i still remember sitting hunched over on my bed when i was fourteen and fifteen and sixteen and seventeen, transcribing soundgarden tabs to standard tuning and wrenching my hands inside out actually playing them. this one's in standard tuning. burden in my hand was one i remember being particularly weird to play. that might be the best practice you can give a kid to get their hands going around.
with fell on black days, it was that off the wall solo (and those harmonies at the end) that was fun to play along with, because the chemistry between kim and chris on the track is so deep that it gets across through a mass manufactured tape played on a cheap ghettoblaster. there's only maybe two or three songs that i know of like this, where you can really channel the emotion of the track just by playing along with it.
the guitar just turns into this electrified monster, and the guitar trance suddenly takes over.
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deathtokoalas
kim's stuff isn't that hard to learn, really, if you're coming into it with enough dexterity. it's a specific style, you just need to get your fingers and mind into it and most of it comes out pretty naturally because it's mostly just all tremoloing through pentatonics. i always wondered if that wonky guild of his was initially a way to get a zappaesque sg thing going on.
but it's a lot of fun to play.
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deathtokoalas
something i used to do back in the day was just run chromatically up and down the neck. i spent a brief period trying to be an impressionist jazz punk guitar teacher by just throwing all the theory out the window and teaching kids to work directly with semitone intervals. the idea was to warp their brains into rejecting western tonality and understanding the instrument as a kind of matrix of notes, in which they could build their own patterns.
none of the kids lasted long, but they did get their fingers moving quickly. see, to me, that's the important thing - being able to move your fingers with enough control to be able to create what you hear in your head.
so, that helps. it's dry, though. kim would throw his beer at me, call me a wanker and tell me to go listen to steve vai. of course, i agree with him to a large extent. i kind of don't feel like soundgarden was meant to be studied.
but it does work.
Huzaifa Ahmed
dude what's wrong with koalas?
deathtokoalas
koalas need to be destroyed due to their cuteness.
J.C. Gleason
Aren't the majority of Soundgarden songs in drop D? I know that Black Hole Sun, Birth Ritual and Outshined are but I don't know.
deathtokoalas
soundgarden used alternate tunings in general, not just dropped d, although the low e was in fact often dropped down a little (sometimes down to c). a lot of the interesting voicings they came up with came from using open tunings.
J.C. Gleason
Really? Huh, you learn something new everyday.
deathtokoalas
yeah. the open tunings were a genre marker of alt rock in the 80s, but are really pretty standard through the history of folk rock.
Jackson P.
Black Hole Sun isn't in drop D....
deathtokoalas
i'm pretty sure it is, actually. it's been a long time, though.
this song isn't, though.
Jackson P.
Yeah you're right. But it's harder to play in drop d than whatever I originally learned IMO.
And yes, this is just in standard. Rather easy song as well.
Could've very well done without that last guitar solo though :/
deathtokoalas
bah. it's the solo that's the fun part to play....
J.C. Gleason
Not necessarily.
deathtokoalas
iirc, black hole sun is in drop-d specifically because it uses the lower two notes. you'd have to transpose it up at least a full tone (unless you're down a half step anyway, then a semi tone) to play it in standard tuning.
at that age, i couldn't be bothered to fuck with tunings. i had one of those ibanezes with the locking bridges and the thumb screws, which means i would have had to unlock the thing to take it in and out of dropped-d or open c or whatever else. that's why i retabbed all the weird tunings for standard tuning. i mentioned it's good for the hands, but it was also good for getting to know the fretboard.
Mathews Barbosa
true story
Djalma Reis
You....damn, you could stay in silence, but no!, you wrote this. You've shared this with us; gold we find through the night on the internet. Thank you very much.
Grease Munkee
why wouldnt you just tune to the song?
deathtokoalas
well, it was the ibanez. i didn't know what it was when i bought it (well, my dad bought it), i was like 12 at the time. i don't know if they still make these things or not, but they lock the tuning in place near the nut and then give you thumb screws near the bridge to tune with. the thumb screws only let you go up or down about a tone or so, then you need to unlock the system at the nut. it's an annoying process. and, if you want to play four or five songs in a row in an alternate tuning, you're going to be spending more time fiddling around with the guitar's hardware than actually playing.
the purpose of the system is to prevent tremolo/whammy players from going out of tune. it's the kind of thing people like steve vai, who use a lot of whammy bar, need to get through a set on stage; not the best guitar for kids playing with tunings.
