Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

Do you know how to drive a stick shift car or anything with a manual (normal) transmission? If you at least understand the concept of driving a manual transmission car then you’ll probably understand the following analogy.

My guitar education feels like I’ve been stuck in first gear with my engine over revving to making up for the lack of gears. I’ve occasionally made it to second gear but either way I’ve been pushing hard and I feel like I’m not getting very far. I feel like no matter how hard I push each practice session I can only get so far — never where I want to be…

I’ve got two more prepaid lesson left at The Music Room. While they’ve been great, I’ve decided not to renew with them. It is important for me to mention that my teacher is/has been excellent but I feel like I should have progressed further than I have. I attribute this not to the teaching but my inability to focus as much time on guitar as I’d like. Quite simply, guitar is over-occupying my time (even though I want to put in more time). I figure if I’m not in weekly lessons I can focus a little more on other things (like Design Patterns or how Firefox works)… In addition to guitar…

My guitar studies will continue and I will continue to run Understanding Guitar.  My plan, in regards to The Music Room, is to take the “ad-hoc” options. With this option, I’ll have to call in to schedule an appointment every week or two. I’m considering this plan a half self-study, have lessons plan.

I was right! Guitar and music in general does reduce one’s stress! Check out the article at Dy-sphoric:

http://dy-sphoric.blogspot.com/2008/12/guitar-music-and-stress.html

The Music Room, Universal Language Spoken Here

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!

The Music Room, Universal Language Spoken Here

If you’ve followed this blog last winter, you might have know that I had been taking guitar lessons and at some point, decided to discontinue lessons. At that time, I had decided that for a mix of reasons.

About a week ago, I stumbled upon a music store called “The Music Room.” I was, as my wife will attest, very excited. Why the excitement? Well, because The Music Room is what I consider a real music store. Their retail store isn’t filled with thousands of guitar hanging on the wall with Amps plugged in and turned up. No, no. They, in my opinion, focus on actually playing the instrument (and many more types of instruments).

They have professional music teachers which is what I’ve been looking for. Their teachers have professional education in music from major universities, furthermore this is what they do for a living — teach music to others. (I’m sure they gig and play elsewhere but you get the idea).

I’ve signed up for lessons and am anxiously waiting for my first lesson. My self-teaching method simply doesn’t work. It is too unfocused and I don’t stick to a regular schedule, nor do I know when to push forward or keep practicing something when I’m stuck.

I suspect working with a teacher will solve problems like this.

I must mention that when I stopped in to sign up for lessons, the gentlemen who helped me left me with a great impression of the place. He was patient and answered all my questions. The shop is clean and obviously geared toward learn to play music; not to push gear out the door. Anyway, like I said — So far, I’m very impressed and have high hopes!

As I said in one of my later posts, I’ve taken a new direction – a new focus if you will. I’ve been following along with the book “Mel Bay’s Modern Guitar Method Grade 1,” playing the pieces and learning things in the order the book suggests.

Currently, I’m practicing on the the E note, F note and G note on the first string and the B note, C note, D note on the second string. I’m playing a few pieces from the book trying to practice my accuracy as well as my ability to read music (which, to me, is one key in this new quest).

As I was playing the first couple of songs (if I can call them that) from the book, I wasn’t sure if they were sounding like the should. I know that I was following the metronome properly, but I wasn’t sure if I was always hitting the right note at the right time. When you are first learning, so much is going on that it can be hard to ensure it sounds right… How can you tell [if sounds right] when the music is on paper?!

I remembered that I have a tabbing / music notation software called TuxGuitar (The team recently released version 1.0) which will actually play what I tab out. Now, at first, this might seem kind of stupid, but I swear it is working — it is helping.

The computer will always hit the right note at the right time. It is almost liking playing with another guitarist, but one that will never come out of time or make a mistake. Basically, like it is politely correcting you. Furthermore, as I’m playing along with the software I can listen to the notes that are played, and I instantly know via comparison if I’ve just played the correct note or not. When I play the wrong note, I can stop and figure out what the correct note is and work through the mistake.

Below are a couple of the songs that I’ve been playing in the TuxGuitar 1.0 format. You can give it a try.

Frolic – TuxGuitar 1.0 File

E – B – TuxGuitar 1.0 File

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 decide to take “learning” guitar in a different direction. I’ve been thinking about my previous post and decided that I want to focus a bit more on the basics of reading music and playing sheet music. While learning to play music like Staind, Cold, Tool, etc. is what I ultimately strive for, I think that I will only get there if I build a good base by starting with basic sheet music.

Given this I was hoping to get recommendation on different books that cover introducing playing guitar.  I don’t want something too simple but not too hard either. After all, I need to rebuild my hands up as it has been a while since I was playing.

Currently, I’ve got a couple of books including “Guitar for Dummies”, a book titled something like “Guitar for Beginners: The Fender Method” and a Mel Brooks [??] book.  But there are a lot of different books out there, all with a different method of doing things.

If you used one and would like to recommend it, please post it’s title (and if possible author) below. I would greatly appreciate it and it would be interesting to hear what people have tried. Likewise, if you tried to use a book and it didn’t help you or it was frustrating to read/utilize please post that too. What is bad is just as important as what is good.

Thank you

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.

If you’ve spent any amount of time reading some of my post here at UnderstandingGuitar.org, you’ve no doubt read that I have a tendency to really push the use of a metronome for a beginner guitarist as a beginning guitarist.

The reason mostly has to do with the fact that when I first picked up a guitar, I didn’t know what a metronome was, and more importantly I didn’t like them and hence didn’t want to buy one and/or “waste time” using one.

I’ve, obviously, since learned what a metronome is, and why a metronome is so vastly important. A very important part of music is that it deeply involves time. A metronome helps you keep track of time accurately. When you listen to a song, you may not think about it but the space (or time) between each note is a characteristic of the song.

When first learning guitar, it is important (in my opinion) to incorporate this in to your practice early on and to simply get used to the aspect of time from the get-go. It sounds easy enough. But to keep a steady beat does take another aspect of attention. Mix this focus with the fact that you are focusing on which strings to hit plus where to fret each string and it gets hard – particularly for a beginner. It all adds up…

The Tool

So now that I’ve given yet another rant on metronomes, here is a neat web site that I found:

http://www.metronomeonline.com/

It is a online, flash-based metronome! The site also explains what a metronome is and how to use it. In addition, it give you details behind the Italian sounding words printed on some metronomes. I think it is all very good information.

Anyway, I thought this was a neat tool in case you don’t already have a metronome. Or perhaps, you just want to try a different metronome.

Enjoy!

On November 14^th, I posted a couple of other chord combinations to practice. While having the chords are nice, I wanted to illustrate them via rhythm slashes.

Below are the three rhythm slash combinations. Click on the images to view the entire image.

1. Em Am – rhythm slashes with the chord voicings.

2. Am Dm – rhythm slashes with chord voicings

3. D A – rhythm slashes with chord voicings.

All of these should be excellent rhythm practice and will help you with your chord formation.

As you are going through these, the goal is to play them cleanly – not fast! Right now, speed shouldn’t matter to you. What matters is whether strings ringing clearly/cleanly. I know that this was a big issue for me when I was really first starting – it was downright aggravating at times.

I found, that when I was having trouble with the chords ringing clearly that just playing them over and over did help overall. Also, slow down and really pay attention to what is going on. If you really can never get a chord to come out right; stop and really look at what the problem is. Once you realize what the problem is, correct it and then practice re-forming the chord [playing it cleanly] and just that chord over and over. Once you’ve done that a few times, go back to the patterns above.

Although, as I’ve stressed before, it is important to do these, and any music practice against a metronome. It is very important to develop your ability to track time and I think that it is easier to do that when you are starting then after.