Thinking of Taking up Guitar - Any tips ?

[Gwylan]

Quite a lot of music is written as 4 beats in a bar (the 1,2,3,4). To differentiate between whole beats and half beats it's common to use "and". If we take the proclaimers:

1...2........3.........4.......1.........2 .....3 .......4.....1....2........3.......4........1...........2.....3.......4....&...1.....2.....3.....4
I would walk five | hun - dred miles and | I would walk five |hund - red more just to |be the man to |

Most of it is just (1,2,3,4 - crotchet beats), but in the fourth bar "just to" is two half beats (quavers), so this could be called as "four and".

A 1,2,3% 4 would be Tum Tum Te Te Tum.

Just to complicate matters you can also specify "swung" quavers.

This makes the same phrase Tum Tum Tuuum te Tum.

Finally, you can try to spot the beats in songs to get a better understanding:
The first and third beats are the strong beats, the second and fourth the weak. So:
I would walk five hun dred miles and i would walk five hun dred more just to be the man to
Usually in songwriting you try to make sure the importand words are on the strong bea

Hope that helps...

Thank you, I think learning Russian was easier. I was crap at that too.
Being left handed didn't help. I tried torturing the violin but it beat me in the end.

 

[icowden]

Thank you, I think learning Russian was easier. I was crap at that too.
Being left handed didn't help. I tried torturing the violin but it beat me in the end.

Just remember learning an instrument takes time and practice. It's like climbing a mountain at first.
You need to get to the plateau half way up where you realise you are enjoying yourself and not having to think as much.
From there it gets better.

It *is* also harder the older you are because your brain isn't as good at building new connections. I was lucky and started playing the piano when I was 5.
I reckon my click point was about 11 years old. Suddenly I could look at music and just play it (especially if I knew how it went). These days I can just sit at a piano and play whatever I want based on whatever I have heard. That's what 43 years of playing does for you :-)

 

[winjim]

Just remember learning an instrument takes time and practice. It's like climbing a mountain at first.
You need to get to the plateau half way up where you realise you are enjoying yourself and not having to think as much.
From there it gets better.

It *is* also harder the older you are because your brain isn't as good at building new connections. I was lucky and started playing the piano when I was 5.
I reckon my click point was about 11 years old. Suddenly I could look at music and just play it (especially if I knew how it went). These days I can just sit at a piano and play whatever I want based on whatever I have heard. That's what 43 years of playing does for you :-)

In another vague attempt to get the kids interested in playing music I've bought a cheap electronic keyboard in the hope that they might just bash it on the way past and make a noise. So now that I've improved my twenty year old guitar skills to a sort of intermediate level I need to work on my thirty year old piano technique.

I haven't dared get the trumpet out of the loft yet. So many instruments, such little ability...

 

[Cycleops]

I think you're just good at music or not. I'm not a natural I really have to work at it but I can make a decent go of it and it gives me so much pleasure.
When you're playing so much is going on in your brain and it's believed it can stave off dementia.
Don't give up, there are just so many benefits plus one day you might actually get to be proficient.

 

[Drago]

Unfortunately (very fortunately for me) I naturally have excellent timing so ever gave it any thought, so can't really advise. Never even used a metronome.

I'm a natural at playing, but reading music makes me sweat. Being a little bit dyslexic tab just swims before my eyes. Now I'm back into it and practicing daily on multiple instruments Im Getting pretty good at mimicking stuff by ear now. Tech ically not the ideal way to play, but at my age a handy shortcut if you cann do it,

 

[winjim]

I think there's a lot wrong with the 'classical' way we teach music, I never really connected with any of the pieces I was learning for the ABRSM exams as it wasn't what I was listening to as a kid, but I am grateful I had the chance to learn a fair amount of music theory. I'm really very rusty on the intricacies but I can read music, I know time signatures, how scales and chords are constructed, the basics of how music is put together. I think it's helped my appreciation of music when I listen, and now I'm back to playing instruments it's coming back and helping it all flow.

It's different for different instruments though. I'd struggle to sight read on guitar but I can follow a chord progression, it's the other way round on piano.

 

[icowden]

I'm a natural at playing, but reading music makes me sweat. Being a little bit dyslexic tab just swims before my eyes. Now I'm back into it and practicing daily on multiple instruments Im Getting pretty good at mimicking stuff by ear now. Tech ically not the ideal way to play, but at my age a handy shortcut if you cann do it,

Actually, technically it's fine. We tend to be a bit stuck in the past. A lot of instrument learning is still based on Victorian learning techniques where you couldn't just pop on the latest song you wanted to play. In all likelihood you wouldn't have heard of the piece or if you had heard it, it would be once.

These days we are blessed with being able to listen to music whenever we want and as much as we want, so playing by ear is a perfectly good way of doing things. Of course dots can help, but the two can work together. Personally, if you give me the music for a piece I have never heard, I can read it and play it (unless its Rachmaninov or something), but it won't sound "right" until I have heard it. Hearing the music just informs my brain as to how the music should sound.

Written music is guidelines not instructions.

 

[icowden]

I think there's a lot wrong with the 'classical' way we teach music, I never really connected with any of the pieces I was learning for the ABRSM exams as it wasn't what I was listening to as a kid, but I am grateful I had the chance to learn a fair amount of music theory.

Same here. Thankfully the world has moved on and we now have Trinity and Rock School as well as Jazz piano syllabuses. So if you are one of those people who would like to stick Bach's 5th Prelude and Fugue in his sun-free zone, you can actually enjoy what you are playing instead. It makes it so much easier to teach kids.

 

[DRM]

The bit your teacher said about 1 2 3 & 4 is 1 to 3 are down strums the & is an up strum put in between 3 to 4

 

[icowden]

Thank you, I think learning Russian was easier. I was crap at that too.
Being left handed didn't help. I tried torturing the violin but it beat me in the end.

Here's a quick video representation.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/62yzfrhmZSBU69C8A

 

[MontyVeda]

Thank you, I think learning Russian was easier. I was crap at that too.
Being left handed didn't help. I tried torturing the violin but it beat me in the end.

do you play the guitar left handed or right handed?

 

[Drago]

Actually, technically it's fine. We tend to be a bit stuck in the past. A lot of instrument learning is still based on Victorian learning techniques where you couldn't just pop on the latest song you wanted to play. In all likelihood you wouldn't have heard of the piece or if you had heard it, it would be once.

These days we are blessed with being able to listen to music whenever we want and as much as we want, so playing by ear is a perfectly good way of doing things. Of course dots can help, but the two can work together. Personally, if you give me the music for a piece I have never heard, I can read it and play it (unless its Rachmaninov or something), but it won't sound "right" until I have heard it. Hearing the music just informs my brain as to how the music should sound.

Written music is guidelines not instructions.

It's fine...up to a point.

I've been turned down for session work and short-notice backfilling because I can't read music sufficienty well. I can read it haltingly, but when the ad goes up on the MU members website for a cover musician for three nights starting tomorrow I'm not going to know the choons in time and I'm not fluent enough to just play from the page.

Both the guitarists in our band read fluently, and only being a halting reader myself does make rehearsals awkward offtimes. Even Mark Knopfler fell foul of it when invited to guest on a Steely Dan album - they're were all fluent sight readers and he can't read at all, and it caused problems and tensions when theyndiscovered he cant do so himself.

Whether anyone likes it or not, or agrees with it, being able to read music to a good level is still the gold standard. I'm a decent by-ear player across bass, guitar, mandolin, bouzouki and balalaika (and violin too, but not owning one I don't get any practice), but even the best of us at that sort of thing - and I am pretty damn good - find it only takes us so far.

I would benefit from far more music reading practice, but as it is I lose 2 hours a day practicing multiple instruments and don't really want to be losing even more time to that. I'm 55 and accepted it as a shortcoming I'm happy to live with. There are plenty who dqn sight read well that can't play as well as me.

 

[icowden]

I would benefit from far more music reading practice, but as it is I lose 2 hours a day practicing multiple instruments and don't really want to be losing even more time to that. I'm 55 and accepted it as a shortcoming I'm happy to live with. There are plenty who dqn sight read well that can't play as well as me.

Fair point. I am a pretty good sight reader, mostly due to a combination of being really good at decoding and spotting patterns and also abject laziness on my part. I was terrible at actually doing practice, but really good at blagging that I had done practice....!

 

[winjim]

I have to admit the fancy display on the new keyboard is helping with revision. Tells you exactly what note you're playing. And even though it was a very cheap charity shop find and a low end model anyway it does a passable impression of a piano. Touch sensitivity and 32 note polyphony.

 

[Threevok]

I have to admit the fancy display on the new keyboard is helping with revision. Tells you exactly what note you're playing. And even though it was a very cheap charity shop find and a low end model anyway it does a passable impression of a piano. Touch sensitivity and 32 note polyphony.

View attachment 690293

Yamahas are good in that sense. I've owned a few models over the years, and the "trickle down" from higher-end models seems to be very quick