Starting out with the guitar

Good post! :D

I agree that most guitar players are relaxed and free. Many will improvise, if they know how. And there's many different formations as you know, for the same chord or lead riff. I like to see guitarists having fun with blondes too. Or Rose Wood, whatever? :shock:

The exception is where a stiff guitarist must sit and read music, and play in the Lawrence Welk-style orchestra. :roll: That's sad, and must be boring, being only one of the instruments.

Fortunately, for music, and people's enjoyment and well-being, I have seen many saxophonists, clarinetists, horn players, even flutists that go for a little razzmatazz and all that jazz. :wink:

Yeah yeah no doubt! I have seen great sax players blowing it out, but I see more guitarists being free, even if they are relative noobs theyll loosen up :D. But if you are a noob playing sax or something you tend to be more reserved and stiff.

Not all the time it depends from person to person of course! But yeah, we played again, lol the drums are crazy, in the drum rolls we switch drums, like I hit ur drum u hit mine, lol I almost hit my friend when I went to hit his drum, missed him though ^^, my friends strap broke when we were walking out to the court, he manage dto grab his drum lol.

And also thanks for saying good post, I sometimes like feel bad for posting those long posts cause I tend to babble lol, but yeah ^^.

LOL blondes or Rose Wood haha, made me laugh.

Post away, its all good reading.

This is the main reason I spend a portion of my practice time learning scales... a little scale knowledge can lead to a lot of improvisation.

Any musician can be a "performer" and have a lot of fun on stage fun, no matter which instrument they are playing.
I think it's more about comfort than anything.

For instance, which guy is having more fun in this clip: Keyboard , guitar or flute player?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdz_G1VGJ4c&feature=related

Or, how about this brass band:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnSZDoVDcc8

First video: Why don't people dress that way anymore?

Second video: My first guess as to where the brass band is from . . . was . . .
they are all Ohio State Marching band alumni . . .
then I did some research . . .
and they are a 'street band' from the Netherlands . . .
I was close.

Playing sax and guitar for a living here are some things I notice:

1) Improvisation is easier on the guitar, because the fingering for scales is the same in every key. For the sax each scale must be learned with 12 entirely different fingerings

2) It's easier to read music on the sax than it is on the guitar

When I learned guitar, I started with pentatonics plus the blue note (b5 on the minor pentatonic and b3 on the major pentatonic) and was delighted in how easy it was to play the same thing in a different key. 5 positions does it all, instead of 12 entirely different fingerings.

On the other hand when I learned to read music on the guitar, I was very frustrated because each not has multiple positions and all the notes feel the same (I'm still MUCH better at reading music on the sax)

I can improvise with either instrument, but because I've put in many more years on the sax, I can improvise better on the sax than I can on the guitar.

Being able to read music and understand basic music theory helped me improvise immensely. But on the sax, you need it because to transfer the pattern from one key to another, you can't simply move the hand up or down a few frets. Instead you have to understand which scale intervals produce what sound (tension or resolution) and then transfer that to the new key.

As far as being free on stage, I've had that from the start. No stage fright, lots of fun, and relaxed/enthusiastic. It's been a party from day one.

When I was in junior high school, I started in the school band, and within a year I was in a rock and roll band. We were terrible, but so was everybody else back then ;) In a few months we got a gig playing for a school dance. -- There I was on stage playing rock and roll with my buddies, and unexpectedly (and delightfully) the cute girl who wouldn't look at me in English class was "making eyes" at me -- and at the end of the night, they actually paid me money!!! Little did they know, I would have paid for that experience.

I've been doing it every since, and am now approaching senior-citizen status. For the majority of my life so far, every dollar I've made has been by making music. For my entire life, every woman I have ever had the pleasure of being intimate with has been introduced to me through my saxophone, guitar, bass, flute, synth and/or the other instruments I play.

If the music isn't fun, then do something else.

Notes

1) Improvisation is easier on the guitar, because the fingering for scales is the same in every key. For the sax each scale must be learned with 12 entirely different fingerings

2) It's easier to read music on the sax than it is on the guitar
OMG that makes alot of sense ^^, now I know why it can get a bit complicated for me to read, but improvisation flows and my fellow sax player is the other way around.

Awesome, you just brightened my day :D.

If the music isn't fun, then do something else.

Thanks Notes.

I played, in public, with a band, for the first time since high school a few weeks ago. WHEEEEEEEEEEEE! WOW that was fun.

FIrst time EVER on guitar. (I played sax in high school.)

I also find that improvisation comes easier on guitar than it ever did on sax- even now (when I happen to come across one) I can play a tiny bit of sax, but only in certain keys. If you're playing in a key I don't remember, I'd have to sit out.

Guitar, though- once I know what key we're in, they're all pretty similar in terms of what I can (and can't) play.

Best,
Ande

Each instrument family has its easy and difficult aspects, and what is easy on one can be very difficult on another.

As I said before, I can improvise on the sax better than I can the guitar, mostly due to the decades more time I've put in on the sax. But I can improvise better in the common keys than I can the ones that rarely get called. On the guitar, all keys are equal. But if I put the same amount of time in on the guitar, I probably would improvise better in the uncommon keys than I can on the sax.

Plus each player has a complete set of skills, and while one may be good at sightreading he/she might be terrible at improvisation. I saw a thing where Itzhak Perlman, (one of the world's greatest living violin players) wanted to play some jazz, but he couldn't improvise his way out of a paper bag. So Andre Previn (jazz pianist and classical conductor) improvised something and wrote it down so Itzhak could get the feel of playing jazz. Although Itzhak knew more about theory and technique that most people on the planet, he didn't have that one skill - improvisation over a chord progression. But then, he doesn't need that to play what he plays.

I find guitar much easier than piano, because with guitar, both hands are doing the same thing, even if the right and left hand may be doing more than one thing (bass and comp or melody). On the piano the left hand doing bass and comp and the right hand doing melody just frustrates me. I think of the guitar as vertical and the piano as horizontal. But I've known people who are the opposite. I suppose it depends on how each person's brain is "wired" (for lack of a better term).

I knew a piano player who could transpose anything into any key. This made him a great asset for a jam session where the singer might come up and call a tune in a non-standard key. But he wasn't a great soloist.

I think that finding the right instrument, the one that fits your personal gifts and talents is probably one of the most important lessons in music. But then, when we are or were beginners, who knows what we would be best at?

Insights and incites by Notes