Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while and I’ve just kept getting pulled away. I’ve completed my lessons at the Music Room and I thought things went well. I spend a lot of time with guitar during this time and actually learned things!

As you might recall from previous posts, I decided to stop attending lessons at the music room because of the amount of time I felt I had to put in to each week to ensure I learned what I was suppose to learn. Ultimately, it left me absolutely no time for all the other things that I had going on. I guess this is the hard part of being an adult learning something like an instrument.

Desire just isn’t enough because that desire needs to be stronger than what you need to sacrifice and for me I was sacrificing too much. Of course, I’m am planning on continuing with the guitar. I will, but I’ve vastly slowed the pace. I doubt I’ll ever be able to play like I wanted to but ultimately, I knew I’d never get there because I tend to be a perfectionist.

I imagine that being a perfectionist has also hindered my ability to play because if I cant nail something perfectly, consistently I keep on it. I wear myself out in this way because I either get tired or frustrated with what I’m practicing.

Anyway, my teacher gave me a few tips for continue to practice. One thing that I wanted to make sure that I post here is that I discussed rhythm guitar with my teacher. Rhythm guitar is a very versatile thing which is why I wanted to cover it. Any time you hear someone solo in a bar or what not, 90 percent of the time they are playing the rhythm part of the song (occasionally filling in with the popular riffs and etc.)

My rhythm guitar sucks. I know it has gotten better since I first started this effort, but it still sucks. I can’t keep time and I have trouble maintaining a pattern. All very frustrating.

My teacher suggested a book called “Winning Rhythm“. I hope to evetually pick this book up and work though it.

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.

It is Friday Night here in Chicago; tomorrow morning I have another guitar lesson. Time in between the lessons elapses quickly.

This week I was to go over the notes on the D string and I was to practice playing the first part of Ode To Joy at 75 BPM. At about Wednesday I was playing it at about 95 BPM which I was very happy with. I hope to fit a few more run-throughs in tonight yet, but we will see what the night brings.

Going back to the D string, I’ve been having trouble with it. Not like the string is breaking or anything, just that for some reason my finger “stumbles” when time to play a note on that string. Just before I sat down to write this, I notice drastic improvement.

Every thing is what it is; eventually i will get it. I just need to practice on it all more.

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’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 a previous post, for scale practice, I’m working on learning the box pattern.

After going back and forth a little bit with Kenski (The Fillmore Five Project), I think I understand what the “Box Pattern” is. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to try to explain it right now, as I don’t think I could write something that in depth — and its not even a complicated topic…

Anyway, I’ve been learning the Box Pattern as defined here: http://www.myguitarsolo.com/sc_box.htm

I’ve already got the Pentatonic scale down; no problems there but I needed to do some work on the Dorian scale as MyGuitarSolo.com has it defined. I think I have it down, but I created some TuxGuitar files to practice with (for rhythm and timing practice).

I’ve placed the TuxGuitar files for download below:

• A Pentatonic (Minor) TuxGuitar File
• A Dorian TuxGuitar File

The source, MyGuitarSolo.com, has the scales written out in a way to show you which notes on the fret board to play, they do not show an order or direction to play the notes in. The TuxGuitar files are my interpretation of what order to play the notes. (Of course, it doesn’t really matter what order you play the notes in and if you are not familar with what I’m talking about keep an eye out here — much more will be coming about this topic).

Below are images of the TuxGuitar files (click to enlarge):

IG of IG Blog pointed out that (at the time of his writing) “five guitar lesson podcasts are included in the current list of top 20 podcasts.” While this is interesting information unto itself, it does point out that iTunes and podcasts are quickly becoming a worthwhile resource to consult when looking for Learn-Guitar material.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the concept of a podcast, it is similar to a radio segment but it is pre-recorded and distributed through the internet. Some people (including myself) also consider them a type of “recorded blog.” In case you are not familiar with the concept of a blog, you are reading one.

If you have iTunes installed on your computer, you can subscribe to these podcasts and then listen to them from your computer. Furthermore, if you have a iPod you can then sync iTunes and the iPod and listen to the podcast on your hand held iPod.

Returning to the topic of podcasts as a Learn-Guitar aid: One problem that you might face when it comes to using these free Podcast is, you basically get what you pay for. Keep in mind that this isn’t always the case but also, that they are free… However, as the five on the top twenty are tributes to, there are good ones out there. You may just need to try a few to find one that fits you. I’d suggest that you start with the podcasts on the top twenty list.

I’ve listened to a few but don’t really have any to recommend at this time. Of course, if I ever find one I’d shurely pass it on. (Oh, and I’ve not checked out the aforementioned podcasts yet.)

MusicMoose.org is an interesting yet potentially helpful learn-to-play resource. I call it a learn-to-play resource because they cover a lot of instruments, including guitar, saxophone, and banjo (among many others).

I’ve not spent a significant amount of time bouncing around their site, let alone trying some of their material. However, for the few minutes that I spent looking at the site, I felt it was worth a mention.

For guitarist they have several lessons all further classified. See categories just above the search results for the different classifications.

This will be an unusually quick post for me — I just want to share two links that I found quickly.

One thing that I need to do to vastly improve is my ability to strum the guitar. I’m very mechanical when I play — I don’t have that “sense of music/rhythm” I guess you’d say and it just doesn’t sound right at all. It been frustrating but it has been getting better, but still, I want to improve. So I decided to look for resources on the internet.

I found this, and I think the teacher/author does a wonderful job giving some example strum patterns. The video (click the person in the rocking chair) is probably the best place to start. The link is: http://www.grouptherapy.guernsey.net/strumming.html. I’ve not gotten in to the MP3s yet, but imagine they’d also be useful.

And the second link is: http://www.guitar-lessons-central.com/guitar-strumming-patterns.html
This has more videos and different patterns, though it looks a bit more complicated.

Enjoy!

Update: Josh, (see the comments) also suggested: http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=5

Aside from some strum patterns, the author posts his interpretation of full songs. Such as Pink Floyd’s”Wish You Were Here” – One of my favorite Pink Floyd Songs.