Hello Steve, I just want to say that the reason I've decided to do music for a living is becuase it defines the meaning of my life, but the reason why I still play the guitar is the inspiration of everything you do with that instrument, which is what my question is about. I've been playing guitar for almost 5 years now, and am planning to go study in Berklee School of Music this following spring semester. However nobody and nothing could help me with my technique problems thats why I've turned to you for help. I don't have that much trouble with writing music, learning the theory, the ear trainig etc, but my playing and mastering the instrument seems to be the hardest thing in my life sometimes! I sometimnes feel as though I will never be able to play the way I want to. I, like yourself like everything picked so it sounds nice and clear, but I cannever be sure whether to exhagarrate as much as i can all my picking during excersising or just make sure it just sounds right. When I'm improvising over a progression for example I cannever just sit and play it all right, every now and again I make a mistake. When practising i usually play a few scales over and over the neck for hours on the metronome but advancing seems to be a lot slower than it should be. How many hours per day average would you say should be enough for someone in my position? A lot of the problem also seems to be in the left hand what would you suggest for improvement? If you take 5 mins to answer this and help me out you'd be taking tons of my chest and helping me immensly at not getting discouraged to do what I love most, because for a really long time now I've only been getting aggrivated and frustrated on this issue. Thank's a lot for being the best at what you do!
OK, this is not really a problem. Everyone can improve their technique with some methods that traditional athletes use. Warm up at least 10 minutes before hitting it hard, first of all. Next, do some scale or pattern practice at a tempo that results in near perfect results. Then, progressively increase the tempo every 10 minutes until the mistakes start to become unavoidable. Go a few minutes at a tempo slightly higher than that, even with mistakes. Then, go back to the fastest tempo that is comfortably error-free. Spend 10 minutes teaching your muscles that perfect synchronization.
Then, play some music that you like, and do something else for the rest of the day. Don't overdo it. You should be able to give yourself a productive session of technique only in the space of an hour and a half, max. The rest of your practice time can be spent on other specific problems of certain pieces, transcribing, jamming, writing, etc.
Schedule time to play with other musicians at least once a week. Have fun playing, too. I'm sure you can get to a new, higher plateau with this method. By the way, everyone does reach a plateau of what is physically possible, so don't base your self worth on what metronome marking that is. Everyone's technique is different, and the techniques that make very fast playing easy don't always reward you with the most control in other areas. So, be reasonable with your expectations.
FROM:
Steve Treharne
Steve, I've been with you since "Freefall" hit the streets,
and over the last quarter of a century (e-gadds!), I'm
still awed by what I consider to be the most
compelling, driving rythmic theme ever recorded. .
.which is of course. . ."Attila the Hun" on the Dregs
"Unsung Heroes" recording back in 81. Would you care
to share the recording setup you used for this? I'm
trying to imagine the unplugged electric (but slightly
electrified) effect that you produced and how you
managed to capture it. Obviously, there are
musculature components that would preclude about
99.9936% of the population from ever having a hope of
replicating this thing, so I think you can rest easy
by sharing how you pulled this off.
No secret there. I think I doubled it with a clean setting on the ampeg V4, but also did a clean, direct line, into the board. This gives a slightly hollow sound, but with a bit a clarity. The strumming actually is easier than you imagine, since the right hand is floating, and strumming is many times easier to do because of that. Most all of my single note lines are with an anchored right hand muting the adjacent strings, so those are much harder technically.
The first chord is on the 7th fret, almost a B bar chord with a suspended fourth, the second chord is a G major over C, same position.
FROM:
Scott Spradlin
I've been a fan for years. Saw the Dixie Dregs in Charlotte at UNCC in the
early 70's and became a big fan. I once flew on an Eastern airline flight (A
small plane) and I believe that Steve Morse was one of the Pilots could this
be true?
You could have been a passenger on a flight in the Southeast with me in the cockpit, but it wasn't with Eastern. Somewhat similar name, though. I don't mention them since all airlines are sensitive to publicity, especially by former employees.
FROM:
Jeffrey Vilardi
Steve, I've been a fan since 1979 and have seen you perform many times. I
have tickets to see you play with Deep Purple &Joe Satriani in Boston this
summer. Do you plan on jamming with Joe at all on this tour. To see you and
Joe play together live would be incredible! Thanks for all the great music
it is greatly appreciated!
We have done a little bit of that in the past, I love jamming with him. Imagine, though, the number of people in both bands. Next, imagine the venue, promoter, and stage manager having to tell every band to cut 30 minutes or more from their show in order to make room for all the acts. Then go to both bands and tell them to cut even more out of their show in order for the guitar players to have a long jam session. After everyone in both bands doesn't know what to cut out just to make the time slot................but, who knows, it has happened before, like i said.
FROM:
Sigurdur Bachmann
Hi Steve my name is Siguršur (Siggi) and I am from Iceland and the biggest
fan of your work from the first album's to Deep Purple and you went to teach
some tricks on june 24th in Tonlistarskolanum FĶH and when you arrived a boy
walked to you and greeted you? You remember? Im that boy and wow just
meeting you in person makes dream's come true and i own a Musicman Guitar
Your model and it rocks! The tone control is great is there any other eq.
that you recommend?
Thanks, first of all. As far as the tone control, I sometimes use the tone control rolled all the way off, (counterclockwise) during some of the vocal verses, and then in the chorus, turn the tone all the way clockwise. What this does, is to keep some low frequency power in the sound, but totally opens up the sound to hear the vocals. If you try this by yourself, it might just sound bad, but in the context of a band, the effect is that the group builds and brightens up during the chorus.
Actually, the volume control is another tone control. For the first 20% of it's movement with a high gain amplifier, it is a volume control. After that, it starts to overload the amp, producing ever increasing gain and distortion. By the way, we usually like that distortion, so many guitarists leave it all the way up.
But there are great advantages to becoming very comfortable with quickly changing the volume level of the guitar. Particularly when you can change pickups at the same time. You can easily go to a single coil pickup with 20% volume and get a very clean tone, then go to a humbucking with full volume to get a very thick, distorted, power chord sound. All of this is possible while plugged into a typical high gain tube amplifier input, without changing the channel switch at all.
FROM:
Tom Welts
Hey Steve, Impacts 2 still hasen't left the cd player! Just one quick
question if you dont mind....havent seen an anwer for this one....
"Who is the family pictured on the Stressfest cd ?..any signifigance? thanx
in advance for your time...see you@PNC in Aug!
The family in their 1950's era car is something from my imagination. The artist did a fantastic job of getting my vision all in a tiny cd frame. The idea was a shiny, happy, optimistic family going to an amusement park...........but inside is calamaty, chaos, and stress.
It could be seen to represent people who see the music business as a glamorous destination and haven't yet seen inside. It was an example of how we always make fun of things, just joking around..
FROM:
Victor Dri
What you think about the premium tickets for North America tour 2004? That contains a Meet and Greet with Deep Purple and a Photo with Deep Purple.
Are you agree?
That kind of thing would be fine with me. In fact, when I toured with Kansas, we had an entire seating area onstage with contest winners from each show's local area. We met all of them each night, and they got free admission, souvenirs, etc.
With any group, one person's opinion doesn't change anything, plus you have to figure in that the promoters set the ticket prices and policies in each area, not the band..
