This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your…
How to get better at guitar
181–190 of 276 posts
Re: How to get better at guitar
#182This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your…
Are you implying some people don't have taste, or less of it? I like to call it interest. What makes something interesting to some that I'm not sure.
I kinda think it applies to all artistic hobbies. On one hand you learn a practical hands-applying skill, on another hand you learn how to express yourself and/or listen to expression of others in chosen medium. And, well, the more you look at something, the more you see. The more you see, the more you know your own preferences.
What's even more funny, the "detail perception" skill doesn't always sync to your guitar skill. So (for me at least) there are times when I'm thinking I'm the hottest stuff around (because I just mastered something I deemed important), and there are times when I'm down because my detail perception suddenly got better and turns out I would prefer to play with more nuance (but didn't learn how to yet)
Re: How to get better at guitar
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is more of urban legend that may somewhat hold true in tourist-heavy areas.
I’m French, this is definitely not an urban legend, for some unknown reason « wrongly » spoken French sounds especially grating to me and all the other French people I know. We might not say it to your face , but it is extremely hard to ignore. I wonder if it’s the same with other Latin languages, or if it is just some consequence of years of forced standardisation of the French accent.
P.S. My mother tongue is Spanish and it's many accents are anything but standardized.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I picked up Violin as an adult, have done recitals, and I suck. Being able to suck and find joy in something anyway even if you're not top nth percentile is a valuable life skill.
I think it's pretty frustrating if the songs/pieces you actually want to play are demanding or even at the virtuoso level. If you really want to play a David Gilmour guitar solo or sing some Led Zeppelin, it better not suck because it won't hit the mark at all. For me, the reason to pick up the guitar as a kid was to play stuff I liked, stuff that turned out not to be that easy, and every time I play, I feel that gap…
It's also obvious to me that at this point I'm never going to reach the virtuoso level even if I really wanted to, but so what? I suck, but whenever I manage to play something that I couldn't before it brings me joy.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#185This brought to mind a quote from Ira Glass: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your…
I was at a dance hall the other day, and this young lady came floating in. It's hard to describe how she walked - just like she was effortlessly gliding. It looks easy, but anyone else would look like a moose trying it. It's the result of a lifetime of ballet dancing. Probably 10,000 hours, at least. I was just in awe.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#186Re: How to get better at guitar
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is more of urban legend that may somewhat hold true in tourist-heavy areas.
I’m French, this is definitely not an urban legend, for some unknown reason « wrongly » spoken French sounds especially grating to me and all the other French people I know. We might not say it to your face , but it is extremely hard to ignore. I wonder if it’s the same with other Latin languages, or if it is just some consequence of years of forced standardisation of the French accent.
People being annoyed at bad French is stereotypically Parisian to me.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#188> When you hear the first guitar note, stop the song, find the note on the guitar, and write it down How do you do that with chords? I know everyone who isn't completely tone deaf can do that with one single note. But when it comes to chords, unless you already know some music theory, aren't there huge number of combinations you have to try before you find the correct one?
1. Start by transcribing the root note that you hear
2. Go back and see if each chord sounds major or minor - most of the time that will give you a major/minor third
3. Go back and play the 5th, and see if it sounds right - most of the time it'll be there
4. Don't worry about 7ths/9ths yet, they'll come, but give them a go
5. Once you've got a few chords, try and figure out the key, and that will help figure out others
So he was basically suggesting to transcribe by each note's function in a chord, starting with most -> least important. It still needs some music theory of course, but doesn't need you to listen to an entire complex chord at once.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#189Everybody that plays guitar have tried to transcribe a riff or a song. But not all have become great guitar players.
The way to go is to have an objective. Is it playing a difficult song like Cliffs of Dover? Playing blues? Rock? What is it? Focus on that style or song. COPY. Become a copy machine.
One example is doing bends. There are many ways of doing a bend. Most if not all blue players do it by holding the neck of the guitar in a very specific manner, so if you want to play blues, you need to copy them. It must be a perfect copy.
Playing the guitar is mostly a physical activity where motions and understanding of the body, and how this is wired into your nerves and brain matters.
If you just transcribe and play riffs, you won't be able to play in a high BPM, because in order to do that, you need to be extremely efficient with your movements, understand speed picking... and people have studied and developed those techniques for many years -- you don't invent this over, you watch videos, practice and copy it!
By just playing and transcribing you'll develop terrible habits which at some point will limit your playing, and will feel like it will take an eternity to correct. That's when most of the people stop playing.
And of course, play songs that are at your level, so typically lower speed songs with simpler chords and then from there understand what music style you want to focus on.
A guitar teacher can help you with that because they can easily come up with exercises and songs that would match your skill, but if you want, you can do that yourself.
Once you become advanced in guitar, then you'll for sure know it, and then you can experiment to do bends in a different way, or do something that would make you stand out, but at first, it's mostly about copying. Later you can innovate.
TLDR: best way of learning guitar is focusing on copying everything, the motions of a player being the #1.
Re: How to get better at guitar
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a jazz musician, and my kids are both professional classical players. I've asked them why they don't learn to play jazz. My daughter described pretty much what Glass is saying here. She calls it "fear of sucking." She knows what good jazz improvisation sounds like, and trying to make herself do it is pretty discouraging. Not that there's anything wrong with loving and playing classical music, which is a factor to…
I picked up Violin as an adult, have done recitals, and I suck. Being able to suck and find joy in something anyway even if you're not top nth percentile is a valuable life skill.
My sister is in a whole different league than me in terms of singing but she also performs live, which I don't plan to do unless it's a karakoe evening.