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TheGopher posted:I'm at a point where I need to just get a ton of repetition in. I'm too busy always dicking around instead of just doing some good practice for 30 minutes before I dick around. Time to go hammer out some scales with my arch-nemesis, the metronome. Your incessant ticking makes me want to strangle babies. Learn to make the metronome your friend. Sometimes I will leave it on one tempo for the entire practice session. Most of the time, I don't put it above 60 BPM. Anything faster than that, I just subdivide. I've known some people who leave it on while they do chores and various household tasks. Haven't tried it, but hey, by any means necessary... At this point, I'm convinced that time-feel and really strong ears are the only two skills you need to be a really great musician. Everything else flows from those two.
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Sep 12, 2010 05:05
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SSJ2 Goku Wilders posted:
Contrast baths (switching between hot and cold water) help me. Also look into foam rollers and self-myofascial release, which you can use not only for your forearms, but your shoulders and back. General strength training for your hands also can help. Squeezing tennis balls, wrist rollers, and wrapping rubber bands around your fingers and spreading them area all cheap ways to help. Don't believe people who say it'll make you play faster, though, that's bullshit.
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Oct 29, 2010 19:28
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Philthy posted:I must have spent close to 3 hours in the local Guitar Center playing all the guitars. Expensive Gibsons, Fenders, PRS, etc. I didn't think any of them felt or sounded particularly good, or different compared to my ESP LTD M-10, which is basically a $100 starter. I think the nicest one that I bonded with was a Schecter C1+. I don't know if I'm let down that there isn't much out there that I can move on to, or if I should be happy I'm not dropping $500-1500+ on a new guitar. Gibsons really aren't worth it. The only reason they're still the massive company they are is because of brand recognition. They have notorious quality control issues, with things as simple as dressing frets and building necks that don't break. Fender is slightly better, and I still think they make decent amps. But if you want a "more Fender than Fender" guitar, I would check out G&L Guitars. They sound great, they're well built, and the price is somewhat reasonable. Really, I wouldn't bother with Guitar Center for purchasing instruments. They're fine for cords, tuners, and even the occasional pedal. But they only stock brand name guitars, usually with lots of scratches on them from being on the floor for so long. Their staff is pretty underwhelming in their knowledge and overwhelming in their desire to push overstock on you. You're much better off finding a smaller, respectable store with better instruments and a more knowledgeable staff. That's not to say that there aren't awful mom and pop guitar stores, because there are a ton. But checking something like Yelp, or even just asking good working musicians in the area where they shop, is always a good idea.
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Nov 21, 2010 02:34
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Tarnien posted:On this note -- is it possible to just be unable to play by ear? I haven't been playing terribly long, but cannot seem to even begin to tell what chord/note anyone is playing. Just about the only thing I can tell is what string/region the note is in, but without playing the notes individually, I can never tell exactly what it is. Have you actually worked on ear training as a specific area of practice?
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Dec 5, 2010 03:30
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Tarnien posted:No -- I assumed it was something that just came with having played for a while. What would you recommend in regards to practicing ear training? Well, your ears certainly can get better after you've been playing for a while, but it's not guaranteed. There are plenty of people who can play things by ear the first time they pick up an instrument, and there are people who can barely hum a tune after playing for 20 years. I think most musicians really need to really focus on it in order to become proficient at it. Some thoughts: - Try to learn as many things by ear as you can. This doesn't mean you never look at written music, but only go to it if you've really tried to play it by ear and it's simply beyond your reach. A program that lets you slow down the music, like Audacity, Transcribe! or The Amazing Slow Downer, can be a big help. This will not be easy. You will get frustrated, you will feel stupid and inadequate, you'll wonder if you'll ever "get it." Hang in there. - Sing lots of things. Sing the guitar parts to songs before you even pick up the instrument. For single-line stuff, this won't present a huge challenge. For chords, it's a little trickier. First, sing the bottom notes to every chord in the progression, one following the other. Then do the same for the top notes, and then the middle notes. - Separately, work on developing your sense of relative pitch. The best way to do this would be to get a teacher. If your teacher doesn't know how to work on ear training, that's a pretty good sign that it's time to get a new teacher. If that's not an option, I would recommend Bruce Arnold's series of ear training books. They are very thorough and well-put together. Go to https://www.muse-eek.com and click the "Digital Files, Books, MP3s and PDFs" button on the left. Scroll down until you find the link for "Ear Training One Note Complete with 3 CDs of MP3's." This is the book that he recommends everyone start on. You can get the book and CDs all together, but you really only need the CDs. The books simply explain his teaching philosophy and how to use the CDs. But if you're already sold on the methodology, and you know how to use the CDs, they're not essential. Just load the CDs on an MP3 player, put them on shuffle, and listen to them throughout the day. I used to listen to them as I was walking between classes. If you do it consistently, you'll begin to notice a real difference.
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Dec 6, 2010 20:45
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Dickeye posted:See, I've got the relative pitch thing down. It's knowing what that first chord is that kills me, because now that I get the I-IV-V and I-V-IV thing (depending on the song!) it's even easier to put it together if I could figure out that first loving chord Not every song, punk or otherwise, has a I IV V or I V IV. And if you really had relative pitch down, it would be easy to find the first chord. You could play any random chord or note and, using your random guess as a reference pitch, hear what the first chord is.
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Dec 6, 2010 21:01
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e: D'oh
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Dec 6, 2010 21:01
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mastur posted:I appreciate standard tuning, especially on bass. It always pisses me off when a friend drop tunes my guitar (now I have multiple guitars, not an issue). Go for it. The worst that happens is that you don't like it and change it back.
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Mar 18, 2011 07:30
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Walked posted:Can anyone help me out on two things: 1) Depends on what direction you want to go. Personally, I think it's stupid to treat "fingerpicking" as a separate discipline in guitar playing, with picking on the other end. The guitar was designed to be plucked with your fingers. The pick is a neat invention, and is very helpful for playing certain styles, but unless you use your fingers in some form or another, you're not reaching your full potential. If you can tell us what direction you'd like to go in, it'd be easier to give specific advice. But here are some general thoughts: - If you mostly use a pick when playing, learn how to hybrid pick. It is awkward at first, but very much worth it, and will greatly expand your possibilities. - If you really want to explore Travis picking/alternating bass style, I can wholeheartedly recommend "The Art of Contemporary Travis Picking" by Mark Hanson. It starts out very simple, ramps up gradually, and by the end you're playing fairly difficult pieces. He has another book called "The Art of Solo Fingerpicking" which takes it even further. If you work through both of these books, you should have the foundation needed to explore guys like John Fahey, Leo Kottke, Rev. Gary Davis, etc if that's something that interests you. - Keep learning different chords, and possibly even some basic chord melody arrangements. Let the music you're playing dictate the patterns you use, not the other way around. 2) Some sort of fuzz or overdrive with a lot of reverb.
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Apr 28, 2011 19:16
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Segovia had the biggest case of sausage fingers you'll ever see. There's really no excuse.
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Jun 8, 2011 05:48
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You should take what I say with a grain of salt (as you should with anyone's advice). But here are some things to consider about practicing and playing in general: - I don't think that alternate picking is necessary to learn. There are just as many (if not more) great players with great technique who don't alternate pick as there are ones who have it down. There are lots of picking techniques... economy, gypsy picking, variations that use hybrid picking, etc. The key is to find something that works for you, and to keep things consistent. Another thing to consider is that certain passages are easier to play if you start with an upstroke, but not with a downstoke, and vica versa. Experiment. - I'd advise against doing mindless exercises, as a general rule. The vast majority of what you should be doing is practicing actual music, whether it's working out songs, transcribing solos, chord melodies, or whatever. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do technical work, but it should be mostly relegated to scales, arpeggios, chords, and other things that you're actually going to use in musical situations. And even this stuff should not be practiced at the expense of playing actual music. - If you're an amateur musician just playing for fun, I wouldn't worry too much about having elaborate warm-ups. Just get some blood flowing to your fingers and start playing. If you're a performing musician, I would experiment with coming up with a warm-up that will get you to around 90% of your playing ability in a few minutes. The reality is that there will be some playing situations (MANY playing situations if you go on tour) where all the time you get to warmup is a soundcheck after stepping out of a freezing van. If it takes you an hour of warming up for you be comfortable playing, that's not going to be practical.
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Oct 28, 2011 18:48
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Sorry, but I don't see any reason to practice alternate picking if you're not going to use alternate picking in actual playing situations.
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Oct 28, 2011 21:32
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baka kaba posted:Yeah, why wouldn't you want to? I mean I know there are more advanced techniques you might end up using, but they tend to at least use alternate picking to some degree. It's not even necessarily about learning to alternate pick, it's a way of getting you comfortable doing upstrokes and downstrokes on every string. Alternate picking on a single string is one thing. Just about every picking model does that (although often times I'll play a slow melody with all downstrokes). That's not a problem. Tremolo picking on one string is a good way to warm up. Where it gets trickier is when you start switching strings. String switching with alternate picking is very different than with economy picking. There are ways to make certain alternate picking passages more like economy picking, but by and large there isn't a lot of crossover between the two. I don't have a problem with alternate picking if that's how you want to play. It's a perfectly valid way to play the instrument. But it's not the only way to play. It gives you a certain sound, and if you like that sound, then by all means use it. If I was teaching a kid, then yeah, giving them very specific picking instructions so that they don't just do all downstrokes (as 90% of them will) isn't a bad idea. But I've found that if you're working with older teens or adults, you can lay out the options, explain each one, and they can make their own choice depending on how they want to sound.
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Oct 29, 2011 00:13
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Manky posted:Like this: Yep. Play a Db chord for 2 beats, then Cb/Db for 2 beats.
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Nov 11, 2011 21:49
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ItalicSquirrels posted:Last month I bought a Yamaha FG700S as my first guitar. I'm pretty happy with the guitar so far, but I've got a pretty big question. I recently heard this song and decided that rather than straight-up acoustic, I wanted to learn slide guitar. Cheap acoustic guitars can actually be pretty good to learn slide on, since a lot of times they're not set up well and have pretty high action. quote:I realize that I would be a more-rounded musician if I learned the regular basics first, but is it possible/wise to learn some good stuff slide before dropping back to learning the other stuff? Don't think of the regular basics and slide as two separate areas of study. Slide is just a different technical approach to the guitar. Everything you learn... chords, scales, arpeggios, etc... will be useful for slide playing. I would instead approach it as, "Learn the regular basics, while also learning how to apply them to slide." quote:If so, is there a book I ought to start with? I also realize I should get lessons no matter what I decide, but my schedule's pretty random and I got this guitar as something to practice in whatever downtime I get. I wrote a post on slide guitar technique in the old Intermediate Guitar thread (you might need Archives to find it), and you can feel free to ask me any questions. A good teacher would be best, though. quote:Basically, is it possible to learn slide guitar from the beginning? If so, what's the best way? And if not, at what point could I diverge from the regular course to start? Yeah, you can learn it from the start. The important thing with slide is to make sure you have a solid technical foundation, so focus on that while simultaneously learning the usual basic materials.
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Nov 12, 2011 01:32
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