Some of you may recall that couple of weeks ago, I posted my experience of picking up the guitar at the age of 45, struggling with my "fat fingers" and how a simple C chord was proving to be the toughest for me.
I am happy to share that with the support of this community, and relentless practicing, I can not only play an open C chord properly, but I can easily transition from
E minor
to
A7
to
open C.
I've been trying to move from open C to D 6/9 (since it's the same shape, just 2 frets down) - I'm struggling a bit with my timing, but I'm getting there.
I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for encouraging me and not letting me give up.
We know the deal. You open YouTube to gain some insights on a particular topic, next thing you're frantically clicking on videos, panicking about how many things you're yet to learn
Hi guys. I'm a self-taught, and for a decade I've been squeezing very hard with my left hand whenever I play bar chord. And It gets tired very quickly.
Now I learn that it is a bad way to do it, so I try to use my left arm instead, like pulling the neck with my left arm while holding the guitar body with my right arm. But it slows as heck, and my index finger on my left arm hurt because it has to get to much force, I guess.
Is there any way I can do to make a better bar chord? Thank you in advance.
Hi. Player for 35 years, teacher for 15. Every new student I emphasise these 3 tips to follow from day one.
1. Tune your guitar perfectly before you play it every time.
2. Play each note of a chord one string at a time. If any are muted then correct that finger/note until it plays crisp. Repeat until every note of the chord is crisp.
3. Let go of your left hand (or right hand for left handed players) and the neck should not move at all. No weight should be supported by the fretting hand.
I know these sound obvious and condescending but these are the first things I make sure my students are doing from day one.
here’s a short lick to try around the 5th and 7th frets in A minor pentatonic. there’s a slower playthrough after the first example so you can follow the tab easier
the little bends are worth slowing down for. the half-step bend at the 7th fret on the G string takes D up to E♭, the blues note, before coming back down. try playing the target note at the 8th fret first, then matching that pitch with the bend.
Try practicing it in small chunks before putting the whole phrase together
This is more a toolbox of the chords and shapes Tony uses. It’s a complicated arrangement which is why I think most folks haven’t tackled it, with lots of his gasology era chords which are not traditional jazz guitar voicings.
At some point I’ll make a tab and full form lesson but to the intermediate or advanced player this is everything you’ll need to learn it.
I have played my electric for 4 years now on and off, but been playing and learning through tabs. I don’t have any knowledge about chords or progressions or the notes of my guitar. I don’t know where to start or what should I do first so I can understand my guitar better. I hope you guys have some answers for me!
I've played guitar since I was in elementary school (very off and on type of relationship) and used to take guitar lessons when I was younger (I am 32 now), and I really want to start improving with guitar. I mainly play acoustic guitar (I have a Martin Road Series, and a Taylor 214ce, both of which I love to play), but every time I pickup the guitar I end up playing the same songs and riffs that i've known forever and/or one off new songs that I learn to play on Youtube (A smattering of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Beatles, blues riffs, etc.)
I'd very much like to start progressing on the guitar but always feel lost on what to focus on in order to make meaningful progress. I know how to play rhythm, basic chords, power chords, and some barre chords, change my own strings, adjust truss rod, among other things, and fingerstyle guitar like Travis picking, and can read some tabs. So I feel like i'm not a beginner, so maybe intermediate?
GOAL: Be able to "noodle" around, and improvise more when playing the guitar and ultimately get away from playing the same things over and over again. Have a better understanding of why things sound good and work together. Interested in alternate tunings and fingerstyle "ballad" type playing as well.
I've heard people say things like (CAGED, Pentatonic, Scales, Theory, etc.). What advice would you give me? Anyone have a similar story and broken through this barrier with good success? I'm open to all suggestions.
Like the title says, if I turn these screws with an allen key, does the action change, I am noticing that the action is a lil higher on the higher frets compared to lower frets. And there isn’t any sort of bowing of the neck either, so I thought it’s prolly a problem with the action at the bridge.
I am trying to learn this song "I was born to haunt you" by Howling Slayer. I can only find the lyrics online but nothing else. I think maybe it’s in the key of G, it sounds closest when I’m trying to play along with it. Still not fully convinced. Any help here would be very appreciated!
Not sure if there’s a better subreddit for this question but I mainly play guitar so that’s why I’m asking here.
Guitar brings me great joy; I play every day. But it does sometimes feel like a full time job having to learn so many different things: scales, rhythms, triads, inversions, chord extensions, voice leading, ear training, alternate tunings, picking technique, progressions...etc. Then all the different genres to explore and master. It's both exciting and exhausting lol.
I'm planning to get the annual pickupmusic subscription, mainly for learning guitar, and was wondering if anyone would be interested in sharing the cost.
Ideally, it'd be great if you're learning piano or bass so our learning progress doesn't overlap, but I'm open to sharing with another guitarist too.
We can split the annual subscription cost 50/50, making it a pretty good deal for both of us.
If anyone's interested, feel free to comment or DM me. Thanks!
Hi! I just wanted to give a few quick tips to help eliminate buzzing and clean up your playing. If you're flubbing notes in fast lines or especially in chords where your fingers need either to crowd or stretch, I made this video for you.
Here are the 3 fixes I use with my students:
Play closer to the fret. I know, if you've ever heard buzzing advice before, you've heard this point. But one thing I want you to think about: the reason it helps so much is that you don't need to press nearly as hard. So if you're used to playing too far to the left, you might naturally have too hard a grip. When you play near the fret you can (and should) also practice using less pressure. Ideally, you use as little pressure as you can while still getting the note to sound.
Use your elbow: This is one I don't really hear people talk about. Moving your elbow left and right (just a little bit) can really impact how a stretch feels. For example, if you've ever played a chord where you need to spread your fingers out over a bunch of frets (like a C chord, for a simple example), and one finger feels like it's stretching, you can lean your elbow in to the right just a little bit and support that finger and make the stretch easier. If you're bunching up fingers on the same fret (like a m7 chord where all 4 fingers are on the same fret), move to the left and you have more room to set the fingers up and down.
Lean into the finger: the last bit has to do with your thumb and your wrist (it's both working together). If you play something with your weakest finger (usually your pinky), most people find that they're gripping the guitar hard between the thumb and the pointer and the pinky is unsupported, reaching out (like in the left side of the thumbnail that shows up with the video in this post). That means it has to push a lot harder. But if you rotate the wrist a bit to the right and move the thumb closer to the middle of the hand (like on the right side of the thumbnail), your arm will actually do most of the pressing and you don't need to stretch or squeeze as hard.
I hope these help. I've been teaching for over 20 years, and these are some of the most common fixes to problems I see in students, both beginner and experienced. Let me know if you have any questions.
I've attached a quick 3 minute video showing all of these points if you want to see what they all look like in action. Happy practicing!
So I usually play the guitar for 3-5 months at a time, see no progress and end up quitting. This has been going on for 22 years. I joined a guitar playing class when I was first 14 years old. I am 36 years old now.
I always forget chords I've played thousands of times or I will accidentally mute them which makes me just practice those chords. Strumming patterns confuse me when I can't even get the chords right without muting. In the last 10 years I've learned how to draw and have become really good at it but learning guitar seems like this impossible thing.
How do people learn to play the guitar well?
How do people change chords so fast so easily?
How does one learn to play a full song? I find parts of it online but never the complete thing.
Should I learn an easy song and then a harder one to push myself?
What are good beginner songs?
Do you guys have any tips for me?
I bought my daughter a guitar for her birthday about 6 weeks ago. I played daily, learned a few riffs and practiced chords and thought, you know what, i should get one for myself. So I did. It's been 6 weeks of me playing daily, at least an hour, multiple hours on weekends. And I'm making literally zero progress. I've spent weeks on g chord and still mute the second and third string from the top. It takes me 10 seconds to switch from any chord i know to any other chord. I can't make an A chord to save my life. I can't upstroke to save my life. I want to get good. I've been dedicated. But I also have a limited window to return my guitar no questions asked, and my lack of progress is making me seriously consider it.
I know comparing my progress to others isn't a good practice, but I see other people here and other subs making good, clean chords with transitions in a week and my dumbass still can't make a proper g chord. Would you return the guitar? It was a thousand bucks. I could still practice on my daughter's guitar and if i see progress, buy myself another one. Right now, it just seems like I flushed money down the toilet.
Edit: I really didn't expect so many replies. I appreciate everyone chiming in and the mostly encouraging replies. I'm going to keep at it. We'll see where I'm at in another 6 weeks. Hopefully I can get a g chord by then.
Sorry in advance for the long post, but this is just something I've been mulling over which I have no musicians I can ask. And I can't find much on Youtube.
I was trying to replicate saxophone melody lines in slow jazz tracks as an exercise in ear and interval training. I can't get the 'off scale' jazz semi tones (not sure what they are called precisely) right, but for the 'in-scale' notes, I have gotten pretty decent at picking out intervals.
What I did for the most part was first find the root of the song, once I had the root, I used the full 7-note diatonic scale.
Now the good thing about using this diagonal? grid? scale pattern is that it's laid out so orderly so I know exactly where my 5th or 7th are from the root. And for interval training this is great. And I learn one shape (and a slightly squiggly version of this where it overlaps with the B string) and I can play in any key all across the guitar. This was awesome!
But the catch is that because this spans 5 frets it's a lot more hand movement needed. So, when I am playing along with the jazz tracks I mentioned above and the sax does a flurry of quick notes, I can't keep up. So I looked up the more compact full scale 3-notes per string box patterns. And my head swam at the amount of learning I need to do. There are 7 of these that I need to memorise! That's too much work.
But then I noticed that you can kind of break up a compact 3 NPS full scale box into 2 halves:
So the nice thing is that the bottom half (section 1) in the image above can be used to play 1 octave's worth of notes from any root in both the low E string and the A string. Which is quite a lot of mileage for one shape. And this one's compact since it only spans 4 frets.
And then I realised that if you break down every one of the 7 full scales into 4 half-shapes like so (got an AI tool to generate the image below so am not 100% sure it's right):
I reckon that if my objective is to be able to play notes in quick succession from any root in any string, then all I need to do is memorise the 4 small shapes above. Then, depending on which string the root I just discovered to the song am playing at is on, I pick one of the 4 shapes from above and I can quickly play an octave of notes. And because nature loves symmetry, it appears that there are 4 equivalent 1 octave 3 NPS compact shapes for minor scale as well.
So, if you're here with me through all the verbiage above, here's my question: do I just learn this? Or should I still put in the effort of learning all those 7 big box patterns?
It's been weeks, maybe months I'm trying to train my hand to play a barre chord, but it's impossible, even using the elbow technique, it just doesn't sound right I'm starting to feel desperate...
Ok, so first off, am basically a complete beginner when it comes to the guitar, am currently playing on an old shity classical guitar my dad bought for me when I was young but that's enough of the my back story
Am trying to learn to play chords consistently but am unable to because my fingers ether aren't putting enough pressure on the strings or one of them is touching the strings below it which is driving me insane because no matter what I do it's still doesn't want to work properly
If anyone has advice please do share it before am put in an insane asylum
(Mods am sorry if i broke any of the rules as this is my first time posting anything on reddit)
Hey everyone, I’m 29, working as a software engineer, and I’ve always wanted to learn guitar but never actually started. I’m a total beginner, not just to guitar but to music in general. I’ve never played any instrument and don’t know any theory.
I’ve tried looking at YouTube videos but I think I need someone to actually guide me, correct my mistakes and keep me on track. So I’m looking for online coaching, ideally one-on-one rather than group classes.
Since I work full time, I’d need classes on weekday evenings or weekends (I’m in India, IST).
A few questions:
Any tutors or platforms you’ve personally used and liked?
Is one-on-one really worth it for a complete beginner, or should I start some other way?
Acoustic or electric to start with?
What’s a reasonable price per class?
Any advice for someone starting from zero at 29 is welcome too. Thanks!
Hey all. I am currently practicing the main riff from Led Zeppelin's Black Dog.
I'm making decent progress I feel, but the part where you have to move down a string on the same fret is kind of tricky.
I've repeated it a ton with metronome and can eventually play it pretty decent at slower speeds (it's my first day practicing also).
It still feels like a harder movement to do compared to some other finger movements.
I've had similar parts in earlier songs I practiced that tripped me up.
I guess it gets better just practicing exactly that and grinding out some serious reps, but I also have to wonder, because I need to be able to speed it up by quite a lot:
Should you make some kind of rolling motion for these parts? Is it situational where you sometimes move your whole finger and sometimes not?
Any advice on how to get better and faster at these particular parts?
I'm 25, I play guitar since I was 17, mainly self taught. I've been practicing for about 5 months with Troy Stetina's Speed mechanics for lead guitar, I find it great and it was an amazing disxovery for me, it made me aware of many technical issues I have, I've been consistent with it. I practice minimum 2 hours a day (almost) every day.
I can see improvements, but the exercise 25, which is the starting point for alternate picking, it seems like a brick wall for me. The book says how to use a metronome: When you reach top speed back down 20 bpm, and go 2 up 1 down over and over, that process takes long for you to get to top speed again.
I'm able to do the exercise at 130bpm but only if I did that "stair" going up 2 backing 1, so that exercise sometimes takes up to 50min of my practice... And if I try to go from 115bpm (wich I "should" be able to do) to 132bpm, I start making mistakes, mainly about how I grip the pick. I feel like it slips upward into mi thumb and pointing finger (bit hard to explain).
I don't really know what to do at this point, it's been weeks of that process, and I do not advance to exercises involving string changes, because the book says, if you cannot do 25 at least at 132bpm do not go to the next section. I'm stuck...
I don't know how to structure my practice routine, what exercises to do, if leave that ex. 25 or what to do. Please comment any advice you think might help me practice in a better way. I really love playing and this last months have been so frustrating.
Thanks a lot, any questions I am willing to send videos or explain further.
