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I was just mulling this over in my head compared to my guitar playing experience. I am self-taught (some friends helped) and have played for just over 20 years
by jimnotgym 6y ago
I was just mulling this over in my head compared to my guitar playing experience.
I am self-taught (some friends helped) and have played for just over 20 years.
I'm assuming here that you are not trying to learn classical guitar, if you are I think you should find a real teacher. I urge you to learn rock music by playing songs. I was an indie rock fan, and started off strumming the chords to my favourite songs. It is relatively easy to do, and the rewards come quickly. The trick is to find a song you like that uses simple open chords, and not too many of them! My first tune was 'Live Forever by Oasis' as an example (cringe). For something more tasteful try 'knocking on heaven's door' by Dylan. It is easy to read chord diagrams. Get a few thin picks and go for it. Really just go for it, the changes will speed up by themselves and the strumming patterns will too, by listening to the song and imitating. Now pick another song with some of the sme chords. A month of evenings can get you reasonably proficient. If you have a friend who is a bit further along then play with them Whenever you can. This is about as far as lots of famous musicians ever got. Remember that!
Alongside this you can try out some riffs. 'Smoke on the water' is the classic, but go with what you enjoy. Tab for these is free online and easy to read. Find a riff you like, if you have a friend who can play the chords while you riff that is fun. You learn riffs like the guy in the article, note by note.
Learning to solo is harder. I used to buy tab books and copy solos I liked. Eventually I realised that I needed to understand some very basic theory, like 'Keys' and 'scales'. I read this in a book but you can google. This is easy on a guitar because you only have to learn a scale shape once and you can change key by playing it in different places on the neck. If you like blues and rock and roll then you only need to learn the minor pentatonic scale to begin with. These 5 notes made many a solo. By running through those 5 notes you start to form licks and phrases you can use. The best way to learn this is to learn to play a basic 12 bar blues shuffle, and play with a friend, taking it in turns to solo. The second best way is a looper or backing track.
I then wanted to play folk fingerstyle. I found the tab for Nick Drake's 'Cello Song' in a magazine and spent a year repeating the first main phrase over and over, a few times most days. The rest of the song came exactly like the op and quite quickly. Afterwards I could pick up other fingerstlye songs quite quickly.
I don't know how to play Jazz.
I think the cap this way of learning places on you is that you don't learn much theory, which makes it hard to arrange songs, compose, etc. Just remember that a lot of the people you are listening to are in the same boat...
- smackeyacky 6y agoThis is good advice. Knockin on heavens door is the perfect beginner song, although at ultimate guitar I think the most popular version uses a capo, just ignore that and play the chords. I like ultimate guitar a lot, there are often simplified versions of songs so you can make rewarding progress early. If you want something simple but need a noisy thrash, the next song could be Neil Young "Rockin in the free world", easy to make that sound good even if you don't have a great singing voice.
- honkycat 6y agoI pay for an ultimate guitar subscription. I like the website okay, but I found that my copy of guitar pro is a bit better. Ultimate guitar would do everything I need if it had a way for me to highlight sections and then hit a a shortcut to restart the section.
- smackeyacky 6y agoYeah I can't say the UG website is anything special, the scrolling feature is pretty useless without being able to limit it to smaller sections of the pieces as you said. Mostly I pay for the breadth of songs available.
- jimnotgym 6y agoI pay for it too. If I hear a song I want to play I want to get straight into it. What I would really like though is something like 'lead sheets' which just tell you the chord progression and tab the main theme, so I can jump straight into my own version of a song.
- lovelyviking 6y ago>The trick is to find a song you like This is really a trick. Lately It's difficult to find a song I like. Most of them became boring or let's say not motivating to learn them. I am really puzzled about what to learn next and I do not know where to get a good advice that is "workable" in my current situation. I play by ear and can figure out chords for compositions I like and if I can't I may search the internet for the hard parts but usually I am too lazy to do it and it's more interesting to figure it out by myself. Also because lately I see that internet versions are frequently "worse" or even wrong or too primitive ignoring all they beauty of complicated chords. So I am pleased with what I have on the one hand. On the other hand I am stuck with question what to learn next? I never master pieces to the complete perfection because honestly I do not perform for the public and so I find it hard to motivate myself with that because who needs another moderate piano player these days when there are plenty of trained pianists available? How many chances I have to win competition with "well trained" people? And who would wish to listen unless you are "perfect"? So what is the point? I play for myself or my friends but if I wish some piece to sound better I find it difficult to achieve even though I know that I am more than capable to improve them to a much better level. So I can't reasonably motivate myself as a "performer/future performer" to sit and train for many hours. I've heard that this "many hours training" could also rise my level of understanding theory but I do not see a direct connection between those. Perhaps I just do not see it and thus do not know how to progress and choose what to learn next to move forward? Any advice?