Today has been fun - not enough work involved, but fun. Had a house trip this afternoon to play badminton at the sports centre, then I cooked some 'turkey and cranberry' burgers for supper (took a very long time to make, but was a first for me - I'd never made burgers before).
But...most exciting of all - I put new strings on my acoustic !!!!!! I've only had the guitar just over two years now, and so this is the first time I've changed the strings by myself, (as I had a bit of help last time). It was mainly fine, apart from the fact that the top E string was being really annoying, so I had to take it off and try to restring it about 5 times before I got it to stay put. It's been just over a year since my last change of strings, which is terrible. I bought a new set at Christmas, but hadn't gotten round to putting them on. But it was getting to the point when even inexperienced me could tell that they sounded horrible, and so since (as far as I know) I'm not meant to be playing my guitar this week, I thought I'd change the strings. Is very exciting. I know they'll keep going way out of tune for a while, and will sound a little metallicy, but I think it's worth it.
Need an early night now, after a bit of TV. (Why is it always the case that the ONE day you can lie in (i.e. today), is the one day when your body decides to wake you up and make you really alert at a time before you even have to get up during the week for lectures ?) Looking forward to going to Sea Mills tomorrow though. And I am getting a lift, so shouldn't really complain about having to get up early :-)
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10 comments:
Hi,
Cool :-)
I guess an insentive to play guitar more often!!
Chloe
Hey Ro,
New strings can be pesky.
I find my strings need changing every 3 weeks or so, which is expensive! But I sweat alot and they die. Strings come to me to die.
Try getting a bulk order from http://www.stringsdirect.co.uk they work out like 3-4 quid cheaper a ste if you club together with osmeone and buy 20 sets. And you're not giving up guitar right>?
Re: the out of tune thang - do you stretch them out when you've put them on? Once it's on, wound and at pitch, grab it at the 12th fret and pull up. Then move your left hand onto the third fret and push down, pulling at the 12th again. move up the board on the 5th, 7th and 9th frets, pulling up at the 12th with your right hand.
Then re tune, and it should hold its tuning better.
Happy noodling
M
Thanks for all the tips Matt.
I definitely won't be giving up guitar any time soon :-)
I do actually do the stretching them out thing (was taught that trick by a guy at my home church who gave me a couple of guitar lessons before I came to uni), but have never done it in quite the way you mentionned before. I'll try. But surprisingly this time, the strings seems to have settled in remarkably quickly, and they already seem to be about 'normal'. I just have had some bad experiences of people playing when they've just restrung - sounds 'lovely' sometimes !
Don't think I play my guitar enough to warrant me changing strings every 3 weeks !!! Wow. But I think I definitely need to change them more than once a year as I have been doing so far. (At the moment I only tend to change them when I think they sound horrible or someone else tells me they sound horrible). How do you know when your strings need changing ? (Other than if one breaks of course).
What will be even more interesting though, will be when my bass strings need changing - now that will be fun !
It really depends on use. All strings lose their shine over time, but they wear especially quickly if you have your sweaty hands on them!
I use D'addario EXPs which have a protective coating on them, which makes them last about a month or so if im using it all the time. i do play it mostly everyday.
I also swear by FastFret which is a coating on a stick which you wipe your strings with. It makes the strings sort of slippy, and easier to play fast, but also means that when you wipe the stuff off you are wiping all the grease, dead skin and muck off them.
I usually tell when my lovely tak has lost her timbre - take a quick look at the strings at the most used frets and see how mucy they are compared with , say, the areas you dont play often. usually They need changing when the top e and b strings, the silver ones, are black!
M
Some of the Strings Direct guys give you a free extra top E string.
I change my strings every month - three months (I can't afford to change 'em too often).
Wooh, out of advice. Wipe 'em down and snap 'em to get rid of grime and make them last longer.
Or don't actually play, just sit and watch the guitar - works for me...
I know ! I was very excited when I looked out of the window this morning !
Oh dear Jambon. I feel pressure. I don't know why blogger is being so annoying, it's not letting me onto other people's blogs either apart from when it's feeling generous for some reason. But fear not, I shall keep trying (and hopefully I'll be able to think of something vaguely interesting to ramble about!) Hope everything goes ok with the thesis finishing. Let me know how it all goes. I've now got one of my 2 projects at draft stage and will be handed to supervisor tomorrow (woohoo!) but the other is a long way off that yet...
For some reason it seems to still lets me comment on my own blog though. Weird huh !
And Jambon: funny too how I never see you online on MSN either unless you have a lot of work to do, lol. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to say hi today. Seriously though, I hope it's going ok.
Yeah, if you add too many comments, you're blog will get too heavy and sink.
:-D
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