Is Self Taught The Best Way?
Many guitarists wear the ‘Self Taught Badge’ with pride. Claiming to be self taught creates the illusion that you thought of everything all by yourself.
If you don’t have a guitar teacher you will no doubt have to look into guitar teach books which on your own can be quite difficult to understand. Knowing someone who already plays guitar is the next place to pick up information about how to play.
All of this is a bit random and a bit of trial and error approach. You wouldn’t go to a self taught heart surgeon who learned his craft through trial and error!!!
Getting lessons from a good teacher will help you progress much faster.
Example: I have a 12 year old student with no past experience on guitar. The student has had 5 lessons and can now play all Major, Minor and Seventh Chords in open and barre chord positions.
Would that be possible by self teaching?
Jimi Hendrix Didn’t Read Music He Just Had Natural Talent!
‘I don’t have the natural talent’ is often the excuse of the under achieving musician.
It’s a bit misleading to believe that just because someone doesn’t read music that their musical ability must therefore be natural God given at birth.
Many rock musicians don’t read music but they learned chords and scales. They also know where the notes on their instrument are too.
Always Practice Sitting Down?
Last time I looked most guitarists perform standing up! BB King has earned the right to sit when playing. But would Slash at the end of the November Rain video looked as half as cool if he had of walked out of the church and took a seat before he played the outro solo!!!!!!!
We all fall into the trap of practicing sitting down then have difficulty playing our stuff when standing up.
Practice Without Plugging Into Amp?
These days luckily for my neighbour’s guitar amps come with headphone sockets.
Too many times we practice a solo unplugged only to find when we plug into our amp with Metal Insane setting and it all sounds like a horrible mess.
The Rock guitarist by definition wants to show off. To show off you need to be loud!!!!!
Identifying the Repeated Chord Progression
You have your song and chords sheet. But you can’t memorize the song. Only with the sheet of paper can you possibly perform it????
Will you memorize D C G D D C G D D C G D D C G D ??? Which is a 16 chord sequence.
Or will you read it as (D C G D) x4 A lot easier.
Too many beginners aren’t told that a song is a series of repeated chord patterns.
Many songs are Verse Verse Chorus Verse Chorus Chorus.
Each verse has the same chord progression. The Chorus is the same every time its played.
There’s So Many Chords To Remember!!
As a beginner guitarist you’ll be taught to memorize chord shapes. There are so many shapes in your chord dictionary it won’t be long before your brain has turned into scrambled egg.
Seriously take my advice check out the CAGED system. In simple terms all chords can be worked out from the simple shapes of the C Chord A Chord G Chord E Chord D Chord.
It’s well worth asking your guitar teacher about it. You can burn that chord dictionary.
Scales Are Boring!!
Scales are boring if you just run up and down them endlessly.
Start out with pentatonic and blues scale and learn how to make a blues solo. Suddenly scales are cool.
