Stuck (Guitar)

Boom The Cat

I'll get straight to the point:

Yeah, so my guitar lessons are every week, for half an hour, in that space of time I have to get the hang of a song and then practice the rest at home, the thing is though, I dont feel myself improving as much as I'd like to, I'm fairly new so is there any relativley easy things for me to do to help my playing?

keeponrockin

Just try different excersises and scales!

Boom The Cat

Any idea where I can get some?

Novawind

Ian vom Saal (who posts here regularly) sent me a very helpful email with an attached diagram of all 7 modes + the major and minor pentatonic scales. I've been practicing them and they've opened up my playing significantly. I don't know if he would mind me sharing them with you but he's a very nice guy and would probably send you the same email if you asked him nicely.

One Song Glory

Upgrade to an hour if possible. You'll get more done, and a lot faster at that. And I don't know how long you've been playing, but try out some stuff yourself to get motivated. Pearl Jam songs are always morale boosters, even if they're dead simple. My guitar teacher taught me the basic chords for Black in my first lesson and I remember feeling like such a rockstar. Now I can play a ton of different stuff and I can do a lot of improv and everything, so I'm moving along twice as fast, but learning a new song that you really like, no matter how difficult it may seem at first, is a good thing.

It actually took me a month to learn to play Alive with the solo and everything. Haha, just remembered that. Now I could play it in my sleep but it was THE hardest thing in the world back then.

So don't give up, it gets easier.

Depending on how much of a beginner you are, I could try to offer up some pointers, but I would need to know your level of experience. I'm assuming your new to this; I think EVERYONE goes through that I'm-not-learning-anything phase.

DOSW

One Song Glory wrote:

It actually took me a month to learn to play Alive with the solo and everything. Haha, just remembered that. Now I could play it in my sleep but it was THE hardest thing in the world back then.

One month? Wow. Did you learn it as a beginner or were you pretty good when you started to try it?

It would take me a month just to get the main riff sounding good.

One Song Glory

I learned it ages ago, but I had already played some songs that were a little more complicated than the basic stuff already. It took me longer to learn Alive than any other song, except maybe Stairway, but I learned that in 6 months of when I started so that took a while. Now I could probably sit down and figure either of those out within a few days; it all depends on experience, practice, etc etc etc.....

The main riff isn't really that complicated if you get someone to show you how it's done. Tab is a good thing, but actual hands-on help is soooooo much better if there's someone to help you.

Drew263

DOSW wrote:

One month? Wow. Did you learn it as a beginner or were you pretty good when you started to try it?

It would take me a month just to get the main riff sounding good.

You're probably just being modest...I started in March and it didn't take long to get the main riff..but I haven't really tried to play the entire song yet.

I've notice though with people taking lessons on this board that there seems to be a lot of learning songs going on? My instructor and I don't do that. We're working on playing the blues using 7th chords etc etc. If I want to learn a song, I just do it on my own. But we spend time working chord progressions in different ways (different chords/same progression) while including a little soloing or voicing the chords. A lot of theory. Is my instructor different??

Since I've never played an instrument in my life, sometimes I get overwhelmed by the theory part of it and just go home and blast comatose or Severed Hand..surely I'm not different there.

Novawind

It's not a waste of your time though. Knowing the theory will probably allow you to write whatever kind of music you want and have it sound decent. My instructor had been working with me on that, but last lesson was simply working on timing for rythym guitar to James Brown's Soul Power.

parel jam

Boom The Cat wrote:

I'll get straight to the point:

Yeah, so my guitar lessons are every week, for half an hour, in that space of time I have to get the hang of a song and then practice the rest at home, the thing is though, I dont feel myself improving as much as I'd like to, I'm fairly new so is there any relativley easy things for me to do to help my playing?

As someone else said before...play Pearl Jam...really! Just try to play. Don't know if you're a beginner, but it helped me (back in 1996) to start with songs on the Vitalogy record (Nothingman, Not for you, Immortality, Better Man)...

Drew263

Novawind wrote:

It's not a waste of your time though. Knowing the theory will probably allow you to write whatever kind of music you want and have it sound decent. My instructor had been working with me on that, but last lesson was simply working on timing for rythym guitar to James Brown's Soul Power.

yeah..sometimes I get frustrated with it b/c what we're doing is stuff that I'll never do. It's not my taste in music. But I guess it's good to know and I guess it's good to be able to pull parts of it whenever I need it.

I should've started this when I was younger though. I've wasted years by waiting til now. I'm hooked.

moster78

Drew263 wrote:

I should've started this when I was younger though. I've wasted years by waiting til now. I'm hooked.

I feel the same way. Better late than never though.

ezyrydr

if you're interested in playing some lead try this:

just put some Blues into your CD player. pretty much anything in the blues genre will do.
plug in your guitar
press play
randomly play some notes until you find some that don't sound terrible with the song that is playing
next you'll probably notice a pattern of where these notes happen to sound good. it'll probably be something like this.
E Frets 7 9 and 12 14
A Frets 7 9 and 12 14
D Frets 7 9 and 12 14
G Frets 7 9 and 12 14
B Frets 7 10 and 12 15
E Frets 7 10 and 12 15
just to name a few.
depending on the key of the song you'll play on different frets.
just make noise and bend strings and find notes that work in different keys. what you'll basicly be learning is the "minor pentonic" scale but who the fuck cares, you're a guitar player not a math teacher.
trial and error works best, you don't limit yourself that way and you get to experiment.
once you find some of these patterns you like you'll notice that the patterns you learn work in all kinds of rock and blues tunes.
it's a good start when you're burnt out on theory. dig into theory after you have your fun just farting around.

Drew263

ezyrydr wrote:

if you're interested in playing some lead try this:

just put some Blues into your CD player. pretty much anything in the blues genre will do.
plug in your guitar
press play
randomly play some notes until you find some that don't sound terrible with the song that is playing
next you'll probably notice a pattern of where these notes happen to sound good. it'll probably be something like this.
E Frets 7 9 and 12 14
A Frets 7 9 and 12 14
D Frets 7 9 and 12 14
G Frets 7 9 and 12 14
B Frets 7 10 and 12 15
E Frets 7 10 and 12 15
just to name a few.
depending on the key of the song you'll play on different frets.
just make noise and bend strings and find notes that work in different keys. what you'll basicly be learning is the "minor pentonic" scale but who the fuck cares, you're a guitar player not a math teacher.
trial and error works best, you don't limit yourself that way and you get to experiment.
once you find some of these patterns you like you'll notice that the patterns you learn work in all kinds of rock and blues tunes.
it's a good start when you're burnt out on theory. dig into theory after you have your fun just farting around.

That's basically what I've done this week. Now granted I know the scales and know what key I'm playing in, know the blue notes etc etc but instead of worrying about when to go from A to D then using E as the turnaround chord..I'm just wailing away. I got frustrated during my last week's lesson b/c I'm not quite sure yet when to change chords. I have a Fender G-Dec amp so it's good to play to different types of music, but I'm not grasping when the exact time to go from A - D - then quickly E then back to A. Make sense? My instructor acted like it was so simple.

So I said fuck it this week..I'm rockin' and not thinkin'.

lucylespian

Steal a guitar that knows more songs !!

Boom The Cat

lucylespian wrote:

Steal a guitarist that knows more songs !!

lucylespian

Boom The Cat wrote:

If you're gonna quote me dude, leave it the way you found it.
Edits are the writer's privelege, not yours.
Maybe you need to look up honesty in the dictionary, you seem to have a problem with it.

DOSW

lucylespian wrote:

If you're gonna quote me dude, leave it the way you found it.
Edits are the writer's privelege, not yours.
Maybe you need to look up honesty in the dictionary, you seem to have a problem with it.

Yeah, what a motherfucker.

Boom The Cat

I prefer 'controversal'