Guitar Deja vu

:? OK!

... further clarification seems in order if nothing else .... BTW whoever referred to the guitar as the "easiest" instrument :( (which I take to be some kind of sideways reply) does a great disservice to most beginners. And here I thought the triangle was the easiest instrument.

Deja vu is prob the wrong word - I don't mean in the literal sense (as potential precusor to petit mal!) as I discovered when I did a little research afterwards. I also discovered that Feb 8, the date of my original post, was the 1 yr anniversary of Dr Ian Stevenson's death (he is a Canadian scientist who studied such strange phenomena - wooo-oooo ).

So I want to back up completely here and say that, while I respect people who dedicate hours and hours to their craft, I am not one of them (it shows, I know). But -really- I don't practice much more than an hour daily, if that. Sorry, even if I didn't have other demands, my body wouldn't let me - some part always starts to complain. Loudly.

And I don't come from a particularly musical family -although my maternal side was heavily into mandolin about 100 yrs ago ( which I didn't know before buying my mandolin either), but even if I was - what does it really mean? The idea that musicality is encoded in our genes is as much hocus-pocus as anything else. Or?

What distinguishes those who can pick up an instrument at will (and I don't claim to be one) from those with a tin ear?

BTW if there was one useful piece of advice I could pass on, that would be - suspend your inner critic. You know, the one that tells you that you s-u-c-k and then makes you put your guitar away to gather dust? Kick your inner critic to the curb. Or better yet, send him off with a box of chocolates and a sleazy romance novel lol The biggest help was to forget what I thought I was SUPPOSED to do on the guitar and just go with my ears and my fingers and what the guitar was telling me. Take that anyway you like :wink:

I think it's all in the guitar that you buy. you obviously bought a guitar that knows how to do things. Or you bought one that likes you a lot.I bought the wrong guitar. It doesn't know how to do to much at all. Or it hates me. Go figure.

What do you mean by guitar Deja Vu? I read your 2 messages, but still don't understand (even if it's 2 French words :oops: )

But I understood that you said the guitar was easiest than the piano... Here's my comment about that:

I play guitar for about 1 year and half now, and this weekend, I tried the piano at my uncle's house.

Piano seems easier to me for a beginner... Learning a basic song on piano is easiest than on guitar. Are you agree?

I learned Yesturday on piano (with one hand only, I was not playing the chords) and it took me 15 minutes to learn it and play it in a decent way...

It took me weeks before I was able to play something good on guitar... :lol:

I may be a piano virtuoso :roll: :wink:

I learned Yesturday on piano (with one hand only, I was not playing the chords) and it took me 15 minutes to learn it and play it in a decent way...

That's the only song I can still play on piano. My parents made me take lessons, and I'm better at guitar after 7 or 8 months than I was at piano after a few years, I guess because it's more fun when no one's making you do it. :D

I admire you, Claudine - for being both young AND focussed 8) - at your age my musical ambitions were limited to speaker dancing lol ... and I might add you are obviously talented as well
BTW I'm sorry to say my french stinks.

OK - here's an example - I can do a reasonable job of sight-reading Yesterday out of my Beatles book, as arranged for piano. But then on the guitar - besides Eleanor Rigby - I already learned Help, Come Together and Across The Universe. Not quite note-perfect but getting there. Yet if I sat at the piano and even knowing the correct chords! - I still couldn't play those songs for you without the book :evil: Go figure that one...

Good theory about “wanting to learn” but I really did want to learn piano and take lessons. I had to beg for lessons, actually. And I practiced religiously :evil:

… another thing about “wanting”. I don't REALLY want to write more songs. The first one was fun and now (especially since nobody cares anyway, judging by the youtube stats) it's just a pain …. I get obsessed over a song but it's not a song I heard a million times on the radio before and there's no tab :roll: Or lyrics :roll: And there's a “need” to play AND sing :roll: , which is WAY out of my comfort zone.

Like I said, this is more or less a spin-off from the 'when did it click' thred but this is really about the clicks that make you go 'hmmm' . There are many threds on gear - which is great - but what about the learning process itself?
So .... did you ever feel destined for the guitar? Did everything just start falling into place right away? Did you find your learning curve taking a surprising spin?

One more thing - my first guitar, a complete impulse buy, was basically good for smashing on the floor and/or lighting on fire. But it did have a big cutaway and really cool flame holes lol. Turns out (and I didn't know this either) that the earliest guitars, which appeared almost 700 years ago (!) had big cutaways and fancy rosettes instead of one soundhole..... woooo-oooooo :wink: