Quote:
Originally Posted by Wyllys
Sunny...
All the theory I ever needed to get going was having someone show me the I/IV/V chords for the keys of C/A/G/E and D...seven chords in all. The next level was learning songs introducing the II, III and/or VI chords, still just those same seven chords. That and a couple of minor key songs like House of the Rising Sun was enough to let me jam with folks and pick up stuff from them while we were having fun.
Maybe waiting for it to click is the hardest part. Patience.
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I think what you may be missing is that it already clicked. I went from knowing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about music or guitar to a solid intermediate level in ear training, guitar technique, theory, and fretboard knowledge in a bit over a year, because I did NOT simply try to copy songs.
I can play to campfire level probably 12-20 songs and anything you put in front of me with chords I know and am strumming, but that alone would NEVER have taught me how music is structured, how to play in EVERY key, how different styles differ musically so that I can borrow from them, the architecture of the fretboard so that I can improvise melodies all over it, and all the fundamental guitar techniques that don't happen to be in those campfire songs, and, yet,
from learning what you call a waste of time, I now know ALL of that.
For some reason, naysayers seem to think that we are not loving the music or enjoying the study, but I have loved it! I just wish that other beginners like me were not being scared away from the same level of learning.
I guess the point is that, no, I can't perform that many songs that other people wrote, but I can play guitar. I can play the music I hear in my head for the songs I wrote and that was my goal from the beginning.