Going backwards

Ha. I've read your practice adventures with a bit of shock and amazement. Even a bit of jealousy !

For I'm only a couple of years older than you and I have ZERO option to skip even ONE day if I'm to hold on to what technical skills I have. In fact, technical progress for me is like swimming upstream every day, with one step forward and one or two steps back, on very slippery rock in cold, rushing water ! This can be quite frustrating if I let it. But I accept it now.

I also accept I have to warm up for an hour and play for almost 2 hours every DAY...or...I can't use all my guitar techniques well, or have much hope of progressing. And that's just for lead with a little rhythm. To focus on rhythm I'd need another HOUR a day at least ! And that doesn't include time for learning new songs or practicing vocals, which take another TWO hours a day to maintain. Adding in recording time and equipment exploration would add more hours a day to the mix. And more time is actually required each day for learning more about the guitar and voice and performance techniques ; unending learning curves and rabbit holes ! (I'm still down rabbit hole 5 two months after I went down rabbit hole 1 for example. Ack)

And at my age, and I guess we're talking about "real physical health age", there's no way my hands are going to hold up to more than a couple of hours of practice a DAY...and if I take a day off...I go backwards in a hurry. (At the beginning of the year I found THREE of my left hand finger joints became "sprained" so bad I decided to take the 6 weeks rest Dr. Google suggested, and that was a MAJOR disaster ! Not only did my sprain pain still exist at the end of 6 weeks, but it took me 6 MONTHS to get BACK to where I had been technically. I'll never do that again ! And in some ways, I haven't recovered my skill level YET ! Note however, this wasn't as impressive as a shredding guitar player I knew who practiced scales for so long and hard for a couple weeks, that both his hands swelled up like the Michelin Man to twice their normal size ! I hope he recovered but maybe he did damage too. He dropped out and I lost track after a move. My hands seem to have recovered, thank goodness, but I make sure to warmup slowly first, and no longer play so aggressively)

Now of course, when young, I could take time off of most physical things like sports and wouldn't lose much or any skills ; not so nowadays. So when I read how you take a lot of time off from practicing I have to think...huh ? Because you are way more advanced and experienced than me. Is it muscle memory from your youth ? Or is your real physical age a decade less than your real age ? Or extra talent ? Does your property maintenance keep your body and brain super healthy ? I suppose all could be true. If so, you are fortunate. I didn't even have an electric guitar until my late forties and only used it to back up my vocals without learning much about it until the last decade or so. My loss ! These guitar things are a UNIVERSE of music possibilities...so cool ! But then, I should have started playing guitar at 8, 8hrs a day to really be good at it, right ?

Not happening with this old body ! Not able to take even a DAY off ever. And I can only get to 90% of my skills playing 2hrs a day. That doesn't include bar chord or power chord rhythm practice, new songs, recording, equipment exploration, performance and vocal practice, etc etc which is clearly too energy and time intensive for me to handle any more. I suspect further degradation of abilities, strength, and energy are ahead for all of us geezers. All of which is to be expected of course.

Eventually. I'll hit the big 70 in 2024.

Someday I might be limited to just cowboy chords or have to switch to keyboards in the old folks home. But for now, I give lead all I got and have a blast ! Les Paul managed to do ok into old age. But I sure don't miss a SINGLE day.

How you do that and not freak out is a mystery to me...I get nervous just thinking about it.

Yeah, it sure is a "use it or lose it" world !

I just hope health care will help out and extend our playing years but until then...two words.

Keith Richards.

PS. And speaking of the Stones...I listened to their new song "Angry" and they mixed it rather strangely I thought.

At the back of the song they sounded like the Stones but the beginning of the song had so much space that it almost lost any sense of continuity or flow ! Weird. Also, I thought the song would have been better at a faster pace.

I'm sure you were waiting for this comment...so there you are !

And yeah, I spend some energy trying to play as lightly as I can, and trying to not get too tense myself. Some days I get so lost in concentration that I not only lose over an hour, I don't move for so long I get stiff ! I don't know if a lighter guitar would help but I just saw Gibson has a new light Les Paul that's half way to an SG with a thinner, all Mohagany body. I haven't felt the need to seek a lighter guitar yet...but the day might be coming...and a half Les Paul, half SG might be interesting ! I tried the thinner body strats though, and I don't recommend them at all. Thankfully, I don't have near the back issues some people have. But after a 3hr playing day, I notice the strain. Will this get worse with time ? Probably. I'll be checking out helium filled guitars eventually...

Ah. There are days when my callouses are too soft and my fat fingers interfere with the adjacent strings. I've been thinking about getting a wider neck just for those days. Thankfully, this doesn't happen too often...yet. I can use my Godin nylon converted to metal for extra string spacing, but those pickups are unsatisfactory. My now departed Dad reported more and more difficulties with his callouses as he aged and I have to assume this will be my fate as well. Old bodies probably don't grow skin as quickly and as well as when young ? So don't lose your wide neck just in case.

Also, lately it's hit me how useful humbucker pole pieces can be ! You could dial in even volumes across all strings, or emphasize strings to best bring out for the punch or sparkle or crackle or thud of various distortion settings/boxes. Even cleans ! One can actually optimize for just ONE preset sound. It takes time and patience though and sure, I used to think it's overkill most of the time. But if I was could only have one guitar, my vote is for humbuckers for those pole pieces and ability to push electrons.

Sadly, I did not acquire a 335 type guitar. I thought the 356 was intriguing though. Glad to hear you really like it ! I'm still settling on what kind of guitar and sound I want ultimately. I NEVER EVER thought I'd be playing LEAD and apparently I never thought I'd get OLD. Ha. Surprise !

All I know about my next guitar is that it will have humbuckers, and maybe...a wider neck, and have a more rounded voice(rounded highs and lows). A 335 type might be ok, or some PRS. I want a Jerry Garcia/Les Paul ability/lead sound...plus a rounded brash to crushing power chords capability. Will a 335 type do that without the ice pick and weak bass issue ? I view guitars as each having a unique voice, with most having an unbalanced sweetspot. I want a rounded, full guitar voice with a well balanced sweetspot everywhere. And I can probably dream on too ! But that's the goal. Of course this is all complicated by the digital effects boxes and amp and setup one uses. And at what volume it will all work in. One thing I can say about electric guitars is that they are impossibly, never endingly, magnificently complicated if one really tries at the biggest sweetspot and best tone(using digital equipment for sure). I could easily have one guitar dedicated to a single preset on each FX box and then I'd need 20 guitars I couldn't use for anything else but their specialized preset ! And that's nuts. Or the province best left to pros.

The rumor used to be that 335s could cover the most ground and maybe that's exactly what I need now. I was put off by the size of a 335 originally so pretty much ignored them. A smaller version might be just right though. I'll make a point of trying out a few in 2024 and see. And 6lbs is 6lbs. I know I don't like my 59ish LP much for what I'm doing and it's 9lbs +. It's a great guitar for what it does but I either need to change out the pickups or change guitars. So we'll see. Glad to hear you really favor the 356 ! And you if you haven't fiddled with your pole piece heights yet, you might be surprised by how much the pole pieces can affect your tone with overdrive and distortion(digital anyway), due to how each string hits your preamp/fx box with more or less volume and/or how even you want the volume across the strings for lead. Better write down your original settings and allocate a lot of time though...I've spent WEEKs doing this already...with a different solution every day ! It's starting to settle out though. And some setups give spectacular rhythm distortion but weak leads, or strong leads and weak rhythm distortion. I was also looking for a decent guitar-to-bass sound for looping, and found it, only to lose it when I raised the output of the low freqs with the pole pieces(octave fx got overwhelmed with too much pickup output I think). So pole pieces can be significant and certainly a bit maddening ! But they are an extra adjustment that single coils don't have. And in the case of a hollow guitar, those pole piece adjustments might be very handy for controlling any feedback issues at high volume too...or creating that issue...so there's that...

My 356 has a standard Gibson ABR-1 Tune-O-Matic bridge with a stop tailpiece. I don't know the heft of the tailpiece. It has been my experience with Les Pauls that a lighter tailpiece tends to sound better to me. I took the stock one off my 60's Tribute Gold-top Les Paul and replaced it with a featherweight one. I also had an ABR-1 bridge put onto it in place of the stock one on the recommendation of my stellar guitar tech buddy. That guitar sounds and plays marvelous. My only issue is with the G string intonation problem that all Les Pauls have with unwound G strings. It makes me have to be very selective about how I voice chords.

For me, I don't think the sound really changes that much from one solid body humbucker guitar to the next but the playing sensitivity most certainly does. How the guitar responds to touch is a big deal for me. I think where the electronics come into play is mostly when playing at less that wide open on the pots. That's where I hear most of the differences.

No I haven't tried the Plek yet but after having a number of different Gibson solid body guitars over the years, I don't think that will remedy the intonation problem with the unwound G string. Since all of what I do anymore is studio stuff I just tune it for where on the neck I'll be playing. I can always punch in parts in sections when needed so tuning, while a PITA, isn't a huge issue. Most of the time it isn't noticeable when playing lead lines but chords are a different thing. My Les Paul is weight relieved and 8.6 pounds. Not light but not that heavy either. I sit when I play in the studio anyway so it isn't an issue. My Rickenbacker 4001 bass is 10.1 pounds and I used to play it all night standing up in my younger years. I probably still could if I were still gigging but I'm not so we'll never know.

I stumbled across this the other day and it looks interesting. Not sure if it will affect the sound of the guitar due to the extensive routing and modification involved to install it, but it looks like it would fix all the tuning problems. I would consider doing it on my Les Paul because it's a lower line reissue and I've already done a number of modifications on it.

www.evertune.com/resources/introduction_to_evertune.php?utm_source=website&utm_medium=internal&utm_campaign=header_e01