Musician's Thread

When I said Hendrix knew theory, I didn't mean he like learned from a book or anything like that. You're right in saying that he learned from a whole lot of playing, but he definitely knew more than "hey it just sounds good." You don't play for that long, with that many virtuoso level musicians to not know at least some reasons why these chords work together.

Regardless of how well you can already improvise, this is still important. Practice practice practice. Granted if your fingers actually start bleeding, you might have a teensy problem and should probably stop playing for a little bit. I play hard with heavy strings, so I have pretty large calluses on my fretting fingers. If I don't play for a few days (which rarely happens) I find myself tearing open the calluses, which then have to be remade. Just a tip, if you ever start to get like loose or dead skin hanging from around your fingertips, DON'T pick at them. I learned this a while ago, I would always get rid of the dead skin but that would just leave my fingers ripe for getting tore up. It sucked until I forced myself to just ignore the shit until it went away from playing.

Another thing somebody once told me that stands true: Whether you're just starting out or are an accomplished musician, you get better by playing with other people, so play with EVERYBODY. And I mean everybody. If somebody mentions they play, invite them over for a bit and jam with them. As an added bonus, you might just find somebody who's really good to play with all the time.

 

Re: Instruments and Music Thread

Exactly. Your voice is an instrument that needs to be learned like any other. I've been singing my own songs for years now, and I can tell you that my range is now a full two octaves higher than it was when I first started. My useful range (the range where I can hit the right pitch 95% of the time) is still pretty limited, but I can now sing a tune better than the average person.

Unless you are tone deaf, you can learn how to sing well. Some people are born with beautiful voices, but even if you aren't you can learn to control your tone and pitch so that your singing will sound half way decent. Even if you listen to singers that are infamous for their unique singing styles (Dylan, Hank Williams, Neil Young), they are still very good at singing in tune and conveying emotion, which is ultimately more way more important than any technical flourishes. Fucking Susan Boyle bores me to death.

Like I said though, it took half a decade of on and off practicing to reach a point where I felt like I was approaching a reasonable level of talent in the vocals department. It'll be years more before I feel like I could call myself a talented vocalist and feel comfortable performing in front of people. It's all about learning to control the sounds of one of the most expressive instruments in existence. Naturally that takes a lot of time.

 

You see, it's threads like these that show just how much this place rocks. I've been playing guitar for about 2 years now. I know all the basic cords and quite a few others, I know some licks that I can play slooowwwwly, and I can play a few songs. Theory is not that hard for me. I definitely understand a good chunk of it, but can any of you tell me exactly what to practice? I have a few technique lessons that I've printed out from the web, and by the way, I completely second justinguitar.com. That guy has improved my playing and understanding considerably in the last few weeks. I have three of his technique lessons that I use, the spider, finger gym, and another one, I also have a couple of other technique lessons that I've printed out. How long should I play these each? I've been trying to figure out a good practice regimen and I'm at a loss as to what to put together. Can anyone offer advice? I'm mainly interested in playing blues.

 

What exactly do you want to learn? "Blues" is a HUGE range of things, and if you specify it will be easier for myself or somebody else here will be able to help you.

As for the "how many times" to learn a lick/technique/that sort of thing, there isn't a set number of how many times you should play something. There is, however, a handy thing called a metronome. Fire that puppy up (there's thousands online), start really slow (I'm not sure of your technical level, right now, but whatever you start on you should have absolutely no trouble playing in time), and build your way up. You should be able to play whatever it is flawlessly at a speed before you move up. Start in 10 bpm increments, if that's too much then go down to five. Remember, this is all for you. You aren't helping anyone if you cheat and only hurting yourself.

As a barometer, I'm pretty quick on the frets and if I'm playing something like 16th note scales up and down the board I'll start around 50 bpm to warm up and max out around 140. It's tough, you'll get frustrated when you can't sweep/ legato/ whatever very well and you won't see much progress right away at all, but keep at it, it'll be worth it.

 

The reason I tore my fingers till they bled is my personal style of playing. I use .10's on my electrics and .12's on my acoustics, which are considered medium strings. I spend a lot of my time running my fingers up and down the strings creating noise that really isn't required and to this day I can't tell you why I do it. It's just the way I play naturally and it will tear your fingers up. I've now got 39 years worth of calluses on my fingers and it's pretty hard to hurt them anymore, but I did actually make my fingers bleed when I was younger. And then I couldn't play for a week or two, but after a year or seven of that, my calluses won't go away. They're like finger Herpes.

E. Tuffmen: If you've committed that stuff to your brain, use it and just play. It sometimes takes me an hour or so to get into playing, but once I start getting into it I'm gone for hours lost in my own world. Just play. Forget the lessons. Forget the world. Forget trying to play that riff you heard on the radio. Just play for the sake of playing to make yourself happy. You'll be surprised at what you can do.

I only sat down with a teacher once I was pretty advanced at playing and the only reason I did so was because I was stuck and wasn't getting any better. I needed someone else to show me a different direction to go and open my mind. All that stuff may or may not be good when you're starting to play, but it can only take you so far. What should you practice? Fuck practice. Play. Enjoy it. Don't parrot others, learn from them and create your own style. There are plenty of people out there that can play "Eruption" note for note, but where does that get them? They're not expressing themselves, they're doing nothing more then my bird does when he imitates me.

It may just be me, but I would find that really boring and limiting.

 

Re: Instruments and Music Thread

Actually, Hendrix did know theory. The saying goes that he didn't know how to read music, which is true. But he absolutely knew theory. Maybe he wouldn't be able to tell you why he played X chord, other than that it sounded good. But he would know what the chord was called and he would know why it sounded good. That is the point of learning theory, so you can forget about it and just play what you know will sound good.

You don't have to look any further than his fucking music to see that he knew guitar theory quite a bit. Every solo he has ever played is rooted in a pentatonic scale or a blues scale. Maybe he didn't sit down with a book, but I guarantee you someone along the way showed him that stuff and told him, this is a scale. That, my friend, is a lesson.

Anyway, the question is irrelevant, because Hendrix is Hendrix. All of you are...All of you. None of you have anywhere near the natural gift that Hendrix had. If you don't learn theory, you will never be a great guitarist.

You seem like one of these, "Man...you just gotta feel the music" kind of guys. That sort of idealism won't get you anywhere. Yes, of course, feeling the music is fucking crucial. But that is one small piece of the puzzle. A mechanical fucking robot that is well versed in theory is always going to sound better than an average guy that doesn't know a lick of theory but really digs the shit maaannn.

 

So I type this under the assumption that no one here is going to be the next Wes Montgomery or Steve Vai, and pretty much everyone asking questions wants to learn so they can have fun and jam in front of people, play some songs at parties and maybe get a little band going. Here are some basic pointers:

Practice TECHNIQUE. 30 minutes a day will do fine. The spider, finger gym, scales - with a metronome. Start SLOW. The emphasis is finger placement, alternate picking, and keeping in time. SPEED will come naturally over time, so if you're looking to play like pertucci, pay more attention to this. Remember, PLAY the note, do not PLAY THROUGH the note.

Play WHAT YOU WANT. Toytoy is right. Did you pick up the guitar because you wanted to understand scale construction, or sit around and and practice the Major scale for hours? I'm guessing not. Play the songs you like. Play along with the record. Contrary to what some think, you will learn immensely from this. Eddie Van Halen learned to play from jamming along to Cream albums in his bedroom. Again, start slow. Don't start off trying to play "Castles Made of Sand", you'll be dissapointed. Learn the chords first, play along, and gradually add in those hammer-ons and pull-offs (a lot of Hendrix's style was based on playing within the chord). For you Dylan fans, check out "Blood on the Tracks". The whole record is in an alternate tuning, and it's a lot of fun to play.

SCALES. If you're going to put the time into learning scales, do this - learn the minor pentatonic, all positions. Set a timeline - Week 1, master the first position, Week 2, 2nd position. Your goal will be at the end of five weeks, you'll be able to play the Am pentatonic up and down the neck. For those of you that want to play blues or rock, this is where it's at. You will be very surprised at how many songs use this very simple scale for leads (Slash, Zakk Wylde live by it). Once you get this down, learn the Major pentatonic (wait, same fingerings? AWESOME!). Pay attention to why the scale is called the pentatonic... the major scale has 7 tones, right? The pentatonic uses 5 - 1,3,4,5 and 7. This is the theory you should pay attention to.

LESSONS. Here is where most people disagree. If you're really, really serious about being the next Steve Vai, go get lessons. If you have money you want to burn, go get lessons. Here's the deal - the amount of information available on the internet for free is unbelievable. If this were around when I was learning to play, I wouldn't have needed to take lessons starting out. Use that info and play play play, and if you start to feel like you want to get serious or get stuck, go take a few lessons.

If you need to know what to practice, follow this:

30 Minutes of Scale, technique (Spider, finger gym), or the like with a metronome. After that, let er' rip. If you have a song you want to learn, crank it and have fun. If you want to get bluesy, play with the pentatonic or jam on a simple 12-bar song to get the feel for rhythm. Just have fun, cause if you don't, you're going to put it down, I promise.

 

Re: Instruments and Music Thread

This whole debate over theory is tired. Sure, he knew the blues scales and which chords went together. But knowing chords and pentatonic scales is just the tip of the theory iceberg... and he never went much farther than that. Don't get me wrong, he isn't just some beer hall strummer - but his playing was heart and ear. What I meant was he didn't learn that from a book, he learned it from playing - trial and error. Same with Clapton. And the Beatles.

A certain amount of theory is necessary. Too much can ruin it for people who aren't Andrew Lloyd Webber.

 

When it come to learning guitar, this site has helped me out substantially:

<a class="postlink" href="http://betweenthelicks.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://betweenthelicks.com/</a>

It has a little bit of everything, but I think the most helpful part are the instructional videos. The guy might seem like a dweeb, but he really knows his shit.

 

I should probably get yelled at for this, as I don't particularly like Jazz or know terribly much about it. But it was once explained to me that Jazz is as much about the notes you don't play as the ones you do, and the time you take to play/not play them. Or, in other words, spacing and intervals.

Personally I think Jazz sounds like someone with Parkinsons getting fingerfucked on a piano keyboard, but we've all got our own tastes.

 

Been playing guitar for a little over 3 years now. I'm mainly into metal and heavier rock.

My setup is an Ltd-JD 600 with an Engl screamer and some various effects here and there. I've recently been looking at getting sweeping cleaner, anyone have tips?

 

Hello everyone, I don't really post on here much, but this topic caught my eye so I thought I'd add my thoughts.

Over the past few months I've dove head first into learning guitar. Up until December I had no idea what an interval was or how chords were made... or anything regarding theory. I still only know the tip of the iceberg but it all has made music much more enjoyable for me to listen to.

As for people asking questions regarding how to get better, I know I'm not an expert or anything, but if you really want to make a certain technique better practice it. A lot. And always with a metronome. There's nothing that anyone can really tell you over the internet that you probably haven't already read if you're serious about getting better. For example, sweep picking requires you to make sure you mute each note quickly after it is played and a smooth sweeping motion with the pick. Some people use their whole arm to sweep while others use more wrist and adjust pick-angle with their fingers. But, really, hours and hours of practice are required for you to get the feel for how you think it feels right.

Toytoy said it was important to have fun with it, which is definitely a huge deal, but "just playing" will only get you so far. For most people "so far" is fine because guitar is just something for them to pick up and play around with in front of people. Anyone who seriously wants to become proficient in order to be able to express everything they want to play requires countless hours of practice. An instrument is like any other art form where most people start by emulating their heroes and then gradually create their own style through an accumulation of skills taken from others while tweaking them to suit yourself. Once these different heroes styles are as close to replication as possible without thought then they go, "Hey, it sounds pretty good if I add this or change this."

 

Hey, I've been playing guitar for about 5 years now, and think I'm pretty decent (ie: have studied it in college, teach, and have been gigging regularly to pay the bills for the last year). Not great creds, but enough to help out people who are starting off, I guess.

First off, and this should be getting mentioned a lot more: train your ear. The most important tool you have as a musician is your ear, and the biggest connection you have to strengthen is that between your "inner ear" and your instrument, so that, ideally, if you can think it, you can play it. Make sure your training regimen includes some ear training (even if it's just 10 minutes).

As a result of this, learning your theory is pretty damn important too. Look, we can debate whether learning theory turns you into a soulless robot or you should "just play what's in your heart, dude" until the cows come home, but knowing music theory is going to let you understand what you're hearing a *lot* more easily, and understanding what you're hearing on an intellectual level is the first step to feeling it on an intuitive level. Conscious competence versus unconscious competence and whatnot.

Jazz is an interesting beast, and I'm by no means an expert on it. It is not my genre of preference, but I can hack it well enough that the average person will think I'm competent. That said, if you're looking to learn "jazz" (which is a ludicrous statement, because jazz is just such an immense genre. Compare, for instance, Louie Armstrong and "Snarky Puppy"), transcriptions and sitting down and analyzing tunes are a nearly ubiquitous rite of passage, i any genre of music, but particularly so in jazz. For guitar, start easy; don't be transcribing Pat Metheny, or Coltrane, or Joe Pass. I know they sound cool, but try some guys like Grant Green, or some Jim Hall.

Even if you don't want to write out the solo (because you play guitar, and let's face it, notation is scary), figure out what is being played where (ie: what chords are being played under a certain lick) and try to use your understanding of theory to figure out what's going on.

Beyond that, if you want to learn jazz, it's about your 3rds and 7ths, and finding ways to connect them. Even Kurt Rosenwinkle does it; you're not too good for it.

I've wasted enough pixels at this point, but I hope some of this helps.
And seriously, train your ear.

 

I'm assuming you've gotten basic sweeping down (the idea of it) or else you'd be asking how to sweep pick. First off, watch this:



Alright, I don't want to hear no "no heart blah blah blah" because that's not what this is about. First off, notice how incredibly relaxed he is the entire time he's doing these very fast arpeggios. No tension anywhere, he's very lightly touching the strings, it just doesn't look like he's exerting himself at all. That's pretty much the key to sweeping. Other than that, there isn't any magical ingredient that will instantly make you a better sweeper.

If you want to get better/faster/cleaner/anything with technical things like this, you need a metronome. Start VERY slow with some basic arpeggios, and work your way up. This will not come overnight. It will not come over month. It will come with consistent practice. I used to be more geared and amazed at that technical stuff than I am now, and I spent forever practicing sweeping, and I'm still nowhere close to that speed. Granted, it doesn't help that I stopped really working on it and switched to .12's, but I can still play fast if need be.

Not...quite. Just because somebody learns Little Wing et al and is suddenly enthralled with Hendrix doesn't mean they lose all sense of style and just shit out mindless riffs. Sit back and relax there cowboy, you said it yourself, you just started a few months ago and have much to learn. Ask questions.

 

Alright, why is this thread dying? There's way more guys who play instruments on here than there are girls with boobies, and yet it seems that even the boobie thread has more life in it.

 

I don't really have anything to add - I'm your typical college student who's been playing guitar casually since high school. But since the thread's going slowly, here's a picture of my baby. Her name is Laura, she's a Brian Moore.

 

Had a long conversation over the weekend about starting to play the guitar. I played the viola for 10 years, so I have experience reading music and a (rusty) musically trained ear. Does anyone have experience going from a string instrument to guitar? What was the toughest technique to learn?

 

Wellll if we're gonna post pics here's my guitar (Not my pic but it's the same). Absolute beauty, love it.

 

I was a brass player in High School, and played a bit through college, but really let it slide once I started working for a living. It's a damned shame, and I think I would enjoy learning to play the piano and the guitar. Reading music and learning theory was never a problem, but getting my two hands to do different things at the same time seems to be impossible. I can muddle through Rockband, but if you put a real guitar in my hands, even after learning a few chords, I can't strum a different rhythm while moving up and down the frets. Put me in front of a drum set? Complete disaster. Eighth notes with the left hand on the piano? Not gonna happen.

It's frustrating, and I am 50% certain it's just a matter of practice. But even after all this time, the only dexterity I have with an instrument feels like it is limited to my first three fingers on my right hand from learning valve positions.

I think if I get to the point where I am willing to make time for it in my life, I'm going to pull my Dad's old hippy guitar out of the closet and pay up for some lessons. Until then, I don't have much more to say than more power to you guys.