Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

My wife and I got back from vacation last weekend.  We had gone to Mexico for 8 days and for the entire 8 days I didn’t touch a guitar. I had a surprising desire to play and fiddle on a guitar. Ultimately, I did make it the entire eight days without going though guitar withdrawal.

Now that the vacation is over, I’ve been trying to get back in to the groove of daily guitar practice. Even though while I was on vacation I wanted to play guitar, it has been a challenge to go back to my guitar routine (not to mention my work and general-life routine).

I started by re-practicing most of my “harder” material. I only had to go back a few pages in my book. I started with a slower tempo and was able to play though the Ode To Joy without a problem. The Ode To Joy was a milestone marker for me. I quickly worked the tempo back to what I was playing it at — 95 BPM.

After Ode To Joy, I picked up where I left off. I progressed further and I’m now in to playing the High E, B, G and D strings while sight reading whole, half, quarter and eighth notes. That is amazing progress for myself. A few weeks ago I had huge trouble with just the High E and B strings (while sight reading)… I was always fumbling either my fretting or picking hand and screwing something up.

I am also suppose to memorize the following pattern as it is suppose to help with finding chords and other musically important information.

A C E G B D F

In upcoming posts, I’m hoping to be able to explain why memorizing this pattern is useful. From what I understand right now, it has to do with chord theory. Keep an eye out for more in this.

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.

Another simple song you could learn to play is “Hurt” which was originally by Nine Inch Nails, but Johnny Cash re-recorded his own version of the song. I’m with the group that feels that this version is superior — not that I didn’t like the NIN version of the song, I just really like how the guitar goes in this version.

Below are the videos for both versions. First, Cash’s version then Reznor’s. If you’ve never heard this song before, be aware that the song is of a dark nature. The Reznor video is particularly “dark”…

Cash:

Reznor -- Live:

You Play It

Now that you’ve seen the video, below are the links to the internet guitar tabs. I believe these tabs are correct, otherwise I wouldn’t post them. This song does use barred chords during the chorus so it can be a little difficult but it is manageable.

http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/c/cash_johnny/hurt-tab.shtml

http://www.guitarmasta.net/c/cash,_johnny/234354.html

Over at  “A Guitar Teacher’s Lesson Notebook” (a blog), Robs interpreted and published chords and rhythms (strum patterns) to a bunch of songs:

http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=103

Some of the songs include

• Barenaked Ladies – If I Had a Million Dollars
• Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
• The Raconteurs – Steady As She Goes
• Many more!

A while ago, I started writing a post on Let Her Cry by Hootie and the Blowfish. I never finished it but I decided to re-write and publish it.

I love the Hootie song “Let Her Cry” and it’s actually fairly easy to play. I’ve been able to play every part but I’ve never fully put it together. I just don’t have the confidence to play it. But I wanted to share it with others out there as you might want to give it a try.

Following are web sites that have published the chords and rhythm for the song. Give the song a try:

• http://www.guitaretab.com/h/hootie-and-the-blowfish/8545.html
• http://www.ibreathemusic.com/forums/showthread.php?p=88626

Update: Here is the Music Video for this song from YouTube

My guitar lesson last Saturday went well. Nothing too fantastic; we went over what I was suppose to learn [See here] and then Gary (Guitar Teacher) showed me a new pattern to learn. I believe he called it 3rd skips. My intention is to throw it in TuxGuitar and post it here at a later date, but no promises on that. I’ve been trying to spend my free time with a guitar in my hand…

The aforementioned 3rd skips I should be playing in quarter notes, half notes and 8th notes.

As for the practice itself, I’ve not done nearly as much as I’ve wanted to. Between my pending vacation [Mexico!] and the election I’ve been a little distracted. I’m trying to focus for at least one hour a day but that has been hit or miss. Sometimes I get a half hour in other times the entire hour. I will be trying to improve that…

Also, I’ve been continuing to practice my Bm and other barred chords. They are getting better but nothing significant yet. I’m hoping that it takes time and my improvement since the first post about this has been vast.

Hopefully I’ll have time to post more about this last lesson at a later date.  Until then (and beyond) thanks for reading! Regards!

I’ve been trying to do this write-up for a while, but have not had time — Work is busy and I’m trying to spend my “guitar-time” with a guitar rather than a keyboard.

However, I have some time now so I thought I’d throw something together. Forgive me for the brevity of this write-up.

In short, the lesson was good. As I told my wife, the instructor didn’t show me anything groundbreaking or awe-inspiring. He gave me some tips on learning to quickly fret the Bm chord. And then, of course, he needed to figure out where I was and where he should pick up.

I highly stressed that I wanted to include lots of music-reading in my guitar education; this was a point of contention with my last instructor as he was not very good at reading music-notation (his admission).

My “homework” was to learn the open-position notes on the guitar without regards to how to read the notes. I’ve just learned which note is which on the guitar neck within the first three frets. Not hard to do, but it did take a little bit of work.

Below is an diagram of those notes:

I’ve done a little bit of self-learning on reading music notation. I’ve found that memorizing the notes on the guitar neck has made it easier to learn to read music. I’d have never thought, but it did.

Anyway, that is it for now. I mentioned that the instructor gave me tips on learning the Bm chord. I will post more about that later.

If you follow this site at all (you can easily follow it via RSS ), you’d know that I’ve been doing a series on Pentatonic Minor Scales and Improvisation.  While I was researching my posts on the topic, I came across another article.

http://www.cyberfret.com/improvisation/101/index.php

This article is also based on the A Pentatonic Minor scale. It is a great article and goes along with what I’ve been writing about. Check out their “Lick #1” and “Lick #2,” they are good examples of the quick improvisation you can do. They sound good and can fit in a variety of places in a song or chord progression.

Please let me know if you find this useful! Enjoy and thanks for reading!

I noticed in the history of search terms that some one attempted to search for “barre chords straining fretting hand” on this site.

If you are straining you fretting hand while playing a barred chord (in my experience) your hand is probably not positioned correctly.

All of your fingers, from the finger doing the barre to the fingers doing the standard-single notes, should be just above the fret wire. (Above is relative to the guitar being stood up.) If you position your hand like this, you will need some pressure to hold down all the strings but not too much.

Experiment with a different amount of pressure. You should then be able to figure out how much pressure you actually need to produce a clean strum [using as little pressure as possible].

Do a google search and you’ll find plently of articles discussing this topic with a similar solution. (So this just isn’t my thing.)

I know I promised more scales related blog entries, but I thought of this and wanted to post it… I promise, those scale entries are coming.

Anyway, are you? Frustrated that is… I recently posted what I thought was a very good article on learning an instrument and frustration. You can view that here. I thought and still thing it is a great article.

But a thought occurred to me and I wanted to make sure i share it.

It is absolutely impossible to practice something over and over and not get better at it. So if you are finding that you can’t play something that you have been trying to play, take a break… wait 5 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day whatever you need to wait in order to re-relax.

Then try it again. Repeat as nessasary. You will learn it.