What are you struggling with?

This is what Mark hoppus and nolly use though!

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And Fat Mike from NOFX too (with his own signature dunlop pick .60 pick even)

I started with a .60 but am somewhere between .88 and 1.0 (max grip nylons)

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Picks, like strings, are really a personal preference thing. Some people really like the gimmick picks like Raptors or the other twee expensive ones with thick gripping surfaces and so on; I find these less playable than just plain old Dunlop Tortex and Ultex.

YMM seriously V with picks, it’s all about what feels best to you.

I have a Rumble 40 and 100 sitting side by side. I love them both. 90% of the time the 100 suits me perfectly, but it’s on the boomy side when I’m playing solo, so I primarily use the 40 just for that. However, for the past year I’ve been sitting directly beside the amps ( almost within reach) but recently sat on the other side of the room when there was some overflow junk sitting in the room from other renovations going on in the house. I was so surprised at how much better everything sounded that I paused the ongoing renovations and rearranged the bass room instead :grin:

So, no, Rumble 40’s aren’t inherently boomy, but location in the room is important and is worth experimenting with.

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Good points, yea I’m crammed into a corner here😀

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Anyone got any particular tips for getting good at 16th notes when they’re sprinkled into songs?

I’ve decided I must learn some sections of Orion and - same as Fade to Black - there are 16th notes scattered about that my fingers tend to trip over.

Aside from general practice, has anyone done any exercises they found useful for this?

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Not necessarily “struggling”, but I did my first bit of Drop-D last night. Was not expecting how much that would mess with my head. It’ll take some getting used to

On the plus side, it tells me how much my ear has already associated “this fret makes this note”.

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What is the most polite and productive way to tell a guitarist that he needs to STOP PLAYING while people are trying to discuss things during practice?

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It depends on the folks in the band, but in my band “Yo, dude! Shut the fuck up!!” worked pretty well.

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Currently I’m trying to get used to playing with a metronome. I’m still at the point where keeping count and trying to regulate note lengths (even just steady quarters) consumes too many brain cycles and I lose coordination. I can Billy Jean pretty well “open loop” but as soon as I try to lock to a slow beat (60bpm) I can barely get through it once.

I don’t think there’s any shortcut or pro tip to getting through this, I just need to get trained to the point keeping simple 4/4 time is a background process.

On a more positive note, my flying fingers are finally starting to get somewhat under control and I’ve struggled with that for years on g**tar.

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Works with just about anyone, band or no band.

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Words to live by, coach. :joy:

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Yes this is the goal, a great skill to get to

Perhaps not a pro tip but something that aids me: try ‘transferring’ your counting ‘into your body’ (rather than having it going in your conscious mind all the time) e.g. try tapping your foot or stepping in place, even swaying your body etc. whatever works for you

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Just got done with a 30 min session, this helps quite a bit if I don’t get distracted with fretting and can get in the groove. I’m doing pretty well at 80bpm now and “phase locking” to the metronome is already getting easier.

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Good tip, this definitely helps me to ‘feel’ the beat :blush:

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Dance. Start dancing. Practice dancing. It will really ingrain that rhythm.

Practice dancing by itself, no instrument. Then practice dancing and singing or humming your bass lines.

It will also ingrain keeping rhythm into the kinesthetic (movement) centers of your brain. Freeing up the musical processing centers to just worry about melodic information.

What type of dance(s) you should learn depends on what type of music you are playing most. If it’s something blues derived (rock, funk, most dance pop), your best bets will probably be Blues Dancing, Hip Hop, or maybe West Coast Swing. But probably avoid ballroom format classes.

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This is how we dance in Holland - does that work too? :slight_smile:

I know you’re being facetious, but yes. Very rhythmic EDM with obvious lineage back to polka. Polka is another great rhythmic dance to learn that is seriously underappreciated. I honestly believe that Swing dancing really came from the fusion of Blues and Folk-Polka. It got folded into subsequent popular music.

If you want to get good at feeling triplets, learn polka.

My problem with ballroom instruction is that they’re largely taken vernacular dances and crammed them into formal structures. They’ve become about teaching Moves and Patterns instead of the actual dance.

It’s like, learning to play bass from a guitar player who knows all about scales, chords, and melody but doesn’t understand rhythm and holding down a groove.

You can go to a ballroom studio and they will teach you salsa and merengue, and it will be very different from what latin people are doing in clubs and backyard parties.

I had to google that: “treating serious issues with deliberately inappropriate humour”.
Love it! I will add “facetious” to my vocabulary, thanks :slight_smile:

I knew some people in the “gabber” scene back in the day … some were really excellent analog instrumentalist. Maybe it’s the dancing style?

But maybe it’s the drugs :slight_smile:

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Yeah it’s sort of like “sarcastic”, but like… you’re taking something legitimate and exaggerating it to the point of absurdity rather than your words being the opposite.

Sarcasm in SNL. Facetious is Monty Python.

I’d say what’s happening there is that it is just the continued evolution of vernacular music. The same tradition and spirit that created folk music continuing into popular street-level music of its day.

Depending on what skills you want to develop, Northern European music like this will tend to have simpler and straighter rhythms than music with more African roots that will include a lot more varied polyrhythms.