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TIps on thinking of the guitar as a piano?

AiCPearlJamWeenAiCPearlJamWeen Posts: 785
edited March 2011 in Musicians and Gearheads
ALright, I started my musical journey when I purchased a guitar six years ago and started teaching myself. I am in the throws of Music Theory II at my current college and it is being taught by an amazing teacher who has his PhD in Music and really knows how to teach and pass on knowledge to others. Thus, I've been surprised at how well I am doing with sight reading, non-chordal tones, progression's and their rules etc.

I have definitely soaking it all in but for some reason I can memorize the piano a lot easier than my guitar. Sure I know what notes are what but when it comes to being able to see on a whim what note I am playing on one string and another note that I next want to play on the guitar it is not as easy as just looking at a piano.

So my question is do any of you have tips on how I can start to really transfer and practice the stuff I have been learning in theory to my guitar? Is there any special way of viewing the fret board as the ivory's of a piano?
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Comments

  • keeponrockinkeeponrockin Posts: 7,446
    This isn't helpful, but I'm a guitar player (10 years) who recently started playing piano... I couldn't believe how much more sense everything made on the piano.
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • mfc2006mfc2006 Posts: 37,447
    keeponrockin wrote:
    This isn't helpful, but I'm a guitar player (10 years) who recently started playing piano... I couldn't believe how much more sense everything made on the piano.

    i completely agree. my wife is a great pianist & she's been giving me lessons. it just makes more sense to me than when i was teaching myself how to play guitar...plus, it's easier on the fingers!
    I LOVE MUSIC.
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  • PaleBrandonPaleBrandon Posts: 66
    check out stanley jordan...his two hand tapping technique is basically playing the guitar like a piano. and remember...there are only 12 notes on the guitar...no matter how you look at it. i learned all the notes on the guitar by playing octaves..the e a and d strings were easy to learn....so once you have those commited to memory just play the octaves from the notes you know....ie....d string 3rd fret is F.....the octave is on the b string 6th fret. hope that helps a little. very hard to explain this type of thing from a computer...anyway..good luck.
  • keeponrockinkeeponrockin Posts: 7,446
    mfc2006 wrote:
    keeponrockin wrote:
    This isn't helpful, but I'm a guitar player (10 years) who recently started playing piano... I couldn't believe how much more sense everything made on the piano.

    i completely agree. my wife is a great pianist & she's been giving me lessons. it just makes more sense to me than when i was teaching myself how to play guitar...plus, it's easier on the fingers!
    Yeah, I'm just learning from basically chord/lyric sheets you get from ultimate, so I'm not 'really' playing, but still, I'm shocked how easy it is. For instance, moving 1 finger changes the chord from C to Em, and moving the 5th up a step makes it an Am! I know for piano players this is basic logic, but for a stupid guitar player used to working in 'shapes', this was mindblowing stuff!
    Believe me, when I was growin up, I thought the worst thing you could turn out to be was normal, So I say freaks in the most complementary way. Here's a song by a fellow freak - E.V
  • mccreadyisgodmccreadyisgod Posts: 6,395
    Out of all the tonal musical instruments (meaning: everything but drums), the piano is the most logically arranged for understanding theory, chords, and arrangements of notes. That's because every individual note is arranged in order from low to high. On a guitar, there are several ways to play some notes, making it a lot more complicated. But the guitar does have some advantages; if you learn one chord shape (say, 6-string major barre chord), you can move it up and down the neck to play that chord type in a different key. So, the majority of guitar is learning the shapes of chords, and then transposing; whereas with piano, you learn the theory and notes and then have to learn new shapes for all the chords.

    I took piano lessons when I was 5-6 years old, and then my parents took me out (I could never sight-read sheet music). I took up guitar at 14, and then when I was in my 20's I went back to piano a bit. And when I took what I knew about music theory (learned from playing guitar) to the piano, it was all suddenly very logical and clear. It makes me wish I could've found a piano teacher to work on theory and improv rather than sight-reading; but I've always had trouble learning things in "traditional" methods (repetition). But once you understand theory, the piano is a very exciting instrument.
    ...and if you don't like it, you can suck on an egg.
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