Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

Guitar Exercises @ MadStratter.com – http://madstratter.com/2008/12/finger-exercises-practicing-guitarist/

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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.

A little bit ago, I posted about the fact that I wanted to go in a new direction; and I have since started.  I got a lot of good recommendations from different people and I appreciate everything everyone suggested.

However, as it turns out I didn’t actually go with any of them… at least not yet. I may revisit other material. For now, I’ve got a book called “Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method Grade 1.” I started flipping through it, and decided that this is where I’d start. I have a bunch of books, but for some reason I thought that this one suited me the best for now.

From this book, I’m basically trying to do everything right… I’m going through the exercises, I’m playing everything against a metronome and I’m ensuring that I’m playing the correct notes… Furthermore, this book only presents the material in standard music notations… Reading standard music notation is something else that I wanted to get out of learning guitar; my guitar teacher a while back wasn’t able to help me with that.

I will be focusing on material in this book as well as scales and of course, my quest to nail Bm which has been an “issue” for a while. I can play it better, but still can’t change to it quickly enough (for me).

It is not new news to the Internet that America’s obesity rates are high — from what I understand, they are higher then most (dare I say, all?) other countries.

There is one “tip” that I’ve heard time and time again to loose weight and get fit is to not find a “close” parking spot. Instead park in the back of the parking lot where there is a ton of open space and plenty of room. From there, you hoof it to the building. I’ve read many different estimates but the experts say that doing this consistently for every where you go — for every trip will result in consistent exercise and also weight lost (eventually).

I look at this tip in this way: Don’t take shortcuts. Just park your car in the parking lot and from there walk to where you need to go. In the cities, you don’t necessarily get to drive directly to where you need to be! And people in the downtown cities who walk every tend to be healthier*.

I think that this logic can be applied to almost anything. It can be applied to learning guitar and it can be applied to your professional life or to something as simple as your house work.

How might you apply this logic in your guitar practice routine(s)?

Also, have you seen shortcut type solutions to learning guitar?

*=My assumetion. No research or other article supports this in anyway. In fact, I could be wrong but don’t tell anyone.

I’ve been traveling for work as we are migrating projects to different offices. I don’t travel often, so it was interesting to me.

I was on the road on Friday, and then again Monday to Tuesday. All that time I’ve been away from the guitar. In a way, I felt that I needed a bit of a break from guitar. I had pushed myself and followed through on the exercises but some days I probably did more then I should have.

Over the weekend, during the time that I did have here at home I went to the Gym to get a little stress relieving weight-lifting in. I was flipping through a weight-training magazine between weight sets and either an article or advertisement reminded me that you should put a day between the days that you weight lift.  I’ve been doing weights training since high school, so this is not new information to me.

Perhaps we should look at this information in regards to learning guitar. The work that you do with you fretting hand is, in a way, similar to cardiovascular exercises. However, there are exceptions to this. Certain chords you learn, in particular barred chords, can be more like an intense weight lifting regimen. Keep in mind, that I’ve been “drilling” the Bm and F chords after reading the article in Acoustic Guitar magazine.

I felt that being on the road for those three days have given my hand the break that it needed in order to build up some muscle. I’m really not sure if this has any validity to it (in regards to learning guitar), but the theory seems sound.

I do need to give my hand a day or two to re-develop some of the dexterity that I had built up but hopefully barred chords will continue to get easier; they have been getting easier for the past couple of weeks.

Yesterday, I was practicing playing guitar… and I don’t know why but for some reason I had the most fun practicing in a long time.

Don’t get me wrong, I do — most of the time — enjoy practicing guitar. That is the point after all… To relax!

However, lately practicing hasn’t been as fun as it use to be.  It is possible that I’m not focusing and moving myself forward enough. One must keep moving forward or (1) you will not learn anything new and (2) you bore yourself.

I’m at the boring-myself stage… Though there is probably a lot more I could have learned had I pushed a little harder.

I need to sit down and establish a practice routine for each day that I practice. I think Joe from “From The Woodshed” has done things similar to that… Though, he dedicates a lot more time for his practice…

What was I doing yesterday to have so much fun? Well, I started working through a book I bought called: 10 Minute Guitar Workout by David Mead. 

The book presents a technique for practicing where you practice certain things (chord changes, scales, etc) for 2 minutes each. There a total of 5 exercises for each day.  The goal is to complete x amount of sets within the two minutes. After so many days, you proceed to the next “sets” goal until eventually you proceed to the next set of exercises.

Now I just started with the book, so I can not say whether it is working or not. I can tell you that the tasks are a bit different from what I have been doing and it is (most importantly) a little more focused than what I’ve been doing… Which is why I think it was a bit more fun.

Additionally, the book came with a CD which I was playing with. I used the BestPractice software to slow the tracks down. This allowed me to play the exercises at different tempos with the CD, which allowed me to mix things up a bit.

Play this for two minutes (not 99 as the music says), it will exercise your fretting hand and your picking hand much. (Click Image for a larger Rendering).

After you try this, please post a comment on what you think. Was it hard? Was it easy? Does your hand hurt too much to leave a comment?

So, I wrote a very simple chord progression. It is the “start” of a song that I’ve been wanting to write for my wife. Points! Anyway, it is a simple 12 bar blues progression in the Key of G.

At this point, the chords involved (I’ve yet to dress it up at all) include G Major, C Major and D Major. However, I’m experiencing a problem that I think most beginners have or will experience… I’m having trouble switching between the chords quickly enough for the pace I’ve set the progression at – that is, I’m not switching between the chords fast enough.

I’ve been practicing the progression with little improvement and keep in mind that I’ve been playing these chords for at least the last 4 months — almost daily!

To be honest, it started to aggravate and frustrate me… I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. But I’m also very analytical, so I decided to do some research via Google search to find some tips.

I found two tips; the first one more helpful than the second one but the second one is worth looking at.

The first tip to change chords quickly: http://www.cyberfret.com/chords/changing/index.php

What the above article explains is an exercise to learn how to form the chord before you actually place your fingers down. The exercise is basically to form the chord and raise your hand off of the fretboard a 1/4 of an inch or so… Then, put it back (you’d stay on the same chord)… Repeat this process and your hand should (theoretically) learn the new chord’s form.

The article explains that putting the entire chord shape down at once is much quicker than individually positioning your fingers. (That, obviously, makes sense.. In practice, however, it is a lot easier said that done…)

The second tip comes via YouTube:

Update: [5/1/2008]: Acoustic Guitar Magazine published a great article along the same lines as this topic. Check it out!

In my last post, I had promised that I be posting more guitar rhythm exercises. Unfortunately, work has kept be pretty busy, so I’ve not been able to generate the sheet music. Nor write anything in depth.

But in lieu of that, for now, are a couple of chord combinations that you could play using the same strum pattern as previously.

1. Em Am (This is “Minor”)
2. Am Dm (This is “Minor”)
3. D A (This is “Major”)

Aside from getting this blog up and running, my all of my guitar practice sessions have included rhythm practice. After about 5 weeks in to playing, I had realized that I hadn’t been practicing rhythm guitar at all! To no fault of my instructor – He was giving me plenty of chord progressions to practice rhythm, however I ended up focusing on chord forms and ignoring the rhythm aspect of my practice.

As a result, I ended up with very little ability to keep time or rhythm. My pace was set by how fast I could change to specific chords; this is not a good method to practice guitar or music in general.

An Exercise

Here is an example of a simple “chord move” exercise which I’ve been using to practice rhythm [I do this exercise with various chords -- please feel free to use chord you are familiar with but do not forget to "push" yourself a little and try new chords]. This exercise is pretty straight forward.

I feel that it is extremely important to play this against a metronome. I feel that this is the best way to ensure that your timing is consistent and even.

I suggest that you start out slowly. There is no need to rush this at all. Get the feel for the chord change and please keep in mind that part of this exercise is to change to the next chord smoothly and without dropping a beat or rushing a beat (strumming before you are suppose to). Then gradually increase your metronome (perhaps in increments of 10 beats?)

Thus far, I’ve been able to successfully (within correct time, no beats missed, or chord-form mistakes) play through this particular exercise at a 80 BPM — I had started at 40 BPM a day ago.

Also, experiment with different chords – perhaps a couple of new chords that you picked up from a book or your instructor.

As always, I hope that this is a useful piece of information that benefits you in some way. Please feel free to leave comments, suggestions, questions, etc!