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.

Another simple song you could learn to play is “Hurt” which was originally by Nine Inch Nails, but Johnny Cash re-recorded his own version of the song. I’m with the group that feels that this version is superior — not that I didn’t like the NIN version of the song, I just really like how the guitar goes in this version.

Below are the videos for both versions. First, Cash’s version then Reznor’s. If you’ve never heard this song before, be aware that the song is of a dark nature. The Reznor video is particularly “dark”…

Cash:

Reznor -- Live:

You Play It

Now that you’ve seen the video, below are the links to the internet guitar tabs. I believe these tabs are correct, otherwise I wouldn’t post them. This song does use barred chords during the chorus so it can be a little difficult but it is manageable.

http://www.fretplay.com/tabs/c/cash_johnny/hurt-tab.shtml

http://www.guitarmasta.net/c/cash,_johnny/234354.html

Over at  “A Guitar Teacher’s Lesson Notebook” (a blog), Robs interpreted and published chords and rhythms (strum patterns) to a bunch of songs:

http://www.heartwoodguitar.com/WordPressBlog/?p=103

Some of the songs include

• Barenaked Ladies – If I Had a Million Dollars
• Johnny Cash – Ring of Fire
• The Raconteurs – Steady As She Goes
• Many more!

A while ago, I started writing a post on Let Her Cry by Hootie and the Blowfish. I never finished it but I decided to re-write and publish it.

I love the Hootie song “Let Her Cry” and it’s actually fairly easy to play. I’ve been able to play every part but I’ve never fully put it together. I just don’t have the confidence to play it. But I wanted to share it with others out there as you might want to give it a try.

Following are web sites that have published the chords and rhythm for the song. Give the song a try:

• http://www.guitaretab.com/h/hootie-and-the-blowfish/8545.html
• http://www.ibreathemusic.com/forums/showthread.php?p=88626

Update: Here is the Music Video for this song from YouTube

I’ve spent time working on a MS Windows program that I will eventually release as open source. The program isn’t spectacular — it is a hierarchical ToDo list. This means that you can have sub-tasks. I like this type of tool while I work (as a programmer).

Anyway, it got me thinking about something… Millions and millions of programmers work on open source software software each day. Some of the most notable open-source products include (but are not limited to) FireFox (the web browser) and OpenOffice (A Microsoft Office Compatible Office suite). These two programs, I imagine, have hundreds of people working on them; thousands of programmers are willing to work on free products. Given this, then why isn’t there free music? There should be thousands of free songs!

Perhaps there is? Perhaps I’m not looking in the right place? Either way, it probably isn’t wildly known else I’d have stumbled upon it by now…

I wrote my aforementioned program as a practice piece. Something to hone certain skills and to see what I could produce. I guess what I’m trying to ask is: do musician or bands create and record songs and release them for free for the same purpose? Or perhaps with the idea of getting feedback from the public in order to improve or perhaps just to hear how one sounds on a recorded and mixed song?

I know that Jonathan Coulton did something like this. He spent, I believe, a year releasing a song a week on his blog for free. You can still download those songs.

Do you do things like this?

I suppose some people do this on YouTube, doing covers and stuff. But I’m looking specificity at original material?

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!

The Fender Custom Shop has announced plans to release a David Gilmour Strat. For those who might be under a rock ( ) David Gilmour is a Guitarist for Pink Floyd. I love listening to Pink Floyd play and furthermore, I love the guitar in their songs…

Shine On You Crazy Diamond is the song that is coming to mind right now; wonderful guitar licks in that song. Wonderful song overall, also.

http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Issue/Daily/News/Fender_Custom_Shop_Announces_David_Gilmour_Strat.aspx

As a quick summary, it appears there will be two editions of the Fender Custom Shop Guitar. One will be priced at $3999.99 and the other “relic” one priced at $4799.99 (MSRPs, I assume).

As much as I’d like to have one, I won’t be buying one of these due to price (and how clumbsy I am). I chipped my electric guitar the first day I had it.

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

I can’t believe I missed this, but the TuxGuitar team has released the first whole version of their software. I’ve been using their software for a while but it has been listed as 0.9.1 as they’ve been completing the software.

TuxGuitar is a lot like Guitar Pro. You can tab out different songs or different tracks and it will play back the song that you’ve tabbed.

http://www.tuxguitar.com.ar/

Below are some screen shots that I quickly took [Click on them to view big versions]:

Give TuxGuitar a try… It’s Free!

I was at a Sam Ash^ about 2 weeks ago, shopping around — just looking (at saxophones [the bug is gone]) and I came upon something that really interested me.

It was a small CD (Jewel) case which said “Learn to play this Hit Song!” It was in a display box with several titles named. I scanned through the titles and discovered that they labeled the level of skill required to play the given song…

So I scanned through looking for items marked at “Guitar_Level 1″ which is the lowest level. I ended up with only a handful of selections (like 2 or 3) and all but 1 was of no interest of me (as far as learning the song). That was “Smells like Teen Spirit” as performed by Nirvana.

I decided immediately to purchase it; I had to at least give it a try and it was only around $13.00.

You can find more information about this here: http://www.playitnowtunes.com^

My first impressions when I broke in to the CD and started to listening was positive. However, I don’t like their version of the song (Smells Like Teen Spirit) but that just probably has to do with the fact that I have always much preferred their acoustic or unplugged versions more then the electric (plugged?) versions.

I’ve only been working with it for two weeks. I don’t want to post a “this will work” or “this won’t work” opinion until I’ve spent more time with it; but I did want to let the world know that it was out there.