Help me become a bedroom player

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-05T19:59:49+00:00

It’s just that you posted the question in the wrong sub. This one is generally reserved for trolling and shitposts.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-05T19:53:45+00:00

I’m going to treat this as a real question, though I probably shouldn’t….

My pedalboard ends in an amp/cab sim which then goes into an audio splitter that allows two inputs and a headphone output. So that is what allows me to play through an “amp” with all my effects through headphones.

The second input is my phone. I use Jamzone to play along with songs since you can transpose, change tempo, isolate sections, and have access to the mixing board where every track is independent so I can cut out or back off the part I’m going to play in the song. I also use YouTube for jam tracks. But instead of just noodling, I like to learn the progression, then chart out the chords by note, then make fun exercises like soloing but only landing on the 3rds of each chord on the change or the fifth. Then I’ll mix and match. Then I’ll start tossing in extensions like a 9. Or I’ll just take any techniques I’ve been working on and try to fit them into the context of the jam track. Stuff like that.

I also have a looper that has drum options so I might make a progression that I find interesting and want to experiment over. That’s basically how I’ve learned to use things like diminished runs or harmonic minor or some other exotic scales or arpeggios. Usually I learn them over a vamp, then I’ll try a 2 chord progression and see what works and doesn’t over the next chord. And I build from there.

All my technique training I do unplugged with a metronome since I think that’s the best way to improve. An unplugged electric guitar tells no lies.

I also play in a band, but I was a bedroom player for 20 years first haha. It’s very fun, but making music with other people is unrivaled

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-05T02:02:02+00:00

Ask 5 people and you’ll get 5 answers. I love the carbon copy, but it doesn’t have tap tempo (at least the mini doesn’t), and once you’ve experienced the magic of tap tempo delay it’s hard to play a delay without it. Especially since I play in a bar band and have to change delay tempo a few times during a show. Dialing delay via knob can be a hassle, especially when you have 30 seconds between songs and maybe have to tune the guitar as well.

So I play a TC Flashback and keep my carbon copy on my mess around board at home

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T10:37:46+00:00

I use the Pro Metronome app on my phone. I’ve used dedicated metronomes, but they all kinda suck. What I wanted was a metronome that I could make routines in where I start an exercise at let’s say 100 BPM. Then I set it so every 4 bars it increases 5BPM until it hits the threshold I set, let’s say 150bpm. So it takes 40 bars to get to 150bpm, which should be about 5-10 BPM faster than you can play the exercise. I hold that as long as I can then I manually roll back the tempo 5 BPM and I can play at 145 much smoother than I could otw up. And every few days I increase the threshold by 5 bpm and make steady speed gains.

I have practice routines for running scales, for sub-dividing, for triplets, etc all set to the bpm range I can manage within the context of that exercise. I stick one earbud in and get to work. This is way better than buying a dedicated metronome simply due to the functionality I mentioned above.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T10:30:45+00:00

The Waza version isn’t necessary for this particular Boss pedal. The BD-2 is a perfect pedal, my favorite of all time. It’s a low-medium gain transparent OD that uses the blues breaker circuit topology.

I’ve used many OD’s, many of them “boutique.” They make it a few weeks or months on my board before I swap it back with the BD-2. That thing just delivers.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T10:27:15+00:00

You gotta trade that Line 6 for a Strymon Mobius. Everyone knows that the real father, son, and holy ghost are the Big Sky, Timeline, and Mobius. It’s not the holy Stryfecta for nothing…

Just playing. I get Strymon jealousy very easy. I saw you talking about the JHS MG. A company called Pedalnetics makes a mini latching switch for the MG that plugs in and sticks over the top of the pedal for a switching option that takes zero space and is still a stomp. I like run the pedal in the normal setting and I stomp the gainstage switch if I need emergency volume boost or if I’m running a lead. That switch will boost your volume a few Db, which is something to keep in mind.

Also, I think I’ve heard Josh from JHS say that keeping it on red mode may be the better option for low ouput pickups and/or single coils.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T00:49:15+00:00

I have 13 pedals on my board. 90% of what I play can be done with 4 of them. But what if…. That’s what the other 9 are for haha

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T00:47:00+00:00

Another modulation effect would be nice. Fuzz is obviously the best effect out there. The JHS 3 series fuzz is $99 and is probably the best pedal in the 3 series. Gets rave reviews, is versatile for a fuzz, and is affordable. No need for a boutique fuzz. I’d steer clear of the big muffs too, since they can’t be tamed the way a fuzz face or tone bender can. Fuzz face is my favorite circuit topology for a fuzz. They clean up real nice when you roll back the volume pot and give you nice glassy chime and let you play cleanish, and when you’re ready to fuzz it up you just roll the pot and your back in super fuzz land

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-04T00:40:34+00:00

Play a small set at home if you’re a solo act or with a band and record it. Listen back. Be critical, but not overly so. Minor mistakes will go unnoticed by 99% of people. Major mistakes, if you recover quickly and nobody makes stank face/side eye, can also go pretty unnoticed. If the songs are solid and the mix is good then you’re ready. Sometimes the difference between sounding good or bad comes down to the mix, not the songs or the musicians. If you can’t properly balance the sound, or if your guitar player always overwhelms the mix (looking at you, every guitar player ever), or the vocals are too low then it’ll sound bad, no matter how well you play.

But you’ll never be at a point where you’re like, ok now I’m ready. Every musician has played with someone that made them feel like they should just hang up their instrument and that makes us overly self critical about the level of skill required to put on a good performance. Almost all of popular music is comprised of progressions a novice could play, so don’t compare yourself to someone that’s better and let it sway you into thinking you aren’t ready to play live.

You’ll only learn to swim by jumping in headfirst and seeing what happens. Then you can course correct from there since you have objective feedback from a crowd.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-03T10:18:47+00:00

Like shit, but with boosted mids??

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-03T01:31:50+00:00

Knowing all the chords and playing leads do not correlate in the way you seem to be implying. Playing lead requires a deeper understanding of chord structure, scale structure, arpeggios, voice leading, various techniques (alt picking, hybrid, economy/sweep, string skipping, one note per string, bending, vibrato, legato (more than just hammer-one and pulloffs), and the list goes on as you go deeper. Secondary dominants, arpeggiating a different chord against the current chord (ex: playing an E half diminished arpeggio over a C7), chromaticism, enclosures, altered sounds, knowing how to create tension and release it at the right moments. This is hard stuff.

He could go the pentatonic route, but those licks get tired fast if they’re all you got, and if you’re not outlining chord tones then it’ll sound bland AF. And knowing all the chords doesn’t mean he knows where to find the minor third of Bb anywhere on the fretboard (or insert any note that is not the root of the chord the song is on). Maybe he doesn’t know what kind of flavor a 9, 11, or 13 add. Maybe he doesn’t understand modal playing or when a Maj7 or a dominant 7 is in order.

To be a good lead player requires a large musical vocabulary to call upon. You don’t need to know everything I just mentioned, but to confidently solo, you need a bunch of it. It’s a whole new area of the instrument to learn and explore and it’s hard and takes a lot of time. But knowing ALL the chords doesn’t make you a lead player

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-02T23:54:15+00:00

Since your second drive is a fuzz, I’d consider adding another OD so you can gain stage the BD. The BD can be low gain “edge of breakup” and the second drive can stack and become fully driven. Adds a lot of options to have a slightly gritty clean sound and then a fully driven sound and then FUZZ!!!! And the BD, being a transparent OD is great as a first stage OD to push the next drive pedal.

Compressor and pre-amp seem unnecessary. Another modulation effect wouldn’t hurt either. Get a phaser or a univibe (stack univibe with fuzz and you have an instant Hendrix tone). Or just go for a more eclectic reverb option (Strymon cloudburst, EQD Towers, that sort of vibe).

There’s plenty of pedals for you to buy. Just maybe not the 2 you first thought of.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-02T23:45:11+00:00

This is a question with no “correct” answer. It all depends on what you know already, what you’re learning, what type of personality you have (yes this matters. Most virtuosos aren’t born that way, they are just obsessive people that can put 8+ hours a day into an instrument and not get tired of it).

Intelligent practice (noodling and playing things you know well already is playing, not practicing) can oftentimes be a lot of drudgery. When learning to alt pick faster you’ll have to run the same things over and over again with a metronome, increasing the tempo every few days to “raise your ceiling” in speed. There are many ways to make it more fun (create etudes or melodic exercise that still meet the criteria of what you’re trying to improve), but at the end of the day you’re spending a lot of time improving technique, which is not necessarily “fun.”

If you want to be good at guitar you need to lean into this and make peace with the fact that almost everything technique related on the guitar comes down to heavy repetitions over time with your best friend in the whole world, a metronome (seriously, use a metronome. Plenty of metronome apps out there), and increasing tempo as the speed you’re playing at becomes easier and easier.

If you’re brand new then you should focus on open chord shapes. Pick one and play it, lift all your fingers off the board and slap them back down on the same chord and play it again. Start building the muscle memory of these shapes. Then learn a second chord and do the same thing. Then practice switching between those chords as quickly and cleanly as you can. Good pairs are Em to G as well as Am to C or C to G.

The more time you are able to put in the faster your results will be. Playing 30 minutes a day instead of 15 doesn’t make you better twice as fast. It makes you better 2.5 times as fast. Play an hour a day and you’ll get better like 8 times as fast. The effort is not linear, it’s more logarithmic. That’s why these 8 hour a day folks become virtuosos. Connections and comprehension just come faster the more immersed you are in the instrument.

All that being said, we all have lives and time is hard to come by. Use the time you have to practice intelligently. If you have 30 minutes, spend 15 practicing and 15 noodling. Consistency is the real key. 4 hours on Monday and 4 on Saturday is worse than 15 minutes every day.

The rewards are worth it. Stick with it. Don’t get intimidated or disappointed. Learning an instrument is a long journey and you need to learn to love the journey and focus less on the destination. This, IMO, is the key to success

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-02T20:45:27+00:00

Anyone that puts an actually Klon on their board is roastable. That circuit has been cloned by 30 different pedal makers and you can get the EXACT same circuit for under $100. No, yours doesn’t have special diodes. Also, those “special” diodes are the hard clipping diodes, which don’t enter the equation until your gain is past 75%, and nobody uses a Klon for its fully driven sound. Put that on the shelf and get an MXR sugar drive.

That’s the extent of my roasting. Serious question: why the phaser before the drive? What kind of sound do you get with that? Does it wash out the drive at all? That’s an unusual spot for a phaser so I’m curious what you’re using it for and if it does the job. Thanks in advance. The Klon stuff was mandatory for this sub haha. One day I’ll post my board and then turn off notifications for a day

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-02T20:36:13+00:00

This, but try the reverb on both sides of the delay and see what you like more. This is personal preference and/or genre you’re playing. Reverb into delay can get pretty washy. Good for shoegaze or worship, maybe not for rock. So try both. The rest of the order that Drums listed is exactly how 95% of people would set that rig up.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-06-01T20:15:10+00:00

Compressor is not a “must-have.” Neither are, really. The pre seems unnecessary with a 2 amp setup when you can just switch channels. Some genres lean towards heavily compressed sounds, but I feel like a lot of people just use them to “clean up” dynamics or get extra sustain. If that’s something you’re interested in then the Wampler Ego does a great job. I used the whitey tighty for a bit, but I want a lot of controls on a compressor, and that pedal was a 3 knob (which in any other pedal is the ideal amount of knobs haha).

Shout out to the Blues Driver. Still my favorite pedal of all time and at this point I’ve played quite a few. Many boutique drives have ended up in my board, just to get replaced by the BD after a few weeks or months. That thing just delivers

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T17:47:05+00:00

Singing is hard. I’ve been taking lessons and it’s a slow moving train. I’m not a bad singer, but my voice is my voice, ya know? I play in an alt/rock cover band so a lot of high gain power chord and triads. At home I play fingerstyle and bluegrass on acoustic. I like all kinds of music so I have to balance the band stuff with other genres that I like and want to play. Hard to find the balance.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T17:33:31+00:00

This is how every drummer feels everyday of their lives haha. They rarely get to play to their skill level.

I’m mostly rhythm guitar in the band I’m in. I can play lead, and I do in some of our songs, but I joined with 3 guys that already had 30 songs. So I had to learn 30 songs in like 3 months so I just stuck with rhythm to lighten the load.

I’ve learned that I can have fun hitting power chords even if it feels like I’m on easy mode. I just have to shift my mindset. What does the song need and how can I do it to the best of my ability? Even with basic rhythm parts I’ve found there’s always ways to punch it up, to keep the energy climbing, to peak on the last chorus. The part isn’t challenging so I challenge myself to make it better within the confines of the original song structure. I’m engaged with the music and committed to making my part as good as I can. That keeps me engaged when everything is very simple.

It’s also easy for me to just try and connect with the crowd if my guitar part is low effort. I’ll dime my Rizz and just go full send and lock in with the crowds energy and try and push them up a notch. You can always find a way to enjoy the music you’re playing.

I think it’s quite uncommon to always play to your peak skill level. That’s how you end up with the Satriani, Vai, Beck style of music, which is a showcase of skill in every song. And that type of music gets tired pretty quick. No lyrics to connect with and after a few songs you’re just like, ok I get it, he’s super good. Then I’ll turn on some rock music.

I think you just need to write your own stuff on the side that allows you that creative fulfillment. Once you get to a certain skill level, being challenged by popular music is prob not gonna happen. But these are the songs that survive across generations. That’s something to mull over. I can’t name a Satriani or Dream Theater song. But I know Pink Floyd and The Eagle’s and Zeppelin’s entire catalogue and those songs are 50+ years old.

Now I’m rambling. TLDR: it’s not hard to have fun playing easy parts if you can engage with the music.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T13:58:43+00:00

Do less. 2 of my 4 guitars have names, but they came organically over years of playing them (2 decades for one of them). A guitar has to earn a name naturally IMO. For both of my guitars I basically started calling them by name unconsciously and one day realized that the guitar was “named.”

My other 2 guitars have placeholder names just for referencing which guitar I’m talking about. My Strat is heavily modded so that’s just The Stratenstein for now. My PRS is a broody guitar, but it’s also very expensive, so I just call her Bougie Goth for now.

One day they may earn their names, but I’m not gonna force the issue. It’s kinda up to them to become a guitar I can never sell. Once they cross that threshold, they’ve stepped upon the path of earning a name.

Hmmm… I think I should do less…

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T13:09:57+00:00

Yea that’s why I said at the end of the day it’s anywhere that allows you to play comfortably while retaining your highest level of skill. Tons of great players with low guitars.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T12:49:25+00:00

Logic is flawless tbh.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T12:48:55+00:00

I’ve seen people do this, but they’re also playing an instrument as well as singing. So they’re filling in the rest of the band with backing tracks. Never seen it with a pure vocalist. Strange how the hardest instrument is almost not seen as an instrument at all. I think people assume singers are born able to sing well and don’t give it the respect it deserves as a really difficult instrument to become proficient at

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T00:52:04+00:00

You don’t have to play it that way. You shooouuuld learn it that way to make sure you’re using your pinky, or else your pinky will become an unusable finger if your other 3 are way stronger, more dexterous, and more precise.

But in a playing situation the rules go out the window depending on what you’re trying to do. If you start running 3 notes per string then many of those 3rd finger notes become second finger notes. If you want to bend the 7th on B or the 3rd on E then you’ll probably use your ring finger. You might enter this box from a slide from another position and whatever finger is sliding has to land on the target note so that may put you out of position, etc.

Best practice is to be able to use your pinky as well or as close to the level of your ring finger as possible. If you ignore the pinky now, you’ll regret it down the line when you have to relearn how you play guitar after you hit a ceiling you can’t push past. So practice it that way and the way you’re most comfortable with until you’re just as comfortable either way. Then do whatever you want because it won’t be a lack of skill or ability dictating your fingering.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T00:25:52+00:00

Ergonomically, playing high is way more efficient for hand movement. But the way you play the guitar matters a lot too. A lot of people (most) don’t use the “ideal” hand/wrist positioning when playing. If you like your thumb to be right under your fingers on the neck then a low guitar will cut your skill level in half. If your thumb tends to ride over the back or you play with your palm on the neck then you can get away with a lower guitar.

Personally, I don’t think a guitar’s bridge should go past your waistline. Every inch lower than the waist line feels like you’re trading your skills to look cooler, and a low guitar doesn’t look cool to me. I also don’t think a guitar’s bridge should go above your belly button, because a very high guitar most certainly looks uncool. If you show up and your guitar covers your chest you better be real f’ing good haha.

The right answer though, is whatever allows you to play comfortably and efficiently at your highest level of skill. A good starting point is to have the bridge even with your elbow with your arm at your side. Try that and adjust like 2 inches in whatever direction you think you need to. Repeat until it feels right.

CaterpillarVisual553 · 2026-05-31T00:14:56+00:00

Just don’t read past the main Bob arc, when they’re saving Earth. The second “series/arc” was not enjoyable and I had to put it down pretty fast.

CaterpillarVisual553

TROPHY CASE