good action on it.

To expand on that imo


You need to have new strings to set the intonation. As strings get old, the intonation gets off, so you want to put new strings on before setting it up imo.