Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

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.

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 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.

During my time with a guitar, I’ve occasionally (who am I kidding, more then occasionally) ran in to music or practice pieces that have frustrated the living heck out of me.

I really not kidding, there are times where I just about threw my guitar because I just couldn’t take it. (Luckily, I never actually did that; but I have felt like it before.)

While you are learning something new, especially something as complicated as learning to play a musical instrument, you can will become frustrated. It is just a matter of time.

I stumbled upon this great blog post about frustrations, specifically aimed at learning to play guitar. I liked the article and I think it is very worth while to read (regardless whether your instrument guitar).

http://blog.littlerockjams.com/2008/01/21/everyone-that-has-been-frustrated-during-guitar-practice-raise-your-hand.aspx

And the following YouTube video was mentioned in the article above. I thought that the video was funny…

A few days ago, I made some recordings with the intention of posting them here. I came up with a quick chord progression while practicing Bm.

Actually, I didn’t really come up with the progression. The progression is Bm, A, G, Em which are the chords for Comfortably Numb by Pink Floyd as written here. It is the strumming that I “created” which I liked quite a bit. So I grabbed my Zoom H2 and recorded it.

I can’t play it perfectly. The reason I came up with it was because I’ve been trying to practice the Bm chord. I can play it, I just need to be able to switch to it faster.

Here are the recordings.

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Note: if you read this site from an RSS Reader (such as Google Reader) you many not be able to see the MP3 players above. Please click here to listen to the three recordings.

You can hear the “dead” chords that I’m playing after some of the chord changes. That is when I’m trying to go back to Bm. It doesn’t work always, but I did get a few in there. Just getting a few of those changes was a major accomplishment for me. The recordings aren’t perfect, but I’m still working on it. I will try to post more when I feel the chord transisitions are better.

If you don’t always follow the comments on this site, I wanted to summarize what I learned about MusicianUniversity.com.

On April 19th, I posted a request for information on MusicianUniversity.com which offers music courses for musicians. I was interested in taking thier songwriting course.

“tsubibo” left a comment on my this site. He pointed me to a link which provided third-party insight in to the company. Of course, this information is one sided however it also showed the level of customer service…

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080415072326AADYEej

This isn’t to say that they are a bad company or the courses are bad (because it is only one posting from one previous customer), but I’d rather not take the risk of losing my money and not getting anything out of it.

tsubibo also mentioned that several people were asking for information about other peoples’ experience (like my post) however, they never found a solid description of someone experience.

The question above plus the fact that nobody mentioned any experience leads me to believe that I should probably shy away from them for now.

However, if you have had or eventually have an interaction with MusicanUniversity.com, please share your story. Leave a comment on either this post or the other post.

I recently decided to subscribe to Acoustic Guitar magazine. And yesterday, I received my very first issue.

I was incredibility pleased with the issue as they had a wonderful article titled: “Tackling Difficult Chords.” I quickly read the article and I felt that it had some very wonderful tips on how to learn to imprint difficult barre chords in to your memory and fretting hand.

The article uses the F chord and the Bm chord as their example chords. Which is perfect because I’ve been working on the Bm chord. (I recently blogged about it.)

After I read the article I immediately began to apply what it had suggested. I worked with the F chord, the Bm chord and for good measure I threw in the (open) C chord. I’ve been having difficultly with that chord because it is awkward to my hand.

I drilled, and drilled the chords and have done the same thing since I read the article. That was about two days ago. It is probably too early to tell, but I do believe that it has improved my ability to play all three chords. As well as I want? Not quite yet, but it is a work in progress and I’m getting closer.

It is possible that the article just gave me the fuel to drill the chords again… I’m not sure. To any account, I loved the article and it would be worth a read to any one who is still working on memorizing barred chords.

What does the article suggest? I don’t want to give away too much (because I don’t want to plagiarize), but for those who might be interested…

The article starts out by telling you to fret the problem chord.  Play the chord arpeggiated – that is one string at a time. Play the chord twice (I suggest using alternate picking) once going down; from low E to high E then going up, from high E to the low E string.

Once you get to the low E string, release the strings but don’t remove your hand from the current position. Reapply pressure with your fretting hand with the same chord shape and do the arpeggiation again. Repeat until your hand can’t take it (actually, just repeat it a lot). You should pay special attention to whether the strings are ringing clearly or not. Don’t proceed until the strings all ring clearly – consistently.

The article then suggests you strum the chord, doing the same fretting hand pressure release as before. Repeat this a lot.

The article then suggests that you do a two-chord chord progression. One chord is the one you are learning, the other chord being a chord that you are very comfortable with. Repeat that progression. (yes, a lot.)

You may not get to this last step on your first or second day. I think that is fine. Take your time and be patient.

Buy the magazine and read the article. It has a lot more important information than what I’ve just given you.

You may also be able to read the article here: http://www.acousticguitar.com/article/default.aspx?articleid=22034

I’ve been considering signing up for a course with “MusicianUniversity.com” for the past few days. However, I’m kind of on the fence and would like some feedback from the public…

Has anyone taken a course with Musician University? If so, I’m looking to learn about your experience and your thoughts on the course you took.

I’m specifically interested in taking the course called: “Guitar Songwriting: writing Songs, Riffs and Chord Progressions”

I’ve been working on the song for my wife (as it is known) and I have come to a road block with the progression / song… I’m not sure where to take it or what to do next. I’ve come up with a few things, but ultimately I simply don’t yet know enough to write a song — at least a song worth keeping.   Anyway, this is why I’m interested in taking the course…

Pretty much any feedback or thoughts would help. Thank you in advance!

Quick follow up update:  tsubibo found this link: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080415072326AADYEe

The post is asking about a Better Business Bureau for the Netherlands, which is where MusicianUniversity.com is based out of. According to the post, the user has been trying to get a refund, presubmably because they didn’t feel that the services were to par.

If someone can counter this, I invite you to leave a comment at the bottom.

I am going to try to check out a local community college for what I’m looking for… I’d rather play it safe then waste valuable time and money…

So, I’m suppose to be going to IG’s CAGED series… But I found right now, that I’m not really in the mood to follow something specific… I’m just in the mood, for now, to bang around on my guitar and make “noise” — Though, I do want that noise to sound good, I’m not really following any sort of specific chord progression or material.

What I’m trying to say is sometimes I just want to bang around on my guitar… Is that a bad thing?  Does that hurt my learning to just not follow any specific material and to just play random chord with random strum patterns… Oh, all of this is done without a metronome…

What do you think? Any guitar teachers out there? I’d love an opinion from you…

As some might know, I’ve been slowly working on a song for my wife. It is something I’ve always wanted to do and so I decided to start sooner rather than later. Some might say I’m rushing things, but it helps me learn, so what the heck!

With that said, I’ve written the first chord progression for the song. I figure I’m going to keep building on it and modifying it until I feel it sounds good.

I made three recordings, and I will be honest — each of the recording contains mistakes in one way or another. Originally I was only going to post one of them, but I thought “why not post all of them.”  I’ll just put myself out there.  I’m not really sure which one is the best or closest to what I want but If I had to guess I’d say recording two or three…

Recording 1:

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Recording 2:

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Recording 3:

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