Hello. . . just signed up to this forum - motivation needed!!

[acousticdude]

Hey everone,

I just signed up to this site, in need of some serious motiviational words from fellow musicans. I'm Europe, Ireland to be specific.

Being playing the acoustic guitar for 11 years. I have never once considered myself to be anygood. I dont have a natural ability to play music but over the years (particularly in the early years) I spent hours at it. . .fighting and wrestling with myself and my non natural ability. . I can strum chords now and I can play songs mediocre standard. I was tone deaf and bought Bret Mannings vocal course to learn how to sing properly. I had loads of guitars and amps but sold them all to buy a decent taylor acoustic. I was bought as a final attempt to boost my motivation for playing. . . I have the passion for guitar and music but somehow manage to always get bogged down by a devil on my shoulder saying to me you dont have a natural ability. . .
I dont want to throw away 11 years of effort, energy and sheer hard graft.
In that 11 years, 5 years was spent doing college, I got married, moved house twice and now we have a baby. . . I also spent a year training to become a sound engineer to learn how to record properly. . So I am looking at how much time is spent practising, TBH, not as much as in the 1st couple of years. .

I need to get back to some serious time dedication and commitment, what's the best approach?

How bad / good am I? Well, i have a small repetoire which usually starts with heavens door, ring of fire, few irish ballads, but I'd probally struggle past 10-15 songs. . . this is bad for someone playing 11 years. . .

Some advise would be great!!

thanks a million

[Malcolm]

Hey everyone,

I just signed up to this site, in need of some serious motivational words from fellow musicians. I'm Europe, Ireland to be specific.

Being playing the acoustic guitar for 11 years. I have never once considered myself to be any good. I don't have a natural ability to play music but over the years (particularly in the early years) I spent hours at it. . .fighting and wrestling with myself and my non natural ability. . I can strum chords now and I can play songs mediocre standard.

If you can strum chords some fake chord or lead sheet music will let you play a zillion songs. What do you mean ".... and can play songs mediocre standard". Is your strumming OK, it's the playing songs you have problems with. That may be a simple fix, just start playing with other people, learn from them.

I was tone deaf and bought Bret Mannings vocal course to learn how to sing properly. I had loads of guitars and amps but sold them all to buy a decent Taylor acoustic. I was bought as a final attempt to boost my motivation for playing. . . I have the passion for guitar and music but somehow manage to always get bogged down by a devil on my shoulder saying to me you don't have a natural ability. . .

What bogs you down, are you having problems playing the tune - the lead solo - if so let your voice carry the lead and back up your solo with chord accompaniment.

I don't want to throw away 11 years of effort, energy and sheer hard graft.
In that 11 years, 5 years was spent doing college, I got married, moved house twice and now we have a baby. . . I also spent a year training to become a sound engineer to learn how to record properly. . So I am looking at how much time is spent practising, TBH, not as much as in the 1st couple of years. .

I need to get back to some serious time dedication and commitment, what's the best approach?

How much time do you need to practice, is that the question? If so an hour a day is about right.

How bad / good am I? Well, i have a small repertoire which usually starts with heavens door, ring of fire, few Irish ballads, but I'd probably struggle past 10-15 songs. . . this is bad for someone playing 11 years. . . Some advise would be great!! thanks a million

I play rhythm guitar in one band and electric bass in another, i.e. I rely upon following the chord progression as written. Counting both bands we have over 350 songs in our gig book, normally take 50 or so to a gig. If you are content to singing the lead and accompanying your vocals playing the chord progressions - no reason you can not add more songs to your repertoire. As long as you are playing for free I see no reason to not take a music stand on stage - if that will help. Once you start getting paid, then the music stand stays home, but, a cheat sheet on the floor or on top of the amp or floor monitor could work. IMO.

Again what is bogging you down, be a little more specific so we can help.

BTW, welcome to the forum.

[Crossroads]

Hey everone,
I just signed up to this site, in need of some serious motiviational words from fellow musicans. I'm Europe, Ireland to be specific.
Being playing the acoustic guitar for 11 years. I have never once considered myself to be anygood. I dont have a natural ability to play music but over the years (particularly in the early years) I spent hours at it. . .fighting and wrestling with myself and my non natural ability. . I can strum chords now and I can play songs mediocre standard. I was tone deaf and bought Bret Mannings vocal course to learn how to sing properly. I had loads of guitars and amps but sold them all to buy a decent taylor acoustic. I was bought as a final attempt to boost my motivation for playing. . . I have the passion for guitar and music but somehow manage to always get bogged down by a devil on my shoulder saying to me you dont have a natural ability. . .
I dont want to throw away 11 years of effort, energy and sheer hard graft.
In that 11 years, 5 years was spent doing college, I got married, moved house twice and now we have a baby. . . I also spent a year training to become a sound engineer to learn how to record properly. . So I am looking at how much time is spent practising, TBH, not as much as in the 1st couple of years. .
I need to get back to some serious time dedication and commitment, what's the best approach?
How bad / good am I? Well, i have a small repetoire which usually starts with heavens door, ring of fire, few irish ballads, but I'd probally struggle past 10-15 songs. . . this is bad for someone playing 11 years. . .
Some advise would be great!!
thanks a million

It's very tempting to think that certain people have natural talent, but I'm not sure that's really true - if you really find out how much practice those people are putting in, then it almost always turns out they are doing a vast amount of practice that they have never told you about!

That's certainly true of all famous guitarists ... on the rare occasions when they openly admit to how much work they put in, it always turns out to be an absolutely staggering amount of work/practice time.

So that's the first thing - don't tell yourself that you lack "innate talent", because that's almost certainly not the problem. The problem is almost always that people just never realise or appreciate how much work and how many hours of really dedicated concentrating practice is required to make definite and obvious advances in your playing ability.

You say you now have an acoustic? Does that mean you mainly had electric guitars before? I can't tell you about acoustic because that's not really a style or sound that I like (or at least, it's not first love). My interest, almost an obsession (it almost needs to be an "obsession" in order to succeed) is electric, and the usual fancy sounding solo stuff from all the usual suspects from early Clapton and Hendrix to Van Halen, Steve Vai and particularly Paul Gilbert, to more jazzy fusion stuff from Alan Holdsworth, Scott Henderson, Guthrie Govan, Shawn Lane etc...OK, so you get the general idea of what I try to play/practice.

If you want to play in those styles (ie electric, rock, blues, shred, jazz-fusion), and if you are teaching yourself using tutorial books and tutorial DVD's, then there are lots of very good guides to choose from (as well as lots of terrible books and DVD's of course!). So my advice is just to get 3 or 4 of the best of those self-teaching guides ie books and DVD's, which are closest to the style that you want to play, and just work like crazy through those as many hours a day as you can possibly manage ... if you do that in a really dedicated way, so that you are watching like a hawk for correct hand position, correct fretting technique, making sure in your head that you know what scales and chord tones you are playing on every note etc., then you will definitely succeed in eventually becoming a decent if not very good guitarist ... but it does take many thousands of hours (even if you are a musical genius).

OK. I'm give you a recommendation for one particular book, which is a total bargain! It's really a book for electric players, but I have to leave you to decide whether you want to go back to electric for this ...

... get a book called "Chord Tone Soloing", by a guy called Barrett Tagliarino. That’s now only £8 and free posting from UK Amazon (see the link below), which is a joke price for such a great tutorial guide for how to play properly.
　
Now, I could have recommended dozens of other great books and DVD's to you for all sorts of playing styles (eg various DVD’s from Paul Gilbert and Don Mock, books like Speed Mechanics, the jazz chord-tone-solo books by Garrison Fewell, a theory book called Jazzology, etc., etc.), but the point of the book by Tagliarino is that it's presented as a complete and sensible course starting from basic ideas about which notes to play in any solo (and why you choose those particular notes), about timing between the notes, about accenting certain notes, about scales, modes and playing from notes which fit each passing chord (ie "chord tone soloing", ie a jazz soling approach), and which has excellent full musical examples both as TAB printed in the book and on a full demo CD etc. etc. ...

... so if you have an electric guitar (or get one! … or if you want to try using it with your acoustic), and if you work from that book, then you will learn all the essential basic theory (and how to apply that theory to you playing) and how to play solo lead stuff in jazzy rock/blues style. That's probably the best single guide book that I've ever come across (after buying & working through around 200 different books and DVD's).

Here's a link to that book, so you know which one I'm talking about, but remember it's a book intended for electric guitar players and the examples are all in that rock/blues-jazz/fusion style -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Chord-Tone-Soloing-Guitarists-Improvising/dp/0634083651/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1339740449&sr=8-3
　
　

[Gallipoli]

I don't think of myself as naturally talented at guitar, but I also don't give up or lose interest easily. So I like to think of that "quality" as a natural talent that I possess.

I've also known quite a few people who picked up a lot of skill very quickly and much faster than I did, but lost interest and now aren't much better than average players.

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