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Old 02-17-2018, 02:40 PM
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Blueser100 Blueser100 is offline
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Default So I started lessons at Guitar Center yesterday . . .

And I was pleasantly surprised. In only a half hour, the teacher helped me learn to recognize note-chord relationships across the fretboard. This is what I told him I came to learn, and I was not disappointed. He went over a lot of things that were a little over my head but I came away with some curiosity and motivation and hope that my playing and my guitar knowledge will improve. And the lesson was free. I got a discount on a pack of lessons and I can't wait to go back.

I finally realized that teaching myself (as good as my ear is) how to play songs and follow tabs in books can only get me so far. I want to be able to do on the guitar what I can do on piano - sit down with a song sheet to a pop tune, have a look at the chords, put on the song, and improvise throughout and make it sound good.
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Old 02-17-2018, 03:23 PM
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Originally Posted by Blueser100 View Post
And I was pleasantly surprised. In only a half hour, the teacher helped me learn to recognize note-chord relationships across the fretboard. This is what I told him I came to learn, and I was not disappointed. He went over a lot of things that were a little over my head but I came away with some curiosity and motivation and hope that my playing and my guitar knowledge will improve. And the lesson was free. I got a discount on a pack of lessons and I can't wait to go back.

I finally realized that teaching myself (as good as my ear is) how to play songs and follow tabs in books can only get me so far. I want to be able to do on the guitar what I can do on piano - sit down with a song sheet to a pop tune, have a look at the chords, put on the song, and improvise throughout and make it sound good.
It sounds like you need a song construction book/lesson type of thing. Take the simple blues progression for example E7 A7 B7. What chords can you use in that key that will fit (substituted in) and remain bluesy? It's interesting stuff if you have the time. Have fun and report back on how the lessons go.
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Old 02-17-2018, 03:33 PM
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It sounds like you need a song construction book/lesson type of thing. Take the simple blues progression for example E7 A7 B7. What chords can you use in that key that will fit (substituted in) and remain bluesy? It's interesting stuff if you have the time. Have fun and report back on how the lessons go.
Can you suggest any such books?
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Old 02-17-2018, 08:41 PM
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Can you suggest any such books?
I've seen some sold by Muriel Anderson and Toby Walker. I'm sure there are plenty on the subject. I think Toby Walker's is a downloadable video lesson on Homespun or from his website.

Mark Hanson has one also:

http://markhansonguitar.com/product/...solos-digital/
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Last edited by TBman; 02-17-2018 at 09:11 PM.
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Old 02-18-2018, 02:24 PM
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thanks. appreciate it
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Old 02-18-2018, 10:07 PM
vindibona1 vindibona1 is offline
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If you're able to play piano you'll be amazed at how fast you pick up guitar. You already know music, and compared to piano, starting out on guitar is a piece of cake when you already have that basic musical knowledge.

When I got back into guitar a few years back I took some lessons and the one thing to make sure of when you have that "pack" of lessons, is that your teacher has a plan from week to week to week and knows how the lesson will go before you walk in the room. Too many times I've had lessons where that wasn't the case and 10-15 minutes would be wasted "refreshing" the dude's memory as to what we needed to work on. 30 minutes goes extremely quickly.

One thing that you might do, is invest in a program called Guitar Pro https://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index....buy-guitar-pro. It's $70 but allows you to download thousands of tunes for free from http://www.911tabs.com/guitar_pro_tabs/ or https://www.ultimate-guitar.com/Much of the music not only has tab and standard notation (as one system) the music often has entire band arrangements in a single file. IMO it's the best $70 I ever invested in my guitar playing.

Good luck.
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Old 02-18-2018, 11:05 PM
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+1 on GuitarPro. Although I have version 6, I will take a pdf of a song that is tough, whether I have a video lesson on it or not and put the score into GuitarPro. I use Guitarpro as a play along "teacher/metronome." It's kind of like GuitarHero with a real guitar, .

It takes a bit of notation knowledge to use it, but it isn't rocket science.
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Old 02-19-2018, 10:08 AM
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Thanks everyone for your replies and suggestions and encouragement. Indeed, it helps to know the piano and to be able to play by ear. I'm fortunate in that I've been playing the guitar on and off for many years. I can play blues, am proficient in Travis picking and can play a range of tunes.

I am taking lessons specifically to learn theory and application, and not songs (yet), and to have a more structured approach to basics that I never learned or ignored, in my quest to simply get to playing songs.

What I am doing at the moment with my teacher - and this is what I came for - is a) learning all the notes on the fretboard; b) learning triads all over the fretboard (similar to Kirk Lorange's Plane Talk but more in depth).

Next step will be learning to connect notes and triads and then branching out from there so I can improvise the way I can on the piano.
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Old 02-19-2018, 10:18 AM
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.....but I came away with some curiosity and motivation and hope that my playing and my guitar knowledge will improve. ...
That's the stuff you can't buy. As long as whatever you're doing (lessons, self-study, jams, in a band...) provides that, you're in good shape!
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