learning the Guitar what do I do?
 

I need some advice on learning the Guitar. This is my second or third time around on plying the Guitar. I don't want to get stuck as I have done before. I've learned to read a little tablature (the "A" pentatonic scale) from one instructor, and a little by ear from another. It's been about a year and a half since I've been serious about this stuff. The by ear was cool and all, I was in the proses of learning to move around from key to key with minor and major pentatonic. Hard times hit and can't afford a teacher. When you change instructors it sets ya back and I ain't no spring chicken (in my fifties). It seems like I'm just plying into the air here with no real plan of attack. Any suggestions? Thanks

Might seem like a stale response but, just try and have fun playing dude. Learn songs that you enjoy and try not to force anything.

Yeah man. Just play what you like. Do some covers and play your own stuff, experiment, and you can probably find some jam tracks online to work on leads and stuff. Another thing about learning by ear, don't worry about it yet. Just play what you know, and learn by sheet music, tabs, or other guitarists. After a while, you'll develope a sense of what chords sound like, how they mesh together, and how leads fall in place with rhythms. Then you'll be able to just jam out or listen to a song and figure it out in no time. Just remember to have fun and not worry about your skill level.

what do you want to be able to play and why? i don't mean to be dismissive here either, they're legit concerns that need to be addressed sooner or later on any musician's path. it will also help in the type of advice our local guitarists will be able to provide.

Thanks Dave. It seems like I got off my original thought. What I want to do is be able to pick up a sheet of music and play it and not be stuck playing the same ol same ol, thus not learning anything new getting board and burning out. I want to be able to hold my own and sound good either with a or without a band. Lets face it I'm a little old to get good enough to go on tour or make a career out of music, although I'd love to. Also,, Is it more important to be able to read or be good at playing be ear.??? I have herd some of the greatest of my time can't read. The instructor that I was (or am with as soon as I get some more dough) says the stuff he is teaching me (relative minors, the difference between major and minor) will help me a bunch when the time comes when I do learn to read more. Is this for real? I want to be able to play lead and some rhythm. My roots are in blues and Classic rock.

If you want my opinion, whatever works for you. And the part about being able to be good vs learn by ear, it doesn't really make the musician. The true musician comes out when you can just jam out songs with a band or jam track. Be listening to a song and just write your own part by feeling the music, not thinking it.

hmmm blues and classic rock, the starting points for SO MANY guitarists (i still have all my Hendrix tab books hehe). how long have you been playing? what are the 'toughest' songs you've learned so far?

unfortunately getting bored and burning out are legitimate concerns when it comes to playing guitar, especially early on if you're the kind of person who gets a feeling of success from learning something unique rather than a new way of using old pieces. for example, when i was first learning my uncle hooked me up with a chord book and told me to go home and learned the dozen or so shapes he had circled throughout (open majors and minors). a week later i went back he got me to strum through the chords then thoroughly disappointed me when he smiled back and said i was done, that was all i needed to know. i remember wondering how it could be possible. he was right though, all i 'needed' to learn were the chord shapes, after that it was up to me to find ways to use them.

when you mention picking up a piece of sheet music and playing along... do you know how to read tablature yet? it's a form of musical transcription that lends itself incredibly well to the guitar. it's also incredibly easy to find online and in music stores. there's no reason you should be running out of a variety of material to play along with.

as for sounding good, there's nothing that replaces practice. though it doesn't need to feel like 'practicing'. i hardly ever specifically practiced anything, i played a whole hell of a lot to anything within my range though. it made it significantly more fun to build up my chops that way. sure i might not have practiced 'that' full scale frontwards and backwards 99 times everyday for months but who cares? i can still pull it out for 'that' solo in 'that' song.

as for reading vs. playing by ear. there are pros and cons to each. a balanced approach would be best, if not, personally, i'd take the person who can play by ear over the reader. in my experience people who learn entirely from reading have a really hard time playing anything that isn't written down first, which makes for spontaneous bursts of awesome pretty much impossible. the vast majority of musicians i know can't read actual music.

going back to your teacher, this goes back to your personal goals and what you're communicating back to him. there's a difference between wanting to learn to play guitar so you can play along to a bunch of favourites and learning to play guitar so you can write out a new batch of classics. it sounds like your teacher is assuming the latter. there's nothing really wrong with it but in car terms if all you want to do is go fast all you need to know how to do is put the car in gear, hold the wheel straight and floor it... on the other hand your teacher is explaining how the gasoline gets to the engine and is compressed by the pistons prior to being combusted by the sparkplug and delivering power to the engine and yadda yadda yadda.

if all you want to do is learn to rock out bring in specific tunes you want to learn and tell him to help you learn those songs - you're the one paying for these sessions after all.

I'll defiantly agree with that. I've just have had a few people tell me to learn to read, that's why I'm asking. Thanks

Yes I can read a little tablature (not enough). I've just had a few people tell me to learn how to read tab or what ever so I can learn more is what was said.
I've been playing this time around about a year and a half (who's counting). In the past I started when I was around 9 or 10 on the ukulele in a class setting (loved it) then went to the Guitar at about 12 or so. I took lessons from the same instructor for a year or so. This is where I made my mistake. I changed from a instructor that was teaching how music is put together vs just how to pluck out a song.... So I learn how to pluck out a few introws,, purple haze, brown sugar, steet fighting man...yada yada, I learned some rhythms like the Who and even a little Led Zeppelin. Got board, discouraged. For personal reasons of the seventies, discovered girls and gave up. I picked it back up again 10 or so years later. gave it half a try, due to whatever excuse I had, it didn't happen. It wasn't till years later that I had my dads old Epiphone I inherited sitting in my house looking at me and calling me "Hey bro remember me when you was a little boy and you used to pluck away on me":usehead: It brought a tear to my eye and now on fire! As far as learning new songs, I have none... it's all been scales, up and down and in and out. Minor to Major. Nine thousand (or so) times a day. Just where A B C and D are and where I am (love it). I'm learning now what I should have learned then. Sorry I got a little long winded there..

My teacher asked me what I wanted and I told him I wanted to learn music. and that is what he is/has been teaching me. I do agree with being spontaneous and not having to have something on paper in order to play it. It defiantly comes from the heart. I just wanted to learn how to read enough to give me a jump start. I think I need to have fun with it, learn how to put it together and not be so concerned with my skill level on where I think I should be learning and making it so complicated. Whadda ya think?

Thats a good mindset to have. I bet you'll be able to go pretty far with thought like that. If what your doing is working for you, then stick with it. I usually do ear or tab. I don't really know how to read sheet music well for guitar, but I could do it. Like, if you put it in front of me and said play it, it would be choppier than the ocean during a hurricane, but I could learn how to play it. I give you mad props for trying to learn the sheet music. As for how music is put together, for me, it wasn't something I learned in a class. It kinda just came from playing other peoples music and writing my own. That advice kinda sucks, but I think I'm trying to say, it will just kind of come with experience (at least for me). Just remember to have fun and be patient. I've bean working on fast alternate picking for a month and haven't really got overly far in cleaning it up yet, but I'm still working at it.

chopped the quote for simplicity but i'll touch on everything.

learning to read tab will make it SIGNIFICANTLY easier to find new material to play along with. it won't teach you the intricacies of creating music but it does provide a simple method to expand your playing catalog. unless you plan on learning other instruments learning to read music over tab is kind of futile. it's almost impossible to find a guitar book that doesn't have both listed unless it's something like '1001 classic campfire songs' which would just have chord charts instead (G,C,D for the verses, A,D,E for the choruses, etc.)

personally the idea of repeating scales makes my skin crawl, why repeat scales when you could just play along to Black Dog instead and still practice the same skills? whatever though, i'm hardly the most standard guitarist either.

you say you want to learn music, how do you define it? it's different for everyone. for some it's rebellion, or a vehicle to spread a message, for others a plea for attention, personally it was a cathartic release for me and my friends while we dealt with demons from our formative years.

don't take this the wrong way but based on your posts you seem to be associating your sense of satisfaction with technical progress. you imply that you get bored when there's nothing new left to learn. that wall will always be there. which brings us to the last thing you said (with which i wholeheartedly agree) - HAVE FUN WITH IT. that is - by far - the most important thing to remember when playing music. everything else is just noise.

also reminds me of a Jimmy Page interview from back in the day. he went on to say that he never EVER wrote complicated guitar parts, he wrote whatever felt easiest for him to play - so he could have fun.

What I meant by reading music was tab... Opps.
Thanks

If you mean tabs, just listen to what Mr. Dave said, he had some great advice in it. Remember that in the back of tab books, there is a key to how symbols are interpreted. Free online tabs are usually more unique to the tabber but follow a similar code. Those tabs also may be slightly or heavily flawed. So be careful with the free ones.

with tabs, like anything else, you get what you pay for. Cherry Lane Music is one of the biggest publishers, their books used to run just a little pricier than the actual album they transcribed (normally around $30 a pop).

just like albums there are plenty of compilation books out there too with greatest hits by bands, styles, eras, and skill levels. though i wouldn't really recommend starting with a beginner's book, the versions are usually incredibly simplified and lack most of the really cool parts. they're fine for campfire strumalongs but that's it.

I don't think I know Cherry Lane Music, i'll check them out, thanks. I ended up buying an AC/DC one that had the tabs and sheet for about 70 songs or so and its great. The books you buy have bean really good in my experience. Its just some of the on-line stuff from the Internet tabbers, kinda suck. It can offer a good starting place if you're willing to revise it, but other times, its more like, What song were you listening too. Hell, other times, they hit the nail on the head so hard, I can't believe it. So I guess, in all, books good, Internet tabbers, like a teenager, unpredictable.

HAL Leonard is the other big name, but my books are all from the 90s. all my Soundgarden books were CLM, Hendrix was HL.

you're totally right about internet tabs, generally speaking they're best used as a rough guide to start learning a song with.

I'll look into HL too, thanks.

As far as scales go, and skin crawling, yes my skin is crawling. and I have had enough. It's just that for years I could see that music is scales (please correct me if I'm wrong) and if I knew scales and knew them well I could therefore learn to play more. Therefore when I learn how to or make a song I will have the tools to play the entire song instead of just part of it.

I don't know why I associate technical progress and success. I think It's because I'm just like a sponge and want to soak up all I can, and want to learn it all. I'm not a technical kind of guy. Maybe that's something I should look into.


I guess I use music as a vehicle to get out my feelings out. I've always felt that burnin in my soul. When I play or hear something I like I more feel it than hear it. Is that weird or don't most of us do that anyway. How do I define music? That's a deep one...What defines music and noise?...That's something that I have pondered every time I go off and start trying to be creative. Thanks

^it's all good, there's a reason a lot of musicians call their jams meditations after all...

i can also kind of see where you're coming from with the whole 'music is scales' angle, but ultimately there's no substitute for practice. knowing scales inside out won't necessarily make anything easier to play, it'll just mean you've got more manual dexterity and coordination to learn another person's parts - but theoretical knowledge will never trump practice in anyone's ability to play the instrument. and not just practicing scales, but playing along to the kind of material you enjoy listening to, or hope to create.

as for writing your own stuff all you really need is confidence in what you hear coming out of your instrument. there's no right or wrong way to write a song, only your way.

Hey I would Like to add my personal experience her just remember one thing: Learning an instrument is never going to be easy :nono:. It takes a lot of time and effort to memorize chords (even for just one song) and figure out strumming and everything. If you get frustrated, give it a break and pick it up again later. It won't be easy or quick, so don't expect it to be. If you are having a very difficult time, a few lessons with a private teacher can get you on the right track.

I forgot one piece of advice that I thought of from reading Mr. marcusclark49's post. When you do learn a song, this is what I do. I start relatively late at night and play through it a bunch of times until I'm too tired to think. Then just go to bed. Then practice the next day and you'll be better after the sleep. Now what's going to happen is this. As you practice, your brain makes notes of how your muscles moved and which movements are correct. When you're asleep, your brain will subconsciously erase all of the incorrect movements and keep the muscle movements that led to the correct or more correct playing of the song. I do it late at night because its really fresh in your brain. I did this while I was learning the sweep for the Metalocalypse theme. I started around 12:30 at night and played until I fell asleep... literally. All I recall is the fretboard getting blurry, the TV infomercial stopped making sense (I practice with insignificant TV program on for background noise), my sweeping became very sloppy, then I swept down and didn't go back up. I woke up around 10 minutes later, practiced for another 15 or so then went to bed. I woke up able to play the sweep a bit faster and smoother but I still need to work on it (I started like 1/32 the speed its played). I hope this is a good tip for learning new songs.

Must have been said before, but practicepracticepractice... Plus all the advantages you have today (internet, CD's DVD's, music software...) that I lacked in my youth!