Making strides over time: Revisiting previously dismissed songs, hope for beginners

[Glennwillow]

I think you are doing well, Scott. I also find it interesting that you have learned to sing, especially harmony to your wife. I have done a ton of harmony singing to my wife over the years, too.

My approach to learning is to learn to play songs I love. Whatever I needed to learn in order to play each one of those songs, that's what I did. So the chords and fingerings that I learned to play over the years are the result of making the kind of music I wanted to make.

I find today, now that I have arrived into my mid-70s, that I can play just about anything I want to play. I still have to work at it, few things come instantly, but things are accessible now with just a moderate amount of work. I find myself wishing that my younger self had known all the things I understand so much better today. But I suppose that's life.

- Glenn

[12FanMan]

Another snail-pacer...

==================================
Yes.....Mr. Snail pace man here. My dad died in 1958 when I was 5. He had a guitar but no one in the family seems to know what happened to it. Only last week did I learn that HIS mother had a guitar (probably the same one) and played it. That was indeed (and still is) rare in those days.

Growing up with 4 siblings (5 females and ONE bathroom!)...needless to say the family budget had no room for guitars, so I grew up wanting one. I finally got one in the summer of 1972...a Conrad 12 string...pawn shop deal. Didn't know anything about guitars then, so I got burned...as the bridge was coming up. I didn't know guitars could be repaired. Later, I got a Yamaha slot head 12 string. the neck went bad but, again, I didn't know that could be repaired...so I gave it away.

Anyway...self taught...slow go. No one to help, but I enjoy playing what I can now on my FG-820-12.

One thing you said intrigued me, tho...I had no idea there was more than one way to make a chord...so the "too hard" monster chased me away from any progress in that area. I have only just begun looking at youtube vids. Another thing you said may help too...that being the ability to see more info about a chord by hovering the cursor over it. I'll have to give that a swing.

I'd like to work on one particular 70's song I'm interested in learning to play (Most of my playing is melody with a strum here and there.) but the "too hard" monster continues to guard that upward path too.

I too am on the brink of retirement.. I just work 2 days a week and will likely cash that in about April. Still....I don't think I'll EVER be good enough to play publically...except maybe in a nursing home...where the audience can turn off their hearing aids (which, someone said, happened last time I tried that!)

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by Methos1979

Even if you take the most laid-back approach to learning to play, as long as you continue to do it, steadily and regularly, you will improve. Even at the most snail's pace of practicing, if you play daily you're improve.

I guess I do that. Or have done that. Or will continue to do that.
I have bored you all with my story on more than one occasion and will not subject you good people to it again. But in the 4.5 years I have been playing, I have discovered the most accurate metric for my progress, and the one that brings me the most joy.

After a near lifetime of jazz and classical woodwinds work, I picked up a guitar to give life to the songs I was already writing. I took lessons for about a year but got little substantively from them. I decided to learn finger style, so I took ZOOM lessons for about 8 months, which jump-started me on the path I have stayed on. All the while I have been writing songs - with and without lyrics. The songs are not complicated. But the more I play them, the more I understand and intuit the guitar. And the more intuitive playing the guitar becomes, the more interesting those once very simple songs become. I have an accomplished ear from decades of jazz improvisation, so I know what sounds good, to me, and conventionally.

The joy part comes from seeing those once elemental songs mature with the progression of my own skills. Like the songs are teaching me what they want, and what I should do. It happened just this morning. I was going over an original rag-type tune I wrote a year ago or more. Instead of just arpeggiating an open A7 as I had been since the tune found me, my fingers told me to go up to the fifth fret and descend chromatically on the 2nd and 4th strings down to the A7. Not a big deal, but a very big smile. That is how I measure progress and what propels me on. I got all kinds of theory and technique books that I bought with the best of intentions. But I just can not seem to get to them. I'm too busy playing.

David

[12FanMan]

To quote a great American philosopher (Gomer Pyle): Shezam!

Embouchure? Had to look that one up. Turns out, to my astonishment, it's not even a cuss word! Maybe I could use it as an insult though. It sure sounds like something I could call someone in the heat of battle....toss it out and run for cover when they reach for the dictionary.

----------------------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by Charlie Bernstein

That's


probably how most people learn and practice guitar. That's why it's called the people's instrument. A good one doesn't cost as much as a good piano or violin or saxophone, and you can start in on playing songs right from Jump Street. No learning bowing or embouchure, either.

Also keep in mind that it's a sideline or hobby for most — something to do after work or after school and in between other activities and responsibilities.

So the majority of guitar players have little or no formal music education. We don't have those five hours a day full-time jazz students put into practicing scales. Pros can woodshed all day and gig all night. Or teach all day and woodshed all night. Most of us can't. We do it on the wing and make up in enthusiasm what we lose in ample dedicated time.



Sure! That's what it's all about.

(And for what it's worth, all epiphanies are sudden — the shout in the street. That's what makes them epiphanies.)


And not just too hard. Most epiphanies are about things you just didn't know, like how Em and G relate or how to make a D9 or what a shuffle is.

[Deliberate1]

Originally Posted by 12FanMan

Embouchure? Had to look that one up. Turns out, to my astonishment, it's not even a cuss word! Maybe I could use it as an insult though. It sure sounds like something I could call someone in the heat of battle....toss it out and run for cover when they reach for the dictionary.

----------------------------------------------------------

As a life long horn player, who struggled as a kid to form the right embouchure, it would not have at all surprised me to see it translated, on this "family friendly" forum, as e********e. I would have know exactly what that naughty word was.

David

[reeve21]

Yes, this is one of the great things about sticking with it.

I recently went back to "Willin'" by Little Feat which has an "up the neck" guitar part and lots of muted strings, and then some moving bass lines in the chorus. I was always about 75 per cent there, but finally a light bulb when off and it fell into place. I wish the vocal would cooperate

[JGinNJ]

I probably have a different approach to learning and practicing since I primarily play jazz standards. But the more tunes you learn, it gets easier when you discover common forms and chord progressions. It's the tunes that are outliers, with lots of changes, that are difficult.

I have about 40 tunes in my regular practice rotation. I choose tunes that lend themselves to solo chord melody, or are commonly played tunes at jazz jams. Recently I dropped a few either because I was bored with them, or after years of wrestling with them, I decided they were just not coming together.
Coming back to them, I often find that it helps to change up the rote aspects I may have learned, maybe by changing tempo or key.

[Bluenose]

In the early days of my playing I had no idea what I was doing. I could play songs as long as I had a songbook to show me what chords to play.

There were many songs that I would have loved to play but at that point I simply couldn't figure them out. Now when I listen to them I'm aghast and how easy and simple they are.

I'm a curious person and I really wanted to understand the 'how and whys' of guitar playing. Over time my ear has improved greatly due to what I would call earnest listening and now I also have a pretty a good understanding of how harmony works.

It all seems so simple and easy now but it did take me many years and many hours of practice, listening and reading to get to where I am now.

[Charlie Bernstein]

Originally Posted by 12FanMan

To quote a great American philosopher (Gomer Pyle): Shezam!

Yup. Gomer quoted Captain Marvel a lot. A man of his times.

Originally Posted by 12FanMan

Embouchure? Had to look that one up. Turns out, to my astonishment, it's not even a cuss word!

But it's even harder to spell than it is to do.

Originally Posted by 12FanMan

Maybe I could use it as an insult though. It sure sounds like something I could call someone in the heat of battle....toss it out and run for cover when they reach for the dictionary.

And if they try saying something worse to outdo you, you can trumpet!

[mr. beaumont]

Oh definitely, re: letting things go and coming back.

Sometimes I'm ready weeks later...sometimes months...sometimes, well, you get the idea.

As I usually post on threads such as these, "The journey IS the destination."

[TRose]

I can happily report that I’ve had this experience. I’ve circled back around to a number of arrangements that for whatever reasons I couldn’t learn on my first attempt.
Getting just a little better everyday eventually pays off noticeably.