I need some direction...

Hi Mike,

You say:
But for me to stay motivated I need to keep learning new things.

At a guess, that's probably a really common thing with beginners. I know that I have the same tendency too. But I think it's a bit of a trap.

Over and over again I've come across players who have a big repertoire of fragments and partial abilities, but no real depth to their skills. Just a sort of scattergun selection of stuff that they moved on from before they really nailed it. Perhaps it's a by-product of the TV era, we all end up with 5 second attention spans. :?

I find that re-starting the teaching books I have is always handy. It somehow still has an element of freshness and reward, because a) I can do it much better than I could when I first went through, and b) because I find all manner of stuff that I just sort of.... skipped... the last time... :oops:

So I have a few things that I work on for a while, but then rotate with something else, so that they don't get stale and boring. To some extent, the challenge in learning guitar is working out how to keep the basic stuff fresh.

My current remedy for the restless itch that you talk about is to try and learn to sing. I'm finding that to sing properly alongside my playing I needed to go back to basics on a bunch of aspects and get them a lot more solid than before. Otherwise I end up with odd timing, extra beats in bars and all sorts of wickedness. :twisted: So it's a way to be doing something new, and tightening up the old at the same time.

How's your singing? And your music reading? I can read a melody line off a score slowly but rarely at playing speed, so I'll be going back to some of my earliest beginner books and working on that again soon.

Oh, and trying your hand at writing songs can be good too. Apart from being a lot of fun, it really makes you think about how it's done musically. It gives you a good incentive to go back and fill in a few gaps!

Good question anyway, and good luck with it. I'll be interested to see what others suggest.

Cheers, Chris

Have you worked on fingerstyle yet?
"Scarborough Fair" and "House of the rising sun" are a couple of good songs to start playing fingerstyle (both are or can be played with strait arpegios with a fixed picking pattern)
I am working on "Fields of Gold" from the intermediate songs on this site and just finished learning "As tears go by" from Guitarforbeginners.com
If you haven't gone that route yet you will find fingerstyle will add a whole new dimension to your playing.
PS: "Dust in the wind" was the first fingerstyle song I learned. Might seem daunting but it really isn't that hard. Chords changes are really easy and most of the song has a set picking pattern (secret, practice the picking pattern on the open strings until you get it down then add in the chords)

Chris, thanks for your reply but you give me WAY too much credit! SINGING & song writing? I am not ready for that yet...

As for the rest that you said...I have no problem continuing with what I am currently learning. I just need new drills/new ways of learning the same stuff. I am just getting bored doing the same drills over and over again...

Thanks

Have you worked on fingerstyle yet?
"Scarborough Fair" and "House of the rising sun" are a couple of good songs to start playing fingerstyle (both are or can be played with strait arpegios with a fixed picking pattern)
I am working on "Fields of Gold" from the intermediate songs on this site and just finished learning "As tears go by" from Guitarforbeginners.com
If you haven't gone that route yet you will find fingerstyle will add a whole new dimension to your playing.

I started House of the Rising Sun back when I first started but at the time it was too hard. I should go back to that. I can probably do the chord progressions now. Way back when I first got my acoustic (15 years ago) I started with fingerstyle. It came fairly easily for me...Thanks!

I am also looking for new ways to work on what I am already working on. I don't HAVE to learn a whole new technique...I just want to add some new things to my practice while at the same time continue to refine what I can already do.

*I know a few scales but I need to work on these. I am trying to add more.

Lack of direction was the primary reason I signed up for lessons.

My teacher may be a bit of a drill sergeant, but he's got me working scales and arpeggios all up and down the neck, and now diatonic chord progressions. It's not the most fun, but when I switch over to a song I believe my playing is much improved. I was a bit skeptical at first, but now I highly recommend getting the fundamentals down cold.

Chris, thanks for your reply but you give me WAY too much credit! SINGING & song writing? I am not ready for that yet...

Course you are.... you're coming on great. I don't think I'm any further advanced than you are and I'm hacking away at it!! :twisted:

As for the rest that you said...I have no problem continuing with what I am currently learning. I just need new drills/new ways of learning the same stuff. I am just getting bored doing the same drills over and over again...

Thanks

If I play scales and so on I play them "straight" a couple of times (or whatever). Then I start jumping about, within the scale, to see what's there.

After all, my ultimate aim with scales is to make tunes out of them. So I see if I can find some nice combinations. I also see if any known sequences pop out, and then I try and complete them. For instance, last week I hit just a couple of notes from the old song Greensleeves so I spent quite a while experimenting until I found the rest of the melody, then worked out what key it was in (which wasn't the one I was playing when I found the first couple of notes) , and so on.

It all feels like useful practice, and it keeps me interested. :D

I would just like to point out that you certainly do NOT lack direction. Your practice routine is very good. Certainly much better than mine.

If you have trouble with barre chords keep working on them. Eventually just like open chords you will be able to form them easily.

Im also with missleman, fingerstyle can be fun too. Ill just add a couple of songs. Blackbird, Julia, Wherever you will go.

Once you get a little used to fingerstyle you can try picking the songs that you already know.

Hi Mike,

Over and over again I've come across players who have a big repertoire of fragments and partial abilities, but no real depth to their skills. Just a sort of scattergun selection of stuff that they moved on from before they really nailed it. Perhaps it's a by-product of the TV era, we all end up with 5 second attention spans. :?

I think Chris has been spying on me :(

Now, what was I saying again?

I think Chris has been spying on me :(

:D :D

There's a guy just like that in our house too. I see him in the mirror every day when I shave... :oops:

But, yes, my spies have been carefully noting all your sins Scott. So if you'll just hand over that beautiful Oscar Schmidt 335-style guitar of yours all will be forgiven.... :wink:

I had a teacher a long time ago that emphasized fretting chords and chord changes and basically refused to focus on lead playing. His logic was that chords are the basis of all music and once you master clean fretting of chords and quick consistent changing of chords then you were more than ready to play lead. I am not sure if he was right or wrong but he did get me pretty quickly to the point I was comfortable with chords. A good example of the need for good chord knowledge and changing skills is House of the rising sun. Get these open chord changes down and you are easily playing a song people with recognize.

The page on my website called "basic strumming" was effectively my chord based practice routine and is why I created that particular page.

The premise behind it was to learn some basic strumming patterns and make your strumming hand independent of your fretting hand. Once you have a few strumming patterns you are comfortable with and don't have to pay as much attention to the strumming then you can start using various chord progressions to work on both fretting and changing.

In other words get good with a pattern like DDUDU and then use it to practice chord progressions like E A D, D A Em G etc. The progressions on my page are somewhat in order of difficulty (at least was for me).

Now, this can get quite boring because effectively your are not learning songs which is what motivates most people. So, after you master a couple of patterns and progressions start to look for songs that match. The patterns and progressions on my page are taken from some relatively popular rock songs for that reason.

Now add in practicing scales, learning the fretboard and reading music you have a pretty stable learning process.

The good news is I think this is what you are already doing and have made good progress in a very short period of time so keep focusing on the basic and throw in the more complex as comfort and time permits.

I personally don't think chord changes are the basis of music. I could be wrong but I don't think it helps if you're concerned about playing one note at a time. Well, it probably would help, but you could get by without it. I don't see one skill as an extension of the other but two seperate skills.

I watched one video

http://www.abc.net.au/newengland/countrymusic/stories/s1029660.htm

as Matt Scullion tried to teach how to play Stand By Me by Ben E King. He refered to fretting on the strings as a 'spider effect' meaning how your fingers should look on the fret board. While playing the song, the 'spider' looked like it was jumping then landing its legs on differents webs(strings). Then I watched Alter Bridge guitarist, Mark Tremonti, play the solo of Open Your Eyes

http://www.alterbridge.com/noFlashMusic.html ,

which was mostly 32nd notes. The 'spider' looked like it was scurrying, maybe to catch a fly.........So what I got out of comparing the two was: When this spider jumps and when it runs, its doing two seperate motor skills.

That probably sounds really really weird but its how I looked at it. Think its why I have yet to take lessons, I tend to do things my own way too much.

In other words get good with a pattern like DDUDU and then use it to practice chord progressions like E A D, D A Em G etc. The progressions on my page are somewhat in order of difficulty (at least was for me).

I'll second that. :) Those pages of yours were printed out and stuck in my daily practice book a while back. Thanks Nils.

I always enjoy running through the progressions you suggest, then trying chopping them around, using different strums etc.

Lots you can do with them. I've pretty much got most of the chord changes OK with basic strums. So I'm using them to work on strengthening up different strumming patterns and picking styles.

OneWingedAngel

I don't agree or disagree with you. I guess because my early years started with and focused on chords I try to equate everything back to them. Even when I am working on learning a solo I try to figure out which chords make it easier. And in a lot of cases they are just single notes and don't lend to forming a chord so to me it is a mixture.

Chris

I find myself going back to that page often and just messing with the progressions. It is just fun to see what you can make out of them.

I knew if I posted this question I would get VERY sound advice! Thank You!

I agree with OneWingedAngel AND Nils...here is why: Chords are the foundation of almost EVERY song. There are very few songs that are ONLY lead style playing. Chord playing anchors the song which in turn makes leads sound that much better. If you have ever heard a song that had poor rhythm guitarist the leads tend not to be as impressive.....So Nils is correct in saying to make sure your chord changes are precise.

However, it has been said time and time again on this site that a complete guitarist is a GREAT guitarist. Leads tend to be the focal point in most songs. People in general tend to be impressed with a good lead guitarist. You rarely hear most audiences say "WOW! What GREAT chord changes!" It's always the leads that make or break guitarists in the audiences eyes (ears).

I LOVE the way OneWingedAngel used the analogy of the spider. Being a physical education teacher I can relate to giving students visuals to help them learn new skills. I also used to be into martial arts (judo in particular) and there are many disciplines that use the "animal" analogy such as "Tiger", "Dragon", "Mantis", and "Snake" are the one's that come to mind.

Thanks everyone for giving me something to work with. It gives me more motivation to continue what I am doing and some ideas to make it more interesting.