A Little Direction Please?

[UpFromTheSkies]

Hey all, new member here I have been playing electric guitar for almost 6 years. After the first couple of years I realized that turning up the gain to 11 and stuttering through power chords I found on the internet wasn't making music. I gradually taught myself a little bit but was never really serious about practicing. People told me that I was pretty good but I wasnt satisfied.

Within the last two years I decided that i wanted to get serious and I found myself a teacher that I really like. I get lessons twice a month so I have alot of time between lessons to practice what i please now but I feel overwhelmed with my options so Im hoping all the helpful people here can help give me some direction.

I have been practicing an hour and half a day so far. Ear Training with intervals, very slow practice of my scales and arpeggios which takes up most of my time. I also do a little bit of transcribing but honestly i mostly get frustrated with it. I know I am improving but I just feel like there's more that I should do. I don't feel like im becoming a musician.

[Malcolm]

Running your scales, up, down, back and forth is doing wonders for your muscle memory.

Do you know why, what you are doing, sounds good and how you can use it to make music, if not that's necessary, i.e., do you know what you are doing or are you just playing by rote?

To help, we really need to know that first.


.

[UpFromTheSkies]

Running your scales, up, down, back and forth is doing wonders for your muscle memory.

Do you know why, what you are doing, sounds good and how you can use it to make music, if not that's necessary, i.e., do you know what you are doing or are you just playing by rote?

To help, we really need to know that first.


.

My teacher has shown me how to right out the major and minor scales using whole and half step so I understand that. He has also shown me the modes in Gm and G which is what I have been practicing. He has also shown me how to arpegiate(sp?) Minor 7th chords, Major 7th chords, Dominant 7th chords and Minor 7b5 chords over the backing track that I practice my modes over. I know about relative keys also. I believe that our next lesson we will start talking about chords and their relation to scales.

I can definitely tell that my slow practice is programming my muscle memory like I would never have imagined. Those scales are firmly under my fingers like the pentatonic never were but when i improvise they still sound robotic but im sure thats a time thing.

I feel that i havent firmly grasped all of this information outside of our lessons though. As in application. I dont know what to do with the knowledge that i have just yet

[Malcolm]

Understand. Learning the stuff, i.e. the patterns are one way to start. I do recommend you follow the way your instructor is taking you.

Why do we use scale notes? For the melody.
Why do we use chords? For the harmony.

Music is made of melody, harmony and rhythm. Leave the rhythm to the rhythm section for right now. You have not been introduced to melody and are just moving into chords. Great. Here is something that took me years to understand.

The melody line and the chord line should share like notes - at the same time in the song - for harmonization to take place. You need harmonization for both lines to sound good with each other. When the melody moves on to notes not found in the old chord it's time to find a new chord that has some of the new melody notes in it's makeup. Finding like notes to play will govern most of what you will do with your music when you move from patterns into music. Check this out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrDh0OFDCAk

Lets see how that relates when we have the chords and are asked to come up with the melody. For example; You are given a cookie cutter chord progression of:

C///|C///|F///|F///|G7///|C///|| what melody notes would sound good over those chords? Yep notes of the C scale over the C chord would work. As would the C major pentatonic scale which has three of C's chord tones and two safe passing notes. Then when the song moves over the F chord what to play? Yep how about your F major pentatonic scale or take notes of the F chord to form your melody.

That's it. That is how music thinks. So as you are doing all your patterns just keep in mind there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Lets jump ahead and have some fun.
Google your favorite song - use these words - Guitar chords, "name of the song" the comma and the quote marks help with the search. Say you get this......

C ...................... G
Happy birthday to you
................ C
Happy birthday to you
.........................G ....F
Happy birthday to dear name
F........C .....G ..... C
Happy birthday to you

Grab a C chord and start strumming all down strums as you sing the song. Yep gotta sing the song so you will know the tempo and when to change chords. When you get to the lyric word "you" change over to the the G chord - keep strumming and when you get to the word "day" in birthday change back to the C chord. Keep going. Hap-py takes two down strums as will birth-day --- normally one note or strum per lyric word.

Yep it's that simple.

Have fun.



Good luck.

[Crossroads]

Hey all, new member here I have been playing electric guitar for almost 6 years. After the first couple of years I realized that turning up the gain to 11 and stuttering through power chords I found on the internet wasn't making music. I gradually taught myself a little bit but was never really serious about practicing. People told me that I was pretty good but I wasnt satisfied.
Within the last two years I decided that i wanted to get serious and I found myself a teacher that I really like. I get lessons twice a month so I have alot of time between lessons to practice what i please now but I feel overwhelmed with my options so Im hoping all the helpful people here can help give me some direction.
I have been practicing an hour and half a day so far. Ear Training with intervals, very slow practice of my scales and arpeggios which takes up most of my time. I also do a little bit of transcribing but honestly i mostly get frustrated with it. I know I am improving but I just feel like there's more that I should do. I don't feel like im becoming a musician.

　
Although I think it's essential for you to understand and practice with intervals, I feel quite strongly that you should not spend/waste your time on any specific "ear training".

And, although imho it's essential to practice scales & arpeggio patterns etc. (not everyone agrees about that though), I wonder why you don't mention your teacher teaching you about chords, chord progressions, creating songs, improvising over different chords, timing and counting time, and playing over backing tracks ... because those are the sort of things I'd concentrate on first.

My teacher has shown me how to right out the major and minor scales using whole and half step so I understand that. He has also shown me the modes in Gm and G which is what I have been practicing. He has also shown me how to arpegiate(sp?) Minor 7th chords, Major 7th chords, Dominant 7th chords and Minor 7b5 chords over the backing track that I practice my modes over. I know about relative keys also. I believe that our next lesson we will start talking about chords and their relation to scales.
I can definitely tell that my slow practice is programming my muscle memory like I would never have imagined. Those scales are firmly under my fingers like the pentatonic never were but when i improvise they still sound robotic but im sure thats a time thing.
I feel that i havent firmly grasped all of this information outside of our lessons though. As in application. I dont know what to do with the knowledge that i have just yet

It sounds to me like a rather strange emphasis on modes and arpeggios. Which afaik is certainly unusual as beginning lessons.

Has your teacher asked what you actually want to achieve? Asked what music you want to learn and play? That's vital, because otherwise you and the teacher will find yourself constantly pulling in different directions.

Your feelings about a lack of really useable progress are normal though. Why? Because, as you are finding out, there is a vast amount to learn, both in terms of how much you need to know, and how skilled you need to become to actually play in terms of technique. That does take thousands of hours of really dedicated practice ... whether you have a teacher or not.

Two lessons a month is probably about right, but only if you are practicing all the stuff every day in between. I'm also impressed with the vast range of self-teaching material which is available now - books (often with demo CD's), songbooks inc. TAB and full notation (ie for thousands of famous guitar songs), and DVD's where you can see & hear directly what the teacher is doing. So apart from practicing all the teachers material between lessons, are you making use of other books and DVD's of your favourite songs and favoured styles of playing?

I think you need to work on things like learning favourite songs from TAB/notation songbooks and work on your preferred style of playing from the best instructional DVD's ... and take those ideas to the lessons with you, ie ask the teacher to play/work through that stuff with you.

IOW - what I'm trying to do is to supply some specific focus here - what are you hoping to play? ... what material are you going to practice in order to achieve that?

Otherwise, if you don't have that quite specific focus, with a specific plan of action, you could very easily spend your entire musical life just bobbing around aimlessly on a sea of thousands of diverse musical ideas and concepts without ever really learning to play in the way you'd hoped.

[Malcolm]

Read your OP again and offer the following.

..........I can definitely tell that my slow practice is programming my muscle memory like I would never have imagined. Those scales are firmly under my fingers like the pentatonic never were but when i improvise they still sound robotic but im sure thats a time thing.

I feel that i havent firmly grasped all of this information outside of our lessons though. As in application. I dont know what to do with the knowledge that i have just yet

A string of scale notes is going to sound like a scale exercise. Now if you break up that string of notes with some pauses and let the "melody" breath it stops being a string of notes and becomes phrases.

We talk in phrases, we sing in phrases, we should play melody in phrases. Here are some "they says" that may help.

• They say that our ear likes to hear four note phrases.
• They also say that we like to hear three close notes then a leap of at least a 3rd. 3+1=4.
• They say that our melody is best served with the chord tones, i.e. the 1, 3, 5 & 7 interval of the scale. Yep that's 4 notes.
• They say playing the pentatonic scale of the chord that is being used in the song will sound good. Pentatonic = 3 chord tones and 2 safe passing notes. Pick one passing note and you've got your 4.
• They say if we were to put on paper - using standard notation - the fly specks should have a wave action, i.e. everything in a straight line (scale note order) is boring, however 20 foot waves would not be called for. Play around with that "leap" see how far is best for this piece.

Point of this post. Right now, as you said, you are learning what to use, how to use it will come later. As you run your patterns give some of the above a try. For example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84cEzgO4Qwk

Have fun.

[mzeroq]

I think a more fundamental question you need to answer is:

What do I want out of the guitar, and music?

Do I just want to learn to play a little, or do I want to write songs, or be a composer, or....?

Once you figure that out, and eliminate what you don't want to do, then you can more clearly define your goals for guitar or any endeavor.

Once you more clearly define your goals, then you can figure out how to achieve those goals and what to spend your time on.

For example, if you really wanted to be the next Stevie Ray Vaughan, I would probably focus on learning the blues and that style, focusing on blues tunes, etc. But if you wanted to be the next Steve Vai, you wouldn't focus so much on your blues stuff. By cutting out what you DON'T want to learn, you can more clearly focus on what you do want and not waste time.

Find out what you want to do, break it down into goals and sub-goals, figure out how to meet them, and check them off one-by-one. Then you will know that you are being successful. Discuss this with your teacher and hopefully he'll cater to your desires.

Beyond that, I would advise a regimen of technique, theory and ear training, and composing / producing. The future of music is in producing music quickly, as in a new song every 3 weeks to release to people. Get yourself a small cheap recording rig (preferably computer based) and record as much as possible as you are learning. Don't worry about putting it out there. Just learn HOW to record and mix. By the time you are ready to hit the stage and perform shows, you'll have enough recording chops to record a broadcast ready CD on your own.

And don't forget performance. Even if it is for your dog, memorize something and play it as if playing it to 100 people on a gig. Get into a band and work hard to write and perform.

Hope that helps.

[MatthiasYoung]

Several good comments here. Sorry if I repeat any of the above, but there are some good points to mention again. In terms of basic playing technique for guitar, or any polyphonic instrument, the main concepts are scales, chords, arpeggios, and slurs (hammer-ons/pull-offs). There are many different approaches to learning these, but these are the core.

Yes, you and your teacher need to be on the same page as to what type of music you are interested in, but stylistic playing needs to come after basic fundamental concepts.

If you feel you are overwhelmed, then take 1 lesson a week. The problem with 2 lessons a month is that you have TOO MUCH material to work on, and 2 weeks of information is being crammed into 1 lesson.

[clearwater]

...and also, if you are doing something wrong, after two weeks of practice it's very hard to correct it.

[Seraphine]

Do keep up the ear-training and working on hearing and listening. It's brilliant when a musician can actually hear and listen as well as make statements ( play ). From the sounds of it, you are in good hands.

[Niels Vejlyt]

Its a huge process and everybody wants to see results fast. But remember the Tao Te Ching sayng The journey of a thousand steps starts with one. Regarding transcribing I find the best is to start with a riff and dont be tempteed to learn more than one note at a time. As soon as you have a few notes down, learn it on the guitar so you dont end up by forgetting the stuff you started with