Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

Most of my practice time has been spent on learning how to read sheet music while playing — not something that is coming easy for me. Thus far, I’ve worked my way up to the D string (from high E). It has taken me about four weeks to get to there. In retrospect, I think that is terrible… I wish I had gotten further faster…

Anyway, tonight after I finished going over about 45 minutes worth of note reading practice and some finger work [this exercise] I spent time looking at barred chords. Right now, as I write this my left hand is hurting me… I really worked the barred chord. I spent about 10 minutes playing a Bm, A, G, Em progression.

After which I started playing a A, G and then a D, C progression. I was playing these using the following chords.

I believe that this is good barred chord practice. Using the A, G progress as an example I was playing:

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4/4 A / / / | / / / / | G / / / | / / / /|
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Repeat that 4 times and then play the same rhythm for D, C progression.

Back when I started guitar, I read quite a bit of material. I hadn’t started this blog yet and the idea of going to a blog for “help” hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

But, I started self-teaching myself with books and I eventually looked up a guitar instructor local to my area. Of all the time I spent reading books and working with the instructor, I don’t think I was ever directly told what I’m about to post here… And it is kind of a shame – it might have saved some frustration. (But to be fair, I do realize that my instructor indirectly told me this.)

Learning guitar is not just about “learning” the guitar. You need to build up muscles, dexterity, calluses and coordination (among other things). At first, certain patterns or chords will seem impossible until you’ve actually spent a significant amount of time with a guitar building up your hands. It simply takes repetition and a lot of patience and practice.

When you first sit down with a guitar and you look at a chord diagram for (example) Em (Diagram to the right), it appears to be a fairly simple chord to play. But as a beginner, your finger tips are soft because you haven’t earned your calluses yet. Playing this simple chord at first without calluses can actually be hard.

Why? This seems like a very simple chord, why might a beginner have trouble with this chord? Because the tips of your fingers are so soft, the strings will sink in to the flesh and cause the sides of your fingers to touch a sounding string. I’ve discovered that this problem has more or less gone away (or at least decreased) as I’ve started to develop early calluses.

Of course, some of this has to do with learning to position your fingers properly, which is another factor in solving this problem. I felt that I was lead to believe that finger positioning was my only issue. This was only half right and it wasn’t until recently that I actually fully realized this.

The same type of thing is true for things like barred chords (strength) and other types of more complex chords (dexterity).

Of course, you can only build up strength, dexterity, calluses and coordination by practicing – so go practice. But have patience and when you can’t play something or a certain chord, don’t fully accept that you “can’t” do it — accept that you may need to develop further yet; but don’t let that be a reason to not practice what you’ve been having trouble with… You can only further yourself if you practice what you can’t do, not what you can do.

As a beginner / intermediate guitarist, I’m always looking for tools to help teach me more than Chord diagrams could teach me.

The poster mentioned at the link below is of extrem interest to me. Rythm guitar can be challenging and while I’ve learned the concepts, I’m not sure I’m applying them correctly.

I’m gonna try to grab myself one of these posters. You might want to take a look at it yourself.

http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2008/KRM-Rhythm-Guitar-Poster.html

Image Courtesy of Harmoney Central

A while back, when I was first starting out with Guitar, my wife got me a book as a present.  The book is called “The Gig Bag Book of Guitar Complete.” I’m almost sure anyone who has gone past the music isle in a Borders or Barnes and Noble has seen this book.

I see the book all over the place.  The book contains, among other things, scales and Chord diagrams. Both of which I have found useful overtime. I’m very glad my wife purchased the book for me.

However, there is a diagram within the pages that I do not understand. I’m sure that I’m not the only newbie guitarist who is lost when looking at the diagram.

With all respect to the publisher (and I truly hope they don’t mind) I’ve scanned an example of this diagram.  It is below:

Can anyone explain the area that is outlined in Red? Click here for a bigger version of the same image. I’ve included the scale above it in case that is somehow related to the diagram, but I’m not sure it is…

Thank you all!!