I'm playing through a Marshall MG15DFX and use a Zoom G2 effects box, and yes, although everyone has different tastes, I love the tone of the Humbuckers on the Gibson/Epi's
What works for me? well I had some excellent advice a while back, a friend of mine told me to always put accuracy before speed, so when I am learning something new I will start off very slowly and be as precise as possible with the fingerings, then when I feel comfortable with it I will gradually build up the speed, this along with hours of repetition has worked very well for me!
I have only just got my head around strumming patterns too, it takes some practice keeping your strumming hand moving consistently to a beat while changing chords at the same time, I tried to use a metronome but could'nt get the hang of it so I find it much easier just playing along to the songs I like, it has improved my timing immensely
I have mastered most of the basic chords and can change very fluently, as for barre chords! well, I understand how they work but
after trying to play them I tend to avoid them for the time being!
It's a long and tortuous journey this guitar malarky eh! but very addictive and I would'nt swap it for the world, I love it!
I'm getting stuck into some Oasis stuff at the moment, It's probably just my level at the minute, not too technical and not too easy, Noel's solos are fairly simple yet very melodic I think.
Who are your influences and what kind of music are you learning to play?
I worked more on scales early on, so I have the major/minor/major pentatonic/minor pentatonic/blues scales in all 5 positions pretty much nailed, just need to get faster on them.
Went at chords later, and have spent a lot of time lately working on them so now can play and change between them pretty well (major, minor, dominant 7ths, major 7ths, minor 7ths, sus 2/4).
Strumming patterns have been hard for me, I struggle with the shuffle rhythm, and have trouble maintaining consistency in my strumming (brain can't do two things at the same time LOL).
I'd really like to get barre chords down as I know the CAGED system theory, which opens the fretboard up to chord playing, but my technique is lacking to play barre's.
I like to play old stuff like Beatles, early Bee Gees, Moody Blues, Nirvana etc. I want to start playing some bluesier stuff like John Mayer, Gary Moore, Eric Clapton, as well as some Led Zepplin one's. I spent December working on Christmas Carols and ended up with over 20 in my repertoire, which was fun on xmas day.
I'm with you on the metronome, I can't hear it very well, so don't really know if I'm in time. I've recently found a bunch of on-line mp3's with backing drum tracks at various bpm's. If you're interested in them, I'll see if I can "grab them" off the site (it's a pay site) and I'll email them to you.
Your friends advice is real sound. I always thought that the "pro's" were natural, and this stuff came to them easily, then I read an article from someone who is a top session player, explaining how he'd sometimes work for 2 hours on 3 bars of music, trying different fingerings, working to get the bars down perfectly, so your point on repetition is on the money.
To close this, I have to thank you, because it was your enthusiasm about starting that got me going. I'd wanted to play piano for many, many years and put it off because of space constraints, but when I read your posts it got me thinking "yeah, I can do that" and off I went. Recently I bought a M-Audio digital keyboard, and have started to work on this as well (my golfing time has been seriously reduced)......so yeah, it really is addictive!
