Uh, I'm not anything with regards to music (and sometimes, I guess, I'm a cranky dad) but isn't it kind of obvious that you're not going to be using your hands to manipulate something, if you're playing guitar at the same time? Also, the product is called a _pedal_, isn't that kind of a clue-stick?
Not to talk down you dad, obviously, but it seems like such a strange thing to not "get". :( I guess I'm sorry for your sake, that you didn't get to enjoy the gift fully.
> This makes sense, right? Guitar pedals are, after all, a technology that you are supposed to step on. And not in some gentle, delicate manner!
I remember getting a guitar pedal for Christmas when I was like 16 or so. My dad did not believe me that you were supposed to step on them, and was angry at me for mistreating his gift, lol. I showed him footage of real bands doing that and he told me "Yeah and Hendrix used to light his guitar on fire on stage, but you're not doing that either." He thought it was a stage trick.
A well made pedal does feel great though. I still have a Boss pedal from 1988 that works with no repairs. Wish all of them were that durable, the DL4 is notable for having connections come apart internally after about a year. Easy fix, but sucks if it happens on stage.
Point #3 is a big deal, especially being easily readable on stage in no light or lights in your face. I have the Lillian Phaser pictured in #5 and had to put tape over the blue LEDs because they are so bright they blind you when you look down. This isn't an issue specific to the Lillian either. From what I understand, blue LEDs are much brighter than the rest, and most designers don't take any steps to dim them.
That's really rough. It's one thing if a child has a history of asking for stuff and then abandoning it. Eventually if the parent says "not until you've used the other stuff", I can understand that, even if that one more thing could have been the item that really clicked for the child.
But in this case, to be forced to play only one kind of thing and then not be allowed to try something you want seems really hard. I'm sorry you had to go through that. Thanks for sharing.
Quick story about this comment resonating (pun intended) with me: My son is quietly coming and pulling out my electric guitar from my office room these days and strumming it randomly (just open strings). I haven't said anything except to be careful after he tried to walk it sideways through a door (screams internally in pain). He's watched me practice scales and the wanted to know how to play individual notes so I showed him and left it. A few days later I heard a tiny "ding" of a single note from him for the first time. Still haven't said anything. Maybe he'll love it, maybe he won't.
Basically, I'm going to keep your comment in my mind to not fall into the future trap of denying him something he really wants to try out just because I have some other hope for him. Even now, it'd be easy to jump on my son at this point and say "ho there child, I could send you to some classes now" and then get upset if he doesn't like it. It's really easy to fall for my own bias and whatnot. I'll remind myself to avoid doing that.
If you don't mind me asking, how old were you when you asked for an electric guitar initially?
For the record, my dad's a strad nut, but also believes that modern luthiers are more than capable of producing instruments as good. And he owns one he thinks falls into that class, so he's put his money where his mouth is.
It sounds good, but no better than you'd expect given his ability, which is dedicated amateur level.
For the record, my dad's a strad nut, but also believes that modern luthiers are more than capable of producing instruments as good. And he owns one he thinks falls into that class, so he's put his money where his mouth is.
It sounds good, but no better than you'd expect given his ability, which is dedicated amateur level.
"I understand that and not saying it is not great, just that it seems to be more difficult to master than I expected. It can be fun to tinker with and learn if you have the time. One problem I think is that the documentation is scattered there's not single Bible to read to learn all about it, is there?"
Just to commiserate, I feel the same way about the pedal steel guitar :D
Father, not brother, gifted me a guitar. Now, we're both amateur guitarists, as are some of my other brothers. In the last 5-10 years my dad has started to collect more guitars. He's nerdier than some of the tech details on guitars than I am (hardware, pickups, etc) but ... we both enjoy guitars.
My dad looked - for a long time - for a guitar that was made on my birthday.- same day and same year, then same month and year. He couldn't find anything that specific, but found something made the following month (which, in my mind, was probably being built a few days before, in my birth month).
So on my 50th birthday I was given a guitar with almost the same birthday as me. It was pretty cool :)
There may not be interests that align with that sort of timetable directly, but perhaps that can spark an idea. I just priced out some 50 year old whiskey, and... that may be too much :)
Play doesn't have to be useless. It just has to be inefficient.
Efficiency in this case would be to just go and buy an $1800 guitar pedal instead of investing $40,000 worth of personal development time on a toy project for the sheer joy of it.
If you're a novice (or a well meaning parent), it's difficult to know the difference between a functional instrument and a 'toy' version, and it's easy to end up with something that's barely functional that causes you to discount the entire sport/instrument as "not for me."
This happened to me with skating. $35 Wal-Mart board, 2x as thick and heavy, junk bearings and wheels. When I stood on it and it barely rolled, I decided skating wasn't my thing.
So I suppose the lesson is: if you're serious, have someone who knows what a guitar is supposed to feel and play like if you're going to pick one up used. I've bought a 30$ electric that I still own and play, and a $100 one that was total junk because I hadn't handled enough guitars at the time to know better.
Happy Birthday ! I had a guitar that my (not a musician) uncle gifted me too. Never stuck with it long enough. Last year (after we moved to another country) I was gifted a Ukelele. My family still recognizes my longing wish for learing to make music this I guess. Thanks for sharing.
It is also the most free eyeballs your product is ever going to get. Start off with an intro paragraph like "Our new widget, available now on Amazon, is the easiest way to toast bread in the morning without starting a kitchen fire! If you like toast..."
Also helps to put the rest of your rant in context. I know nothing about guitars, so I immediately think someone's kid who knows how to play is more qualified than I am to say your product sucks. Why not?
>I can see how this dumbs it down for people in the beginning, but where does a beginner learn how to play an instrument with a 90% failure rate in the first year? It's clear that the problem hasn't been solved, otherwise more than 6% of the US population would playing a musical instrument.
I don't see that failure rate as a bad thing. People who don't want to play guitar that bad will "fail," which also could be known as moving on to something else (?). How is this guitar a stepping stone to actually playing a guitar though? I imagine most people will simply stop at this guitar and use it as a party trick, which is fine; I'd even play around on it if it was on hand. The furthest this guitar can go in teaching someone to play an actual guitar is the matching of the strumming hand to the fretting hand's basic location on a fret board, to say nothing of the fingering (pushing a button doesn't come close). In other words this guitar it seems will get you like... .5% of the way to being proficient at an actual guitar and really no more. The strings on this guitar seem oddly loose, like rubber bands. Just an observation. I'm sure you guys have a reason for this. More catch for untrained thumbs, no blistering? The only way I see this being a step toward real guitar playing is if someone has a really good feeling about being able to hold a guitar shaped instrument and being able to coherently produce sound and decides to give it a full go. But the reality is that making the leap to a real guitar will lead them to run about against the same wall that everyone runs up against: the pain, blisters, hours of infuriating attempts at fingering, having to learn shapes, names of notes and chords, having to learn to tune, read sheet music or tabs, listen to songs to learn them by trial and error, etc.
>Partially correct, it's as easy as Guitar Hero in the beginning, but the only correlation is that there are buttons instead of strings on the fretboard. Otherwise, it's an entirely different product. We're a computer that is shaped like a guitar.
Exactly. So learning to play this is learning to play a computer shaped like a guitar, not a guitar. Like I said, if someone gets a good feeling out of this and that's what it takes to take the plunge into the long hours of pain that guitar learning is then that can be a positive. Though I really cringe at the thought that someone might be fooled into thinking they've arrived at a replacement for a real guitar.
>While it's fun to think that guitar made of wood with tensioned strings and metal has more personality vs. a guitar made of plastic and metal, without trying the instrument yourself I beg you to defer your criticism until you try it.
Okay. I don't see how you can suggest that this guitar is capable of any nuance. It's a brute chord computer. The muscles of a hand on a real guitar with a pick or thumb can operate in such minute and multifarious ways that as far as I can see cannot be done on this guitar. You can play a single note on a real guitar in so many different ways. You can strike the string with varying intensity, you can palm mute the string, you can use varying pressure with the fretting finger on the note, you can vibrato, bend, and so on. Maybe I'm missing something. Can you do slides on your guitar? Bends, vibrato? The basics. Is picking your strings vs. finger-picking different or is the signal just interpreted the same? Can you influence the timbre in any way other than using that knob? Can you post a video of someone doing a solo on your guitar? Doesn't seem possible. I guess you can use it to write basic songs if you're a songwriter. I guess on your guitar you can fret chords at a speed that is inhumanly possible, which is sort of interesting. If I played this I'd be tempted to treat the chord buttons like individual notes to come up with something outlandish. But I don't get how you can insinuate that the guitar is capable of doing what a real guitar can, if that is what you're doing. I take back my "hate" comment. I don't hate it. I'd mess around. But my criticisms above pertaining to your insinuation stand.
>Kind of like electric cars vs. ICE cars. I'm a car geek through and through and there is nothing like slamming your foot into the gas pedal and going fast. The smell of petrol and the noise from the engine/exhaust are the visceral traits people talk about when they drive their ICE cars. Does Tesla lack personality and nuance because you don't smell and hear the same things? I like to think it's a different personality because I still get the same goosebumps when you switch to insanity mode and floor it.
I don't think that analogy works. A Tesla has all the functionality of a combustible car. Your guitar doesn't seem to have the same functionality as a guitar, has most of the functionality cut out, paring it down to chords, and that's saying nothing of the sound of the actual chords, which sound like my first $80 electric plugged through my first $50 amp. There's not a rich tone there. Maybe you could sell it with an amp with effects.
Put simply, guitars have a terrible user interface. I have "taught" Korg Kaossilator to a dozen people and they have all picked it up and started making not-terrible electronic dance music within an hour of first using it.
Edit: Maybe explain why I'm supposedly wrong instead of downvoting?
I've always dreamed of a Gibson Les Paul (a legendary guitar made in the US)
Recently, i had a birthday and decided to fulfil that childhood dream
I purchased it
I've got a Gibson Custom Shop Les Paul Custom - a higher-end Gibson Les Paul in black (ebony) finish and gold hardware
I felt thrilled of my dream becoming truth, given i can now afford it
But, suddenly i started feeling guilt, that i pamper myself with a pricy toy, while people from my home country are living near poverty
I'm ashamed to show off the guitar to my friends and relatives, because i'm afraid they'll find out what i paid for it and start to give me a lesson, what i could with the money otherwise
Sure, i could have purchased a much less expensive instrument and be happy about it, but i just felt, "if i'm getting it, it has to be the best"
I feel, that i can't accept this present, but in the same time, there is no reason for me to not
Not to talk down you dad, obviously, but it seems like such a strange thing to not "get". :( I guess I'm sorry for your sake, that you didn't get to enjoy the gift fully.
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