beginner's tricks: two from me and a request for others

[Starter]

Hi,

I've been playing for about a year and half, and have discovered one thing that speeds up learning, and one thing that makes practicing even more fun.

The one for learning is probably standard advice from any music teacher: practice the tricky passages (one or two measures) over and over. Playing whole songs of course is tempting, but for learning them it's the concentrated repetition that really help with muscle memory.

The second is obvious but I just stumbled onto it by accident. I now vary my practicing with the capo, anywhere up to 5 frets from the nut. Each set of songs sounds just that bit different, which is kind of interesting in itself, and the spacing is of course different too, which is also sort of fun. On top of that, the action gets lowered a little, which is good for morale. And if I use the tuner to check tuning before each session, it makes me review the notes on the neck at that particular fret.

If anyone has anything equally basic to help us beginners I'd be interested to hear them. For example, is there any clever way to learn how to sing and play the more complicated songs at the same time?

Will

[Mack]

Try this website for developing your ear etc....this helps my playing
http://www.teoria.com/index.html Click on "Exercises"

[BillDuck]

Find other people to play with. It's fun and educational.

[mr. beaumont]

No tricks, just facts:

Learn the names of the notes in the chords you play--never be satisfied with "shapes" or "grips."

Start learning every note on the fretboard now. You can have the whole thing licked in 3 months if you work every day.

The ways these will help you in the future are innumerable.

[BigD]

Here is a few:

1. Ensure that the development of your right hand is given as much attention as fingering positions of your left.
2. Unless you want to play classical, learn to strum to give your right hand rhythm.
3. Learn at least one means of communicating musical ideas such as Tab or notation. It will open up the whole world to you.
4. Train your ear, particularly the intervals between notes. Use the beginning of a song you know well to represent an interval (for example Over The Rainbow is one of the few songs to start with an octave interval Some-where)
5. Learn songs or entire pieces and minimise the noodling.
6. Don't feel pressured into writing songs unless that is what you want to do. There is plenty of satisfaction from playing the great arrangements of others.

7. There is no unified correct way to play or learn to play the guitar unless you plan on learning to play classical, in which case most of my advice may not apply anyhow.
8. Enjoy you playing. To me this means playing when I feel like it and getting the balance right between exercises, familiar pieces and working up something new.
9. Be aware that is you play in a band or gig for money then it may affect your enjoyment one way....or the other (see 8.)

Lots of other stuff, this may not be "tricks" as you requested but that is what initially comes to mind.

BigD

[shawlie]

Very nice topic, lots of great advice given.

One thing I wish I would have known earlier - work out left and right hand fingerings pretty early while learning a new song. Even a normal C chord can be fingered in so many ways - a piece can be fun to play or be just plain frustrating unless your fretting hand is thought out from the beginning.

[unimogbert]

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[Lono]

for me, I spent years just on the music. Didn't even try and sing until I could safely get all the way through a song.

A useful trick I use is keep an electric nearby always. When you are watching tv, just work on scales. It is great dexterity and motor skill builder. Plus, it being electric, it is way easier on the fingers, and won't drive your room mate or spouse up a wall if they are watching tv, too. They can't hear you.

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Starter

Hi,

I've been playing for about a year and half, and have discovered one thing that speeds up learning, and one thing that makes practicing even more fun.

The one for learning is probably standard advice from any music teacher: practice the tricky passages (one or two measures) over and over. Playing whole songs of course is tempting, but for learning them it's the concentrated repetition that really help with muscle memory.

Exactly. The trick is to zero in on the small elements - maybe just a couple of beats over a chord change. Loop it over and over; and then connect it - in turn - to the beats before and after, and loop those.
It's always the transitions that cause problems: not what's happening in (say) bar 4, but what happens as bar 4 moves to bar 5. So you can practice each tricky bar in turn, but also practice how they join up.

A lot of beginners don't realise what it takes to memorise a piece. It's not a mental thing - it's a fingers thing. (I mean, "muscle memory" is in your brain somewhere, but it's not about conscious thought.)
I always say - your fingers are stupid! Don't forget that. But tell them something over and over for long enough and they won't forget it! And moreover, once they know something, they will speed up automatically.

Guitar playing is not natural; it's a bizarre physical activity we didn't evolve to do. But so is riding a bike or driving a car. It always starts awkward, but eventually - with enough mechanical repetition - it becomes second nature. And that's when you start making music!

Originally Posted by Starter

Hi,
The second is obvious but I just stumbled onto it by accident. I now vary my practicing with the capo, anywhere up to 5 frets from the nut. Each set of songs sounds just that bit different, which is kind of interesting in itself,

Yes - this is a great tip. Aside from technical issues, it helps to get you out of the rut of always hearing a song in the same key. As a singer (or accompanist to a singer) you need to find the best key for the vocal, and that may mean moving a capo around, or - if you want a lower key of course - transposing to other shapes.

Originally Posted by Starter

Hi,
and the spacing is of course different too, which is also sort of fun. On top of that, the action gets lowered a little, which is good for morale.

As an aside, if you find using a capo makes your action noticeably lower - eg when placed on 1st fret - that means your nut is too high.
I have to say this seems to be the case with most guitars, because when built they err on the side of "too high" with nuts, because too low is obviously disastrous. But a good guitar setup should lower the nut to the same height as a fret - so it feels no different to play with a capo (other than the reduced fret distances of course).

Originally Posted by Starter

Hi,
If anyone has anything equally basic to help us beginners I'd be interested to hear them. For example, is there any clever way to learn how to sing and play the more complicated songs at the same time?

Good question, but I don't think there is a "clever" shortcut. It's just practice.
You can learn the guitar part thoroughly first, so it becomes subconscious before you focus on the singing. Or you can sing it to a simplified arrangement (eg just strumming chords rather than fingerpicking or whatever), and build up the backing slowly. Or you can take it bar by bar, trying to do both at the same time in small units. Maybe some mixture of all three, whatever feels right for you. (Personally I would go with #2.)
Of course, take on board that capo question: before you do anything else, find a key that's comfortable for you to sing it in. If that's lower than open position (capo on negative fret number!), and the guitar part is really distinctive and important in that key (in those shapes), you could tune down. (Or play the guitar part a whole octave higher, if possible.)
But also it's a good exercise (theoretical and technical) to transpose the key so you play different shapes. (Eg, taking a key down from G to E.)

Otherwise I have nothing to add to all the great tips above (I second every one of them)!

[kallesandria]

If you can't play with other musicians, play to a backing track. I use a tab editing software and either pick along with a specific song, or you can actually write out a chord progression to a song to play along with. Or play along with a CD or mp3 file. The purpose is to just get you to really develop a solid rhythmic style of playing. You could play to a metronome....but I find that kind of, er.....metronomic.

I remember a number of years ago, being at a bluegrass festival and picking along with 4 other people that I'd met. There was a guy on guitar and his timing was horrible, to the point that he'd actually toss in the occasional extra beat into a simple 4/4 pattern. Of course, everyone else just kept rolling along and he'd have to stop for a second and then rejoin. I never saw anyone do this before, it was really weird. The funny thing is, he never seemed to learn anything from it, that he might actually be doing something wrong. He'd go for hours, making these same mistakes over and over.

Karen

[jimdunk]

One tip that I've applied successfully, to tricky passages in particular, is to start at the end of the passage and work forward. Specifically, play the last two notes (or chords) of the piece. Next play the last three notes, and keep adding the previous note. When you hit stumbling blocks, repeat the passage until you work it up to your target tempo. When you get the passage up to tempo, add on the next previous note.

I'm not sure exactly why this works for me. I think when I start from the beginning (like normal) I tend to get lost -- forget where I'm going. When I start at the end, I always remember where I'm going to end up, so I tend to not get lost.

Also, as someone else suggested -- use play along tracks -- in my case I got Band In A Box. It makes playing/practicing a piece a heck of a lot more fun. I also, sometimes just use the BIAB drums only, to replace using a metronome, again, just a tad more fun than a metronome.

Jim

[JohnnyDes]

Here's one. Record yourself occasionally. You'll hear stuff you don't like that you never notice while playing.

JD

[Losov]

Originally Posted by Starter

I've been playing for about a year and half,l

You're not a beginner. You're a guy who plays not as well as he'd like to, not as well as he's going to. That puts you in the same boat with most of us here.

The "trick" involved here is to have a positive attitude about yourself. Think of yourself as larger than the task. It cannot overwhelm you, you will always beat it. Always.

[tag0519]

This is a nice thread. Thanks Starter for posting this. Anything I have to offer was stated already. Just wanted to say thanks and I'm learning a lot.

[Minotaur]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

No tricks, just facts:

Learn the names of the notes in the chords you play--never be satisfied with "shapes" or "grips."

Start learning every note on the fretboard now. You can have the whole thing licked in 3 months if you work every day.

The ways these will help you in the future are innumerable.

True indeed. I found that learning chord theory and what notes make up a chord, as well as their place in a scale, has been not only a big help but fun (OK, so I'm weird ).

Learning what makes up a chord takes you far beyond just learning the shape of a C or the dreaded F barre chord. Maybe you don't need or want the full barred F, but if you know where an F A C are, you can make other voicings of Fmaj, for example.