learning guitar as physiotherapy

[santiago]

Having broken my little finger on the left hand I thought it would be useful to do some amatuer recovery. I still cant bend it at the second joint and that was from not marking a aussie rules football proprely, when having grown up in that social enviroment having done it many thousands of times...oh well, but a good pal of mine did say that when you get to 30-50 that the injuries you sustain are the first indicators of elderly-ness, which i suppose is a no brainer.

Its just a Monterey basic acoustic. Plus i decided to fill in some of that blue social networking sites lost time as i promised myself to do something different. At 36 I think it was a late decision to get what for me is a very impulsive buy. Also i thought i needed to do physiotherapy on the little finger so guitar served healing properties too.

For me im not a technical beginner but im trying just to have fun first. Enjoy the different sounds it makes and slowly climb the what for me is a slow climb. Have decided to go out on a limb and go totally uneducated or skilled, I do get totally bummed sometimes because with lessons who knows...but then occasionally, sometimes for no time or not a great little riff can be produced. Im contemplating a electric pretty soon and i think a bass would make me just flip out because i would be having so much fun.

I did a search and i could not find a purely instructional thread. Dont worry i have a book and you tube and stuff but its not really the same as peer research. Simple lessons from different backgrounds all related to here and now.

So yeh, i totally think any person who always thought about it should persevere.I think 1 to 10 i would be a 1.5 but it has seemed to open up the creative side of my brain and it seems to be a very pure and positive result, also totally humbling........my friends 15yo kid was about a 9/10, it was amazing and that probably is why people give up, but yeh totally humbling because i held this kid as a baby and i was 15 years behind him.

Guitar...............anything you want, teach the newbs or the oldies is the point of this singular thread.

oh yeh i have been playing for 1 year approx, the first 11 months were hard but getting slighly easier but then the last weeks it feels like you double your knowledge kinda in 30 mins.

Edited October 27, 2011 by santiago

[dollarjuice]

I've been playing guitar and bass for years now and am a bit devastated that i broke my hand last night and wont be able to play for 4+ weeks.

Tips for beginners;

- Always try to fret notes and cords with the very tips of your fingers, not the pads. This often gives a far better tone and once you practice it (it'll probably be hard at first) it will make everything a lot easier.

- Try and make sure that your thumb on the back of the neck is in between your 2nd and 3rd finger.

- Learn how to alternate pick from the start as its easy to pick up from the start but if you get into bad habits they die hard.

- LEARN YOUR MUSICAL THEORY!

This last one cannot be stressed enough. Sure if you don't you may be able to play songs, but learning the scales, and how they interact will not only make you a better and more competent player but in my opinion makes the whole experience a lot more fun.

Also santiago I have a good quality bass + amp I'd sell to you if you're interested. PM me if you want to know more.

[santiago]

Interesting, so dollarjuice you promote actual learning of the educational music theory. I will def take that as a lesson and take that onboard. I have heard about the scales but i do them sometimes and i know what you mean, in regards to muscle albeit small muscle memory.

[Darklight]

I'm glad you have started playing- don't worry about your age. You'll be 80 and have been playing for 50 years. You won't be one of those people who have sat round moaning at 50, 60, 70 that they always wished they'd learned guitar, I meet them a lot. I have friends who came to music late and some of them are better than me but we all love it so what the hell

Hope you find people to walk you through the basics, it's easier to get a grip at an early stage if you are actually shown, but not impossible if you don't get that. Take a few lessons from a recommended tutor if you can afford or trade for them, even just to get your playing position right.

If you end up jamming with a group make sure they're kind to beginners and if there is any ego floating around about your learning status, ignore it or walk off, don't let it discourage you. We should be learning all our lives so at all times each of us is going to be a beginner at something if you're making a go of your life

Scales- yes I'm big on scales too, it's not a popular position these days, but in addition to hand strength and muscle memory it acquaints you with the spirit and range of sheer sound your instrument is capable of. If you can play a scale with love, and make it sound interesting and beautiful, you can play anything

Remember to stretch! I have both carpal tunnel and RSI, one for each arm, from playing too much too early and not stretching and it's definitely limited my playing since my 20's. As guitarists we carry a lot of tension in our hands and arms. Look on the web for stretches and move them around while you're in position so you really *feel* them- merely imitating what you have seen or been told with a stretch isn't enough- good stretching feels like a psychic release. Not especially painful, more a revelation

[Roopey]

[sethomopod]

Fantastic! A guitar thread!! This place just gets better and better!

Dollarjuice has nailed two KEY points that you should listen to.. Alternate picking and theory.. Cant stress those enough..

Scales are very important too.. You can get around alot with the ol' Pentatonic (ONLY to begin with!! lol Learn them all!)

But, It is very easy to try and swallow too much information at once, and end up with a brain burst..

You said that you are just starting and you are having fun just getting to know the sounds and feel of you guitar, I would recommend learning TAB (If you dont already know, TAB is a very easy and quick way of learning song, but still not a replacement for learning notation) and jumping on a tab website.. There are lots.. And go through and find some songs that you really like, and start learning them.. Its amazing how much you can learn just by playing music you really enjoy listening to.. It's great because you hear your fave songs come alive and have alot of fun while learning, and you start to get an insight of how the song was written, why those certain chords sound nice when played together, how melodies are laid over progressions.. things like that, which can accompany learning theory and make it easier..

I remember just after I started,, (9 yrs old) I bought a shitty electric/amp combo (being left handed doesnt help alot there) a distortion pedal, and the TAB for Metallica's Ride The Lightning.. I couldnt put the guitar down I was having so much fun trying to play these songs that I was loving to listen to.. I learnt many things from trying to emulate that album..

All in all, I'm saying that learning you fave songs will hopefully help alot in other aspects..

Alot also depends on what particular style you are interested in playing.. No point spending early learning time on techniques that you wont utilize in the beginning.. (eg, sweep picking techniques if you want to play classical.. More advanced but just an eg.) Those other techniques can come later..as you become more and more addicted to the beauty of guitars, you will want to know it all!!

re differnet styles, I am a fairly competant player, been in alot of gigging bands and what not.. I play exteme death metal (dont roll your eyes all at once!), but I also enjoy Classical and Jazz.. I just stated learning a different style of playing.. involving adding percussive sound with fingerstyle.. Tapping, slapping and fingerpicking.. It blew my mind to begin with, even after playing for over 20 yrs! Still loving the learning process..

Hungover, so hope this doesnt sound like how my head feels.... gloopy.....

S

[Kee]

I'm going to pick it up after exams!!

[CβL]

:D

I just bought an acoustic guitar (old 60s Yamaha, apparently I'm the second owner :D). I've been learning music theory (and sound theory) for a few months now, and it's gotten to the stage where I need to put what I know into muscle memory.

I have been told by many of my friends that they regret focusing so strongly on learning TAB notation. Yeah you might be able to play something sooner, but it's a dead end. You will not be able to play anything that is written for other instruments if you only know TAB. So learn how to read staff notation.

I would also suggest getting quite a few books on music theory, because it's so convoluted and many of the names don't make sense (to someone with a science background, a musical tone being a frequency ratio of 2^(2/12) was a hard thing to get out of the books).

But in terms of actually playing guitar - I don't know shit. I want to play classical style (when I buy a classical guitar), and fingerpicking on this acoustic. What other techniques bridge these two?

Edited October 28, 2011 by βluntmuffin

[Roopey]

[Zen Peddler]

Monterey makes some ok acoustics - usually quite cheap and some better than a lot of more expensive brands. I actually own one and its shits all over the Gibson I used to have. They are good because you can add thin guage strings and do pretty nice bends and stuff.

I used to put guitars together for extra coin and sell them on ebay. If you want a cheap fender strat or telecaster give me a month and ill set it up for ya. I dont work with Gibsons any more because I once owned a chinese copy that three old blues guys in Williamstown were convinced was the real deal because there was no difference between the quality of the pick ups and general tone. the big difference was the price - $300 v $4,000K plus...

My advice is that the only way to learn is by ear. If you cant play by ear then you'll learn a shit load slower than you will otherwise. After ten years or so you should be able to pick any song up. I can easily work out any song I hear within a minute.

All the theory is a load of shit in my opinion. Theory and structure is a way to try and control music and music construction - its a way of making rules and exclusions for music and all of it you will find yourself doing naturally before you read the theory that tells you what your playing represents.

Play with soul rather than structure.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[CβL]

All the theory is a load of shit in my opinion. Theory and structure is a way to try and control music and music construction - its a way of making rules and exclusions for music and all of it you will find yourself doing naturally before you read the theory that tells you what your playing represents.

Well, not really. If you tune your guitar to any standard tuning (i.e. not off-key) - then you're using harmonics and standard harmonic relationships that have been used for thousands of years. Learning music theory is way to communicate with other musicians what you are doing, and ask what they are doing. That should be all, and anyone telling you otherwise can sip tea with a raised pinky elsewhere.

All harmonic theory comes from nature, such as the integer overtones of a vibrating string, and our logarithmic hearing structure.

If you don't control harmony, or even rhythm or timbre - then we get John Cage. John Cage is arguably the worst musician ever.

Writing it down also ensures that music doesn't get lost, such as what has happened with a lot of music from other cultures.

Lastly, if you like symphonic music, you'll know it is NOT possible without music theory and music notation.

[ThunderIdeal]

economy picking is really important. that means alternate picking, but say your next pick stroke is on a thicker (lower) string, so your hand is going to be moving up as the string is higher on the neck, it doesnt matter whether your last pickstroke was up or down, your hand is moving up so the next pickstroke will be an upstroke. there is a great exercise for this i can't be bothered tabbing out and i couldn't find it online, you need to do it though, you shouldn't need to think too much about your picking hand.

thickest strings you can handle, start with ten - forty six for an electric. throw your nine - forty twos in the bin, those aren't strings they are an unfunny joke, get some ten forty six and if its not too difficult work your way up to some eleven - fifty two or whatever.

can't recommend dire straits enough if you feel like playing some fingerstyle without going the nylon-string, classical route

personally having focused on technical playing the whole time i was playing guitar, i would advise against it. play songs that you love, not songs that push your chops.

I want to play classical style (when I buy a classical guitar), and fingerpicking on this acoustic. What other techniques bridge these two?

 

dire straits.

you don't NEED a nylon-string guitar to learn classical.

PERSONALLY i disagree with your comment about reading standard notation. sure, learn how to translate it, but being able to play along as you read is far more difficult on guitar than just about any other instrument. you've gotta really decide if it's worth the effort! if you never become proficient then it wasn't worth the effort and you would've had a much easier time using tabs.

IMPORTANT:

i nearly forgot, this is the age of guitar pro.

you aren't using guitar pro?

well what the fuck are you doing? quit doing that and get guitar pro already, fuck.

Edited October 28, 2011 by ThunderIdeal

[dollarjuice]

All the theory is a load of shit in my opinion. Theory and structure is a way to try and control music and music construction - its a way of making rules and exclusions for music and all of it you will find yourself doing naturally before you read the theory that tells you what your playing represents.

 

This is possibly the least thought out thing i've ever read on this forum. The theory of music is a way for us to understand how it all fits together and how to make the most of various instruments. Ever feel the need to play a nice C cord but wanted it higher up than how you learnt to fret a 'usual' C? If you know your theory you'll have no problem.

Theory controls music about as much as science controls the universe, it doesn't! It's there to help us understand it, and represent what we know and have learnt.

As for seth's point about tabs, they are great for beginners. Look up a program called Guitar Pro 5 and grab the resective files to open with it from This Website

Great thing about this program compared to just tabs is that you can play along with the song, and you can see the relation between the musical notation on the staves and the tabs.

EDIT: Ugh thunder beat me to the guitar pro punch. Damn this typing out whole posts with 1 hand thing T.T

Edited October 28, 2011 by dollarjuice

[CβL]

I have heard to practice Dire Straits before, but didn't remember - will give them a go.

I guess it depends on your terminus. For me, guitar is just the beginning, I want to be able to play a number of instruments eventually. So in my case, it's entirely necessary. If you only ever want to play guitar (how do you know that your future self doesn't want to play other instruments?) - then not learning staff is probably alright.

Edit: added a missing 'e'. Stupid keyboard.

Edited October 28, 2011 by βluntmuffin

[ThunderIdeal]

i shoulda been a bit clearer, but there is learning to decipher standard notation, and there is learning to play an instrument in real time while you read standard notation.

learning to decipher it isn't hard and everybody should learn to decipher it, but to play guitar while you read it is really quite tricky which is why there is such thing is guitar tab but there is no such thing as piano tab or flute tab. tab is a better notation for guitar, except you have to look at the staff above it to get rhythm, dynamics, etc, but that is still a lot easier than turning those circles into fingerings.

in standard notation i think roman numerals appear to tell you when you should be moving up from the open position, for instance barring the fifth fret a V will appear. to be quite frank, depending on the piece of music, figuring out how to use your fingers while playing it for the first time is downright impossible to do reliably.

guitar is not really an instrument where you grab a piece of music you've never seen before and play it. sometimes it might be possible but it's not a skill worth aspiring too IMHO.

[CβL]

Ah, thanks for that advice. I think that I'll try and get that good, but it's good to know that if I can't get there - it's because it's actually damn hard.

[Psylo]

Sometimes the feel of what you're doing is satisfaction enough.

There is a lot of beauty to the sound of wood & strings intertwined with the human spirit. I think what you're embarking upon shall be a wonderful journey.

Unless of course you will be twiddling the hours away trying to perfrom a Bon Jovi cover. Then, I would retract the above statement of moral support.

This guy plays a mean Uke'

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qadUoaWkRW8

[Jonstn]

Been wanting to learn guitar for ages, was learning as a kid but family shit got in the way and it was all forgotten about.

Hopefully this'll spark me to get into it again, gonnna need something to keep me occupied during Uni holidays!

Ultimately I want to be able to play some dick dale tunes, I love his music i'm a sucker for surf guitar

Edited October 28, 2011 by Jonstn

[ThunderIdeal]

electric guitar speaks DIRECTLY TO THE SOUL of white people - dave chappelle

it's a well timed thread for me, i don't have a 'lekky anymore but i'm grabbing my steel string and my sweet-ass amp this weekend because after eight (8!!!) years of barely touching a guitar i have been hankering to get back into it, in a different direction this time. i'm gonna buy a nice solid-bridge lekky with actives and blast the forest with 85 watts, any suggestions what i should get? i've never had a great sounding guitar, the closest thing was an epiphone SG.

[Zen Peddler]

One of my favourite guitarists soul wise is Nels Cline. Check him out on the song 'Impossible germany' - its a pretty shitty song but his lead, although not overly technical is just awesome. And the warmth of the jazzmaster pickups always give me a boner.

Now let me respond to the replies above:

Music is about the convaying of emotion, not about groups of musos sitting about comparing notes on how they did this or that. Music when it is created comes from within - it comes from the soul, it is generated from somewhere most musicians cant really put their finger on. Music theory attempts to annotate and explain the reasons why certain scales or structures in a given key sound good - it attempts to reduce music into math which it can be argued that it is, rather than its true expression.

A person can wank about all day reading about how certain notes in a scale can create emphasis or suspense leading into the change of chord. They can read about the reasons why Robert Fripp played such strange scale structures and why they worked in often fairly run-of-the-mill chord progressions like an E min to a Maj structure.

But If you play your instrument by ear - you will find that the spontaneous moment will evoke these things because they make musical sense to a trained ear. And it will work - not because some cold logic tells you it will, but because it evokes a response in your heart.

There is no need to write it down and send it to people for analysis in some university lecture theatre. Any musician doesnt need to see it written down to understand it musically, artistically or on the level of the soul, or to compose an appropriate response.

I will go further and suggest that musical theory is the bastion of the non-musicians (present parties excluded) who seek to legitimise their own understanding and proficency of music by using wordy terms and theory to create a have and have-not's system where more talented musicians can be ridiculed for not comprehending the meaning of the term penatonic while playing is every day and understanding it perfectly when encountering it in the fluid state of a good jam session.

Orchestral musicians rely on written music only because its the easiest way to convey to them quickly what they are required to play in the overall arrangement. it is a rigidity that is placed upon them and they must resign themselves to relying on written music for their careers.

None of the best musicians and guitarists save one or two in the last 50 years gave a flying fuck about musical theory - they just played from the spirit and the heart and they havc had more influence on the music of the heart than lecturers in tweed jackets dictating to dwindling student numbers for a faculty increasingly starved of funding.

Humans love to document, control and analyse things to the infinite degree. They want to catagorise everything. Music theory is just logical, cold mathematical rigid explanation for what should come to any decent musician naturally.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Zen Peddler]

If you look at popular music for the last 50 years I could probably list the guitarists and influencial musicians that clearly adopted the learning and dissemination of musical theory as a guiding principle to their creativity and art in a list of ten people...

Brian Eno, Robert Fripp come to mind, maybe some of the guys in the Doors but it stops about there.

Personally I would say that a post suggesting that a guitarist can only ascertain how to construct a c-bar chord through music theory is a better candidate for the most 'poorly thought-out post on this forum' than my own - given that it has more to do with the understanding of playing the guitar than it has to do with written music theory.

And the accusation that my post was the least 'thought out post on these forums' is particular scathing given that posts here recently attempted to justify participation in the mining industry through utilisation of the Nuremberg defense LOL

Edited October 28, 2011 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Psylo]

If you look at popular music for the last 50 years I could probably list the guitarists and influencial musicians that clearly adopted the learning and dissemination of musical theory as a guiding principle to their creativity and art in a list of ten people...

Brian Eno, Robert Fripp come to mind, maybe some of the guys in the Doors but it stops about there.

 

No way, man. There are numerous guitar prophets intertwined amongst the 50 years that you speak of.

Jimi Hendrix knew little of "the rules"

Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton & Ginger Baker took the guitar-psychedelic sound to Level 7.

Steve Hillage owned the rainbow airwaves with his guitar journeys, first as part of Gong, then onto his own variant of Hoffmanised groove.

[Zen Peddler]

Sure I agree wholeheartedly. But did they sit down and annotate their expression through written theory? Did they sit back and ponder the intricacies of a Bohlen-pierce scale or a Scala Enigmatica or did they just go out and fucking play what felt right?

Eric Clapton is not someone I would use as an example of pioneering guitar work.

Did you ever hear Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells. I guess he was a proficianado of musical theory, although I often wonder whether some of his total off-the-wall yet some how logical ideas were influenced by acid...

The guitarists that understand soul - and Jimi was the first - were naturalists - they played what sounded and felt right. Robert Fripp is the exception.

Edited October 28, 2011 by Zen Peddler BlueGreenie

[Zen Peddler]

I've pretty much now hijacked this thread - but I leave you with this last point.

The song 'The end' by the doors. Oft played at stoner parties and other such self-proclaimed arty uni-student gatherings, we all accept its a real cracker.

What is it about the song that lifts it above inconsequence? What makes it resonate so profoundly with people from the 'periphery'? Is it the musical theory? the adoption of the minor scale and eastern-reminiscent drone? Do stoners sit back and ponder the scale wonderings of Krieger's simple soapbox p-90 guitar twangs?

Or do they hear the simple, yet utterly complex and profound verse of Jim Morrison and feel them in their heart and hear the music amplify that resonance? It doesnt speak to you at the level of analysis, interpretation and logic. It speaks to you at the heart and the soul.

[Psylo]

Eric Clapton is not someone I would use as an example of pioneering guitar work.

 

You are dead to me.