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  #16  
Old 05-29-2017, 04:20 PM
agfsteve agfsteve is offline
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Originally Posted by SunnyDee View Post
I think you're right on both these. I would know the melody, but add it back to the beat. And yeah, I try to play very ,very slow "micro-movements" when learning something new but some things you just can't, like a riff with hammer-ons. Doesn't work at all. :P
Oh yes, hammer-ons and pull-offs! AAAAArgh! How can it be sooo hard to just not do anything with your picking hand while your left hand makes a simple motion? And like you said, the note has faded by the time you work out what you're supposed to be doing.
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  #17  
Old 05-29-2017, 04:32 PM
Pitar Pitar is offline
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Drum your fingers on a flat surface starting with the little finger, finishing with the index finger as a steady repeating rhythm with an even beat, no pausing, creating a steady drumming and stable meter. Can you do that? It takes a moment's focus but it becomes a mechanical thing quickly and reliably constant.

Reverse the order, beginning with your index finger and ending with your little finger, attempting to accomplish the same rhythm. I can't do this. But, I can finger pick it reliably. That bugs me. Several years infrequently attempting the reverse pattern frustrates me with failure.

But, if I had to do it I know I could. I found alternating thumb a piece of cake to that.
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  #18  
Old 05-29-2017, 04:38 PM
agfsteve agfsteve is offline
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Originally Posted by Pitar View Post
Drum your fingers on a flat surface starting with the little finger, finishing with the index finger as a steady repeating rhythm with an even beat, no pausing, creating a steady drumming and stable meter. Can you do that? It takes a moment's focus but it becomes a mechanical thing quickly and reliably constant.

Reverse the order, beginning with your index finger and ending with your little finger, attempting to accomplish the same rhythm. I can't do this. But, I can finger pick it reliably. That bugs me. Several years infrequently attempting the reverse pattern frustrates me with failure.

But, if I had to do it I know I could. I found alternating thumb a piece of cake to that.
I can do that easily, but it doesn't seem to translate to fingerpicking for me, unfortunately.
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  #19  
Old 05-29-2017, 04:44 PM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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Originally Posted by Pitar View Post
Reverse the order, beginning with your index finger and ending with your little finger, attempting to accomplish the same rhythm. I can't do this. But, I can finger pick it reliably. That bugs me. Several years infrequently attempting the reverse pattern frustrates me with failure.
That's strange. Just wondering, are you fingerpicking with your pinky?
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  #20  
Old 05-29-2017, 04:55 PM
s0cks s0cks is offline
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Reverse the order, beginning with your index finger and ending with your little finger, attempting to accomplish the same rhythm. I can't do this. But, I can finger pick it reliably. That bugs me. Several years infrequently attempting the reverse pattern frustrates me with failure..
A good example of the brain imo. When those strings are under your fingertips it's already activating the fingerpicking pathways. It's like when we see someone yawn, it activates the same pathways, so we yawn. Or when you see someone drink and suddenly realize you're thirsty.

I'm not very good at tapping from index to pinky either, but I did spend a week practicing it every day so I'm now a lot better at it. But I've always tapped from pinky to index since a young kid so of course, that way is effortless for me. Yet neither seem to translate to the guitar at all (I guess we are not tapping, so much as plucking. But even with my left hand, I can tap from index to pinky no problem on a guitar neck, but on a flat table top, not so well. Oh the brain!).
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  #21  
Old 05-29-2017, 05:03 PM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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A good example of the brain imo. ..Oh the brain!).
Definitely. The brain is so weird. I can tap fine, but you know how people say form the shape of the chord before putting it down on the strings, or just form the shapes with your hand to practice? I can't really do that. I've done them all a thousand times, but without the strings, my fingers are all messy.
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  #22  
Old 05-29-2017, 05:07 PM
GBS GBS is offline
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An hour? A week? Patience grasshopper. It took me over a year to get this thumb work mostly down:

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  #23  
Old 05-29-2017, 05:11 PM
s0cks s0cks is offline
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Originally Posted by SunnyDee View Post
Definitely. The brain is so weird. I can tap fine, but you know how people say form the shape of the chord before putting it down on the strings, or just form the shapes with your hand to practice? I can't really do that. I've done them all a thousand times, but without the strings, my fingers are all messy.
Yes. Even if I use my right arm as a pretend guitar neck I can't form a chord for anything. I have to have the guitar in my arms!

Last edited by Kerbie; 05-30-2017 at 04:25 PM. Reason: Removed masked profanity... adjusted accordingly
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  #24  
Old 05-30-2017, 02:25 PM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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Originally Posted by agfsteve View Post
If I'm riding a bike, my legs know exactly what to do; I don't think to myself, push down with the right foot, then the left, then the right, etc., so why can't I just make my thumb do the same binary type of operation?
...

So any way, just venting, I realise there is no short cut or trick to learning this, I just have to put in the hours and try not to drive myself insane in the process.
How are you getting on today? Better?
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  #25  
Old 05-30-2017, 02:56 PM
agfsteve agfsteve is offline
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How are you getting on today? Better?
Thanks for asking. Better, yes, I think so, although I moved on from I Want You (She's So Heavy).

I have about 60 (wild guess) songs that I like to play through from my Beatles chord book, so I don't tend to stop too long on any given one, but each time around I'm getting better.

It's surprising how many Beatles song's melody notes fall right under your fretting hand, just holding down a chord, although part of the reason for that is that the Beatles chord book that I have (The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook) does a superb job of providing all the correct chords.
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  #26  
Old 05-30-2017, 03:19 PM
SunnyDee SunnyDee is offline
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Originally Posted by agfsteve View Post
Thanks for asking. Better, yes, I think so, although I moved on from I Want You (She's So Heavy).

I have about 60 (wild guess) songs that I like to play through from my Beatles chord book, so I don't tend to stop too long on any given one, but each time around I'm getting better.

It's surprising how many Beatles song's melody notes fall right under your fretting hand, just holding down a chord, although part of the reason for that is that the Beatles chord book that I have (The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook) does a superb job of providing all the correct chords.
Cool. Have fun.
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  #27  
Old 05-30-2017, 03:24 PM
Hurricane Ramon Hurricane Ramon is offline
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  #28  
Old 05-30-2017, 04:18 PM
lowrider lowrider is offline
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Originally Posted by agfsteve View Post

When I tried just to pick out the melody (so ignoring the thumb) for these first four bars or so, I got it right first time, so it took me all of thirty seconds or so. So then all I need to do is add in the alternating thumb on the A and D strings, so that's like the riding-a-bike thing where you don't even need to think about it, but noooo, doing the two things together is probably going to take me another hour or more of stupefyingly boring practice; very frustrating.
.

I'm no expert but you have things backwards. The bass is supposed to drive the song and you put the melody in on top of that. Get the bass down first.

Then you can start another thread asking why melody is so hard.
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  #29  
Old 05-30-2017, 04:19 PM
merlin666 merlin666 is offline
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For songs like this a flatpick may be a better solution than a thumb ...
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  #30  
Old 05-30-2017, 04:21 PM
dhalbert dhalbert is offline
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I think it's not so helpful, at least at the beginning, to think of the thumb movement as "independent" of the melody notes. They are in combination. I like the approach in Mark Hanson's Contemporary Travis Picking book, which does not immediately emphasize "steady thumb rhythm"; instead it talks of patterns that involve both the thumb and the picking fingers. It amounts to the same thing, but it is doing thumb and finger movements serially and in combination, so you don't have two streams of thought going at once.

I played classical piano through high school and never thought of certain fingers as being independent of others. But they did sound that way once I got the expressive part of the playing right.
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