• About this blog
  • Articles
    • The THD Flexi 50 Amplifier
    • The THD Flexi 50 Amplifier (part 2)
    • Improving Your Guitar Playing by Self-Assessment
    • Nice Chord Voicings
    • How to Get A Nice Clean Guitar Tone
    • Fender Twin Reverb
  • My Music
  • Archives

Second Floor Tones

Music, guitars and gear - musings from the Second Floor

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • YouTube

A More Musical Guitar Player

May 10, 2019 by Stig Leave a Comment

As a guitarist for the past thirty-odd years I’ve spent my share of hours working on techniques. From the extremely tedious, mechanical, madness-inducing, spouse-annoying picking drills with a metronome, to the more musically fulfilling – and ultimately more useful – endeavours, such as working out songs, learning chords or melodies, and so on. No matter […]

Basic Slide Guitar

March 14, 2015 by Stig Leave a Comment

Detail of slide guitar playing

In this post I’ll give a short introduction to basic slide guitar technique, tuning and phrasing. There’s a YouTube video further down that shows some examples. As always, I’d love to hear from you, so don’t be shy – leave a comment. Guitar setup Tuning I usually play slide guitar in one of two open […]

New Article: Nice Chord Voicings

January 18, 2015 by Stig Leave a Comment

Guitar Playing Character

Yes, there’s actually a new article, and it’s about some chord voicings that I think are, er, nice. Basically it’s about how you can alter some well known triads and get a lot more out of them in terms of colour. An added bonus is that these voicings can easily be adjusted and in turn […]

How To Become A Better Guitar Player

November 16, 2014 by Stig Leave a Comment

Woman cupping her ear

I’ve just writtten an article about how to improve your playing by self-assessment. In short, it’s about honing your critical listening skills and relating them to specific goals you have for your playing. As I say in the main article: What kind of noise do you want to make? Read the full article here: Improving Your Guitar […]

Troy Grady to the Rescue

October 12, 2014 by Stig 1 Comment

Troy Grady

When I started playing back in 1987, I was infatuated by technique. I loved Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai, and the defining property of “good” music, was that it demanded good dexterity. All other variables were of minimal importance. I stopped caring about songs, and bought records based on the guitar solos, not the material. […]

Using the volume control on your guitar

August 3, 2014 by Stig 2 Comments

Volume control

Marshall amps traditionally sound very good with the volume control at less then maximum The humble volume control on your guitar is one of the most under-utilized controls in all of electric guitardom. Most people see us guitarists (deservedly so) as volume-dependent, knuckle-dragging oafs, who can’t play a single note without having 120 dB SPL […]

E-mail Newsletter

Never miss a post! Sign up for the newsletter here. (Your e-mail address is perfectly safe)

After submitting you'll need to check your e-mail to confirm, then come back here and continue reading.

Categories

  • Amplifier
  • Controls
  • Effects
  • Guitar
  • Human behaviour
  • My music
  • Off Topic
  • Pickups
  • Playing and technique
  • Recording
Share

What’s all this then?

This site is the author´s (Stig) playground on the Interwebz. Here he indulges his desire for writing exceedingly nerdy articles concerning the minutiae of guitar playing, gear, recording, music, and related (and not so related) topics.

There’s some information about this site and how it deals with privacy, amongst other things. There’s a handy link you can click if you’re into reading about that sort of thing right here:

About this site, privacy. etc.

Recent Ramblings

  • Thank you, and good night
  • Les Paul Tones
  • A More Musical Guitar Player
  • How To Make A Strat Sound Good
  • Your Own Playing Style

Tags

6L6 acoustic guitar a more musical guitar player Clean tone EL34 Erik Welo Fender Stratocaster Fender Twin Fuzz Face GAS Les Paul Logic Maxon OD-9 microphones mids musical context New Year's Resolution overdrive phrasing Picking Technique playing feel Playing Style pots preamps recording Self-Assessment setup Single-coil slide slide technique Sound better THD Flexi THD Hot Plate Troy Grady tuning Volume control Xotic RC Booster Yngwie Malmsteen

Copyright © 2019 · Second Floor Tones

Copyright © 2019 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in