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.

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

[See the link...]

As a follow up post to “Create your Own Custom, Unique, Unscripted Guitar Solo!“, I wanted to post the next box to learn — oh, yes — there are more boxes.  There are a total of five Pentatonic Minor scales (in the key of A). The post mentioned above introduced you to the first two – Box 1 and Box 2.

This post will introduce you to what is referred to as Box 3. The music below is Box 3 in A (Making this [also] A Pentatonic Minor). Keep in mind, for this previous series with the 3 boxes (so far) they have all been a A Pentatonic Minor scale, only on different positions on the neck of the Guitar.

A Pentatonic Minor - Box 3

You can download the TuxGuitar file here: TuxGuitar file – A Pentatonic Minor – Box 3

Remember to first memorize and practice the scale. Afterwards you can set yourself free with the scale; you can play around and improvise within the scale. Enjoy!

Bonus: Following is me practicing this scale with effects from my Pod v2. I’m posting it to illustrate how I sound when first learning a scale. I figure that it might make readers more comfortable with their practice to know that my material is full of mistakes also (it would for me). Note: The following is full of mistakes.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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.

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.

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…

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

Back when I started guitar, I read quite a bit of material. I hadn’t started this blog yet and the idea of going to a blog for “help” hadn’t yet crossed my mind.

But, I started self-teaching myself with books and I eventually looked up a guitar instructor local to my area. Of all the time I spent reading books and working with the instructor, I don’t think I was ever directly told what I’m about to post here… And it is kind of a shame – it might have saved some frustration. (But to be fair, I do realize that my instructor indirectly told me this.)

Learning guitar is not just about “learning” the guitar. You need to build up muscles, dexterity, calluses and coordination (among other things). At first, certain patterns or chords will seem impossible until you’ve actually spent a significant amount of time with a guitar building up your hands. It simply takes repetition and a lot of patience and practice.

When you first sit down with a guitar and you look at a chord diagram for (example) Em (Diagram to the right), it appears to be a fairly simple chord to play. But as a beginner, your finger tips are soft because you haven’t earned your calluses yet. Playing this simple chord at first without calluses can actually be hard.

Why? This seems like a very simple chord, why might a beginner have trouble with this chord? Because the tips of your fingers are so soft, the strings will sink in to the flesh and cause the sides of your fingers to touch a sounding string. I’ve discovered that this problem has more or less gone away (or at least decreased) as I’ve started to develop early calluses.

Of course, some of this has to do with learning to position your fingers properly, which is another factor in solving this problem. I felt that I was lead to believe that finger positioning was my only issue. This was only half right and it wasn’t until recently that I actually fully realized this.

The same type of thing is true for things like barred chords (strength) and other types of more complex chords (dexterity).

Of course, you can only build up strength, dexterity, calluses and coordination by practicing – so go practice. But have patience and when you can’t play something or a certain chord, don’t fully accept that you “can’t” do it — accept that you may need to develop further yet; but don’t let that be a reason to not practice what you’ve been having trouble with… You can only further yourself if you practice what you can’t do, not what you can do.

I hate it when I go in to a music / guitar store to find an accessory and the store doesn’t carry the exact item I’m looking for and (to further frustrate you) they don’t even carry something like what you were looking for.And then on top of it, they offer to “get” the item for you or to order it for you. See, here is the thing, if I was willing to wait for the item, I would have ordered it my self from one of the many big-name online music stores retailers as opposed to have gone to a music store to (1) look at and play with the item, and (2) purchase it on the spot.

I like to look at what I’m going to buy before I buy it and I like to leave with something when I spend money – it’s just how I am. Is that bad?

What I’ve been looking for is the Chordmaster II by Planet Waves. It is a simple device that tells you how to play different chords different ways. I wanted to use it to help with the song (or chord progression, at this stage) I’ve been working on…

I have a book, but feel it is sort of incomplete, and I understand that the Chordmaster II has 7,400 chords contained within it… That is a lot more then my two books…

So, I wrote a very simple chord progression. It is the “start” of a song that I’ve been wanting to write for my wife. Points! Anyway, it is a simple 12 bar blues progression in the Key of G.

At this point, the chords involved (I’ve yet to dress it up at all) include G Major, C Major and D Major. However, I’m experiencing a problem that I think most beginners have or will experience… I’m having trouble switching between the chords quickly enough for the pace I’ve set the progression at – that is, I’m not switching between the chords fast enough.

I’ve been practicing the progression with little improvement and keep in mind that I’ve been playing these chords for at least the last 4 months — almost daily!

To be honest, it started to aggravate and frustrate me… I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist. But I’m also very analytical, so I decided to do some research via Google search to find some tips.

I found two tips; the first one more helpful than the second one but the second one is worth looking at.

The first tip to change chords quickly: http://www.cyberfret.com/chords/changing/index.php

What the above article explains is an exercise to learn how to form the chord before you actually place your fingers down. The exercise is basically to form the chord and raise your hand off of the fretboard a 1/4 of an inch or so… Then, put it back (you’d stay on the same chord)… Repeat this process and your hand should (theoretically) learn the new chord’s form.

The article explains that putting the entire chord shape down at once is much quicker than individually positioning your fingers. (That, obviously, makes sense.. In practice, however, it is a lot easier said that done…)

The second tip comes via YouTube:

Update: [5/1/2008]: Acoustic Guitar Magazine published a great article along the same lines as this topic. Check it out!