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Last Lesson with The Music Room…
Filed Under (Random Thought) by Frank on 28-01-2009
Tagged Under : Cover, frusterated, Guitar, Learning, Lessons, Music, Practice, Rhythm, Song, Strat, Teacher, The Music Room
I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and I’ve just kept getting pulled away. I’ve completed my lessons at the Music Room and I thought things went well. I spend a lot of time with guitar during this time and actually learned things!
As you might recall from previous posts, I decided to stop attending lessons at the music room because of the amount of time I felt I had to put in to each week to ensure I learned what I was suppose to learn. Ultimately, it left me absolutely no time for all the other things that I had going on. I guess this is the hard part of being an adult learning something like an instrument.
Desire just isn’t enough because that desire needs to be stronger than what you need to sacrifice and for me I was sacrificing too much. Of course, I’m am planning on continuing with the guitar. I will, but I’ve vastly slowed the pace. I doubt I’ll ever be able to play like I wanted to but ultimately, I knew I’d never get there because I tend to be a perfectionist.
I imagine that being a perfectionist has also hindered my ability to play because if I cant nail something perfectly, consistently I keep on it. I wear myself out in this way because I either get tired or frustrated with what I’m practicing.
Anyway, my teacher gave me a few tips for continue to practice. One thing that I wanted to make sure that I post here is that I discussed rhythm guitar with my teacher. Rhythm guitar is a very versatile thing which is why I wanted to cover it. Any time you hear someone solo in a bar or what not, 90 percent of the time they are playing the rhythm part of the song (occasionally filling in with the popular riffs and etc.)
My rhythm guitar sucks. I know it has gotten better since I first started this effort, but it still sucks. I can’t keep time and I have trouble maintaining a pattern. All very frustrating.
My teacher suggested a book called “Winning Rhythm“. I hope to evetually pick this book up and work though it.
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Keep searching for a guitar teacher that fits you and your goals, once you find the right one, you will want to pick up the guitar and play. I’m not an expert but have you focused on technique more than the pleasure of music? My own lessons have evolved into “working on songs” rather than “learning the guitar”. Rhythm, chords and theory come in when they are needed, not for their own sake. My first song involved the 4/4 folk strum D_Du_uDu which took me a long time to learn (Green Day – Time of your Life), rhythm is hard for me, it doesn’t come naturally at all (I can’t sing and play yet because I still count in my head). Now I’m working on two other songs, learning about transcribing and arranging a song for my ability. For instance, what started as a G D Em D progression is now G5 Dsus4/F# Em7 D; it sounds great with the bass string note changing from G to F# to E to D and is slightly easier to play (finger 3 is stationary). It is fun to play with music and come up with embellishments on my own, like two bars of D changed into [D Dsus2] [D Dsus4]. In a nutshell, put the fun back into it.
You mentioned the little instances of soloing during rhythm guitar. That’s one thing that helped me when I first started out was to insert little fills in between my chord structures. Its easier if you’re writing your own music, plus it will keep you on your toes and help to develop quicker reflexes.
I basically was listening to Randy Rhodes one night (the master of fills), and I realize “I should probably work on that”.
Play because you enjoy playing, thats the fun you enjoy it step by step little by little