Subject: RE: Any serious 12 strings players left?
From:
GUEST,Rick Masters
Date: 08 Jun 13 - 08:13 PM
Hi all, I enjoyed reading this thread. I have also had a love affair with 12-strings for many years. My first was a brand new acoustic Harmony I bought after saving my money all summer back in 1970. It was the very same model Ringo Starr used on is debut album. Three assholes with knives took it from me a month later. Then somewhere around 1980, I picked up a beautiful sounding Takamine that is still my choice for recording today. And I just got my old rosewood Guild F-312 back from a crack repair yesterday and I am struggling to become friends with it again. It is SO different than the Takamine!! The Guild growls and roars while the Takamine purrs and sings. The Takamine has a Roland G3 synthesizer pickup and an ancient 6-string in-hole pickup for the FX. I actually dislike the sound of acoustic 12-strings and would rather play a 6-string when there is no electrification. But with an amp and FX, the 12-string becomes very unique and I never tire of it. The sustain is wonderful. There is an entire universe in any two chords. I have a strange style that utilizess the string tension of the 12-string to bounce on -- I call it "trampoline" -- and sometimes I take off a few accompaniment strings to get the sound I want, so I guess I'm turning it into an 8 or 9 string guitar -- except it's still really a 12-string, I think. I use a bare hand with a long thumbnail. I'm not sure what my right hand is doing. I can't see it or my thumb -- it's just a blur -- because it moves to fast or my mind works too slow or something. And if I try to force myself to play, the result is horrible. I have to just let my hands take over and kick back, then it works. It's like somebody else took over my body. It's like the opposite of what most 12-string players do, I think. I mean, I don't even know what chords I'm playing, I had an accident when I was a kid and I think in shapes, not symbols, when I play music, so it's really hard to explain. You can find me on Last.fm or Soundcloud if you want to freak yourself out.
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sj
