Hi All,
 
I would like to introduce you all to Snarky Puppy The story behind Snarky Puppy is pretty simple .
Over there on The Telecaster Forum they have a section called Twanger Central .
Every Week they host a backing track and many of the guys post their guitar playing over the weekly backing track ...
 
Snarky Puppy is this weeks Twanger Central backing track # 98...
https://soundcloud.com/gu...ppy-twanger-central-98
 
My Guitar playing on this track is simple , I'm not holding back anything , I'm playing one of my  Strats  and I'm shredding my rear end off ..
If your into that type of playing feel free to give Snarky Puppy a listen ..
 
thank you in advance
all the best ,
 
Kenny

Not enough notes!  Excellent shreddage Kenny, I like that tone too. People (well, just Tim really..) say that I should get a strat and expand my palette of sounds. Probably true.
 
Man, you were letting it all flow here, good to hear that I love that 'tape speed' thing you do at 1:26 and the reverse to come back in at 1:38 - care to share how you did that?

I think you were holding back a touch there....... only joking. That is some very nice shreddage and a lovely tone from your guitar.

jamesg1213
Not enough notes!  Excellent shreddage Kenny, I like that tone too. People (well, just Tim really..) say that I should get a strat and expand my palette of sounds. Probably true.
 
Man, you were letting it all flow here, good to hear that I love that 'tape speed' thing you do at 1:26 and the reverse to come back in at 1:38 - care to share how you did that?

Hi James,
 
I'm gonna be a little all over the place here for a moment please forgive me for the mini guitar lesson ...
 
Not enough notes huh ?  The guys over at the other forum were like WHAT ! The Heck Just Happened Here ?
 
I have a couple of things I feel like sharing here today about my process regarding playing lead guitar.
I might as well share it now while it is on my mind . I hope somebody gets something out of it ...
 
When ever I have a tune or a backing track that I'm gonna play over the first thing I do is I put it in music transcription software and slow it down while keeping the pitch of the song in the key I will be playing it in .
 
The software I use for that task is called Transcribe by Seventh String ..they have a fully working 30 day demo ...
 
The reason behind that is I want to be able to take my time and listen to the spaces between the notes I'm playing.
Also I don't try to play anything fancy when I'm playing slower , I want to be able to find the best notes to play up to or down to including all the common notes that will float over all the chord changes. This is done to find the notes with the most emotion ....
While I'm doing that type of exploring I'm also playing around with the places I can extend my melodic phrases in interesting ways that don't conform to how a typical guitar player/ student of the guitar plays ...
 
I fall into the category of guitar players that fully believes that if you want to be able to play fast with total freedom of personal expression and fluidity , you have to practice your moves on the fret board slow and with precision 
After I have familiarized myself with the track and what I may want to play over it then I play and record over it at normal speed 
 
Having said that I guess people may think I'm shredding , I think of it more along the lines of I'm just improvising over a tune w changes and I'm trying to do a one of a kind improvised performance in the moment.
 
As far as getting a Strat . I would urge you to consider getting one    Listen to Tim on this one ...
Strats are true tone monsters that can fit and sound good in any style of music ..from acoustic to hard core you name it ...
If you can get used to playing one ( the feel and set up ) ...you will be rewarded .
 
The Stratocaster I played on this song is a Garden Variety Squier Strat that I bought new for peanuts 11 years ago ...
The only mods I have done to it are I took out the junk volume and tone controls and replaced them with better ones while also changing the 5 way switch ...I also wired my lead pick up to my middle tone control ...
Other than that I sanded down the neck and put an oil finish on it
I have much better guitars I can be playing including American Strats , Teles and my Les ...the thing is this little humble guitar that I played on this song is siting out on my guitar stand right now while all the other guitars are sitting in their cases in the closet ...
 
I did mention that my guitar is stock pickup wise ...The tone I got is a combination of how I played and how I processed my signal chain...
My signal chain for this recording started with an Audiofed sp? Tube Screamer style overdrive into Bias Amp LE using a Triple Rectifier set to low gain ...that's what I used to play ...for processing after the fact I did another one of my secret little tricks ...
I don't use guitar processing ever on my lead guitar parts at all... I use Vocal Processing ... always have always will .
That part of my signal chain I'm gonna keep close to the vest for now ....
 
For the tape stop effects I used on my guitar I used Traction Waveform 8 ...That program has excellent editing capabilities that I cant reproduce in SONAR ...
It was as easy as splitting my guitar clip , applying a fade with the choice of slow down or speed up ...that was it
To do that type of edit with the tape stop effect in SONAR takes many more steps ....
here is a video on how to do it in SONAR  ...

 
all the best,
 
Kenny
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

That was an interesting read Kenny, thanks for the info This paragraph you wrote;
 

kennywtelejazz
 
I fall into the category of guitar players that fully believes that if you want to be able to play fast with total freedom of personal expression and fluidity , you have to practice your moves on the fret board slow and with precision 
After I have familiarized myself with the track and what I may want to play over it then I play and record over it at normal speed 
 
 

Quite coincidentally, I watched a few vids by Jon Herington (who I admire greatly) last night, and he said pretty much the exact same thing
at 12:55 in this vid;
 

Kenny,
 
Great post..    I like you are playing traditional blues licks and mixing in some "outside" notes as well.   A nice mix of rock and Jazz/fusion.   Makes for much more interesting listening.  Very cool you have such a broad palette of choices to draw from.   

Regards

jamesg1213
That was an interesting read Kenny, thanks for the info This paragraph you wrote;
 

kennywtelejazz
 
I fall into the category of guitar players that fully believes that if you want to be able to play fast with total freedom of personal expression and fluidity , you have to practice your moves on the fret board slow and with precision 
After I have familiarized myself with the track and what I may want to play over it then I play and record over it at normal speed 
 
 

Quite coincidentally, I watched a few vids by Jon Herington (who I admire greatly) last night, and he said pretty much the exact same thing
at 12:55 in this vid;
 

Hi James,
 
I'm glad you got something out off my long verbal wind age
Hey I enjoyed the video you posted it is always nice to hear a pro back up a proven workflow I believe in...
PS I have jammed with a guitar player that has played and recorded for S D ..Elliot Randal ...long story another time
 

markno999

Kenny,
 
Great post..    I like you are playing traditional blues licks and mixing in some "outside" notes as well.   A nice mix of rock and Jazz/fusion.   Makes for much more interesting listening.  Very cool you have such a broad palette of choices to draw from.   

Regards

Hi markno999 ,
 
I did everything I could to keep it interesting melodically and harmonically...I'm glad that quality of playing showed ..
I still practice and work on new things . One of the nice things about getting older is I can finally play what I wish I could have played when I was younger 
FWIW, it may surprise people to find out that I'm not really a big fan of playing guitar solos that last 4 mins....
I play by their rules over at the other forum and that's how they like to do it over there ...
Thank you for the song listen and the kind words you have said about my guitar playing
 
all the best,
 
Kenny
 
 
 

In a word....  schaweet!   
 
I very much enjoyed that, Kenny.   Whatever your path to get there, in the end it's certainly working.  I'm also getting a bit of a fusion edge with over the top playing that always remains clean, lots of "in-between" melodies, and some really great technique.  

WOW MAN! I like that you kept it so clean playing everything and didn't try the easy way by adding heavy distortion and such things, as "COUGH COUGH" some of us may do on occasion to make it sound a little faster!
 
Sounds great man! The bass line on this makes me think of a spy movie for some strange reason. 
 
Enjoyed hearing this one very much! That's some serious riffing going on there my friend! 
 
Keep on Keepin' on!!!!
 
Bobby
 

Coughing means you're pointing out the fake? Interesting! Everything's fake isn't it? 
 
Kenny, quit the B's you go on about in other posts, this is what you were meant to do.  You are a shred-meister.