Understanding Guitar

One Beginners’ Efforts

I’m looking for potential contributors to this site. I’d like to get multiple people to contribute learning-guitar articles here. This site is very well indexed by search engines and often comes up in search results.

If you are a guitar teacher, you’d be greatly welcomed. It’d be a great way to get your name out in to the guitar-teaching world.

If you are a current student, then contributing here can be a great way to vent frustration or to gather different perspectives. I’ve also found that it is interesting to look back on your playing history.

If you are a constant player — band, session, etc — writing and contributing here would be a great way to get your [band] name out in to the internet.

If you are at all interested, please e-mail me at Frank[at]UnderstandingGuitar.org. Several spots are open and I really don’t have a maximum.

As an explanation to those who have been following my guitar-learning adventure, I’m enrolling in a Masters of Science of Software Engineering program and expect to have little time for guitar until I complete the program. Since I won’t have time to learn guitar, I also won’t have time to write articles for this site. This gives me two possibilities, tear down the site (I pay money to run this) or allow others to author articles for it. I hope to get authors and continue this site.

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.

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!

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!

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 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).

IG of IG Blog was kind enough to pass the award of E for Excellent to UnderstandingGuitar.org.  The award works like this (from what I understand, I’ll appreciate any corrections).

A blogger receives the award from another blogger (who has received the award already).The receiving blogger is then to pass the award to ten other bloggers. Pretty simple right?

Problem: At this time I only routinely follow six blogs… They are on the far right under Other Blogs… No matter your skill level, I encourage you to check them out. They are all chock-full of information. If you know of another blog that you read and respect — particularly in the “Beginning Guitar” genre, please share!

In keeping with the spirit of the award, I will list the sites following this along with my thoughts on the site. (No particular order) Unfortunately though, at this time I can only list six…

• IG Blog: IG Blog (who gave this award to me, Thank You!) is full of information. IG posted a good article on the CAGED system, which I’m currently working though. Aside from that, IG post all sorts of information and provides all sorts of links.
• From The Woodshed: I litteraly just found this site today… I’m really sorryI had never stopped by it before… Aside from the interesting read of Joe’s daily progress and notes, Joe post tips and trick on learning guitar. If you don’t know, Joe is studying guitar full time (No job right now) and is trying to go pro. I wish him the best of luck!
• Electric Guitar Review: Cary provides a lot of good information and reviews on gear and such. I don’t comment on his site much, but I do enjoy reading about the latest gear.
• The Fillmore Five Project: Kenski, similar to Joe of the Woodshed, is working on becoming a professional guitar player. Kenski posts information relevant to beginner players. He has also posted extremely helpful comments within the pages of my blog. I wish Kenski the best of luck, also!
• Heartwood Guitar: Though Rob hasn’t posted anything as of late, his blog is chop-full of information for anyone learning guitar at any level. He has a huge list of songs written out for private study. Take a look, you may find something you’ve been wanting to learn.
• Pickstroke: Pickstroke has a whole bunch of good information for guitar players of every level. Including songs and other good resources. Pickstroke is also the original source for my post about slowing down music. Such a great tool, I’m glad they posted about it or I’d have never found it.

I know a lot of these sites have already won this award… But if I didn’t pass it back, I’d have no one to give it to!

If I find more sites to give this award to, I will update this posting.

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…