..... you've worked on a piece for what seems like a million billion years, and yet you still can't get it to work or sound good, never mind getting it right. When you are so frustrated you could pull a Pete Townsend and bash the guitar over your amp?
I've just been working on the intro for Roll Over Beethoven for a long time now, and I just can't get the third pulloff right, no matter what. I can do it on the acoustic, but it just doesn't work on the electric. I've done drills, exercises, slowed down sped up, closed my eyes, crossed them, looked at my left hand, looked at my right, tooka break and did fingerpicking, everything. Are there just some things you cannot physically do, even after tons of practice?
I guess I just need to cool off and wait a few days before doing it again, but I really want to play it. I can do Johnny B Goode, any reason why the Guitar Gods are not smiling upon me now? :cry:
If you don't know where you're going,
Any road will take you there
Maybe you do just need to set it aside for a little while.
I have had the same thing with some songs and after leaving it alone for awhile then coming back to it it all fell together.
DUDE! :lol: If you learned it forwards and backwards and inside and out. Just stop thinking, let your fingers do the job. They'll know where to move and how to play it. I know it sorta sounds dumb but it happens to me all the time, but when ever Ive practiced something over and over, just put it aside for a while then just pick up your guitar and let your fingers do the job. It works for me, try it.
"We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly
static isn't it ? You know what I mean ? " -Jimi
well.... I don't know it forwards backwards, well, maybe my fingers do. I just get hung up and mad. I should just chill. Sorry for the rant.
But I did go back to it and turned one of the offending pull-offs into a slide and I can get through that rough spot. Still.... I should take a break. Thanks. I'm just a moron, thats all. :|
If you don't know where you're going,
Any road will take you there
Give yourself a break. Your mind is still working when you stop playing. You just hinder it if you continue practicing.
Breaks are not worthless times which can be left out. They are euqally important as playing guitar itself.
It's what I learned the hard way :roll:
NO MORE THEORY!!
um...
KNOW MORE THEORY!!!!
<------>
motz
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Remember also that a performance sounds different to your ears when you're playing it than when you're listening to it played back to you. If you can record yourself playing it somehow, and then listen to your performance, you may be pleasantly surprised.
Besides, why do you have to play it exactly the way someone else does? If a pull off sounds lame to your ears, go with the slide, or a ghost bend (if that's the correct term). Someone's postings have a quote at the bottom from Jimi, saying something like 'people copy me so precisely, they have even copied my mistakes'.
Make the song your own, if you are really cheesed at the pull off do something else.
:)
You'll run across things like that time to time. maybe your trying to hard sometimes that can make it seem even worse. Keep practicing you get it, just your time the rest will fall into place.
Joe
I'd say if you get frustrated while playing it put down the guitar for a while (like others have suggested) because if you keep playing it tensed up and angry your muscles could remember that tension and it may become even harder to play correctly
Thank you all for hearing me out. I was just needing to vent, but never thought so many people would answer with caring (er, um...) words of encouragement. :)
Not really trying to get it to sound EXACTLY like Chuck Berry, but the first few licks are signature parts of the song, like hooks, you know? I did make it a bit easier for me by adding a slide, it seems to help. I do want to learn it right though, so my fingers are accoustomed to this kind of playing, because I wrote a song for my band that has a Chuck Berry/Rockabilly feel. I've never written complicated guitar parts like that, so I thought I'd learn from the best. (And I do simplify difficult parts, anticipating that they're more trouble than they're worth. I've only been playing for a year and a half...)
Anyway, thanks again everybody. I'll shut up now :)
By the way, longdave, what's a ghost bend? should I be scared? :o
If you don't know where you're going,
Any road will take you there
somehow i sense the piece giving u trouble may be a pull-off on an inner string and you are hitting the string under it as you pull off??? if so, then i used to have that problem but i just practiced it slowly and now its no problem. maybe its a matter of a long stretch? another problem im overcoming now by positioning my hand differently...just analyze everything from pick angle to hand and thumb angle at slow tempo and ull eventually get it.
