Originally Posted by: haghj500What happened during practice?

I know this sounds quite petty, but considering that it came from someone who's been supporting me ever since I first picked up a guitar, it really did more damage than it should. I turned on my Amp as usual, and tried some new settings (that is, I turned my Amp to the '57 Fender Deluxe Reverb amp-model instead of the British 80's Marshall-style amp-model) and played through a few of the songs I know, using my Distortion Pedal when I needed a bit more gain (or needed to bring the volume up for a certain part... or both), and I think that went pretty well. Then I went a bit back to basics and did some simple Barre Chord exercises, because to me, they're always a big problem... I found 4 chords in one key, and played them as Barre Chords with the root on the low E string. I kept that going for about a minute, before the bad stuff happened.

After playing those four chords over and over and putting some Rhythm into it, I suddenly, out of nowhere, got complaints that it sounded (and I quote) "F***ing horrible" and "way too dark and evil". Okay, so I picked some other chords and played those for some a while, and got even more comments in the same vein. Those Chords I was playing? They were in a Major key. That shouldn't sound "evil" or "aggressive" or "heavy" or anything like that. I kept going for some time, finding some other chords to play every time, but it didn't make a difference.

After about ten minutes of dealing with that kind of destructive criticism, I tried playing Smoke On The Water, just to see if the tone was the problem or if I was just very unfortunate when it came to picking out some Chords... Everything went well, right up until the solo, where I would normally do a pretty good job, by comparison. And I fumbled my way through something. Not a solo, just something. After fumbling my way through the rest of Smoke On The Water, I tried switching to the '80s British amp-model on my amp, and dialed in the tone I usually use and tried playing Smoke again (with a just as sloppy solo)... And the destructive criticism calmed down just a little bit, but still not enough to make me feel motivated in any way. After a few more minutes, I put the guitar back in a 3-guitar stand I found recently while clearing out the garage and I haven't even thought of touching one since... It's a shame, really, since I have a couple of really nice guitars. :( Now I'm just listening to some of the music I know usually makes me actually want to go pick up a guitar and practice, in hopes that the motivation and inspiration will come back to me soon... So far, 3 hours of mixed music I like hasn't helped much...

So what if I was playing with some different gear and tone-settings than I normally do? I normally don't really use my SG after getting new pickups for my LP, but it's still a very cool Rock-guitar that sounds really cool through the '57 Deluxe preset, even if I dial in some extra effects I don't use with my LP or ES. It really shouldn't be the SG-through-Fender-Deluxe combination (with a Phaser effect on top) that caused the destructive criticism...