Help me break back into electric guitars

[island texan]

I can’t think of a better place to get help on this than on the Acoustic Guitar Forum. I simply can’t be alone with this problem. Here goes:
When I was in high school, I started out playing electric. (I actually had a ’57 Gibson double cutaway I sold for 150 bucks when I was in college and needed money!) Anyway, by college days, I was only playing acoustic and I almost never used a pick again. Guitar playing has been off and on for the last 45 years, but I have never been able to get back into electrics. In my efforts to do so, I now own three of them and make stabs at plugging in an amp, getting a nice stiff pick and stomping on my three pedals – all in an effort to get turned on. I really do want to get turned on to playing an electric again, but I can’t find the zone. Thirty minutes and I’m ready to toss the pick, pick up an acoustic and relax.
So why do I want to play an electric anyway? You may ask. No, I don’t aspire to start a garage metal band or play boot-scootin’ music in the local dance hall. I want to do that self-indulgent thing most of you who are reading this do – find gratification in mastering another form of guitar music. I think the genres I’m digging into is where I need to go, simple jazz and old rock & roll and blues stuff up the neck. I’m pretty sure that’s where I belong, but I need some sympathetic advice about how to find that zone. Is it lessons? Youtube instructions? More jam tracks and just endure it? See a therapist?
FWIW, on a steel string acoustic I rank myself modestly as a middle-intermediate and can hold my own in a jam. I can play in front of a group and can learn a new piece in a couple of weeks or less. On a classical, not that good, but to an untrained ear I can fake it pretty good. On an electric, I feel like a doofus: poor attack technique, lazy bends, trouble staying on the beat, no clue how to make the pickups and amp do what those of you who are accomplished can do.
I await and welcome your sage advice.

[Davis Webb]

I would try to emulate different styles out there to see where your sweet spot is. I would suggest getting a PA, drum machine, something like the Boss DR3, with a bass line, then you have a 3 piece at home. I use that through a looper and I get a 4 piece on my own. Then when I play out, it all fits into my pedalboard case.

a. Jeff Beck, he does not use a pick, works with volume swells, tremolo bar and slide in very soulful ways

b. BB King, see if blues is your thing, let the notes sing, work small areas of the fretboard deeply

c. Slash, from G and R, classic rock

d. Eric Johnson, for mastery of 3 piece sound

I cannot tell from reading your post why you are conflicted about it. I would say there is a world of sound to explore on the electric that simply doesn't exist on the acoustic. Focus on that.

GL! Welcome back to the dark side.

[wrathfuldeity]

The obvious issue is...crank up your amp...hopefully it is a vintage tube like a quadra verb with JBL's

Seriously...get a simple old tube amp like a Champ or Princeton or deluxe.
Btw there are old odd ball amps with a bit of bench time can be stellar little amps...all of mine have been well under $100...two of my daily players are a 1949 mono-block pp6v6 and 1950's se 6L6 record player conversion. Then find the sweet spot of the amp...at the threshold between clean and break-up...and then use attack, and git knobs.

Imho its just determination and ears...that is listen to what you want to play...and watching yt vids helps a lot. A lot of great electric players that don't use picks.

[mikealpine]

I'll add Mark Knopfler to the no-pick group. Find songs that you really want to learn all or part of. I did that with the solo from "Bartender". It was a reason to practice. What about finding a few locals to jam with occasionally? If you know what you really want to learn and play, it'll drive you to do so, in my opinion.

[svea]

I use the same thumb pick and Alaska finger picks on my Tele that I do on my acoustics. Or, I just use bare fingers. The Tele works great for finger style, clean or grungy, no matter. I like my action a little higher than the rock shredders, and I use 11's.

Svea

[blue]

Originally Posted by mikealpine

I'll add Mark Knopfler to the no-pick group. Find songs that you really want to learn all or part of. I did that with the solo from "Bartender". It was a reason to practice. What about finding a few locals to jam with occasionally? If you know what you really want to learn and play, it'll drive you to do so, in my opinion.

Beck, Knopfler, and the last of the triumvirate is Lindsey Buckingham if you are talking electric rock. Buckingham is really interesting because tons of folks can't tell by hearing.

Beck definitely is in the lead in terms of "having his own thing going on". I can't think of anyone who has taken more advantage of what a strat with its volume knob position and trem (even though it's the modern 2 point floater and he use a roller nut) going into a marshall can do.

[blue]

What you are having trouble with is what we used to call "riding the lightning".

Your problem, if you want to call it that is that you know how to play guitar. You don't know how to play the amp! As an example a big cowboy G chord sounds great on acoustic. On electric with an amp right on the edge of breakup or beyond not so much. On electric try fretting the third fret on the first, second and sixth string and MUTE the fifth string. Playing the fifth and sixth strings alone (2nd and 3rd fret like a cowboy) can work too depending on what else is going on, but the full cowboy G is rarely going to come out of the amp sounding good unless you are playing pristine clear. And really what's the point of that See stuff like that isn't a guitar problem, it's an amp problem.

It'll come. I recommend concentrating on big open rather primitive stuff. Like Kiss, AC/DC, the Pixies, pre wall of sound ZZTop, etc. Anything that goes back and forth between single note and so called power chords (which will give you more control than you may currently have as an acoustic player on only hitting 2 strings) and big healthy chords in different voicings (like the G above) than you are probably used to. Make sure it's stuff with lots of space, so you can learn what sounds good when you let it die, and what needs to be stopped with muting. This is the stuff that will teach you all the technique stuff in terms of attack, etc.

I realize that stuff is probably NOT what you want to play. But you can learn a song like that in 10 minutes, but it's not the song you want. It's the performance of the song you are working at!

Getting a great sound coming out of the amp alone in your living room on a three chords and a cloud of dust song is NOT EASY, and it will mean you have learned to play the amp.

[island texan]

Thanks for the feedback. Reading through the advice about the amp issues is sort of like all the tech talk about pickups. (I've got one guitar with P90s and two with Humbuckers, and I'm not sure I can really tell the difference other than the amount of 60 cycle that seems to run through the P90's.) As I sit down with an electric plugged into one of my non-tube amps (one of which allegedly can emulate a tube), it becomes apparent to me that what is holding me up isn't how loud or distorted or hot or whatever I sound, it's the fact this contraption picks up every little error, and I sound crappy. With an acoustic I can pluck a couple of strings and you'll never know if I barely touched an adjacent string or got the G a split-second ahead of the E, etc. As mentioned earlier in this thread, knowing when to cut off sustain requires a skill rarely needed with an acoustic. Even though I don't use a pick much, it's so apparent to me when my pick 'sticks' coming off the B or E string on the electric, while it's barely noticeable with an acoustic.

I completely understand and agree about the 'cowboy chord' issues. My take is that whenever playing full and fairly open chords, either the attack needs to be more gentle or the volume and tone controls turned down. I try to stick with power chords and single notes and bends with an electric for now. Again, I'm sure some of this has to do with amp settings, and I welcome more advice on that.

At some point I'm sure I will be able to appreciate the amp, but right now I think I need to get some of these techniques down better. The way I'm looking at this, especially after reading forums on electrics is that an acoustic guitar almost does the playing for you, while an electric requires a greater array of techniques and technical understanding to fully execute well.

I've thought maybe it would be good to go to a guitar store where there is an interested and knowledgeable salesperson who can walk me through the amplifier and pickup settings with different rigs so I can get a better start on this.

As an aside, I think this underscores that beginners are probably better off starting with an acoustic to avoid just making racket with an electric. At least that's the perspective of this old fart.

[wrathfuldeity]

^ that is exactly why you want a distortion pedal...it hides alot of mistakes til you got some e chops

and that is why most folks want a sensitive and responsive tube amp so that you can milk the tone....ya can't learn to milk on a dry cow

[redir]

Any pics of the old Gibson?

Who needs a pick anyway?

[Steve DeRosa]

Originally Posted by wrathfuldeity

...that is exactly why you want a distortion pedal...it hides a lot of mistakes til you got some chops...

As a teacher in the public and private sector since 1970, IME that's the one thing you never want to do if you expect to make any real progress. I got my first electric/amp at age 11 (still own both, BTW) and faced some of the same problems - as a junior jazzer I learned a more refined technique from the get-go, so things came more easily to me than some of my friends - but the only way to truly master the requisite skills is to just keep plowing straight ahead, just as you did when you were first learning acoustic; distortion pedals are fine in their place - I still have an original mid-60's Sam Ash Fuzzz Boxx and first-run Big Muff in my arsenal, among others, so I've been with the game since the beginning - but the question you really need to ask yourself is, are you interested in making noise, or are you interested in making music...?

[wrathfuldeity]

Originally Posted by Steve DeRosa

As a teacher in the public and private sector since 1970, IME that's the one thing you never want to do if you expect to make any real progress. I got my first electric/amp at age 11 (still own both, BTW) and faced some of the same problems - as a junior jazzer I learned a more refined technique from the get-go, so things came more easily to me than some of my friends - but the only way to truly master the requisite skills is to just keep plowing straight ahead, just as you did when you were first learning acoustic; distortion pedals are fine in their place - I still have an original mid-60's Sam Ash Fuzzz Boxx and first-run Big Muff in my arsenal, among others, so I've been with the game since the beginning - but the question you really need to ask yourself is, are you interested in making noise, or are you interested in making music...?

^I wholeheartedly agree...the single best thing I did many years ago after breaking my left wrist was to re-hab via classical left hand technique with countless hours of scales and drills on steel string acoustic which subsequently enabled to me to pick up other things much more easily. Of course have a couple of distortion pedals, but essentially a fairly clean player. Playing a clean amp will demand more focus on technique which will pay off in the long run. There is an axiom in playing, amps, pickups and pedals...its harder to clean up a dirty than to dirty a clean.