Re Acoustic vs Electric

As Steve Stevens told me in an interview, "if a dude can shred on acoustic, he will sound good on electric but the opposite ain't necessarily true"

hey Joe.

what can i do? i have tendinitis and i wanna play the guitar.

does it have a solution?

JOE don't you have tendinitis??

i bet you don't.

plese help me amigo.

por favor!!!

Right on re the practicing Cube!! As a matter of fact early in ones playing life, acoustic playing is almost necessary to help develop proper vibrato and more importantly string damping techniques.. You just can't get away with too much sloppiness on an acoustic.

Greyfox88 - Interesting question. Personally, I tend to play ENTIRELY different types of music on acoustic vs. electric. When I'm playing acoustic, I'm thinking more along the lines of Cat Stevens (simple chords/song structure, focusing mostly the lyrics). When I'm plugged in, I want to be Joe, John Christ (Danzig), Angus Young (AC/DC), and Ron Thal (Bumblefoot) (all at once preferably) - basically crazy but controlled hard rock. Honestly, though, I'm not all that skilled, and I think it definitely shows on the acoustic when I try more complex things.

Webmaster/Joe - thanks for the longer sound clips. My first impression when listening to them was that the new album is going to be heavier than I initially thought, which is fine by me.

Morning ...

Alexandre: oooh! Surprises! I will, once I get time to go into the city (during business hours)

So only two people have ever used the words Byzantine and Byzantium? I used to think it was "bighs-an-teen" My interest was aroused by some cymbals I found under the name "Byzantine" which after searching the 'net I found no info on. The guy in the shop pronounced it as "bighs-un-tine" however on Age of Kings it was pronounced "biz-n-teen" so I did a search for pronunciation in dictionaries but the clearest result I could get was the "American" version (biz-un-teen) and the "British" version which was unclear as to whether it was the same as my original idea or the guy in the shop's. ("tein" - is that teen, tine or tane? I want a phonetic alphabet!)

So currently, I call it By-zn-teen and By-zan-tee-um. Any scholars of English care to make any input? I know they're not words used in common language.

How can you ten finger tap? Don'tyou only have 8 fingers?

(insert long pointless spam here)

Greyfox88 - At school, it usually isn't about proving to others that you can play... unless there's another great guitarist there that can outplay you, in that case you've gotta prove it to yourself that you're better. Personally there are a few things that people find impressive at my school:

1.) Shred and tapping. Pretty much going nuts as incoherantly as possible

2.) Really nice sounding fingerstyle songs

and, the kicker

DCK you were close the proper spelling is appendages you just forgot a 'p' anyway is that other appendage the same one you practiced with a while back?*wink wink*

Jon, thanks for the ITLIS clips. I like the variety. If I Could Fly is a good melodic song... looking forward to hearing the whole cd.

Joe, hope life if fun, xo.

For acoustic over electric, I wouldn't say that just playing an acoustic demonstrates someone's ability. I think the real skill factor is simply playing without the use of effects (including distortion/overdrive).

For instance, I can't afford to spend a fortune on a really good acoustic guitar with a nice action, but on the other hand an electric guitar with a nice action can be relatively cheap. Many people with cheap acoustic and electric guitars who don't have much money to spare, such as myself, will also likely choose to settle for a cheap acousitc and buy effects for their cheap electric guitar instead of choosing to splash out on an expensive but better acoustic.

I can play my electric guitar with no effects and a clean tone to a standard that truly reflects where I am with the instrument. If, however, some blinkered purist were to say 'that's no good, you're nothing on the guitar unless you play unplugged' and then asked to hear me on my acoustic guitar, it wouldn't reflect my ability fairly, because my cheap acoustic guitar, unlike its similarly priced electric counterpart, has an ultra stiff grip on the strings to make fretting a note feel like you're cutting your fingers with cheesewire, plus the gap between the strings and the fretboard seems wide enough to be able to climb through it!

I still play acoustic as well as electric, it's good to play both just to vary your playing even if your acoustic's action is horrible like mine, but frequently I have to tone things down on the acoustic. My friend has a really nice acoustic, and when I play his I play just as well as on electric, because with his acoustic it's fine just to play freely without inhibitions over the action or tension. Those two aspects are more important, I think, than just being plugged in or not (as long as effects aren't being overused).

If all things were equal in terms of action, tension and so forth then acoustic use may be said to reflect true ability, but usually people's acoustic and electric guitars aren't equal. Different if you're Joe, or Vai, and can afford the best of both, even having them customised to your tastes, but for many of us, we can't do that.

What I find funny is that if you play your electric guitar with no amplification at all, so that you're only playing the bare guitar except without the acoustics, then play something well, some people still dismiss it as 'that's easy because you did it on an electric guitar', as if it did everything for you! I don't know why it bothers some people so much. Mind you, people who get that wound up about something like that are often the sort of people who if you do what they ask to the letter, they try and find some way of picking that to bits or insisting on something else being important that they hadn't told you they wanted, then look at you like you should be ashamed of yourself and apologise to them!

JAZZY BOY- i think joe's "fastest" playing, is on either surfing with the alien, where he does that super fast tapping stuff with the pic... or for straight playing it might be Crushing Day, theres some real fast leads on there... and when joe played it live a couple tours ago it looked like he was having a bit of trouble with it, he didnt fuck up or anything but you could see his face grimacing as he stretched all over the fretboard...no wonder they dont like to do the song, it was awesome though! we might not ever hear that tune live again....but we all chanted for it and joe delivered after months...maybe years of hounding, rock on joe.

edit: check it out, guitar world 1999 reader poll... BEST HARD ROCK ALBUM - Metallica, Garage Inc. ---BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT - #2 Metallica - Garage, Inc.... says volumes.

Granola, Granola, go, go, Granola!