Due to volume restrictions imposed by my practice environment--an apartment with tile floors causing natural reverb and neighbors--I have taken to pretending I'm a lounge act when I do my imaginary gigs. And I mean a small lounge. Coffee shop type stuff. But not acoustic folk-singy/singer-songwriter coffee shop. Even quieter than that. More like electric-but-background-music, very soft instrumental stuff.

This has been quite fun. Playing with my settings in a jazzy tone (not that I can play jazz chords, but the amp settings are lots of bass and mids, treble rolled down, nice and round), amp set quiet, and then my *playing* trying to be even quieter.

I realize that I have never before even really tried to play with "touch." I actually feel like I could play such music in a real coffee house, if it were a setting where it's basically empty and not too many folks are even paying attention to me. Just messing around with different chord progressions and arpeggiating.

Even doing some of my Nirvana stuff but with full barre chords and arpeggiating, playing extra soft.

Seems like it would be fun to be a mellow lounge act.

Playing coffee-house style is the best, isn't it? It makes me feel like a real damn good guitarist
I just jam for hours when I'm in that style. Even though I have no neighbours apart from paddocks and cows, I still turn my self down as quite as I can get from time to time.

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former user radio_friendly_unit_shifter

Yeah dude. I never feel like I'm real damn good, but I do feel like I can do what I've seen other people doing in such a setting. I'm really enjoying messing with this "thick", "round" tone on the neck pup of both my strat and tele, with my Mustang amp on 65 deluxe, twin, or princeton mode, very clean, just a touch of reverb. I just arpeggiate chords and let the Fender guitar and amp do the work of sounding pretty.

One thing that makes you a 100% better player is trying to play a song you know really well, but backwards.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

Hmmm. I have not tried that. I'll have to try it.

Now do you mean standing backwards? Because I've tried that a few times, myself.

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Visit my ReverbNation page @ http://www.reverbnation.com/mcampbell
Thank you!

It's physically impossible to stand backwards, from your own personal perspective at least.

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

I think he means behind his back. Is that right Buxom?

no, he literally said standing backwards. I'm talking about doing the actual parts of the song in reversed order with reversed everything. Basically, take a song and play it from end to beginning. I've done it with a few and it sounds really good, actually. (depending on what you're playing, it may not)

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1984 Squier Contemporary Stratocaster
1986 Peavey Envoy 110
1967 Kingston Acoustic

this thread made me laugh.
i have to play very quietly when the wife and daughter are in the next room, and it's a challenge playing how i play very quietly. i think i sound a little better when i can barely hear what i'm doing, though. maybe that means i'm terrible.
but i'm always happy to get an hour alone so i can crank the old peavey up and make my dog run outside.

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~Dan

I realise this is not the intent of your post but just a few days ago I was in a music store and tried out one of these new Yamaha THRs. As soon as I tried it I recognised it was maybe one of the best solutions I've seen yet for the age old problem of playing electric guitars at low volume levels for apartment dwellers. Just thought I'd put this out there for the sake of interest.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.