You'd think this would be painfully obvious....

[John_C]

I reckon learning to play the same lick so as it sounds good at any volume or gain is the real trick. Clean and distorted show up different faults

 

[mrbean667]

Cool, you learn something new every day!
Now I need to get practicing intensively...

 

[Fox Mulder]

It is a fact that most musicians are nothing but mere show-offs. That's why they don't practice. I find this really common with bassists: They wanna practice for a month, for 10mins a day, form a band and impress their friends. Lawl.

As for guitarists, I think Pantera raped most of them with Cowboys From Hell. Even though I see some of them with the "Oh I'm a metalhead, I don't listen to groove metal" kinda attitude, most of them were into a lot of Pantera once in their lives and their fetish for gain pisses me off. The result? They can't freakin play with an appropriate amount of gain. If you ever see a guitarist complain about 'lack of gain', ask him if he's a Pantera fan. If he says, "No", ask him if he was ever.

 

[John_C]

Coyboys has quite a bit of gain..............or am i misunderstanding you?

 

[Metaltastic]

Yeah, he's implying that the love of Pantera most guitarists have in their developmental years also fosters a love of gain - of course, I never really liked Pantera too much, but I can relate to the sentiment! And then I thought turning the gain way down was cool, but too much and palm mutes just sound castrated, so back up it went to a happy medium for me, I love the roar of really nicely saturated guitars! Case in point:

 

[Fox Mulder]

Exactly.

 

[greyskull]

i practice on an acoustic.

 

[MonochromaticStains]

Yeah, he's implying that the love of Pantera most guitarists have in their developmental years also fosters a love of gain - of course, I never really liked Pantera too much, but I can relate to the sentiment! And then I thought turning the gain way down was cool, but too much and palm mutes just sound castrated, so back up it went to a happy medium for me, I love the roar of really nicely saturated guitars! Case in point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJLAZfmRM0

Truly fabulous Album one of my fav's of all time...

Great guys too...

 

[beyond dead]

Yeah, he's implying that the love of Pantera most guitarists have in their developmental years also fosters a love of gain - of course, I never really liked Pantera too much, but I can relate to the sentiment!

fuck bro... i can play every song in pantees discography (minus a couple solos i never bothered to learn) I used to jam along to their shit all the time.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Yeah, he's implying that the love of Pantera most guitarists have in their developmental years also fosters a love of gain - of course, I never really liked Pantera too much, but I can relate to the sentiment! And then I thought turning the gain way down was cool, but too much and palm mutes just sound castrated, so back up it went to a happy medium for me, I love the roar of really nicely saturated guitars! Case in point:

Definitely know what you mean.
For a while I subscribed to the "minimum gain for the style of playing possible" school of thought. Yeah, so it sounded better than the days when I used the gain on 11 but after a while it feels like you put too much effort into playing and when I was soloing certain notes were lacking sustain.
I then decided to increase the gain a little, I noticed I wasn't losing clarity, but the sustain was better and it just felt better to play.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Yeah, fuck, I really hate that attitude of "practice unplugged, it'll improve your technique". Two totally different mindsets, practicing unplugged and plugged in. Playing unplugged did wonders for my alternate picking attack consistency, I wont deny that, but it does nothing for your muting technique, probably why my dad who's a classical player would play my electric and it would constantly feedback and notes would be ringing out all the time