Hey everyone. I've been playing guitar for about 6 months now and I don't know if I'm practicing the way I should be right now. I had a guitar teacher for about 3 months and I learned chords, scales, some basic songs, theory, etc. But, after the 3 months, they had to move and I lost my teacher :cry: . Since then, I've practiced scales more (I only know the major ones at this point) and have been downloading tabs for various songs that I like and learning them, but I don't know if this is the right approach. What's your guys' opinions? Should I be practicing songs yet? Learning all the scales? Teach me your ways O_O. Thanks for any and all help.
My opinion?
Every song you learn teaches you new abilities that you can use in other songs.
I am constantly learning and using new chord shapes that kepp popping up again and again.
If you don't know how to read notation I would work on that a bit also.
Of course there are alot of other things to learn but what you should learn is based solely on what you want to do with your guitar.
There are so many ways to play. Lead, rhythm, solo, fingerstyle. ect...
Maybe you are content to just strum and sing around a campfire.
Each style of playing has its own list of things that have to be learned.
No one can play every style of music known to man, and who would want to anyway.
Just keep plugging away and if you get in a rut take a look through the lessons on this site.
Best of luck.
Just keep plugging away and if you get in a rut take a look through the lessons on this site.
Why wait untill then, If I were you I would start off with the "Easy songs for beginners" section on the home page of this site. The lessons are great AND you can here how they are surposed to sound. David puts some rock solid lessons together.
P.S.- Sorry to hear your teachers music store moved on you. Did you try to get his/her phone number? Chances are they might live near you and you could get your lessons on the side.
Sounds like you've made some good progress for just six months. You are obviously over the hump. Now that you are without a teacher (though I'm sure there are others in your area, just go see some live bands and ask around). it just depends on what interests you, and what you want to accomplish, and what you see yourself doing with the guitar six months from now.
You mention you only know one or two major scales, so you might want to learn a few others like the minor pentatonic and the blues minor (almost identical) and then get some rhythm tracks to improvise over the top of.
Playing chords along to full songs is a great teacher too and will improve your rhythm playing... especially since a large percentage of the tab you find online is either wrong and usually not complete. I use it as a starting point but create my own tab. It takes more time but with the use of Transkriber software, it will be right and complete.
I just ordered from Dispatch Music some Play-Along books/CD's. About 8 songs per book with the complete song on CD with and without guitar and vocals. Since Hal Leonard's name is on it, I bet they'll be pretty good backing tracks. Find out next week when they show up. Buy three get one free, so for $40 bucks I figured it was worth it... I'm sure they will be better then some books I've bought... but I've always learned something regardless.
Guitar One, Guitar World and Guitar World Acoustic are a few mags that have a variety of instruction and professional tab too!
You did not mention what type of music you were playing but it might be useful to work on hammer on's, pull off's, bending and sliding. You can do this while you are working scales against a rythym track to make your lead playing sound more interesting.
Well that's all some good food for thought... hope there was at least one idea in there for you.
E doesn't = MC2, E = Fb
Music "Theory"? "It's not just a theory, it's the way it is!"
Jonny T.
