Thank you very much for the fave and the comment.

675179 Been a while, huh? I finished sorting the riffs from easiest to hardest, don't think I did a perfect job of it but I did what I could. Besides, I figure if something easy was mistaken for something hard and put way down on the list, worst case scenario is I blow right through it.

Breaking a song into pieces and learning the easiest parts first rather than learning it straight through seems to have paid-off for once. Well, I mean it's only "Celestial Crown" (the easiest song on the album, the two-minute instrumental opener that's fairly uneventful but does a good job of setting the tone for the album), but I'm so close I'm going to record it soon. Basically, I have a system where if I learn a song, I record it. From here on out. So hopefully I'm recording covers of all nine songs on the album sooner or later, starting with this one.

I've heard of Tosin Abasi; in fact, I bought "Wave of Babies" awhile ago - great song. They're actually on the same label as Scale the Summit, and get this - there was a time when Prosthetic (their label) swore up and down that they would never sign instrumental bands. That was several years ago - lo and behold, they've got two right now. Funny how that works, eh?

Sometimes I see guitars that look small just because they look small to me. I don't have to see a guitar that was necessarily bigger in any way before that - there are just some players who make it look so rinky-dink in size compared to them. There's a picture of Kirk Hammett on Wikipedia right now, and I know the guitar is tilted in that shot, but still, it just looks so small in his hands! Although I do imagine that sort of perception is even more dramatic in your example, and others like it.

I use thicker strings because it beats having a longer guitar. Sure, as I can testify, the longer the string is, the better the note sounds (try a fifth-position A5 as opposed to an open A5 and tell me which sounds better; my money is on the open one). There's two ways to get lower pitches on guitar, and one of em's to use thicker strings. It doesn't add to the difficulty curve like broader frets do. You can still do a lot of the things on a baritone that you can do on a standard if the baritone's built right. Plus, I enjoy (for some sadistic reason, I guess I'm a masochist) barre chords, which to get higher chords on a baritone you would have to do more often.

But first, what drew me to rhythm guitar? I guess as much as I enjoy me some lead soloing, I was always fascinated by chords, especially barres. I couldn't really put it into words (at least not here, anyway), but there's just something that really draws me to it. So I decided, "What the hell? I'll let someone else hog the spotlight."

I guess people tend to go mostly on the side of indie rock. Really, it's the most popular subgenre right now (I couldn't see why, I'm not really a fan of it but I'm OK with it), and they're not dropping it too low or anything like that. They're just playing in a lot of the more well-known tunings, not least E Standard (or some open chord stuff), and I guess thinner strings are better for that for some people. On the other hand, it could simply be that people can't handle the kind of stress thick strings put on your fingers. But I EARNED my calluses, bro. I'm PROUD of those motherfuckers. And I didn't get 'em by going easy. Sooner or later, you're gonna hurt yourself on any string; using lights just postpones the inevitable. I love my heavies. Actually, another reason I have them is because I think while the action on my Peavey is comfortably-low, it had trouble with thinner strings. They just kept making fret buzz. So I simply got strings that didn't buzz so much, which made me work harder to master 'em, so here I am.

And yeah, what a difference half a step makes. You just don't know until you try it, and then it sounds so... different from what you're used to. It sounds so much heavier. Best part is, since it's so close to what you'd usually play in anyway, all you need to do is retune - you don't need new strings or another guitar. And it's not so low that it becomes mush or needs thousands of dollars in equipment just to sound semi-decent.

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Oh yeah, there's definitely going to be six strings that costs thousands for little return. I'm just not intent on getting anything above mid-end stuff at all. And I do wish I had an 8 string, though I'm not sure if I could adapt to it so well. As you mentioned, broad as fuck. You've most likely heard of Tosin Abasi from Animals as Leaders. If you look at any of his pictures, his "standard, commonplace" 8-string guitars suit him perfectly. Then you just spot that one rare instance where he's using a 6-string, and it looks tiny in his hands.

Awesome, it's good to finally see someone who prefers heavy gauges. Honestly, we seem to be pretty rare from the little I've seen. I've heard some people claiming that they use lights because they're "exclusively lead" like some sort of pro. Apparently soloing is impossible if you use heavy gauge strings. STRONGER FINGERS BRO.

And yeah, could have sworn I heard just a bit of stoner stuff from those Sword tracks. Of course, Eb Standard/Drop C# are nice to play in as well. To think just a half-step does wonders. I'm guessing that since most music is based off of full-tones as the basis for diatonic scales, (as in, not played in the key of a sharp or flat), it's just really different to start out that way. Makes sense for stoner stuff to be that way, I guess.

674988 I've seen plenty of sixers that were far more expensive. I still have the option to restore the string - I can't remember what gauges they are, maybe 11s or 12s - but I've just chosen to take it off. I only got it when I thought I wanted to play 7-string, then realized I was happier playing 6-string and could also take advantage of the presence of the extra low string. It just meant I didn't have to buy another guitar to play that low; I basically already had one.

So no, this wasn't the whole idea from the start, it's more recent (I only did it a few months ago). And yeah, if I got their Omen-8 just to take off the highest two strings that would be pointless as well, since the Omen-8 is more expensive and the fretboard is a lot more broad, which would make the six lowest strings harder to access.

I guess I look at it in terms of how long the investment makes good returns. Like, if I buy a 700-dollar guitar and it breaks completely within a year or two, that's 700 dollars I should have saved. Not that I would have known that at the time - hindsight's 50/50, you know - but upon reflection, a guitar can last a lifetime (or at least a good 40 years!) if you take care of it and don't do anything insane with it (like bashing it). If all the wear and tear comes from you playing it, and it holds-up for years, then in that case to me 500 doesn't seem like so much. It's a good long-term investment, and it's better than spending nearly twice that money on a guitar that doesn't last nearly as long. I've heard of Gibson SGs that break, and some of them have turned-out to be rather flimsy; if my ~400 or so guitar can hold up better, it's more worth the money.

A set of goals is nice if you can get it. I just thought if you were going to try it you should know in advance what you're in for, because even I still have yet to see how this is going to turn out. I'd love if it worked completely, but there's always something, you know.

I like heavies too. As I recall, my Peavey is strung at least with 11s, if not 12s. I'm mainly a rhythm player, so the heavier, the better. I don't mind lead and wouldn't mind learning some, but to me, rhythm's more important or else your leads won't have any. It's okay if someone just wants to play lead, but of course to play lead you have to learn how to play with the rhythm. Me? Skip the middle man, I just like to go for the throat.

C Standard turns out to be one of the lifeblood tunings of doom bands like the Sword. I did play in B until I got the book when I realized what it might be made of, so then I tuned up half a step. Priestess (my favorite band I mentioned way earlier) uses Eb, at least most of the time. In general, "stoner" rock (like Queens of the Stone Age and, to a lesser extent, the Sword) use lower tunings like B & C; Queens guitarist Troy van Leeuwen said they use C, and I think B, in an interview, and it makes sense given how high up the neck he and Josh Homme play. (On a side note, I'd kill to go to a Queens concert. I've had to get my fill of them on YouTube.)

I've been using GarageBand to help with my playing. It's worked for the few days I've been using it, only time will tell how efficient it will be. I use it because it allows me to set tracks to a certain tick mark in case they don't have any kind of count-in, or start with the percussion; for example, the intro track "Celestial Crown" starts with one guitar, but there's no count-in or drums or anything like that, so I had to set it for a delay of exactly two seconds in GarageBand so I could play to it. The song sounds simple when you hear it, but it's got some tricky slides. I've been getting used to it, though. It's fun to play, but of course it'd be much more fun to play other songs on the record (Age of Winters). The book's pretty accurate from what I can tell, I have yet to come across anything that's horrendously wrong (biggest issue so far is the tempo markings, which as I said earlier is simply due to human error and timing and is not actually an issue). I play with a metronome first and then I try to play with the track.

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$500's still a shit ton to spend, especially if you're not using the 7's range. I'd much rather get a $300 guitar with a $200 DI if I had that kind of money. Signature series go only for one or two hundred more (not that I even like the idea of signatures but still).

Anyway, B Standard is the standard for any death metal. Melodeath comes in at maybe 7string-Standard of C Standard. *Core gets dropped. Tech and grind might be lower. But in essence, i have to do the whole pitch shifting thing to be able to play comfortably. Plus there's more "classic" enthusiasts who prefer baritone, so that's nice. Not all baritone stuff's gotta be hard, if you look for some. Amon Amarth's "Pursuit of Vikings" is among the first songs I learned. Their newer stuff is worse harder, but the older works clearly show that faster =/= better.

Anyway, pouring time into a setlist or anything isn't a problem. Might give me something to work towards.

If you've got that tab book though, just play back the audio and cover while you read. And for the harder parts, play it back, stop it, and then play whatever the book shows you. The only time doing such a thing fails, is when the tab is horribly wrong and you're pretty much transcribing it yourself. Assuming the book's pretty spot on though, it'd be fine.

Oh, and as for your 26.5" at C standard, what string gauge are you using to play it at? I just realized how much I like heavy's. All the guitar's I've played that aren't mine use light strings, I think they might actually be factory strings, maybe they just didn't bother getting their own.

And the KX5 doesn't even have a whammy bar. And even though shitty Strat knockoffs come with whammy bars, I'm okay with it, as I see the tremolo bar to be completely tasteless and only fit for mindless shred-style soloing, which is the least original style there can be. Probably the most off-putting thing about a large chunk of hard rock, and oldschool thrash metal.

Then again, people could say the same thing about power metal in regards to vocals, and tech-death in regards to drums. Eh, guess it's just my bias.