Well I have been playing for a few weeks. And I love it, but after playing with my friends, and listening to their abilities of playing songs, and a great understanding of chord progressions, I come home and practice the basics, and it seems to be a little less entertaining, working on the fundamentals. So I was wondering what kind of things other people do to keep enjoying playing while still working on the basics? Any ideas would be great.
I am addicted to the guitar, just like I am addicted to air and water.
i think if you stick david hodge lessons easy songs for beginners there must be loads to keep you interested there, also i am sure you can impress you friends as well 8)
:WHO INVENTED WORK SHOULD COME BACK AND FINISH THE JOB OFF: http://www.soundclick.com/bartin
I just play around if I get bored learning stuff. Last night I played around with my delay effect and slapped the strings on my guitar (does that make sense?). It made a cool percussive sound. And if you fret a chord, you can either get a tone to your "slap" or have it ring out. Very cool, I thought.
All I want is food and creative love.
Progress is slow sometimes, and you'll feel like you're not really getting anywhere. That can be frustrating. And you'll constantly see people who are 'better' than you are, and that just adds to it - 'cause you'll be frustrated and jealous.
At the NAMM show last summer, I saw one guitarist after another who was better than I am in some way. Some of these guys were a lot younger than I am, too... and I started getting frustrated with my playing. Then I saw a guy playing a bass with one hand - because he only had one hand. And I said to myself "if he can do that, I have no excuses". I haven't had a 'boring' practice since then.
Just keep your focus on the pieces you can almost play, not the ones your friends have down. Keep doing that, and you'll probably pass them up in time - because lots of guitarists reach a comfort level, and their 'practice' time becomes simply playing through things they can already play. They won't get any better after that.
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Like the others said you just stick with it. I have been playing for almost 7 months and have complained about this that and the other thing on this forum. Yet improvement comes sometimes fast and sometimes in spurts. I agree that if your practice becomes boring or less fun scrap it for that day and just noodle (play around). Maybe have some fun licks to play of your favorite songs or make some up. I found the blues licks a lot of fun to play and they have help my playing progress as well. At least this way you're still playing and getting your hands used to playing and not just putting it away.
Cobra, sometimes the best way to go isn't just practicing chords, but learning songs. By doing that, you'll also be praciticing chords. Take them slow, get the changes down. It's more fun to play a song than random chords.
Set yourself a goal when it gets boring:-
"I am going to work out the introduction to Paranoid/ Born to be wild/ Personal Jesus/ Gay Bar and then I am going to string six of the chords I know together, call it a verse and write some words (it doesn't matter how baaaaad they are)".
And suddenly it gets far more interesting. If you can't quite work the introduction then you might have something in the same key as the verse you've just written and hey presto - next time you're with your friends you can say "here's a little something I wrote"
Best,
A :-)
"Be good at what you can do" - Fingerbanger"
I have always felt that it is better to do what is beautiful than what is 'right'" - Eliot Fisk
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if things get boring I'll throw on a CD and play along as best I can.
the Stones or Niel Young work for me every time.
this way you are using you ears to hear the chords on the CD. you are using your brain to make the changes and file things for future use. and you should be having fun rocking out with a great band.
I intersperse my practice with playing songs, after all that's what it's all about.
Tim Madsen
Nobody cares how much you know,
until they know how much you care.
"What you keep to yourself you lose, what you give away you keep forever." -Axel Munthe
i've been playing for a bit more than a year but i've never praticed a lot of things like arpeggios, scales, whatever. My main goal was to achieve a decent strumming and a steady sense of timing.
a few months ago I bought a book, an excellent one by the way (check it at http://www.mega.-muse.com) with a very downscaled approach focused on strumming which really let you play real songs in quite a short time. So I'm doing a bit of excercises of this book (almost every day and now i'm doing conformtably all the first half of the book's excercises) and then I play along with songs (I learnt almost one hundred of them, at least in a basic version which still let me play alongside the cd and make it recognizable by casual listeners)
Now being more confortable with strumming I try to play the songs I already know not sticking to first position open chord and thats' interesting. My main goals for 2006 are to really learn barre chords and the percussive sound
then in 2007 i will try some serious fingerpicking or maybe some scales who knows?
it's a very slow progress but I have all the life in front of me....
Matteo
