From where do i go ?

forget theory and worrying about scaes for now. apply your chord knowledge to songs.
learning to play songs helps you achieve chord changing experience, as well, as many other important skills.
go to Easy Song on this forum for ideas.

I can change fluently between all open chords and suspended chords, including F's and B chords.

I can play properly probably around 15-20 songs, so should i just carry on learning new songs ?

I can change fluently between all open chords and suspended chords, including F's and B chords.

I can play properly probably around 15-20 songs, so should i just carry on learning new songs ?

I'm sorry, but I've got to be honest here. You can play 15-20 songs? After two months? Really?

Then what are you doing on the computer, go on tour already.

I'm not as mean as that sounded. I'm just trying to be honest with you dude. I doubt, you really can play all those songs and at speed and accurately. Its IMPOSSIBLE!!

I keep a book of all the Chords i can play perfectly, all the chords transactions i can do fluently, all the songs i can play spot on, and if i can't play an entire song the parts of the song that i can play.
Also what i want to work on, wether it be a specif chord or song.

Everyday, i will play through all these songs, which takes around 1hr 30min, before attempting anything new.

Pink Floyd - Wish you were here (Chord progression, no fancy intro)
Alanis Moriette (sp?) - Hand In My Pocket
Dire Straits - Walk Of Life
Breaking Benjamin - Polyamerous (Acoustic improvisation)
Breaking Benjamin - Forget it
KT Tunstall - Silent Sea
KT Tunstall - Gone To The Dogs
KT Tuntall - Suddenly I See
KT Tunstall - Ashes
KT Tunstall -Stoppin The Love
KT Tunstall - Black Horse/Cherry Tree (No Loop pedal so sounds pretty raw)
KT Tunstall - Heal Over
KT Tunstall - Leather
Greenday - Boulivard Broken Dreams
James Blunt - Tears and Rain
James Blunt - You Beautiful
James Blunt - High
My Own Song - No Name (Just simple Am-C-G-Em-Bm progresion)
Friends - Intro Theme Acoustic

Those Are The Songs I can play, (including strumming patterns)
I'm not lying, i really don't see the sense in that, i am in no way "bigging" myself up. I practice for atleast 3-4 hours a day.
I know there is a H3ll of a lot more to learn, getting more unusuall barre chord changes down, i know absolutly nothing about scales or theorly.

As you can see from the list above, none of the songs above are anything to demanding, and yes i like KT Tunstall, i like the catchy rythm of her strumming and the lyrics, I would say at least 7 of the songs above are very simple 3 chord progression. Yes "Suddenly I See" Although fairly simple chords, has a pretty complex strumming pattern (at least i think so), and i probably put around 50 hours + getting it down so it sounded right.

At the end of the day the guitar is like anything i presume, the more time and effort you put in, the more you get out of it. I put alot of effort into it, for the first 3 weeks i couldn't get open chord changes down, i was frustrated and i hated it, but i stuck with it, kept practing and then "click" it happened.

I'm sure guitar like everything, can vary on how fast people can learn and improve on it.

All i was asking for was guidence, on where to go, what would be best to do, to improve in the direction i want to go in, such as rythm guitar.
I'm also intrested in learning some finger and alternate picking because i've never even tried it.

If you have any feedback it would be greatly appreciated, cheers.

soxzs,
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to offend you in anyway. Not at all. Its just two months? It took me a month and half for my callouses to get nice and tough when I first started....hehehe :)

Good that you stick with it. You'll need that patience and fortitude more and more as you progress. Just don't get in a rush.

A next step could be getting into an electric guitar. A whole other world there, different skills and techniques.

I'd suggest finding an instructor, doesn't have to be a long term thing if the funds are an issue. Maybe a once a month thing or just a few lessons up front. Reason I'm suggesting that, is an instructor could do a few things for you, the main one right now, is to point out any bad habits you may be forming so you and he or she can correct them early on.

A good teach will also show you the basic skills that are a must to master. And something to practice everyday. Yup practice, not playing but boring practice, drills and exersises to get the fingers strong and nimble.

Amongst a bunch of other things my teach is helping with is my theory studies. I know certain songs and/or bits of songs I really like, my instructor applies what I already know with theory. For me its a way to connect the dots and I'm 'getting' the theory down, albeit little by little.

Applied learning is what's happening here. Example I want to work on my improvisation more and learn more voicing and phrasing. So my teach and I work out the root(s) of certain songs or just simple chord progressions. Then he showed me where to start with the given scale (mainly the Minor Pent). BOOM! its opened up a whole truck load of things to work on, and its FUN! Find the root of the song and you know where that note is on the 1st or 6th string you have the starting point for the scale.

Theory can be very confusing at first but applied to what you do know it starts to make more sense.

D :)

If all you're doing is playing the same songs over and over again, you may get real good at those songs but you really aren't progressing as a musician. I think learning some scales would be a good idea, as would working on playing individual notes. A bit of theory can also go a long way.

In 2 months you have really made a lot of progress. Congrats.

Myself as I remember, I was only able to play C major correctly somewhat in 2 months and my hands were extremely sore due to developing callouses...:lol:

Gotta defend soxzc a little. While to this day I am no kind of great guitar player, I could play at least 20 songs after 2 months starting guitar. They were pretty horrid, but I could play them. I went and got songbooks right away with the chords over the lyrics and practiced like crazy. I focused on real easy songs with 3 or 4 chords max. I also had a good friend who was really good on guitar and showed me lots of songs.

In some ways I wish I had taken lessons. I could have learned to read and also avoided some bad techniques that I had to work out of my playing years later. On the other hand, I really developed a good ear. People were always impressed that I could hear a song on the radio and figure it out in a few minutes. So there are some advantages to learning by oneself. But nobody really learns alone, as I said, I got good books and stole licks from friends. And I was a true practice freak, I would practice 6-8 hours per day or more.

Start learning some scales. If you like Rock primarily, learn the Minor Pentatonic. Study theory here so you will understand what you are doing. Theory is still a little over my head.

But there is nothing wrong with learning songs. Sometimes when you learn a song, you learn technique without thinking about it. If you learned the solo to Crazy Train, you are gonna be pretty good at tapping when you get that down. I have never really liked playing exercises myself. I would rather learn a song with a particular technique used in the song. After all, we don't study and practice to know theory or to tap artificial harmonics. The end goal of all practice is to play songs.

The end goal of all practice is to play songs.

Amen to that. I could also play lots of songs within a few weeks of starting - I learned House Of The Rising Sun, I couldn't arpeggiate it properly but I could strum the chords. Then I learned Stand By Me - with those two songs, I had Am, C, D, F, E, E7, G, and Em. I bought songbooks, and though I couldn't read music, they did give guitar chords - so I'd learn a new chord every time I played a new song. Like Wes, I've always had a pretty good ear - so once I'd found where a song started, I could pretty much play along with anything after a few months. Obviously some chords are trickier than others - took me years to recognise diminished and augmented chords, for example. But with practise, you can recognise virtually any chord - even unusual voicings of commonplace chords.

The trick is to put all those chords together in coherent form and make music out of them!

So keep learning new songs - every new one you try, you'll learn something from. Whether it's a new chord, or a different strumming pattern - every song is different!

:D :D :D

Vic

i think you should learn fingerpicking. It's different from strumming, a lot of songs are picked, you can apply pickingpatterns to songs you already know to play them a new way, some songs have picking and strumming both in them, and you'll be playing at a higher level. you should also learn to play and sing at the same time...