--> Share things you've learned about guitar

[cnev]

Hey I just saw that my name was being used in vain here but Mr. Vic...but it's all good. We all have different ways of learning songs and if it works go for it.

I really don't have any problem with someone playing songs as Vic describes, the main reason I try to play songs as close as I can to the originals is because I think I learn more that way. I mean if I can play a song the way it was played by the original artists then I know I'm learning something. I don't play alot of strummy songs as I don't even own an acoustic guitar.

When I first started playing a spent time tryting to work the techniques independant of learning songs and to some degree it might have been benificial but I soon realized that I didn't really know any songs all the way through and that is the point of taking up the guitar in the first place to be able to play songs. So by learning these songs as close to the orginals as possible and learning many different types of songs that eventually I will start learning the techniques as the come up in the songs and that has worked well.

Now as far as leads/solo's go I'm probably a bit behind in my development there and I think there are a couple reasons. One is that I don't really practice my scales and soloing very much and the other is since we have formed a band this past year or so I have been mostly playing rhthym with the occasional lead and a couple harmony solo's on a few. I really need to work on it more since that has always been my first love. Playing rhythm tends to bore me unless the song is a real rocker and adding a sus 4 or anything else doesn't relieve the boredom, but in the current situation the lead player is very very good and has been playing all his life so it makes sense for him to handle the leads. At the end of the day we need to sound good as a band, it ain't just about me but I have gotten involved in a couple different open mics and met a few players that I have the opportunity to play with different people several times a week, of course I don't have that much time but the opportunity is there.

But I didn't want to get into a crutch of changing things because some passge in a song was too difficult so I changed it. If I run into that (which I really haven't in a long time) I would just put the song down until I thought I was capable of playing it but now other than the lead lines which can still be difficult there aren't many songs that I can't play the rhythm to.

As for strumming patterns unles syour playing acoustic to me learnng them are next to useless since they are rarely if ever used in a rock song being played with an electric guitar. I just learn the rhythm that is being played in a particular song and other then some choruses where they might be doing some straight 1/8 note strumming no two songs are ever the same.

It's really hard for me to tell anyone what they should be learning as a beginner since I'm not sure there is a right and wrong you just have to go with the flow, but having an instructor is always a plus.

[ishikasaxena]

once you learned it, how to play the guitar?..whats the next step in my career???? how i can make my career with guitar.???

[kblake]

If you play an electric, play it plugged *IN* every chance you get.. Even if it is at low volume..
I used to play unplugged all the time (and I thought I sounded ok), then when I finally jammed with someone I realised my playing was not what I thought it was lol...
So now I plug in and I think it has improved !

Thanks
Keith

[Vic Lewis VL]

once you learned it, how to play the guitar?..whats the next step in my career???? how i can make my career with guitar.???

That's maybe a bit too much of an all-encompassing question to answer here (the answer's probably 42!) but...once you've learned guitar well enough to play some songs, do that - learn some songs. Better still, start writing your own - music's all about finding an outlet for your feelings, so if you can express yourself lyrically as well as musically, so much the better.



Vic

[DylanBarrett]

It's quicker to learn to play acoustic guitar than an electric guitar.....

Rock on!
D

[JoeHempel]

42....the answer to everything....I agree!

[ishikasaxena]

Hey enjoyed the young guitarist...he played it awesome...well he might not be technically strong but he was enjoying, what he was playing which impressed me...may he will impress to you as well.

http://www.desitara.com/noncompviewvideo/17915/

enjoy

[JoeHempel]

That's Sungha Jung in that video, he's a prodigy in my opinion.

[Vic Lewis VL]

It's quicker to learn to play acoustic guitar than an electric guitar.....

Rock on!
D

I dunno about that one - opinions vary. I found electric guitar much easier than acoustic to learn on - lower action, lighter strings etc....in fact I made it part of my practise regime to learn a new song on acoustic first, then when I'd got it somewhere near, switch to electric - it seemed so much easier!



Vic

[KR2]

I wouldn't know which is easier; electric or acoustic . . . I've only played electric.

Someday I'll find out . . . but not right now . . . right now, I'm having a love affair with my new electric . . .

and I'm not going to cheat on her . . .

. . . yet.

[matteo]

there are so many things to learn!!!!what i can tell is that if you keep playing regurarly, after a while you can accomplish things that were impossible to play just some months before. A few months ago i finally managed to play clean barre chords(something which have eluded my abilities for at least two years), more recently, with a few of dedicatd exercises, I managed to play power chords using index, ring and pinky instead of just index and ring. Now i'm into palm-muting and it seems that i found out the key to use it correctly, alternating between muted and unmuted strums. The same goes for rock shuffles which i have never been able to play. On the rhythmic side, upbeat rhythms are no more a problem and i'm discovering new excting things like quarter note triplets and how to alternate between eight notes and triplets and similar rhythms (very useful for heavy metal)...

If i remember that 3 years ago i was not able to strum the simplest song around, i'm quite happy!

so i would say that perseverance is the key to obtain results.

Cheers

Matteo

[matteo]

As for strumming patterns unles syour playing acoustic to me learnng them are next to useless since they are rarely if ever used in a rock song being played with an electric guitar. I just learn the rhythm that is being played in a particular song and other then some choruses where they might be doing some straight 1/8 note strumming no two songs are ever the same.

hi cnev

i don't understand your assertion about strumming patterns but maybe that's because i'm not english mother tongue: does strums refers only to alternate picking or could it be referred to any type of rhythm? because in my opinion one of the best things to do is to learn a lot of different rhythms, if possible learning the more peculiar ones to each style, in order to fastly discerne them in the songs. i'm also into hard rock and metal and from what i understand most of the times heavy metal songs are based on the same rhythms of pop/rock songs except for the fact that in classic 4/4 metal songs (so i'm not talking about thrash or speed metal songs which are full of time signature changes) we tend to play them with downstrums only and uses a lot of palm-muting to create syncopations but the rhythm more or less is the same (most of the times a flurry of eight notes, mixed between muted and unmuted ones). It is also true that in hard rock and metal there could be several different riffs which are to be learnt note for note so it is true that you could not take a single pattern and use it for all the songs (like in some pop/rock numbers).
Sometimes when i have some difficulties to discerne rhythm parts of riffs, i play them along the cd with alternate strums because it is easier to discerne the exact strums, then when i understand them correctly i play them with downstrums only with the occasional upstrums to enphatize some accents.

Cheers

Matteo

[cnev]

Matteo,


What I meant was unlike strumming an acoustic guitar where you might use a pattern of D/D/u/Du for many songs I havn't found many electric/rock/metal where you would use patterns like thta alot. Sure there are passages must likely the chorus where you might do that but it seems every song is kind of unique and you have to listen to each one.

I hear what you are saying about metal and palm muting with downstrokes and although the technique is similar in may songs it's not common at least for me to find the exact same rhythms used in different songs.

We play Judas Priest songs in the band and I play a few Metallica songs on my own and they both use alot of 1/8 palm muted downstroke picking but it's not like I can take the same pattern that I use in the Judas Priest songs and use them in the Metallica they are rarely exactly the same.

[Chris C]

I have to laugh at so many things I thought of as reality, when I first started playing, and was not. I was angry at my guitar teacher in that he could not tell me what he was doing. I mean, isn't that an expectation for a newbie? I thought so.

But, after a few years of playing, I found out that was not the case. Players play and VERY often don't know what they are doing. Why? Instinct. And hours behind the instrument.

+1

That nails it for me.

I once read an article in which some top flight pro pianists were asked how they went about learning pieces for recitals - which of course can be very long. Some spoke of practising each hand separately for hours, some spoke of learning all the hardest parts first before they attempted to put the piece together, and I think one even said that they started learning from the end first. But one guy said that he flatly refused to try and analyse what he did, because the whole process was some sort of wonderful mystery to him, and he had no intention of trying to put it under the microscope in case it the magic vanished if he looked too hard at it.

I'm with him. I have an engineering background so I'm used to valuing precision, planning and predictability, yet with music I absolutely love that when I play I don't know what's coming next, or how I do it. When I started out, my left hand was so stiff and unresponsive that I spent months and months just getting any kind of control over where my fingers landed for the chords (I guess years really). During that time I just let my right hand do whatever it wanted - I just couldn't concentrate on both things at once. So my right hand just plucked and picked and strummed in what seemed like a random way, and I was always going to work on it....maybe next year....

But along the way something intriguing happened. My right hand got fed up with waiting its turn and developed its own style. So my left hand has apparently been trained a fair bit by eye (I did a lot of staring at the left hand as I worked on positioning), and my right hand entirely by ear. If I'm finger picking I genuinely don't know which number string I'm hitting and why. It's just whichever one the thumb or finger(s) liked the sound of. If you asked me to tab out something I just played I couldn't do it, even if you offered me good money.

I've never had a practice schedule - ever. I've written a few out, but never done them. I really enjoy reading theory, note names, composition of scales, etc - but I don't think that way when I actually play. Then it's just about finding the next noise and have my finger just 'know' from experience where to find it, or be willing to try a new experiment.... The interesting thing to me is HOW you get that experience. All my 'practice' is just noodling and experimenting. I wander about all over the place, yet I still listen with care, and I find out what need to know.... at least that's what I like to believe. Perhaps I'm deluding myself?

This is my list of vital ingredients:

Timing.

If you don't have both control and flair in your timing you've got nothing. You need good timing to play with others and to create any kind of musical impression effectively.

Instinct.

As Corbind said you have to get your playing to the level where it's happening instinctively. You can't keep thinking "play a B then an F#... put my ring finger on the fourth fret of the third string..." it's got to become completely instinctive and automatic.

Touch.

Good playing is more than just hitting the right notes in the correct order. There must be subtlety and variation in the dynamics. Developing good 'touch' (which I'd put down as a blend of placement, balance, and degrees of force) is a major goal for me.

Style.

Last, but not least, I want my playing to have some style. Not just a personal style that sounds like me, rather than a copy of someone else's playing, but also that hard to define quality that sets apart the merely technically proficient from the expressive and artistic.

So that's my goal. Timing, Instinct, Touch and Style. It's nice to be able to put some balls into your playing, but don't ignore the T.I.T.S. The Yin and yang of music I guess.

Cheers,

Chris

[Chris C]

BTW,

The guy who practised his piano pieces from the end first had an interesting reason. He maintained that many people start their learning and practice from the first few bars and then add a few more, then more and so on. Eventually they can play the whole piece, but what has happened along the way is that they've played the earlier parts many times over - on the way to the part they're currently up to - so the beginning is now completely solid, and they've spent less time on the later stages.

He reasoned that if he began at the end and worked backwards (obviously in chunks of bars, or phrase, not literally note by note) then when it came to the actually performance the piece would get more and more familiar, and therefore easier and easier as he played through it.

Rather a neat idea.