Playing Clean How-To, Unwanted String Noise Removal Tips

Revision as of 10:13, 27 June 2016

An Article by Darius Wave

Introduction

Hey guys (and girls)

Today I would like to share some tips with You. Those are tips I try to show in my lessons, because I believe they're critical, if You want to sound like a pro. This time I wanted to share them with our community through the forum.

If we look at what "Playing clean" is exactly, we realize it's a summary of a few different ascpets, like precise timing, even tone, consistent picking, correct pitch at bends and vibrato. Each of them takes time to master at pro level, yet there is one especially important in my opinion. Why so speciall? It's a pack of good habits, every guitar player should build since the very first days of playing. As the word says...those are habits so once you get them, you just play, never thinking about "how to". Those are...

Noise removal habits

In playing any instrument, silence is same important as the notes we play. Electric guitar with distortion needs a speciall care in this case, because distortion boosts all unwanted noises. For professinals it's critical to be able to keep your instrument 100% silent in all the breaks/pauses or the spots it's simply not involved in the arrange.

Good muting habits are not only the case of breaks but essentially...all the time we play as well. Ringing low strings can affect the sustain of high notes for example. This means that very often we do have twice as much job to take care of unwanted strings, than to play the actuall note.

Making yourself to preapre both hands for natural muting at the stage of beginner education is something, that can save you years. It's easier to get some good habits from the basis, than replacing bad habits with new ones. There is only one way to make it reasonable fast...

Completely stop doing things the way you did before. Use only the new way, from now on

Yes. You need to say to yourself "I'm done with the old way". You can't just split things and use bad, old habits because things are easier (at least for now). You need to totally remove what has been done wrong, from Your playing. It will take more or less time for each of us, but there is no shortuct to pass this, and in most cases....there will be time of doubts and disappointment, cased by lack of ability to play wlll things, we were used to consider as done/learned.

Let me introduce You to a few things/habits I have got naturally in the process of learning to play the guitar. I had to analyze my playing to help other people fix some issues. I thought I would be glad if someone could show me back then...i guess things will progress even faster.

1. Always roll down the volume knob, when you finish playing/have a longer break. I use a side of my right pinky to do that, and it works like automatic nosie gate. I do this even on the shorter breaks - for example: when the band plays silently and I have to use a little more of distortion to play long sustain notes for a change with breaks. Sometimes some of the buzz or hum can break through the fx noise gate. Why to risk if that's such a simple thing to fix at the stage of guitar itself