Do's and Don'ts for Aspiring Visual Kei Musicians

Musicians
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We have a lot of musicians on this forum - far more than I expected - and I also suspect that we have a lot of visual kei fans who would like to get more into music. We can use this topic as a way to share our experiences and hopefully get others going!

I’ll come back later with some things as I think about it, but here’s three things to get us started:

Do get yourself a quality instrument

Whether it’s guitar, bass, drums, keyboard, or even your voice, make sure you get quality goods. If you cheap out and get a $95 Amazon Basics guitar, you are getting $95 of guitar. Also, it’ll be near impossible to sell it to any serious musician and even Guitar Center won’t pay more than $30-$40 for it, and that’s for parts at best. At the same time, don’t go overboard and spend quad digits for your first instrument. For guitar at least, I think a good starting place is about $200.

(Guitar) Do focus on E Standard for a while

There’s a very tempting voice that will pop up in the back of your head that will tell you to keep the guitar in Drop C so you can play some bitchin’ visual kei licks. But personally speaking, it’s a lot easier for me to understand and visualize the guitar neck if you keep it in standard tuning.

Same thing with getting 7-string or 8-string guitars, or 5-string bass. These instruments open you up to a whole world of music, but it can be very confusing to go from E Standard to B Standard and then not understand how the scale extends. Definitely not for beginners.

I would say stick with E Standard for the first six months of your guitar journey at least. I’m almost on five years myself and I’m still learning new things about the guitar in E Standard.

Don’t focus on learning only visual kei songs

Not only are there not a lot of tabs about for these songs, but a lot of them aren’t in E Standard. You can find plenty of tabs for early Dir en grey or the GazettE (both in E Standard), but after that pickings get slim rather quick.

Put a pin in it and come back to it when you are an Intermediate Guitarist. There are a lot of cool songs that you can play that are in E Standard. I’ll list a few of my favorites below:

  • 銀座 from SMT1
  • 関東土下座組合 by the GazettE
  • 霧と繭 by Dir en grey
  • Blue’s theme from Pokemon RBY
  • Wily’s Castle 1 from Megaman 2
  • 邪教 from SMT1
  • 秒「」深 by Dir en grey

All in E standard, all pretty fun to play!

Anyone else got any tips?

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Hey, i might be well set up to expand on this, as i’m a guitarist who’s sold guitars for my income, and (maybe as a result of these) i’m quite poor.

So, what’s a $95 guitar mean, specifically what sets it apart from a more expensive one, in the context of learning to play the instrument?

  • at this price range the frets are usually fucked up, the sides aren’t cut right and they’ll dig into your fingers when you slide around. You won’t get like, injured; it’s just a little annoyance that’ll make playing and practicing a little less fun.

  • that’s BASICALLY it, if you’re as budget as me. I’m not gonna tell anyone you gotta drop $400 on a guitar to enjoy it, especially not to learn it. If you can, it’ll be appreciated for things like: more control over your tone, it’ll go out of tune less often, notes will be more consistent (simplifying here for someone who’s 100% new, don’t judge me lol)

But here’s the cheat code; just never buy a guitar new unless you’re extremely sure what exactly you need and there’s no way you could get it used. Guitars are meant to be bought used until you’re a touring musician, a doctor, or have something crazy specific in mind. You can spend $100 on Reverb or Facebook Marketplace and get an instrument that sold for $400 new, which is (imho) that golden zone of “the cheapest guitar you can buy with nothing major wrong with it”.

All this ofc about pricing i can only verify for the US, so that’s why i say what i do about the Amazon basics kinda guitar. Would i recommend it? Literally never, when there’s other options at the same price. And i don’t think you gotta go too far past $100 for your first instrument, when you may not even know what pickups you like yet.

Oh, and if you think acoustic is the easy version - no, definitely not. Acoustic’s almost a different instrument entirely, and if anything i think is a lot harder to learn on, as you gotta press the strings harder to get them to do the notes. But if that’s what you wanna do specifically, morning wrong with it! I just mean it’s not like, Electric Guitar’s Easy Mode.

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Expanding on this with a tip from my old bass teacher when I switched to a 5-string. Not so much about VK specifically but learning extended-range instruments in general - if one decides to take the plunge, STAY on that instrument for a while in your practice routines, in jamming, and in writing. It isn’t just a guitar/bass with an extra string, it’s almost a different instrument and you need to get used to the quirks, strengths, and weaknesses of these guitars if you want to utilize them to their fullest potential. Sticking on it for some time rather than constantly going back and forth between it and a 4-string bass/6-string guitar will make that whole process slower and more frustrating

The majority of my instruments and amps I got used, and they all hold up great. And if you’re like me and think dents and scratches add character to an instrument, that opens up the “great instrument but hella cheap because it looks like Willie Nelson’s “Trigger” guitar” bracket of options!

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I don’t know anything about playing music, but I’ve always wanted to try to learn.
Is starting with a bass a bad idea?
Is buying a bandman’s signature bass for a first instrument a bad idea?
I’ve been eyeing a second hand Reita signature model and a mini Aki (SID) signature model because I like how they look.

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this is about the furthest thing possible from a bad idea!

everything you learn on bass will transition very well to other instruments, whether that’s if you wanna switch to them, or give a drummer/guitarist something to try.

there’s also about ten guitarists for every bassist, and maybe twenty guitarists for every good bassist lol. so if you learn it you’ll be in high demand!

someone on youtube said the best advice they can give someone buying their first guitar is “buy one that looks cool, bc then you’ll be motivated to play & practice it.”
if you can afford either of those, i can’t imagine you’d at all be let down!

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starting with bass is a great idea. it’s the foundation of the band and will teach you a lot about musical fundamentals that guitarists sometimes ignore. signature models are expensive, though… i recommend something inexpensive and upgrading in the future.

speaking as a professional guitarist, there’s never been a better time to be a new guitarist / bassist. so many options at great prices compared to when i was starting out.

harley benton is a budget brand i trust for reasonable quality instruments that punch above their price range. pair with a sansamp bass driver or mxr bass di and you don’t need much else.

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This is great!
There’s a lot of info online that conflicts with each other, so I’ll toss my hat in the ring here:

LEARNINGSELF-TEACHING
It’s easy to get stuck in a rabbit hole when trying to find online resources for learning techniques and theory. I recommend finding one or two resources and sticking with them when starting out, that way your pacing can be consistent. There’s a few I cannot recommend more:

One of the OGs. He has a very relaxed style of teaching and has been doing it for over 20 years, pre-YouTube era. He’s extremely knowledgable, and if you’re an absolute beginner, he is probably the most recommended learning resource online.

Bernth is an awesome guitarist for learning rock and modern metal techniques. A few things might go over your head at first, but the benefits pay for themselves. He also has a Patreon with mini courses around ~5 bucks which can’t be beat in terms of price.

In terms of learning theory, this guy is one of my favorites. He has a way of breaking down information into a digestible way that guitarists of any skill level can hop right in. He also has a free chord progression book that’s a killer resource.

Honorable mentions:

12Tone (YouTube)
8-Bit Music Theory (also YouTube), especially if you’re into video games and JRPGs!
Jens Larsen (For more Jazzy learning)
Underrated:

Seiya, of Deviloof fame. He has a couple of exercises that are worth checking out, too.

INSTRUMENTS/GEAR
GAS is real. I started out with an Ibanez GRX20, and I very quickly outgrew it. You have to kinda try to strike a balance between affordability and motivation, if that makes sense? My next guitar was a Schecter Blackjack Diamond 7, and that motivated me to practice more than anything else had at that point.

It’s not a universal, one-size-fits-all solution, but if you’re feeling held back by your current gear, set yourself a goal. Something like, if you keep your practice consistent for a month or two, you deserve to upgrade. Just don’t go wild with it like I did, by buying a FM9 (Fractal Audio). It made me practice more to get my money’s worth, for sure.

Pick a DAW. Reaper’s free, and is amazing. A bunch of the big audio companies (Adobe, Steinberg, etc) have trials, so you don’t have to pay for greatness. You can achieve killer, professional-level sound with free and stock audio plugins. I’ll link some later

Songs
I spent the first year-and-a-half of my guitar learning by practicing scales, exercises, etc. I built up my endurance, but almost at no cost. What motivated me was wanting to play like You from Janne Da Arc, but practicing along to songs I didn’t care about wasn’t getting me anything but frustrated lol.

There are a bunch of easy songs for every skill level, and it’s difficult to tell which ones are at your level, so it takes some experimenting.

I’ll say that I made the most progress with my journey by actually playing along to music that inspired me. When you go on stage, or jam as part of a band, you can just play linear scale exercises, but it won’t get you far lmao. Find a sound you want to play along to, find stuff to keep your interest. It’ll help you improve more than a year of learning music theory with no application.

This is getting long, so I’ll wrap it up here:

PRACTICE
This was one that took me a while to figure out. Most guitar teachers recommend breaking a practice schedule down to an hour, meaning:

15 MIN TECHNIQUE
15 MIN MUSIC THEORY/SCALES
15 MIN PLAYING ALONG TO MUSIC
15 MIN EAR TRAINING

This is good, but as you find more things to learn, this will become bloated. The optimal practice schedule would be 70% focus on playing music, 20% learning new techniques, 10% Music Theory. You do want to learn to play music, so why not make it worth your while?

In terms of starting theory, you don’t immediately have to learn 1,000,000 concepts at once. Start with your Triads. I’m almost 4 years into playing guitar, and I STILL find triads/triad extension/arpeggios useful in terms of crafting music and improvising.

That’s all from me, I’m also open to answer any questions and give suggestions if needed!

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+1 for Justin Sandercoe. Most thorough teacher on YouTube. His videos taught me to play 15 years ago and he’s still the best IMO.

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Absolutely. I don’t find myself practicing many new techniques unless it’s central to a song I’m trying to learn, but if I do, I always go for Justin’s lessons first

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If you want to sing seriously, take singing lessons. That’s all.

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If you want to play any instrument seriously, take lessons. That’s all.

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Something that popped into my mind for aspiring guitar players - use less distortion than you think you need! A lot of dirty guitar tones sound a lot more distorted than they actually are. The illusion comes from a combination of a few things.

  1. Layering - when producing a studio recording, it’s nearly universal to double-track rhythm guitars and pan them out left and right. This makes recordings sound bigger and wider, as well as makes guitars sound dirtier
  2. Bass tones - even in quieter/less aggressive songs, adding some sort of saturation or distortion to the bass is VERY common in rock music. You often won’t hear it as “distorted bass,” per se, but this is one of the many many ways that a bass tone is a big part of the perception of the guitar tone
  3. Compression - distortion and compression aren’t the same thing, but they have a lot of overlap in how they affect a sound. You might find yourself adding gain to your tone at home trying to match the amount of sustain that a studio tone has, but that studio tone in all likelihood has some compression somewhere in the signal chain after the amplifier itself.

Other reasons to use less gain-

  1. Technique - a lot of distortion can easily highlight poor muting technique, but it will also hide poor dynamic control, which in turn begets poor picking technique. Playing and practicing cleaner will force you to develop better habits in these areas. Even Randy Rhoads practiced his tapping on a clean channel, for good reason
  2. Note definition - I don’t want to go into a whole rant about it when others have done so already, but a lot of VK songs, like other Japanese rock and pop music, often have chord voicings that are either very dense, or otherwise something more “tasty” than a standard triad or power chord. The more distortion you pile onto a guitar tone, the less you’re able to hear each individual note in a chord, it all smushes together. And hey, if you’re going for like a black metal kind of sound that may be what you want! But if you want clarity, less is more!!
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Love this post!

I play with a lot of distortion when I practice along with a song (Mono/My guitar audio in the R, original song in the L), but when I practice a new technique or scale/triads, I mostly switch to slight dist or completely clean

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He’s completely right.

I sent him a Helix patch on the side for some feedback and it’s the simplest thing in the world. A compressor into two overdrives, which aren’t even intended to be stacked, which feeds into Line 6 Badonk (spin on a Rectifier) + Cali V30, run through a Tilt EQ (this one is underrated af), optional double take modulations and reverb spring at the end.

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With the power of studio editing, it manages to sound a lot dirtier than I was lead to believe playing by myself.

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This is a great idea for a thread but damn I could talk so long about this. My experience is obviously not relating to the VK scene, but to metal/alternative scene in general. The short version is you just have to work hard, be active and keep people engaged. Simple. I have not achieved AS much as I’d like due to mental health issues holding me back in various ways but im doing ok. Some of my friends are also in pretty high profile bands and its literally just hard work that pays off when it comes to music. You also got to be willing to take a gamble now and then, if you arent willing to put money into what you do what makes you think other people are going to put their time and money into it either???

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