How long to learn the CAGED system?

[amyFB]

Originally Posted by Pine

.....
I have followed this thread with interest, and have appreciated everyone's point of view. Really appreciate SunnyDee's posts. ....is articulate and respectful, while disagreeing with the majority. I wish I had that knack.

.....

wholeheartedly agree with all of the above ^^^^

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by Pine

I have followed this thread with interest, and have appreciated everyone's point of view. Really appreciate SunnyDee's posts. He is articulate and respectful, while disagreeing with the majority. I wish I had that knack.

Originally Posted by amyFB

wholeheartedly agree with all of the above ^^^^

You guys are really kind. I appreciate it. I certainly try.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by SunnyDee

I only take issue with two parts of this idea: that one should stop learning all the other things I've learned this year to only play songs for years and that it's necessary to practice these songs beginning to end, over and over again to performance level (also taking years), in order to learn to play guitar. Both of these things have been proposed here.

You seem to have (mis) interpreted advice and example from long experience as some kind of personal criticism...which it is not. Facility and ability are not just achieved as in "I didn't know it yesterday, but I know it today". It's not a finite quantity, rather a life-long journey with no Earthly end.

There is not one single instance in the approximately 10,000 fiddle tunes, songs, parts that I've played over the years where the music has stayed the same and not grown, if note in the notes, at least in depth of understanding and expression. They are played today with the benfit of time and experience. Music grows on (in) you...

As to practice vs. playing I find the approaches differ in outlook if nothing else. I've never really "practiced" outside of perhaps rehearsing with someone else.
I play, I learn, I progress. I have no concept of "performance level". That seems like an arbitrary and very limiting construct. I accept what I can do today with the knowlege and hope that I can do as well or "better" tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a story told to me by a great old fiddler/violinist who took me on as his guitar player when he was in his 70's and I in my 20's:

An aspiring young violinist lived in a small apartment above a store-front shop in the town. Across the street above another shop lived an old violinist. Every day you could hear scales, arpeggios, etudes and such emanating from the young mans apartment while the only sound proceeding from the old mans apartment was an occasional long, sonorous C note.

This drove the younger man to distraction until, one day, he ceased his musical labors, left his apartment, crossed the street and ascended to the second floor of the building opposite to knock on the old mans door. Introducing himself, he said:

"I study and practice, study and practice all day, yet all you do is play the C note on the G string. What's up with that?"

"Son", the old man replied, "You're looking for it. I've found it."

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

You seem to have (mis) interpreted advice and example from long experience as some kind of personal criticism...which it is not.

Not at all, Wyllys. I never took it to be personal. No worries there. I certainly appreciate the view of long experience as any learner should. Good story.

[Wyllys]

In re left-handednss:

https://youtu.be/D_BzM-JeEmM

Singer/songwriter/troubador Bill Staines is a lefty who plays a right-handed guitar "upside down". As such, his alternating bass finger-style is jst a tad different as his thumb takes melody notes on the treble strings. An amazing song writer and equally inspiring guitarist. Too bad it's just a photo and not a video...

[stanron]

You can see it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4hBbB2i7w

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by stanron

You can see it here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF4hBbB2i7w

Great! Thanks.

Here's a link to my favorite piece of his:

https://youtu.be/nHayfrUIJDM

Music starts about 4:10.

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

In re left-handednss:

https://youtu.be/D_BzM-JeEmM

Singer/songwriter/troubador Bill Staines is a lefty who plays a right-handed guitar "upside down". As such, his alternating bass finger-style is jst a tad different as his thumb takes melody notes on the treble strings. An amazing song writer and equally inspiring guitarist. Too bad it's just a photo and not a video...

He's a very interesting musician and songwriter.

This topic is already more than 10 pages, I'd best not get started on handedness or it'll be 20!

[paulp1960]

Hi SunnyDee,

What are your goals? I'm guessing from reading that you want to write your own songs exclusively. If you fancy yourself as a composer you could forget learning to play the guitar and just paint the notes into a computer DAW program with the mouse.

But assuming you want to learn guitar the business about learning songs would apply of course to your own compositions. You still need song stamina building up and technique good enough to not make any mistakes for a song of any length.

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by paulp1960

Hi SunnyDee,

What are your goals? I'm guessing from reading that you want to write your own songs exclusively. If you fancy yourself as a composer you could forget learning to play the guitar and just paint the notes into a computer DAW program with the mouse.

But assuming you want to learn guitar the business about learning songs would apply of course to your own compositions. You still need song stamina building up and technique good enough to not make any mistakes for a song of any length.

Thanks paulp1960, this isn't my thread, but beginners who want to use guitar for composition and songwriting are pretty common, I think. There are many things they might want to learn: music history, lyric writing, fundamental theory, ear-training, rhythm, notation and sight-reading, singing, other instruments, other people's songs to a degree, even using a DAW, as well as guitar technique (all things I've worked on the last couple years). Wanting to learn all of that might influence how they go about learning to play guitar.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by Pine

I would agree that there is a majority who propose "just play songs", but would not agree that there is consensus about that.

I have followed this thread with interest, and have appreciated everyone's point of view. Really appreciate SunnyDee's posts. He is articulate and respectful, while disagreeing with the majority.

Well, this IS the "PLAY" forum after all...

[funkapus]

Originally Posted by Toby Walker

Bingo, Bingo, and BINGO!

Learn by doing. Learn the songs and PLAY the songs. I spent a lot of time learning arpeggio's, scales, and chord inversions all over that neck. But I never really understood them, made them part of my DNA, before I started to USE them in songs. And I did that as I was learning them.

I don't know what my problem is. I feel like folks are speaking a different language from mine -- what they're saying makes sense to me on some level and yet I still feel like I don't understand. And I'm worried that in expressing my lack-o-understanding, I come across as arguing, and I don't mean to do that. I just don't get it.

I've seen you play live several times now, and I've seen you play the same song different times, and your performance is different each time; and I'm not talking about a different arrangement. There are parts of a song where, while you're playing, you seem to feel one thing and so you make something corresponding to that come out of the guitar; and other times where you'd do something different based on what you feel *then*. So when you are expressing yourself, when you are playing a tune and are varying from what you might have done when playing the same tune the night before, where does the ability to do that come from?

What I'm imagining is that you hear in your head the music that you want to make, and you have the ability to know where to go on the neck to make those sounds happen. That's what I think of when I imagine "learning the fretboard" -- knowing (without having to think about it) what to do on the fretboard to make the notes or chords you want. And in this thread, I'm reading you and folks saying that one develops this instinct or unconscious knowledge or whatever through learning and playing songs, and I don't understand that. To me, when I'm learning and playing songs, I'm learning to do this thing at this time, and then that thing at that time, and so on -- which feels like a completely different thing from the improvisational, spur-of-the-moment sort of thing that happens in a solo or a fill. How does doing one lead to being able to do the other?

I'm sorry if this seems obvious to you, or I seem slow to get it. I really am trying to understand.

[funkapus]

Originally Posted by Wyllys

In re left-handednss:

https://youtu.be/D_BzM-JeEmM

Singer/songwriter/troubador Bill Staines is a lefty who plays a right-handed guitar "upside down". As such, his alternating bass finger-style is jst a tad different as his thumb takes melody notes on the treble strings. An amazing song writer and equally inspiring guitarist. Too bad it's just a photo and not a video...

Yeah, it's a style that has a really different (and therefore interesting to me) feel to it. Elizabeth Cotten played the same way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voPJENW6i4c

[SunnyDee]

Originally Posted by funkapus

Yeah, it's a style that has a really different (and therefore interesting to me) feel to it. Elizabeth Cotten played the same way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voPJENW6i4c

Yes, there are some people over on LeftyFrets who do. I think it often involves alternate tuning. Would be fun to look into with all those righty guitars hanging around.

[Wyllys]

Originally Posted by funkapus

...when you are expressing yourself, when you are playing a tune and are varying from what you might have done when playing the same tune the night before, where does the ability to do that come from?

If I may be so bold (I usually am), it comes from years of playing and both a large repetoire of songs as well as a personal understanding of music which goes deeper than the notes themselves. Obviously, music is second nature for an artist like Toby. I doubt he had a choice. For a talented and serious musician willing to take the time and do the work, music is imperative. You're hooked...

Edit:

Speaking of things changing...

https://youtu.be/Un-FO8iXCrA