Comments by "" (@johnwattdotca) on "Rick Beato"
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In the 1970s, when I was a lead guitarist-vocalist playing six-nighters in bar bands and show-bands in Toronto,
I would practice during the day with keyboard players who had synthesizers. We'd take turns playing notes,
me with my heavy electronic effects, and the keyboardist with his synth sounds, trying to guess what it was.
We had to do that so we could tell not only what key the song was in, if we were jamming out a request,
but also be able to tell what chord was used, sometimes hard to tell the difference between major and minor.
When you are playing with pitch-bending effects, you can develop a stronger sense of pitch yourself.
Scientific tuning, using an oscilloscope to tune guitar intonation, is different from tempered tuning.
It would be interesting to see if you can produce more videos with this information in mind.
I recommend "This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin,
a Montreal, Canada, professor who also records as a guitarist. His next book was also a best-seller.
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Double wow! It just happened again. Yesterday, I must have spent over an hour, with a lot of thought, talking about playing guitar in different ways, setting up Stratocasters, because I owned a 1964 Strat in 1970, with a 50 watt Marshall stack and effects, five months before Jimi Hendrix passed away, who I saw in Toronto. I described how a Nashville session player, on a honeymoon in Niagara Falls, showed me how to make a Strat or Tele sound exactly like a banjo. But when I visited today it was gone. I did the same thing I'm doing here, publishing that, looking around and coming back, but that disappeared. Frustrating.
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I'm hard core left-handed. All mammals are born 50/50 left or right handed, scientists thinking what you
move in the womb first is what you become. Anthropologists say it was the invention of bronze, the helmets
shields and spears, making it easy to stab left-handed people in the heart, why we're down to ten percent.
There is an electro-static coalescence in the front of your brain, where the electricity of your brain cojoins
the electricity of your body. Left-handed people have two, so if you are wounded by a bullet or someone
hurts your feelings for the rest of your life, the second one begins to compensate, back to your default self.
Playing guitar with the bass strings on the bottom and the highs on top is the easiest way to play guitar.
See how your fingers flutter over the strings to play lead, not having to scrunch them up to play lead
on the G, B and E strings. See how the pad of your index finger is always there for the bass strings,
whether you are playing jazzy or using feedback, deadening the strings you don't want to hear.
After exchanging his 1955 Gibson L5 back and forth in his dressing room, helping me to decide,
it was Mister George Benson who encouraged me to want to keep playing left-handed the way I was.
I talked about my 1964 Stratocaster in 1971 and the Marshall I custom ordered from England, but I never
said I saw Jimi Hendrix at Maple Leaf Gardens, just down the road, and while Mr. Benson was very
knowledgeable about using feedback he never mentioned his name either.
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It's not easy for me to criticize younger musicians, but there's a big difference between music and a fetish.
I'm not hearing anything I haven't heard before, and except for the extra two strings, nothing I haven't played.
"Someone comes up with two-handed tapping". Did you think Eddie, not every other guitarist who "tapped",
including violinists from the beginning of violins? Closer strings allow easier contanct for fingers and picks,
but I'm hearing this young man talk himself into musical irrelevance, if he expects to be a band player.
I just had a thought. This man might be left-handed but he doesn't know it. And please, no North American
rock musician ever added anything creative to music. It was all about loud volume and new electronic sounds.
You can't say a hard rock trio, with no rhythm or chordal backup, can be considered serious music,
unless you are appropriately stoned.
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Rick, the hardest thing it is to do for any artist is putting down another artist. We know how difficult it is to make
it in the business for profit, never mind a full time living. Being a musician, being the musician you are, is the
result of your own intelligence and diligence, with a little dark side synchronicity as artificial product producers.
Bands that throw themselves at a producer are doing a corporate walk, expecting to be given their new sound.
From studio jazzers showing rock band guitarists parts, to producers using technology to assimilate the band,
that's what you're talking about, working for technology. I know agent talk. I was there when Gino Vanelli
auditioned for Ontario agents, his first time out of Quebec. I was there when The Police did a small bar gig.
The way corporate music has evolved in America, you don't want to be the kind of person who makes it.
Why doesn't everyone just say The Beatles are going to be the Shakespeare of rock and get over it?
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I'm here to say I have my own reasons to update Classic Rock, and that's the change in technological society.
The first change would be updating tough stud lyrics into the feminist age, and tough stud lyrics are easier
to work with as singing them out. Changing the terms of technology means changing almost any previous lyric.
Expecting to hear rap means being able to rap it out, when rock stars used to be about shouting out the name
of the city they're in, even if they're wrong. And what about bombast, where you feel the bass in your gut?
North Americans are used to seeing Dancing With The Stars show, where people dance to music with rhythm.
Modern music is hip-hop and raggae influenced, what are only slower and more laid back beats and rhythms.
You got me thinking. For artists, computer art became "clip art".
Clip music doesn't do it for me, but I don't have anything else.
Signals, that's all what most of it is.
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One of the albums I figured out note for note as an influential musician in Ontario, Canada, was Pretzel Logic.
I am by far a more melodic guitar player than Larry Carlton. I saw Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple the same year,
and Mr. George Benson took me backstage to swap his 1955 Gibson L5, helping me decide to be right or left-
handed, and play with the bass strings on the bottom, enabling chords and lead ability denied to other guitarists.
I was playing full time in the seventies, living in Toronto for two years playing in salary showbands, where I was
using Hendrix sounds while I was playing off the melody of songs, whether I was singing or not.
As Clan Watt, with both inventive electrical and governmental actions, I have a suggestion for Larry Carlton.
I'm using first year manufacture DiMarzio pickups, "P.A.F. Humbucker" and the "Fat Strat".
With a humbucker at the neck and two single coils Strat-style, use a Switchcraft toggle switch like an S.G.
Wire the humbucker on one side with the single coils on the other. With your volume on full, as Stratocasters
are designed for, have all the pickups on. Where you pick determines your volume and tone, any volume
and tone, and softer picking can have a cleaner, acoustic sound or a mellow jazzy tone, and when you pick
harder it gets raunchy, a nice balance before you add effects. Finger-picking is also in the same volume mix.
Mr. Larry Carlton! I have probably enjoyed your guitar playing as hearing it all over the place,
and as a non-smoker, non-drinker myself, it's reassuring to see you looking and playing good,
and finding new ways to continue your musical success. Uh... got any lefty Stratocaster tremolo units for sale?
I make sounds like Jimi Hendrix and riff of like John Coltrane to Nicolo Paganini, with some McCoy Tyner,
and I don't have to play just one note at a time for solos. I'm still ready to hit it big time, even if I don't care to.
There are Sons and Daughters of the Gael who speak Gaelic. Bay-an-uck-let, blessings on you.
If I receive any kind of reply, I betcha I can describe an Am chord you have never played before, as a righty.
And please, don't make any kind of guitar playing bet with me. I have never lost, even in major music stores.
I'm sure you can see you inspired me. Please, call George Gruhn if you want a reference for my inventiveness.
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