Search options (Page 212 of 279)

Syd1994 - I don't think you're preventing yourself from learning if you change up a difficult part.  The pros do it.  But I would suggest if you change up a part of a song you like so that you can play it now, that you also practice the part that you changed up so that you can continue to improve.  While I believe it's important to play songs the way you enjoy them, that it's also important to have stretch goals.  By picking a song you know you can't play, and working at the little parts until you can get it, you'll learn quite a lot.  There's nothing wrong with doing a simplified arrangement in the meanwhile.  And if you never get it "right", that's OK too.  Listen to some covers.  The best ones take a song and bring the new artists own style and approach to it.  Jose Feliciano's "Light My Fire" is such an example, as is Hendrick's cover of "All Along the Watchtower."  Neither of those songs sound anything like the original artist's version, but they are both absolute classics alongside the original versions.

- Zurf

Decide what you want to do for yourself, then do it.  If you want to learn songs well enough to strum them and sing them without all the frills and riffs, and that satisfies you.  Then do that.  Or perhaps do that while at the same time learning new and different "tricks" (hammer-ons, pull-offs, power chords, neato arpeggios and inversions in recognizable riffs, etc.).  If you do that, then you'll be able to pepper those "tricks" into your songs while you play them.  And while it may not be the way the recording artist you know did the song, you'll make it your version and that's all right by me. 

- Zurf

Well, in that case, I guess you can go ahead and beat yourself up.

Guitar and music should be fun.  Fun that takes a lot of effort, sure, but fun nevertheless.  If it's not bringing you pleasure at the moment, then by all means take a break until the itch returns.  But given that your expressed regret is not starting sooner and being better by now, I fail to see how going more slowly is going to help lessen the regret. 

As far as Aspergers and ADD, I don't know anything.  If those are the causes of any guitar related issues, feel free to disregard anything I post at will.  If those are excuses you're giving yourself, though, proceed with the self-inflicted butt-kicking.  Only you know for sure (and I suppose maybe your therapist). 

On the third hand, I used to jamm with a fellow who had problems with depression.  Personally, I think he sounded great.  We always had a good time when we jammed, and he was clearly the more skilled of the two of us.  But he gave up guitar completely because he didn't sound as good as he thought he should.  I thought that was sad, but while he sounded good to me the guitar just brought him stress.  So, for him, he decided to let that stress go out of his life.  He was on the negative of the whole cost/benefit assessment when comparing the stress and the pleasure it brought him.

- Zurf

Music is mathematics.  Mathematics deals with the relationships of intervals.  Music deals with the relationships of intervals.  They are different expressions of the same thing.

- Zurf

Well now there's an accomplishment worthy of note!  Congratulations.

- Zurf

That war was awful.  Of course, they all are.  But that one in particular was gruesome and brutal.  My own grandfather also served in France at that time.  In one prolonged battle, my grandfather was the only survivor - German or American.  Thinking about that, it occured to me that my grandfather would have had to have prowled the battlefield looking for survivors, and then killing the ones he found that were in the "wrong" uniform.  I cannot imagine after so much bloodshed and violence going about finding the only other remaining people, and then killing them.  Yet, it was that or die because they were trying to do the same thing.  Afterwards, he rummaged what rations he could, picked up his machine gun and as much ammunition as he could carry, and walked to the most recent place he could remember there being Americans.  After a couple of days on his one man retreat from the front, he reached more Americans to give his report.  Once given, he was conscripted into the regiment he found and received orders to report to Verdoun.  No rest after that ordeal.  He was sent to what became the longest, bloodiest, deadliest battle in history.  As a machine-gunner, making him a prime target for the enemy.  He survived that battle too, to come home.  The extent of his aggression from the time he came home to the time he died was aimed at rabbits in his vegetable garden and for some reason Joe Garagiola when he was giving play-by-play of a Yankees or Mets game.  Many times my grandfather would turn off the sound on the TV if Joe Garagiola was doing commentary and flip on the radio to hear "someone who knew how to do play-by-play." 

Anyway, an awful war, carried out by citizen soldiers. 

Something that seems relevant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJi41RWaTCs 

(Moderator, this is a YouTube link to a professionally recorded public radio performance that to the best of my knowledge carries the permission of the performer/author, John McCutcheon.  If that is insufficient protection, please delete.)

- Zurf

How long is "a while"?  You don't need to tell me, I'm asking more for your benefit.  Think about all that goes into guitar.  You have to train your ears, your arms, your fingers, your voice.  And you have to do them all at once.  Oh sure, there are voice exercises you can do alone.  You can listen intently to songs.  Etc.  But for it all to come out together as a song, you have to train them all at the same time for at least part of your practice time. 

Gosh, that's a lot of training.  Plus you also have to train your concentration.  I suppose there are some multi-tasker wizards with short attention spans who are guitar whizzes, but they're the rare exceptions.  Most I know (and I would expect that includes most of the folks reading this message) have to work hard mentally and physically to improve.  Improvement at first comes very, very slowly.  And then eventually, several years down the road, things start to come fast.  And you begin to wonder why.  And then you realize - it's because you trained so hard at first to be able to do it.  You've learned how to hear.  You've learned how to strum.  You've learned how to use a pick and to move the fingers of your left hand independently of those on your right. 

Someone on here once said that they were amazed by something kind of silly.  For all her life (I think it was a 'her'), she had never been able to rub her tummy and pat her head at the same time.  A couple years after playing guitar, she did it as part of a silly kids song with her children and it was no big deal.  She didn't even have to try.  Why?  Training.  Making the right and left hands independent.  Learning to segment your mind to concentrate deeply on several related tasks at once.  And so she learned that, yes indeed, she had been learning much more than how to pick notes on a guitar. 

These things take time.  Have you given yourself enough time to learn them?  Has it been three or four months?  If so, then you haven't given yourself enough time.  You should count yourself lucky if you can get between three open chords relatively smoothly in ANY strum pattern.  Has it been a year and a half?  If so, well, if you're practicing daily I'd think you'd be further along, but I'm willing to bet you're better off than you were a year ago. 

So think about it.  Have you given yourself enough time for all those things to happen?

Oh, and I've been playing for going on three years now and beginning to play passably, and my wife won't sing with me either.  And generally I have to make sure my audience has had sufficient intoxicants to have passed the critical stage where they pick on everything and not entered the entirely-too-honest-say-anything-that-enters-their-minds stage. 

- Zurf

My list: Subject to revision without notice and organized by the genres I generally listen to.

Blues - the hook
Country - the hook
Rock - the intro riff
Folk - storytelling in the verses

- Zurf

There's got to be something memorable about a song.  Sometimes it's the introduction, but often in pop, country, and rock music its "the hook". 

I have no idea what a strophe is.  Must be a Belgian thing. 

Playing disco on an acoustic sounds like an interesting exercise in creativity.  Good for you. 

- Zurf

What is this mythical land of which you speak?  Frets above the fifth fret!  That's just crazy talk!

No, I have never tried that.  I may on my electric, but I have the action on my main acoustic set kind of high because I play finger style a lot over open chords and really beat on the poor guitar.  The slightly higher action prevents buzz.  I am looking to get another guitar (hopefully a twelve string) that I can use for strumming and will have a lower action where that would probably work better.  The electric has a nice low action, though, so I can give it a whirl on that.  Though I think I'm not supposed to say the "e-word" on the acoustic forum. 

- Zurf