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Well there's stretching your range and skills and then there's inappropriate choices. You could try playing ragtime but it's a style that has little resonance today. Likewise whilst it would be interesting for you to play with a steel slide in lap position that's another specialist niche.

Your tutor should be looking to build up chords and rythmic strumming, fingerpicking, barres and runs. Basic Am Em pentatonic scales and soloing. But the music must have relevance to you.

From the net;

<a href="http://guitargas.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_guitargas_archive.html" target="_blank"> http://guitargas.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_guitargas_archive.h tml</a>

"I've read on some reviews that this guitar is shit and only any good for punk. I take it that the comment was written by someone who thinks that punk is crap. It sounds fine to me.

All I would say is that this guitar is the most expensive guitar I have. It cost more than my Fender Strat for example. I think I paid something like £450 for it in 1988.

Famous players of these guitars in the past have included Mick Box (Uriah Heep), Kirk Hammett (Metallica) and 80's session ace Alan Murphy (Go West, et al)."

I'm a beginner and am finding there's plenty to be had tone and distortion wise by manipulating the guitar and amp's respective volume and tone controls. Last night I came across a real nice bluesman sound by putting both tones just a bit below middle, turning the amp volume up and the guitar volume low.

It may all depend on the amp you have and how it matches the styles you desire. I suspect I've purchased a practise amp with stupid levels of gain since I never turn the distortion up off zero once it's engaged but otherwise it gives me old-fashioned growl and thwak. I get the impression that amps like Roland's Cubes give a clean sterile sound so might require effect pedals more. Maybe it's me...

First off make the chords the cheat way without the back 'barre' finger and only play the strings you are holding. That still makes these two chords full blow 4-finger chords though.

Look to practises chord changes that greak your fear of F and B. Try C F G, you'll need these for so many songs.

Particularly make the C a full-on 4 finger C then you are just shifting the shape and the G becomes much more accented as in 'D'You Wanna Dance', try that one slow 'Mamas and Papas' style before building up to rock version speed.

In a few songs I've seen tabbed the Bm is an accent chord following a vocal harmony rise and so isn't necessary (I removed Bm from 'Build Me Up Buttercup' by following the earlier verse pattern, as I'm not the Four Tops vocally!). Likewise last night I worked through 'You Give What You Get' and found most the song can be done acoustic with just the Fmaj7 Cmaj7 Amaj7 A progression and some judicious D at the true chorus, that's not to say adding electric flourishes wouldn't use the bits I dropped though...

Solution 1) All amp-up seperately. This has the advantage that everyone gets the sound they want and controls their own kit. Sound checks work by a friend in the back/middle of the club telling each band member to turn up down until a good all-round band sound level is reached. Crude but players have been doing this for decades.

The down side of the above is when band members become convinced that they're not being heard at the back and turn up, then the guy next to them turns up and the sound goes pear-shaped.

Solution 2) The instruments are close-miked or fed direct into a mixer board which then feeds PA speakers. Acoustic guitars can use sans-amps. The advantage over 1 is that a roadie can mix the instruments before the show but also tweak things as you play - as the club fills up the overall PA volume can be raised to match.

PAs can be hired for the night but watch that you don't get stuck with a ratty one. If you can find a firm who can keep you with gear you trust great otherwise you might think about group purchases for crucial parts of the gear like the soundboard.

Some clubs have their own PA and these can be very professional but they can also be a tannoy also used for calling out food orders.

Saw The Glitterband once and they really proved that a group's sound can be made by a good PA. Their system was small but perfectly suited to that glam pop fuzz guitar sound. Unfortunately they had this awful leader singer who just bellowed for the whole gig...

Blues scale? No, i've been looking at the pentatonics (hoping to piece together the solo of Christy Moore's 'Ride On' which happens around the 9th fret) but a link to any good blues scale page would be appreciated...

Keith Moon died in the very same flat 4 years later. It was owned by Harry Nilsson. Do I get a prize?

Elvis wasn't really a 'creative' but he was highly effective at picking songs. He probably died of undiagnosed Herschprungs syndrome, which is where the lower bowel doesn't know it's full. However crash-dieting didn't help. In fact crash-dieting also accounted for Mama Cass's death.

It's certainly true that Elvis died with very little recorded material left to release but given sufficient furlough I reckon he'd have recorded again, even if it was only R'n'B covers (which he had a real connoisseurs collection of). Elvis was locked into a small number of Nashville songwriters but there was talk that he was going to break free and accept songs from wider sources.

As regards the age of death, whilst the young have great constitutions heroin builds up resistance very quickly. It simply gets harder to estimate how much more is needed to give a high. Likewise cocaine really stresses the cardio-vascular system. Nothing like all these drugs to weaken a formerly strong person; so Brian Jones goes from being a good swimmer to drowning...

Could it be that the tone you like is the sound of your strings going slightly out of tune as you play?  <img src="images/smiley_icons/icon_confused.gif" border=0 alt="Confused">

Thanks for your optimism Jerome. Glad you can see where I'm coming from Jay. I'm very suspicious of this 'tone' business but it's an elite thing. - I haven't handled a pre-65 stratocaster so I can't gainsay a dealer who claims it is worth as much as my house.

Same goes for some of these battered genuine relics from the 70s, they might have a good sound if a luthier straightened them out and upgraded parts but collectors won't do that, they want an 'as played then' claim. Now I seem to remember alot of 70s guitars were rubbish but again it could be I was handling the cheap stuff my friends parents could afford not whatever the dealers want me to buy today.

Does body block or neck tonewood improve with age? On my Seagull the top board will flex with playing and get slightly more elastic/resonant and so the sound improves a tad over the years. The bizarre thing is if I tried to sell it on eBay the knocks and scratches of playing would make it less sellable that one that had been left in the box untouched...

Thanks BL, and thanks for the answers to my threads, I got that Brawley HH hardtail I mentioned. The setup was perfect and I was immediately getting all the classic 60s thwak and ring sounds I wanted. In fact I played it so much last night I broke the shop E string on the last particularly spirited session of Johnny B Goode we did.

Restringing with 11s tonight, I'll let you know how it goes...

If you're a beginner particularly a youngster any electric guitar you buy today will be great. Back in the 70s there were alot of poor copies and even worse generics. The bar has been raised the past decade and whilst there are still some bad-value-for-money guitars there are few truly abysmal sounding ones.

Never fix your heart on a guitar based on the web. Go to a shop lift it up and see how it feels. Next always ask to plug in on an amp's clean channel and just gently strike out the strings. Don't try and impress the shop owner he's seen it all and I find under the rest of the shop's gaze my fingers turn to rubber. After all it's you checking out the guitar not vice versa. Try another one that felt right to hold, plug in on the same amp at the same level and listen to an open chord again. Repeat until a guitar says 'buy me now'. If you don't get a WOW from the guitar tell the owner it's too trebley/bassy/fuzzy/needling for you and thank him. Try another shop.

Repeat above until all shop staff whisper 'oh no not them again' as you enter. Then one day you find 'your guitar'...