Seeking Advice Regarding Self-directed Study

[Jaywalk3r]

I'm trying to learn to play the guitar, particularly fingerstyle guitar. I especially enjoy the music and styles of Mississippi John Hurt, Etta Baker, and Elizabeth Cotten. It isn't practical to learn to play in the style of Cotten, but I'd love to try to play like Hurt or (especially) Baker. There's some other traditional tunes I'd like to be able to play that maybe none of those three ever recorded, but most of the other music I want to play is at least 90 years old. To be clear, I'm as interested in studying the music as I am learning to play the guitar.

I'm also wanting/planning to learn basic music theory as I study and learn to play the music.

Music resources I've accumulated include:

• The Fingerpicking Blues of Etta Baker (DVD Homespun Video) with the original notation and tablature insert;
  
• Masters of Instrumental Blues Guitar, by Donald Garwood: "An analytical instruction method of blues guitar including blues chord progressions, melodic structure, rhythmic units, instrumental breaks, based on the styles of Etta Baker, Bo Carter, Rev. Gary Davis, John Fahey, Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Frank Stokes, and others, in standard musical notation and tablature.";
  
• The New Lost City Ramblers Song Book (Cohen, Seeger, Wood);
  
• The Mississippi John Hurt Guitar Tab Book (Max Nachlinger, PDF)

I also have a few contemporary titles, such as Guitar Aerobics (Troy Nelson), Music Theory (Guitar Method, Tom Kolb).

In addition, I have the bulk of the discography for each of John Hurt, Libba Cotten, and Etta Baker on CD. I also have the Anthology of American Folk Music (Folkways, Harry Smith), The Bristol Sessions 1927-1928 (Bear Family Records), The Johnson City Sessions 1928-1929 (BFR), and The Knoxville Sessions 1929-1930 (BFR). I have quite a bit of Doc Watson, who played a lot of traditional tunes, as well as a lot of Jerry Garcia performing the same songs as part of various acoustic lineups. For a lot of the songs of interest, I have several different versions to listen to.

I can mostly read music notation, but not in real time. My brain has a pretty good understanding of the fret board and understand how notes and chord shapes move up and down the fret board, as well as across it. My left hand is lagging way behind with its understanding.

This is my second attempt trying to learn to play. I failed to make sufficient time to practice the first time. Also, I didn't have any specific goals. All I knew was that I wanted to do something other than strum chords. Since then, I got into the music of Hurt, Cotten, and Baker, in that order.

I have much more free time this time around. I also feel like I have more focused goals. I have acquired the music and/or tablature for many of the songs I'd like to learn. What I don't have is a coherent plan to get from being a new beginner with only some intellectual knowledge about the instrument to being able to competently play some of the easier songs in which I'm interested.

My guitar is a Taylor 812ce 12-fret. I love its size and appearance, but also how it sounds. (I can't play, but I have heard it played by a very good old country & jazz guitarist shortly after I purchased it.) I guess it's pretty lucky for me that it's well suited for fingerstyle, because when I bought it (used, via Reverb) it had never even occurred to me that some people play without a pick. I've since fallen in love with the tone of a delicately plucked string on the guitar. Further, a pick just feels clumsy in my hand, whereas playing with my fingers (on my right hand) feels natural.

My other equipment includes a decent stool for practicing, a music stand, and a guitar stand. I also have a tuner, metronome, and tools for changing strings.

I want my practices to be productive, but I don't really know where to start. It's all a bit overwhelming. Scales? Open position chords? Speaking of chords, how well do I need to understand the theory behind them? Is it enough to know the intervals and be able to recognize the inversions?

Are there online resources that I can use in conjunction with the old songs I actually want to learn and still get some sense of coherency?

When do I jump in with learning songs? How do I determine which songs are appropriate for early learning?

Should I focus on notation or tablature (or both)? I can understand both, but in real time cannot convey to my left hand the information from either.

Unfortunately, one on one lessons are not an option for me at this time. Let me assure you that it isn't because I don't recognize the value of such lessons.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!

[JonPR]

The basic advice is take it slow, and take it step by step.

You have to train your fingers - obviously! - and that takes plenty of repetion of each step.

You have more than enough resources. The books should show you the ideal hand positions, but if they don't, just watch as many players in this style as you can find. YouTube is an amazing resource! (I don't mean lessons necessarily, I mean watching the masters playing, and you can slow youtube down if you need to.)

As a self-taught player in this style since the 1960s, and now a teacher, I suggest ignoring any advice about the "independent thumb". You should think of each pattern as thumb and fingers interlocking. (The thumb only feels independent once you have practised the patterns enough.) I see you don't have Mark Hanson's books, so if you want to buy another I'd recommend one of his; he gets it right. (I used to try teaching from the independent thumb method, and it always failed. Then I remembered how I'd taught myself, years before: complete patterns from the start. That works.)

Take one bar of a pattern and slice it into beats. Every beat usually has a thumb stroke (on alternate bass strings), while one or more fingers will either coincide with the thumb on the beat, or play notes between the beats. So the elements are extremely simple:

• 1. thumb on beat
• 2. thumb and finger(s) on beat
• 3. finger between beats

Just occasionally there are variants, but 99% of this style is composed of combinations of those three elements. If you chop each 4/4 bar into individual beats, that's what you will see, and that's how you organise your fingers.

Obviously you do need to be sure the beats are regular - a metronome can be useful here - but if you start by just getting the thumb on that beat - going for "independent thumb" - that's easy enough. But it doesn't matter how good you get at that, when you bring a finger in, the thumb rhythm tends to fall apart. Hence the need to combine thumb and fingers from the beginning. Just do it as slow as you need to, even if it feels insanely slow.

Once the thumb and fingers interlock in the right order, then you can steadily speed up, but maintaining the time and the groove is the important thing. As you learn each bar, then learn the next bar, and gradually string bars together in pairs, then fours and so on. I.e., the process is linear. That's how finger memory works.

Lastly, don't overload your brain! If you feel yourself hitting a wall, or getting tired or bored with it, just stop. Don't push it. Your subconscious has to take time to organise the information. When you come back to it, you will find it easier.

[Jaywalk3r]

Originally Posted by JonPR

The basic advice is take it slow, and take it step by step.

Thank you! There's quite a bit of useful info in your post.

I had expected the "independent thumb" to be problematic to learn, but your approach sounds like an easier approach for learning.

[JackC1]

Originally Posted by Jaywalk3r

I want my practices to be productive, but I don't really know where to start. It's all a bit overwhelming. Scales? Open position chords? Speaking of chords, how well do I need to understand the theory behind them? Is it enough to know the intervals and be able to recognize the inversions?

Scales: I find that I like to learn the scales of the songs I play but not learning the scales for the sake of learning the scales.

I don't think one should attempt to understand the theory behind the chords until they've played enough that they've become super curious. If your theory outpaces your playing, you'll just forget the theory after a while anyway (at least that's been my experience).

By "recognize" do you mean ear training or just knowing how the chords are built on the music staff/intervals? Once you identify which one, then you know how to search and there're lots of resources online.

Originally Posted by Jaywalk3r

Are there online resources that I can use in conjunction with the old songs I actually want to learn and still get some sense of coherency?

Not sure what you mean by "coherency". If you've already got a list of songs, you can search "justin guitar <insert your song name>"" and see if he's got a tutorial on it. I like his teaching methods.

Originally Posted by Jaywalk3r

When do I jump in with learning songs? How do I determine which songs are appropriate for early learning?

Should I focus on notation or tablature (or both)? I can understand both, but in real time cannot convey to my left hand the information from either.

The song is too hard if you've put in 5 hrs and still can't play it and see no improvement. Pick another song or an easier version of this song. After a while come back to the original and you'll breeze thru it (because you've improved as a player).

Focus on both. With practice, you can read staff/standard notation in realtime (this isn't the same as sightreading; you sightread at a level much, much below your normal reading).

I prefer TABs but I can read staff notation just fine. I only know I prefer TABs because when the music has both notations, I just read the TABs. However, many music I play (and that's "easy guitar") don't have TABs, only staff notation. So, knowing how to read both lets me play more music. The big advantage for staff/standard notation is singing (and a little bit on note values); I can't sing on TAB.

[TBman]

Get this from Brad Werner. The notation with tab for the pieces start on page 30. The beginning has music information and the pieces with just notation, no tab.

The videos for each tune are on the page as well. These pieces, if you learn to mimic Brad, this will teach you note duration (legato), clean playing and musical flow. Stuff that translates to any style of playing.

https://www.thisisclassicalguitar.co...ssons-grade-1/

I've learned some of the tunes, not but not all (I will revisit them at some point).

You're allowed to play this on steel strings. The guitar police won't show up at your door

[davidbeinct]

I really don’t think you can do any better to get up and running than Toby Walker. Start with his absolute beginner lessons:
https://www.tobywalkerslessons.com/c...0-97bb12e32f1d
When you get comfortable with those move on to beginner fingerpicking lessons:
https://www.tobywalkerslessons.com/c...a-ecceae0488e8
His website is a little tricky to navigate but he is very approachable. He’s a member here and a great guy.
Good luck with your journey.

[Bluenose]

Learning to finger pick requires you to learn to count which is very basic. Most of the old blues f/p tunes are in 4/4 time. I've been f/ping for years but when I'm learning something new from tab I still count it out. 1,2 ,3,4 on the strong beats and use the 'ands' between for the off beats. Easy to learn f/p songs are composed of 1/4 notes on the strong beat and 1/8 notes on the off. Example : 1 and 2...3 and 4. Triplets often found in blues are counted 1 and ah 2 and ah 3 and ah 4 and ah. Anyway good luck and there is no end to the teaching resources on the inter webs. Try not to become overwhelmed, find a teaching program you like and stick with it.

[Jaywalk3r]

Originally Posted by JackC1

By "recognize" do you mean ear training or just knowing how the chords are built on the music staff/intervals?

Thanks for the reply!

I meant recognizing different inversions of a particular chord on the staff, especially with respect to chord shape. I would eventually like to be able to recognize different chords and inversions by ear, but that seems a bit more advanced than I'm ready for at present.

Originally Posted by JackC1

Not sure what you mean by "coherency". If you've already got a list of songs, you can search "justin guitar <insert your song name>"" and see if he's got a tutorial on it. I like his teaching methods.

The problem is that there aren't many, if any, songs from my list for which JustinGuitar has a tutorial. Searching for each John Hurt, Cotten, and Etta Baker yielded zero matches. Searches for a few specific songs by title also came up empty.

My list isn't short, and I'm confident there's quite a few suitable for beginners, even if I don't know enough to identify those pieces.

I'm not knocking Justin. He just seems to be focused on teaching more contemporary songs than the ones in which I'm interested. I'd expect the overwhelming majority of his customers and Web site users are primarily interested in post-WWII music. I'm not his target audience, and that's okay.

[Jaywalk3r]

Originally Posted by davidbeinct

I really don’t think you can do any better to get up and running than Toby Walker. Start with his absolute beginner lessons:
…
When you get comfortable with those move on to beginner fingerpicking lessons: …
His website is a little tricky to navigate but he is very approachable. He’s a member here and a great guy.
Good luck with your journey.

Thanks for the tip! I checked out a couple of his beginner lessons, and found his teaching style to potentially be a good match for my learning style. I'll check out more of the lessons over the next few days (at least).

[Jaywalk3r]

Originally Posted by Bluenose

Learning to finger pick requires you to learn to count which is very basic. … I've been f/ping for years but when I'm learning something new from tab I still count it out.

Good tip. I'll use it in conjunction with JonPR's suggestion of breaking bars down into individual beats. Thanks!

[JonPR]

Originally Posted by Jaywalk3r

I had expected the "independent thumb" to be problematic to learn, but your approach sounds like an easier approach for learning.

As I said, when I first tried teaching this style, I took that concept for granted, so I was surprised when it didn't work.
I had to remember my own process to understand the problem. Because I had no lessons (there were none back then, and no books!), I'd just worked things out by slowing them down on tape - it didn't occur to me to separate the roles of thumb and fingers, and I had no problems that way.)

But that may just be my own experience. It's true that the thumb and fingers do have different roles. The thumb is independent in a sense, in that it usually just keeps the beat while the fingers do all the interesting stuff.

You could compare it to strumming to a beat while you are singing a song. If you haven't got the steady strumming down, singing vocals which go off and around the beat is likely to disturb your strumming.
But then those really are different physical skills. Using the right hand to play fingerstyle is one interconnected physical action. Keeping the beat is still a crucial part of it, but it's more successful (IME), when thumb and fingers are involved together from the start.

[Deliberate1]

Conrgats on your deep dive, and enthusiasm. Now four years in, I know the feeling of wanting to learn it all, and at the same time. In my own journey, one of the hardest things for me has been to remain focused on the task at hand, It is so easy to be sucked off course by something that looks interesting or fun. If you like, give it a taste, and then return.

But my best suggestion to you is to reserve time in your play day to to just sit with your guitar and explore it with no plan at all in mind. I come from a lifetime of woodwinds work. It is a different experience - one note at a time. That is it. But the guitar can produce a salad of sound. It is so much fun just putting your fingers on the fret board and carefully listening how moving just one of them relative to the others changes what the guitar gives back you. That is how the instrument can reveal itself to you. And how you develop an intuitive, not intellectual, understanding of it as a music-making machine.

Enjoy the discovery.

David

[colchar]

Originally Posted by Jaywalk3r

I'm trying to learn to play the guitar, particularly fingerstyle guitar. I especially enjoy the music and styles of Mississippi John Hurt, Etta Baker, and Elizabeth Cotten. It isn't practical to learn to play in the style of Cotten, but I'd love to try to play like Hurt or (especially) Baker. There's some other traditional tunes I'd like to be able to play that maybe none of those three ever recorded, but most of the other music I want to play is at least 90 years old. To be clear, I'm as interested in studying the music as I am learning to play the guitar.

I'm also wanting/planning to learn basic music theory as I study and learn to play the music.

Music resources I've accumulated include:

• The Fingerpicking Blues of Etta Baker (DVD Homespun Video) with the original notation and tablature insert;
  
• Masters of Instrumental Blues Guitar, by Donald Garwood: "An analytical instruction method of blues guitar including blues chord progressions, melodic structure, rhythmic units, instrumental breaks, based on the styles of Etta Baker, Bo Carter, Rev. Gary Davis, John Fahey, Mississippi John Hurt, Mance Lipscomb, Frank Stokes, and others, in standard musical notation and tablature.";
  
• The New Lost City Ramblers Song Book (Cohen, Seeger, Wood);
  
• The Mississippi John Hurt Guitar Tab Book (Max Nachlinger, PDF)

I also have a few contemporary titles, such as Guitar Aerobics (Troy Nelson), Music Theory (Guitar Method, Tom Kolb).

In addition, I have the bulk of the discography for each of John Hurt, Libba Cotten, and Etta Baker on CD. I also have the Anthology of American Folk Music (Folkways, Harry Smith), The Bristol Sessions 1927-1928 (Bear Family Records), The Johnson City Sessions 1928-1929 (BFR), and The Knoxville Sessions 1929-1930 (BFR). I have quite a bit of Doc Watson, who played a lot of traditional tunes, as well as a lot of Jerry Garcia performing the same songs as part of various acoustic lineups. For a lot of the songs of interest, I have several different versions to listen to.

I can mostly read music notation, but not in real time. My brain has a pretty good understanding of the fret board and understand how notes and chord shapes move up and down the fret board, as well as across it. My left hand is lagging way behind with its understanding.

This is my second attempt trying to learn to play. I failed to make sufficient time to practice the first time. Also, I didn't have any specific goals. All I knew was that I wanted to do something other than strum chords. Since then, I got into the music of Hurt, Cotten, and Baker, in that order.

I have much more free time this time around. I also feel like I have more focused goals. I have acquired the music and/or tablature for many of the songs I'd like to learn. What I don't have is a coherent plan to get from being a new beginner with only some intellectual knowledge about the instrument to being able to competently play some of the easier songs in which I'm interested.

My guitar is a Taylor 812ce 12-fret. I love its size and appearance, but also how it sounds. (I can't play, but I have heard it played by a very good old country & jazz guitarist shortly after I purchased it.) I guess it's pretty lucky for me that it's well suited for fingerstyle, because when I bought it (used, via Reverb) it had never even occurred to me that some people play without a pick. I've since fallen in love with the tone of a delicately plucked string on the guitar. Further, a pick just feels clumsy in my hand, whereas playing with my fingers (on my right hand) feels natural.

My other equipment includes a decent stool for practicing, a music stand, and a guitar stand. I also have a tuner, metronome, and tools for changing strings.

I want my practices to be productive, but I don't really know where to start. It's all a bit overwhelming. Scales? Open position chords? Speaking of chords, how well do I need to understand the theory behind them? Is it enough to know the intervals and be able to recognize the inversions?

Are there online resources that I can use in conjunction with the old songs I actually want to learn and still get some sense of coherency?

When do I jump in with learning songs? How do I determine which songs are appropriate for early learning?

Should I focus on notation or tablature (or both)? I can understand both, but in real time cannot convey to my left hand the information from either.

Unfortunately, one on one lessons are not an option for me at this time. Let me assure you that it isn't because I don't recognize the value of such lessons.

Thanks in advance for any advice or suggestions!

There is a good course out there called "Learn & Master Guitar", which was bought by Gibson a few years ago. It is taught by Steve Krenz. There are a couple of other courses in the series, including one on fingerstyle. Maybe you could try it?

If I remember correctly, the courses are available online somewhere (Udemy?) so that you don't have to wait for the DVDs to arrive. Check around and I am sure you will find it.


https://www.learnandmaster.com/spotl...rstyle-guitar/

[Blueser100]

Originally Posted by JonPR

The basic advice is take it slow, and take it step by step.

You have to train your fingers - obviously! - and that takes plenty of repetion of each step.

You have more than enough resources. The books should show you the ideal hand positions, but if they don't, just watch as many players in this style as you can find. YouTube is an amazing resource! (I don't mean lessons necessarily, I mean watching the masters playing, and you can slow youtube down if you need to.)

As a self-taught player in this style since the 1960s, and now a teacher, I suggest ignoring any advice about the "independent thumb". You should think of each pattern as thumb and fingers interlocking. (The thumb only feels independent once you have practised the patterns enough.) I see you don't have Mark Hanson's books, so if you want to buy another I'd recommend one of his; he gets it right. (I used to try teaching from the independent thumb method, and it always failed. Then I remembered how I'd taught myself, years before: complete patterns from the start. That works.)

Take one bar of a pattern and slice it into beats. Every beat usually has a thumb stroke (on alternate bass strings), while one or more fingers will either coincide with the thumb on the beat, or play notes between the beats. So the elements are extremely simple:

• 1. thumb on beat
• 2. thumb and finger(s) on beat
• 3. finger between beats

Just occasionally there are variants, but 99% of this style is composed of combinations of those three elements. If you chop each 4/4 bar into individual beats, that's what you will see, and that's how you organise your fingers.

Obviously you do need to be sure the beats are regular - a metronome can be useful here - but if you start by just getting the thumb on that beat - going for "independent thumb" - that's easy enough. But it doesn't matter how good you get at that, when you bring a finger in, the thumb rhythm tends to fall apart. Hence the need to combine thumb and fingers from the beginning. Just do it as slow as you need to, even if it feels insanely slow.

Once the thumb and fingers interlock in the right order, then you can steadily speed up, but maintaining the time and the groove is the important thing. As you learn each bar, then learn the next bar, and gradually string bars together in pairs, then fours and so on. I.e., the process is linear. That's how finger memory works.

Lastly, don't overload your brain! If you feel yourself hitting a wall, or getting tired or bored with it, just stop. Don't push it. Your subconscious has to take time to organise the information. When you come back to it, you will find it easier.

Couldn't have said it better myself. The Mark Hanson books can be extremely helpful and essential for learning the Travis picking patterns that underlie so much of this style. Mississippi John Hurt, to me, is the most accessible for beginners though some of his pieces are more challenging.

My recommendation is to pick ONE of the books/DVDs that you already have and start with one song, etc. and take it slow and go from there.

[asweet22]

https://www.guitarvideos.com/

Every workshop I have purchased from them has been excellent. They have a new all-access pass, which could be overwhelming to a beginner, but is a fantastic deal.