I want to stop screwing around and actually learn to play the guitar

I keep my acoustic in the living room just hoping it'll force me to pick it up more but man it's hard sometimes especially when I don't feel like everything is ever improving.

The "pretend to read" think is pretty spot on - when I was playing a lot I never felt like I was doing anything other than that, like an actor "speaking" a foreign language in a movie by learning a phrase phonetically. I want to know why certain things sound good together, how to play in a particular key, what notes you can and can't play at certain times and so on. I want to know a little bit of theory, but I don't care about being able to site read or anything.

Playing with other people seems like it would be really helpful but it's hard for me to pull off - I know actually hardcore PhD music professors (oboe, cello, composition, etc) but no good guitar players. The cellist actually played bass in a crappy band we had a couple years ago (I faked the drums) and she was crazy - her pop music knowledge was slim but you could play her a song one time and she'd just play it back to you verbatim. She says that since she was a kid she's just "seen" music when she hears it and instantly knows everything about it. It's kind of amazing.

"I want to know why certain things sound good together, how to play in a particular key, what notes you can and can't play at certain times and so on."

I have basically zero knowledge of music theory, but from this tabula rasa POV, you can figure out that what sounds "good" is a pattern, and so long as the notes follow a discernible pattern, they will sound "good"
For example, the basic "Louie Louie" chords sound "good" because there's both an ascending and descending pattern of notes that occur simultaneously, and they happen to occur in such a way that they harmonize, so it's a music equivalent of a pun.

"Louie Louie" is GGG CC DDD CC (repeat). Basically a 1-4-5 chord progression that then goes back on itself to get to the beginning again.

What I started off doing was learning the I-IV-V chords for several different keys (C, G, D, A, and E), and then gradually over time I (terrible phrase coming up) extended my dominion over the fretboard, by learning the chords in between.

Oh, and gradually patterns, particularly movable chord shapes, will begin to emerge. So instead of thinking "index finger on 1st fret of 1st and 2nd strings, ring finger on 2nd fret of 3rd string, little finger on 3rd fret of 4th string" you'll automatically think "that's F Major", then pretty soon you'll starting thinking things like "if I move that F Major up one fret, that's F#".

This might also help, as it can be printed out on a single sheet of paper instead of spread over dozens of page of a chord book.
http://www.castaliapub.com/guitar-keys.html

"Louie Louie" is GGG CC DDD CC
If you take the notes the chords are named after, that forms the ascending part of the pattern, but if you look at the other notes in the same chords,
there's also a descending DDD CC GGG CC. You can play those notes on a bass while someone plays guitar and they will sound "good" together.
These are also the opening chords for Sesame Street and Beat on the Brat I think, so it's extra good times?

I don't know when I started recognizing what specific notes I was playing and all that. Never had a lesson, but just knowing, like, this string is E, and if I put my finger here to tune it, that's A, and so on, I just gradually figured it out.

I'm considering paying for lessons lessons for the first time in my life* because I wanna get real about chicken pickin', and I do not know a single person who does that (i.e. the find a friend to play with technique is somewhat out--plus I moved away from my friends I play with). That and I need to learn to play lead shit over chord changes, I have never, never done that.

*(But LATER in life, when job+money happens)

Another interesting song to unravel is Link Wray's "Rumble", especially the little descending twelve solo which is (fanfare) the pentatonic scale in E.

Yeah IIRC you just start at G on the high E and do pulloffs straight down the scale until you hit bottom.

Not sure if this will format correctly but here goes...

-3-0---------------------
-----3-0-----------------
---------2-0-------------
-------------2-0---------
-----------------2-0-----
---------------------3-0-

Under the same principle as the ascending/descending patterns in louie louie, I bet you could reverse the direction of that solo so that it is ascending and it would sound OK.
(You'd have to start on a different note though.)
It seems to me that solo'ing is just a matter of getting from note a to note b, and there's a lot of wiggle room for you to do it -- as long as you hit those 'key frame' notes, the listener's brain will accept that it's conforming to some kind of pattern, even if it's a jumbled mess in between.
Take the one-note solo for "I Want to Be Sedated"
I bet you could improvise a credible solo variation using almost random notes so long as you returned to that one note periodically.
(Obviously, the more you can make it conform to a credible pattern, the "better" it will sound)

if you can't find other people, what i enjoy and think helps is having a multi track recorder (they are ridic cheap nowadays) that you can strum a chord progression onto and then play notes over top of that on another track trying to come up with what you might be hearing your head

in your head

lol Rumble is one of the songs I'm always playing on my guitar. I probably just need to learn some different songs, I'm always playing the same ones which is probably why I'm so slow to improve.

Hey, do both!

joygoat- totally with you there, i've started to stop screwing around and actually learn as well!

many of these tips focus on the work the left hand is doing. what fascinates me is the work the right hand is doing in terms of strumming technique, e.g., is the pattern all downstrums; how many strings are being struck on each pass (power-chords, for instance, only allow you to strum three strings, and sometimes you can't start on the low E, which sounds very hard!); the notion of palming or muting the strings; when do you alternate between full strums and picking individual notes; performing those precussive-knocks on the body of the guitar that's done in many latin-styles.

Sometimes I make the same vow as in the thread title. But sometimes I've worked at playing something from tab or whatever, and eventually I've got so I'm, you know, pretty sloppy but at least hitting most of the right notes. And I've felt proud, and I've moved on to a different song or just had a day off, and 2 days later I can't seem to play the first one at all. Muscle memory completely gone already.

Is this a normal stage which can be overcome, or is it a sign that guitars/music are not for me?

(I also totally can't recall how to play a song or even what it sounds like if a different song is in my head, so that's a big sign that playing live is always going to be out of the question, I think, but maybe someone else here can go "I used to be like that and now I am rocking stadia nightly")

My current guitar-improvement strategy is to learn Slayer songs from online tabs. I can't seem to get my head round solos from tabs though, not that I could play Slayer solos anyway.

play w/ a drummmmmer. or someone singing or anything, I just know a drummer. I keep my guitar by the computer and pick it up when I get bored/internet crashes. also benefit from paying close attention to good guitar playing, youtube to infinity. I think focusing on little things and messing around w/ & enjoying things I've already learned, esp changing the rhythm, are key for me. playing everything extremely slowly&excellently.

learn the pentatonic scale. practice it over and over and over and over until your fingers move smoothly and you can do it without looking at the fret board. speed up and try alternating the note order. listen to your favourite song, find the root key, and jam along

Is this a normal stage which can be overcome

Yes, it's a normal phase that nearly everyone who plays an instrument has to go through. For me, the key was practising the instrument (keyboard) every day. Also the skill of remembering which notes/chords to play is transferable between instruments. When I started being more serious about playing guitar, I found that the practice I'd put in memorising songs on keyboards meant that I found learning guitar chord progressions straightforward.

find the root key, and jam along

I guess to me this is where "learning to play the guitar" has actually already happened. Like if a song is just D, G, and C, what key is it in? will any note that's part of these chords or part of the D, G, and C major scales sound "good" if played at any particular point while these three chords are being played by another guitar?

Working out the key a song is in is usually a matter of looking at the chords and figuring out which key fits best. A song that uses just D, G, and C is probably going to be G Major, because those three chords are the Dominant (V), Sub-dominant (IV), and Tonic (I) chords of that key. Improvising a solo on top of those chords means playing notes that are in that key, which for G Major are G, A, B , C, D, E, and F#.

^^^ whoops my grammar is a bit off there.
Also these things are not really strict rules, although they can get you in the ballpark. You can throw in notes that are not in that key. It's a matter of taste and personal preference.

im going to be mr broken record here and say again - get lessons. i know its cooler to teach yerself, but thats what i did, and you know what? i regret not taking lessons at some point, a lot.

fwiw, learning music theory will likely be very helpful for figuring out which notes not in the key you can throw in where without being unnecessarily jarring, or conversely to be purposefully jarring

(xxxpost) arghhh made a mistake!
In G Major, D is the Dominant (V), G is the Tonic (I), and C is the Sub-dominant (IV).

(xpost) I agree with the need for lessons. It's a lot less frustrating to be able to ask a guitar tutor "hey what about this?" and get an answer in a couple of minutes, rather than search on the internet for hours and still not find out. Also having someone who'll give you an objective opinion of your playing is good - your own opinion will vary widely between "I'm great" and "I suck" to be any use.

i will seek lessons... AND SCOTCH.

"I've moved on to a different song or just had a day off, and 2 days later I can't seem to play the first one at all. Muscle memory completely gone already."
How different are these songs? I think there's a certain frame of mind where you notice you're doing the same thing in one song as in another song that really helps you remember how to do that part, and I think it's largely unconscious, so if you're very attentively following a tab, it might not stick?

http://www.halfjapanese.co.uk/how-to-play-guitar.php

but tabs are only good for strumming the basic melody of a rock song, right? they're almost never giving you the individual notes played by the guitarist, or the solo patterns, and so forth . . .

http://www.beefheart.com/datharp/10com.htm

no that is wrong, tabs show finger placement in respect to string and fret instead of musical notation.

I've got a really really shit Yamaha acoustic guitar which is nigh-on impossible to play, which I keep around all the time. It's great. I can barely hold a chord on it and now if I pick up a half-decent guitar I'm always amazed at how fluidly I can play.

Like if a song is just D, G, and C, what key is it in? will any note that's part of these chords or part of the D, G, and C major scales sound "good" if played at any particular point while these three chords are being played by another guitar?

As explained above, this particular example is easy as these three chords all fit into the key of G major. To answer a little more broadly, the way to figure this stuff out is to first learn what notes are in all of the major scales. I can explain that in detail if anyone is interested but it's pretty easy to find lessons on how it works.

Then to figure out which chords correspond to that major scale, you need to harmonize the scale; i.e., stack the notes of the scale on top of each other in thirds. The result is the same for every major scale, and it looks like this: I ii iii IV V vi viidim. So I IV and V are major, ii iii and vi are minor, and vi is diminished. Now you know all of the triads (three-note chords) that can be built using *only* the notes of a given key. These are the chords that are used most often in simple pieces of music.

So for instance, the A major scale goes A B C# D E F# G#. Applying the formula to that scale we get A Bm C#m D E F#m G#dim. Those are all the triads we can make in the key of A major that don't require borrowing any outside notes, aka accidentals. So if a chord progression goes e.g. A F#m Bm E, we could analyze that as a I vi ii V in the key of A.

In terms of playing a solo or writing a melody to fit those chords, the simplest thing to do is just think "I'm in A major" and use those notes in whatever way sounds good. But again to look at it a little more broadly, with any type of chord and melody note, there are two possibilities: the melody is a chord tone, meaning it's one of the notes that's also being played in the chord, or it's a non-chord tone. Chord tones will always be safe to use, generally sound solid and "inside," and can be held out. Non-chord tones are necessary to provide a sense of movement or tension, but generally have to resolve to chord tones.

So for instance, if I'm improvising over the above chord progression, and the current chord is A, C# is a chord tone, so I could hold that note over the chord. D, though, is not a chord tone, despite being a part of the scale. So if I'm playing a D over the A chord, it's not going to sound wrong, but if I hold that D out over the whole chord, as opposed to e.g. moving down to C# or up to E (both of which are in the A chord), it's going to sound dissonant and maybe wrong.

So it's all well and good to just take a scale and play it kind of randomly when you're starting out with improvising. But if you listen to a guitar solo by somebody like David Gilmour, the notes are chosen carefully to go with the chords -- he's moving through non-chord tones, but he lands on the chord tones on certain strong beats, providing resolution and dramatic effect. The solo in "Mother" is a great example of this.

no that is wrong, tabs show finger placement in respect to string and fret instead of musical notation.

yeah, i actually knew that. i meant more along the lines of the tabs you see on websites diagraming rock songs, which seem to me -- like the chords above the lyrics -- more about the basic sound of the song, not the intricate notes being played by the guitarist

The result is the same for every major scale, and it looks like this: I ii iii IV V vi viidim. So I IV and V are major, ii iii and vi are minor, and vi is diminished.

Whoops, I meant vii is diminished. And if it wasn't clear I'm using roman numerals to correspond to each note in the scale, and major/minor scales have 7 notes.

Daniel: You're right, a lot of tabs are just the chords, but there are also some that do give you "the intricate notes being played by the guitarist."

yeah, i actually knew that. i meant more along the lines of the tabs you see on websites diagraming rock songs, which seem to me -- like the chords above the lyrics -- more about the basic sound of the song, not the intricate notes being played by the guitarist

Technically those aren't tabs, just chord charts, although they're sometimes colloquially referred to by the same name. Guitar tablature is when you have six lines with numbers on them corresponding to the frets. It's just more economical to write out the chord symbols above the lyrics if you can assume your reader knows how to execute the chords or you provide chord fingerings at the bottom or something.

rt. i'm fascinated by what you say above, but i'm having trouble grasping this part of it:

Then to figure out which chords correspond to that major scale, you need to harmonize the scale; i.e., stack the notes of the scale on top of each other in thirds. The result is the same for every major scale, and it looks like this: I ii iii IV V vi viidim. So I IV and V are major, ii iii and vi are minor, and vi is diminished. Now you know all of the triads (three-note chords) that can be built using *only* the notes of a given key. These are the chords that are used most often in simple pieces of music.

So for instance, the A major scale goes A B C# D E F# G#. Applying the formula to that scale we get A Bm C#m D E F#m G#dim. Those are all the triads we can make in the key of A major that don't require borrowing any outside notes, aka accidentals. So if a chord progression goes e.g. A F#m Bm E, we could analyze that as a I vi ii V in the key of A.

i feel like it represents the key to unlocking the door i want to unlock, but i can't quite figure out how to use the key.

This is all new to me (I'm music theory illiterate), but I think he's saying:
A major = A B C# D E F# G#

first chord is
A = A C# D (i.e. every other note for three notes)

2nd is
Bm = B D F# (every other note for three notes)

etc...

er A = A C# E i mean

Do you know about triads and major/minor keys/scales? That is the piece of knowledge that will help explain that bit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_and_minor

xp: Philip is correct in what is being explained here. The next step is learning a notation convention, where Roman numerals are used to represent the 7 notes in a major scale; the uppercase ones represent a major triad and the lowercase ones represent a minor triad. The triad built off the 7th tone in the scale is special; that is a diminished triad because the interval between the first and second notes is a minor third and the interval between the second and third notes is a minor third. (Note that in major triads, the interval between the first and second notes is a major third and the interval between the second and third notes is a minor third. In minor triads, the interval between the first and second note is a minor third and between the second and third notes is a major third. The interval between the first and third notes for both major and minor triads is a perfect fifth; in diminished triads, that interval is a diminished fifth.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interval_%28music%29

this should also help

Yeah, it can be tough to explain this stuff in enough detail to be clear but without droning on forever. I left out the explanation of why certain chords are major and others are minor or diminished, but you don't really have to know that in order to understand which chords fit into a certain key.

But like Philip is saying, you build triads by starting on any note in a scale, going up two notes in the scale (we call this interval a third) and adding that note, then going up two more notes (another third) and adding that one as well. If you do this with each note in the major scale you end up with seven different triads. We can then look at the thirds in each triad and decide whether the triad is major, minor, augmented, or diminished by looking at which thirds are major (four half-steps apart) and which are minor (three half-steps apart).

But for every major scale it works out the same way. So to give another example the Eb major scale goes Eb F G Ab Bb C D, and so the chords go Eb Fm Gm Ab Bb Cm Ddim.

If we continue adding thirds we can build chords with four notes in them, which gives us 7th chords. That would look like this: IM7 iim7 iiim7 IVM7 V7 vim7 viim7b5. So I and IV are major 7th chords, ii iii and vi are minor 7th chords, V is a dominant seventh chord, and vii is a half-diminished or minor-7-flat-5 chord. Again, this is what happens when you use only the notes that existed in the original major scale. Additional chords can be generated by borrowing notes from other keys or by utilizing the minor scales.

oh man, this is why i'm music theory illiterate!
(I think you can get by just thinking of music as variable patterns -- things will sound OK so long as you've got patterns that harmonize on occasion)

i know much of that already. this may be a very stupid question (i'm a bit distracted ATM), but why is the second note you mention Bm, instead of B (as B is roman ii in the key of A)?

used here:

first chord is
A = A C# D (i.e. every other note for three notes)

2nd is
Bm = B D F# (every other note for three notes)

"Never Going Back Again" is fairly challenging, I'd say. Definitely a few notches up from "Blackbird" or "Freight Train". I don't know why he'd say that the left hand part is easy; it's less intuitive than e.g. Zeppelin's acoustic songs. I recommend using a metronome really strictly and slowing it way the fuck down, maybe starting at less than half the original tempo.

Sorry if that's the kind of hint you weren't looking for. It's just the only I was able to learn or teach it.

yeah I do take it slow, although not with a metronome.

my barres are ok for chugging out chords but show their limitations when it comes to fingerstyle. hardest thing in ngba though is one that stretches over four frets, even with a capo on 4 that's ahem a stretch.

damn this flagging app keeps posting too early.

... & the one where I have to fret the top two strings with my little finger, which is apparently too puny and weak.

Pretty difficult tune tbh.

Pretty difficult tune tbh

Aye but I think if I can't get it now I never will. (Where "now' is a period of weeks, probably months.)

A smarter man than myself once said, "If you think you've gone too far, just keep going." And I find that's usually a good rule of thumb

True, I would add "until you know you've gone too far", you can bite off more than you can chew.

So did you stop screwing around and really learn to play the guitar?

If the answer is yes, be sure to come over to Fingerstyle Guitar: Can You Do It?

I quit screwing around and very slowly learnt to actually play the guitar to a standard where I'm happy to play by myself in front of the TV, still terrified to play in front of anyone else. Now I have a kid and very little time to actually learn to play the guitar.

xp I will, shortly. or longly.

maybe it's an unhelpful or self-deprecating distinction but I feel like I learnt to play songs on the guitar rather than actually learning to play the guitar? e.g. I don't do scales.

Same here.

The 13th chord shape is tough, yeah, but I don't recall if this is ever actually necessary?:

... & the one where I have to fret the top two strings with my little finger, which is apparently too puny and weak.

Are you thinking of the chorus? Is it not possible to use the 3rd finger for the B string and the 4th finger for the high E string?

I never paid a lot of attention to that tune, but there are two guitar tracks right?

xp that's slower for me to make but yeah definitely cleaner once I have. might be easier for me to work on the speed than idk lifting tiny dumbells with my little finger.

might be two on the record idk but you can do a v passable imitation with one.

what guide/tab sheet are you using? or none lol

https://youtu.be/_rLZ-LIx09I

I think I just hear one? Buckingham played it solo when I saw them. (Fairly close to this, and similarly, disappointingly slowed down). Based on a scan of Youtube live clips, he's been playing it with one guitar (using the same fingerings that I think ledge and I are using) since at least '92. This live version from '77 seems to be accompanied with acoustic bass, though, but I think it's actually a little fuller-sounding than the record.

2xp

According to recording assistant Cris Morris, this song took a while to record. Said Morris: "It was Lindsey's pet project, just two guitar tracks but he did it over and over again. In the end his vocal didn't quite match the guitar tracks so we had to slow them down a little."

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=15497

Bit weird though, why wouldn't the tracks be recorded at the same speed?

Key was too high for his voice?

he seems to manage when he's doing it live!

Interesting. I had assumed they just stereoized one guitar track on the album.

ahh drop d, no wonder i could never sound it out in standard tuning

Started using a metronome. Good tip! Feels like I'm screwing around just that little bit less.

Glad to hear it!

Are you barreling through the whole tune from beginning to end or looping little sections?

Bit of both, more of the latter. It's good to get a feel for how it all goes together but I know time is better spent focusing on the trickier parts.

I want to stop screwing around and actually learn to play the bass guitar. is it a really bad idea to start with fretless? y/n

it's the style i eventually want to play so in my mind it makes sense to just go for it. i'm quite good at guitar and my playing tends to be more rhythmic than melodic. so even though they're completely different beasts, i'm not going to be a complete n00b when it comes to mechanical fundamentals.

any fretless players here? tips, tricks?

I'm not a bass player, but why fretless? Just because I associate it with more melodic, floaty styles and fretted with more rhythmic bass playing.

idk it's really the only style i've connected with? i really like the long slides and its "round" sound

Seems like you could go a lot faster with a fretted bass, but if you really prefer that sound....

i say go for the fretless if that's what you really want to play.

Just get one of these

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJDXxKP6Qxk

is there a less cool musical instrument on earth than the chapman stick

the slide whistle maybe? i'm not sure tbh

the master of the chapman stick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xc__38ryzZo

hey at least it sounds cool