Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

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

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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).

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.

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”)

Welcome to UnderstandingGuitar.org – One beginner’s efforts to learn guitar and music.

This blog catalogs my time learning how to play guitar. The aim is to provide tips, exercises, encouragement and general information about the guitar and playing guitar.

Although I’m the main blogger – and this blog catalogs my time learning the guitar, the site overall is for anyone who wants to learn how to play guitar. And because of that, I highly encourage any and all community interaction. I will try to address any and all questions and I would love to hear other peoples opinions in response to my opinions. (Note: You do not need to “log in” to this website to leave a comment)

And finally, I want to express my sincere appreciation for your visit to this site and I hope that you return as a contributing reader!