Does Room Tone Even Matter?
Plus, how to get your hand sync working
This week the newsletter is filled with great videos and lessons. We have Jim Lill, with his best produced video yet on tone, Levi Clay going back to basics on what we should practice, Chris Sherland talking about hand synchronization and so much more. What's your favorite link this week? Make sure to comment on Substack.
I have two awesome announcements coming in next week’s newsletter. So keep an eye out here for new ways that Chasing Sound will help you practice better, and make more music. Alright, let's get into these links.
This Week’s Guitar Links
- The One Thing Every Influential Guitar Tone Has In Common - Jim Lill is back with a new video on the merits of good tone, and where it comes from. I love the production on this video, and I really enjoyed the conclusion he comes to throughout the video. What do you think about Jim's findings?
- What Are The Best Guitar Cables of 2023? - Talking about making changes in tone, I liked watching this new Chairmen of the Boards podcast, which gets together pedalboard makers from various companies. The focus of this episode is on an article by Guitar Player, that talks about the best guitar cables out there right now. What cables do you use with your rig? Later in the week, Guitar World did a best patch cables article, which is a nice companion piece to this video. You can check that out here.
- The John Mayer Song Nobody Can Play - One of my favorite John Mayer songs is the classic “Neon" from his 'Room For Squares' album. I've seen a lot of folks try and play this riff right, but a lot of people are missing that essential component - the bounce! Tyler from Music Is Win shows off the technique in his latest video.
- Guitar neck profiles explained: find your perfect playing partner - I'll be the first to admit, for years I didn't pay much attention to when people mentioned neck profiles. I'd just like a neck on a guitar for its playability or not. But then I started to get acquainted with what all the profile letters meant, which made it easier to know if I'd connect with a guitar or not, even before picking it up. Guitar World just put out a great article on neck profiles that'll help demystify this stuff if you're new to it.
- Break This ONE Habit In Your Practice To Make HUGE Progress! - Really straightforward video from Levi Clay this week, asking you to focus on the things you need to practice vs. the things you want to practice. He's not wrong here - having this type of focus will take you a long way. He also mentions his newer Guided Practice book, which has a great subset of his Patreon lessons.
- Synchronization: Get Your Hands Working Together - Nothing will make a guitarist sound more amateurish than missing notes and chords, and a lot of that comes down to hand sync. Chris Sherland put together some great single and multi strings exercises to work on. If we're talking about things you should practice, this is one of them.
- The Boden RESQ:D Concept - I love this interesting concept from Strandberg guitars. Rather than get rid of bodies, like so many other manufacturers do, Strandberg is "rescuing" them, and making them into their RESQ:D line of guitars. They're going to be limited edition, but their price point will open these guitars up to many more players. I've seen anywhere between $1199-1499.
- Riffs and Licks with Satchel from Steel Panther - Nick Bowcott recently linked up with Satchel of Steel Panther to talk about 80's riffs, and why they were so iconic. I love the 80's VHS style filter on the video.
- The Only Way to Improve Your Sight Reading Skills - Brad Harrison just started a new series on how to get better at sight reading. “The better you can read, the less you have to practice.” I'm excited to see where this series goes over the next couple of videos. If you've never done any sight reading before, this is a great video to start with. If you ever have any sight reading questions, let me know!
- Daniele Gottardo - The Cabinet (Official Music Video) - I love Daniele Gottardo's playing - I feel like he creates music in the same vein of Yngwie, but with a ton more instrumentation behind him. His songs are very lush and orchestral, with his tapping and legato skills taking him to another level. Check out his new song “The Cabinet”.
- How to create fluid streams of notes like Eric Johnson by combining economy picking with legato pentatonics - If you already know pentatonics and want to work on both economy picking and legato in the style of Eric Johnson, you should check out this great lesson. I love lessons like this, that have a handful of licks I can introduce into my practice schedule. It helps shake things up every once in a while.
- The Mixolydian Blues Scale Could Be the Most Useful Scale of All - Another thing you might want to work on, if you don't have it under your fingers already is the Mixolydian blues scale. After something like Ionian and Aeolian, Mixo has to be one of the most useful scales across blues, rock and other genres. This lesson shows you how to use the blues scale along with mixolydian to make a hybrid scale that can be played over major and minor progressions.
Hey did you know, not only do I talk guitar each week, but I also teach it!
Try out a half an hour to see how much you can learn when you know the right things to practice. Whether you want to learn guitar, recording, mixing or more, I can help you out!