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vty posted:How did you guys learn to play? Do you just grab all of your favorite tabs and practice speed and go from there? This is what I did. I can tell you my two biggest blind spots from learning this way (and these become HUGE blind spots later on) are music theory (I know chromatic, major, minor, blues, and that's about it) and fretboard knowledge [I've got bottom E and A (and by extension, upper E) up to about the 17th fret down okay, but I'll be god damned if I can remember where I am most of the time anywhere else]. I've got all the open chords, barred major and minor, as well as a handful of other weirder chords memorized as well, but I can't solo or improvise worth a poo poo even though I started playing over ten years ago. The biggest problem with learning from guitar tabs is that you will figure out a lot on your own (like if you learn to play a C# major in one song, and a C#sus4 in another, and if you know enough (you don't have to know very much at all) to recognize what has changed, you can then apply that same modification to any other chord you know) that won't really ever take the place of a more thorough understanding of music and the guitar. I don't think any amount of song tabs can really tell you WHY G, Em, C and D sound good together, nor can they really tell you WHY a particular solo contains these particular notes. They also make it a lot easier to ignore memorizing your fretboard. Say one song goes 1 5 6 13 3 7 4 14 (completely random) on the A string. You can probably learn that pretty easily and there you go, you can play Doo doo doo. The problem is, you could probably learn to play it fast enough to reverse the rotation of the earth and turn back time to save Lois Lane and without ever actually knowing what NOTES you're playing. That's fine if you just want to know how to play Doo doo doo, but that's about all it's good for. This becomes a huge drawback when you find yourself trying to write your own music. Think about it this way: Who do you think is going to write a more creative arrangement on the guitar, someone who has completely memorized 1000 songs someone else has written, or someone who has completely memorized their fretboard, some intermediate chord theory, and, just to give the man with a thousand songs a fighting chance, a mere 10 different scales? I'm actually going to be starting guitar lessons this week to fill in these seriously ugly blanks. It's something I should have done 10 years ago.
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Sep 6, 2010 04:58
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:59 |
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Lessons starting this Monday. Looking forward to casting someone an objective eye on my playing. Here's to hoping I haven't developed TOO many bad habits along the years. On a semi-related note, I've started looking for a vocal instructor as well. I want to suck less at everything.
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Sep 15, 2010 19:12
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Well, maybe "bad habits" is the wrong way of looking at it. I guess I'm also looking for good habits I didn't know existed. I sort of plateaued a few years ago, where no matter how much I played I seemed to still get stuck on the same old stuff, no matter how often I played, time after time, and then kinda stopped playing regularly. I guess since I'm getting back into things, I want to introduce some improvements into my technique while I'm still feeling more malleable. I was always sort of a stinker on lead, improv skills suck, and I know I favour my index and middle finger too much, and I'm hoping to expand my musical horizons a bit and learn some jazz. I dunno. Even if it's not what I expected, I've spent money on stupider things. If there's even a chance I get what I want out of this, I think it's worth a shot.
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Sep 16, 2010 21:12
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CalvinDooglas posted:I would be careful not to assume that just any guitar teacher is a "professional" guitarist, in the sense of musical ability. There are a great number of teachers, guitar especially, who do not have great chops, but know enough to teach beginners, who are the vast majority of lesson takers. A "good enough" guitar teacher may not recognize subtle technical flaws or how to improve on already good technique. The instructor I decided on seems to be pretty well-rounded, based on his bio. 30 years playing, 20 years teaching, got a cert from The Berkeley College of Music, then did a three-year jazz program at Humber. I might not be the greatest guitarist in the world, but I'm probably up there are a critic of pretty much everyone and everything. I don't doubt for a minute I'd be able to sniff him out immediately if he was just the kind of teacher keeping one lesson ahead of the student, so to speak.
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Sep 17, 2010 00:22
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baka kaba posted:I'm no shredder but guitarists tend to use the one-finger-per-fret technique, where you have your hand in one position (say index finger over the 5th fret) and your fingers cover a box of four frets, with each finger responsible for the notes on the fret it covers. There's more to it than that (you can sometimes stretch, you might need to play more than one note at once, and if you're moving position it might make sense to fret a note with a different finger) but that's the basic idea. I had my first lesson yesterday, and one thing I learned was pretty much exactly this. I don't know why it never occurred to me before, but I can already see how it will help me tremendously. It's such a stupidly simple concept. I feel like I've been wearing my shoes on the wrong feet for years. My index and middle finger have been doing WAY more work than they have to, and I was just never able to figure out a way of training up my ring and pinky. I guess playing scales across all six strings using only four frets was just too complicated an exercise for me to come up with on my own. I really can't believe how big my blind spots were. Any my instructor is definitely legit. Even from one short hour I could tell the guy has forgotten more theory than I know, and has the technique to use it. I'm pretty psyched to learn more!
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Sep 21, 2010 15:13
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Man, I really had no idea how very, very, very, VERY under-educated I was about guitar and music in general until the lessons began. Ten years and I'm currently working on modes, triads, four part chords (playing the notes through various modes, like playing i iii v vii for all the notes in a given scale, not learning what a C7 is for the first time), and basic some pretty basic fingering technique. And it's actually hard. It's REALLY helping though. A month ago I wouldn't have known a dorian mode from a phrygian mode from my rear end in a top hat, but now I do. A month ago if someone had asked me to jam over an Am7 - D9 I wouldn't have had a loving clue what to do. Granted, I still suck at improvising, but I suck surprisingly less than I did a month ago. And I'm still in a bit of shock about how difficult I find it considering what a basic idea it is. Play notes that don't sound awful against two chords. Boy, that's a real toughy! I'd be embarrassed if I wasn't so happy that I'm finally able to do this poo poo. I wish I had done this when I first picked up the guitar. This is exactly what I wanted out of lessons. My fingering is improving, my improvisational skills are improving, my music theory is improving, and the best party is I can actually see how it all fits together and I get how it's all building a foundation upon which I'll be able to grow into a solid player. It's very exciting. man thats gross fucked around with this message at 19:16 on Oct 5, 2010 |
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Oct 5, 2010 19:13
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Stumpus posted:I'm starting guitar, after coming from playing trumpet classically and in jazz for about 15-16 years. I understand music pretty well, but I'm not very coordinated with both hands when trying to do music. My first question is this: Should I play the guitar so that I'm fingering things on the neck with my right hand? (My reasoning being that I already have great dexterity with my right from playing trumpet) quote:My second question comes from noticing some problems I'm having in trying to play chords. Often times my finger can't arch high enough to get off other strings, and it makes it sound bad. I noticed at the end of my first practice that I can push the strings down and sort of away from the others and it frees up space so that I can lay my other fingers down without so much worry. Is this kosher? Is it possible and should I do it without pushing the strings away? quote:Finally I'm tight on time and budget so I want to avoid having a teacher until later. Is there a good place to find some fundamentals I can stick to so that I don't end up saying ten years down the line that I wish I had started that way? 
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Oct 5, 2010 21:52
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Suspicious Lump posted:I have a simple question that isn't just about guitars: Are you ever too old to learn a musical instrument? Sorry man, you missed the cut-off. 
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Oct 15, 2010 00:58
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If anyone was curious about my progress so far, the lessons are really helping a lot. Using the scale exercises my instructor gave me, I've pretty much memorized seven different forms that give me all of the natural notes from the first fret to the fifteenth. Memorizing the actual NOTES I'm playing isn't coming along quite as quickly, but it's coming. Either way I'm already finding it easier to improvise. Now we've started working on basic chord progressions, tonic, sub-dominant and dominant chords, and a few standards to work on while I get used to the shapes of these jazz chords. They're weird and hard, but I'm getting already getting used to the shapes, and they sound great together. It's been a while since I felt that stiff my-fingers-don't-bend-that-way contortion of unfamiliar chord shapes, but I know from experience it goes away, so I'm not getting discouraged. Now I know why everyone I know took jazz throughout high school. It's fun useful and it saved them from spending thousands of dollars on this poo poo 10 years later.
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Oct 19, 2010 14:37
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 17:59 |
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CalvinDooglas posted:Sing the note names (on pitch if you can) while you play them. Use a very low tempo so you can get them all right. I think my instructor kind of anticipated what you mention in the latter paragraph though, as he gave me several different shapes for each of the chord types he wanted me to learn. The only thing he didn't write down was what interval in the chord each note is, but I could easily re-write the shapes he gave me with the interval numbers included. I'll keep in mind not to focus too much on the chord shapes, but I honestly am having a bit of a hard time consistently playing some of these chords cleanly, so it is something I have to work on. But I'll make sure to maintain focus on the notes I'm playing and where they fit into the theory. This is really helpful, thanks.
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Oct 21, 2010 16:33
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