In any case, don't worry about where you are now or where your best friends nephew was in 1863. Just make sure you are going forward and the process itself is fun. If learning ain't fun you might as well stop since you'll never ever have learned everything there is to be learned.
Agreed!
Cheers,
Max
I am sure it is implied in all of the above but progress is all relative.
It is relative to your state of mind when practicing. Use the guitar to get away from other problems and try not to bring them to the guitar.
It is relative to how much you practice. Pick it up whenever you can even if just to noodle.
It is relative to how you structure your practice. Repeat something, learn something and noodle.
It is relative to what you are learning. Easy will go quicker
It is relative to how well you learned the fundamentals. Got to have a foundation.
It is relative to where you are in the learning process. Open chords vs. barre chords for example.
It is relative to your goals. Got to have a target then change it regularly.
It is relative to what you are comparing it to.
And above all It is relative to how much your are enjoying learning and playing the guitar. If you are not enjoying it you won't learn anything. Relax and enjoy what you have learned and enjoy the challenge of learning more. Sometimes big steps and sometimes small steps but all enjoyable.
If that's the book I think it is, I started with the same book (and guitarnoise of course), just over a year ago. My suggestion is to try playing other stuff. It's not that the book is bad, I think it was actually a decent way to start, but pretty much all the stuff in it basically the same. There's not much fingerpicking stuff in it, it's almost all strummy stuff with open chords. Go play other stuff for a while, and don't be afraid to pick something that's obviously a little beyond your ability. (Don't stop practicing the open chords though.) Try learning some theory while you're at it. Play some scales. After messing around with other stuff for a while, go back to that book and you'll be amazed how much easier it seems. And that's the real thing. It will _seem_ easier, but in reality, it was easy all along! (Nils is right, it's all relative.)
TZ
I am sure it is implied in all of the above but progress is all relative.
It is relative to your state of mind when practicing. Use the guitar to get away from other problems and try not to bring them to the guitar.
It is relative to how much you practice. Pick it up whenever you can even if just to noodle.
It is relative to how you structure your practice. Repeat something, learn something and noodle.
It is relative to what you are learning. Easy will go quicker
It is relative to how well you learned the fundamentals. Got to have a foundation.
It is relative to where you are in the learning process. Open chords vs. barre chords for example.
It is relative to your goals. Got to have a target then change it regularly.
It is relative to what you are comparing it to.
And above all It is relative to how much your are enjoying learning and playing the guitar. If you are not enjoying it you won't learn anything. Relax and enjoy what you have learned and enjoy the challenge of learning more. Sometimes big steps and sometimes small steps but all enjoyable.
Why does someone always bring up my relatives! :roll: :lol:
Dave - just to echo your sentiments... if you check out my "evaluating my teacher and myself" post from a month back, I also expressed frustration at reading the speed of progress (and speed of progress that some others seem to have in this forum... much faster). I'm 42 and at the 8 month mark. I also suck. I also practice 4-5 hrs a week. I had a recent epiphany. One day I could suddenly do barre chords! It was great! That was a week ago and I haven't been able to do them since. :(
Alternating bass? Yeah that works as long as I keep my eyes glued to my strumming hand.... sometimes.
I would agree that you should try a teacher. I have been taking lessons for most of the last 8 months and it does really help. I think sometimes you have the skills to do a particular cadence, but you just need someone to clarify the "spirit" of how to do it. I.e. "try emphasising this down stroke" or "only strum the bottom 3 strings for this one" or "really emphasize the bass string for this one"... and holy crap - suddenly you sound so much better! And without actually being any better. I think this is a major plus for having a teacher :)
Yeah, I don't have any real good advice to offer, just wanted to let you know that you aren't alone... I'm right there with ya and only 3000 miles away.
Don
Oh, yeah, one more thing.
Recently I was fishing for some support from my wife. I had been struggling with a few songs for 30 minutes and then finally I put down the guitar, hung my head in shame, and said "Man, I suck!" My wife looked up and... did she say "No you don't, dear, you are playing wonderfully?" No... she said "Thats ok." I.e., "its okay if you suck".
So, learned my lesson - don't go fishing for compliments cuz you never know what you're gonna catch :)
"Man, I suck!" My wife looked up and... did she say "No you don't, dear, you are playing wonderfully?" No... she said "Thats ok." I.e., "its okay if you suck".
Welcome to my world :cry:
Oh, yeah, one more thing.
Recently I was fishing for some support from my wife. I had been struggling with a few songs for 30 minutes and then finally I put down the guitar, hung my head in shame, and said "Man, I suck!" My wife looked up and... did she say "No you don't, dear, you are playing wonderfully?" No... she said "Thats ok." I.e., "its okay if you suck".
So, learned my lesson - don't go fishing for compliments cuz you never know what you're gonna catch :)
Be thankful you HAVE a wife that tells you that you suck!
I am sure it is implied in all of the above but progress is all relative.
It is relative to your state of mind when practicing. Use the guitar to get away from other problems and try not to bring them to the guitar.
It is relative to how much you practice. Pick it up whenever you can even if just to noodle.
It is relative to how you structure your practice. Repeat something, learn something and noodle.
It is relative to what you are learning. Easy will go quicker
It is relative to how well you learned the fundamentals. Got to have a foundation.
It is relative to where you are in the learning process. Open chords vs. barre chords for example.
It is relative to your goals. Got to have a target then change it regularly.
It is relative to what you are comparing it to.
And above all It is relative to how much your are enjoying learning and playing the guitar. If you are not enjoying it you won't learn anything. Relax and enjoy what you have learned and enjoy the challenge of learning more. Sometimes big steps and sometimes small steps but all enjoyable.
It's also relative to how much natural ability you have too.
Dave,
I'm sure that you are improving. You might not see it as a fluid process but as a step forward here, a step forward there. You might play sweet today, then sour for a week, then sweet followed by two off days, then two days in a row of sweet. Progress might only be seen by the absense of mistakes that you were making a month ago.
Nils mentioned goals. What are your goals, short term and long term. Are you planning on becoming a rock star? If so you need to practice more than 5 hours a week. Short term you are trying to nail that alternating bass. Long term? For me, Geoo put it perfectly, it is to have a relationship with my guitar. To enjoy the feel of it in my hands and to enjoy the music that I can make with it. If friends and family can share in that enjoyment all the better.
While it is possible to learn to play guitar ( or any instrument ) strictly from books or the internet it is important to have a teacher. Why? Well even with bad fundamentals you can get past the beginning level. You can sound just like the sound files included with the learning material. But bad fundamentals can hold you back from progressing further. --- The foundation that will support a ranch house might not be able to support a 10 story office building. No book is going to be able to tell you that your elbow is too far out or your wrist is bent at a bad angle, or that there is too much tension in your shoulders. A teacher will. Practicing bad habits will only serve to enforce those bad habits. ---
As a quick suggestion. Lay off the alternating bass for a few days. Go on to something else, something you can do really well, build your confidence back up. Then go back to the alternating bass, I'd bet you'll see some improvement after coming back to it.
Good luck and let us know how it goes,
Michael
Playing an instrument is good for your soul
I'm nearing my two-year guitarplayinaversary. Sadly, I probably am lucky if I have 12 months in it. I've been steady at it for 4 months now. 40 years old. You could never accuse me of being a guitar player without insulting someone who actually does it well, but it sure is fun. At this age, should anything else matter?
40 isn't old unless you play baseball against college kids (as I've been doing this Fall) who throw 90mph fastballs. Why bring up baseball? There's a parrallel here. I do it because I love it, not because I've got aspirations to be a pro. I have fun with it. Same thing with guitar, and probably the main thing i figured out this past summer that'll make me not put it down again.
In my book, if you're doing something because you're enjoying it, progress is all of a sudden not the most important thing.
Roy
"I wonder if a composer ever intentionally composed a piece that was physically impossible to play and stuck it away to be found years later after his death, knowing it would forever drive perfectionist musicians crazy." - George Carlin
if you can play the open chords and change between them slowly without looking i think the next step is to find a slow song that has these chords in it, get a recording of the song and learn the song. also get some songs that have one or two chords that you don't know yet so you can start to learn them. and get some songs that are a little faster than you can strum so you'll learn to get faster. then get some songs that have simple riffs in them at the beginning so you can start to learn that, like redemption song.
Something that often helps is to pick a very narrowly defined, specific short term goal.
It could be something as simple as a single chord change, or as complex as a complete song. It should be no more complex than what you can, with significant effort, achieve in between one week and one month's worth of work. If you aren't sure what you can achieve in a month's worth of work, seek out a more experienced friend or teacher to give you that bit of direction.
Break that simple task down to component parts.
If necessary break those parts down further.
Now you have the specific elements that will make up your daily, focused practices. Put forth the effort and in a week to a month you will have made signficant progress on at least one thing.
This approach can be far too tedious for most people as a normal way of practicing, but for when you're feeling stuck and directionless, it is a very good way to put some zing back into your practice because it is very easy to see yourself achieving something you couldn't do a week before.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side." -- HST
There is no such thing as a lack of progress, merely a temporary flattening of the learning curve.
It's only when you give up that it flat-lines.
I started with nothing - and I've still got most of it left.
Did you know that the word "gullible" is not in any dictionary?
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My Articles & Reviews on GN
For sure I have made progress, but every step forward seems to take an inordinate amount of time. I have been working on an alternating bass-strum for over a month now and still sound shoddy. And I find that if I miss playing for more than a couple of days I lose a lot of finesse and timing.
You need to remember that each new technique and riff you learn involves training your muscles not just to do a sequnce of motions, but to do those motions automatically. That takes hours upon hours of practice. This holds true no matter how long you've been playing.
As for missing days: If I miss one day, I know it. If I miss two days, other musicians know it. If I miss three days, my entire audience knows it. I play every day, even if all I have time for is to strum a few chords and do a scale or two.
Playing guitar and never playing for others is like studying medicine and never working in a clinic.
