Re: Some beginner questions

On May 1, 10:24 am, "Big Daddy" <nos...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
1) I see in another post guys trying to help a discouraged player by saying
"don't worry about scales...just play songs". I had understood playing
scales is what helped you play the songs? For instance, if I want to play
"stairway to heaven" (which all beginning guitarists want to play :-), I
have the guitar tab and it tells me what fret to play where. I try to play
just 3 or 4 notes and it seems like it would take me YEARS to pickup the
whole thing as I have to concentrate each finger move.

Big Daddy, as a beginner I can relate to what you are saying. It
never hurts to learn theory, scales, and the location of notes on the
fretboard. But if you want to learn solos I can tell you what's
working for me and I've only been at it for a short while. First I
stated trying to read tabs but even though I could see where to put my
fingers, I couldn't get the feel of the rhythm and it didn't sound
like much. Next I went to Guitar Pro (a tab player like the freeware
Powertab). This has helped me immensely and is still my most valued
training tool. But even still I found that I wasn't really able to
get a grip on the sound and proper tempo. So next I got a Tascam
CD0GT1 guitar trainer, which plays the CD but can slow it down while
maintaining pitch. Now I use Guitar Pro for tabs and playing along,
but I stop after I get a feel for the basic tab and then use the
Tascam to play along with the real song at the slowest tempo and work
up to full speed.


2) As for playing songs, I've got a good # of chords memorized as well as
the beginnings of movable bar chords. But again, when I look at tabs for
things like "Smoke on the water"...while it has the fingerings for "G5" or
"C5", it only shows 2 of the 3 strings being played. So even though I know
and play that chord, I'm only playing part of the chord for that particular
song. I notice this a lot in the songs...it lists a chord, but then only
plays 1 or 2 strings out of that chord. I guess that is common? I'm having
a hard time finding songs that play full chords completely without having to
worry about what I'm doing with my right hand.

You will learn to only hit the strings that are called for. You don't
have to be all that accurate. Those smoke chords are power chords.
They are meant to be played distorted and will sound terrible if all
the notes in a stand chord are used. Even the 3 chord power chords
are only 2 notes, root, 5th and the root an octave up. Sometimes even
clean chords sound best when strumming different strings on the
rhythm. I made a video lesson for Bad Moon Rising on youtube that
shows this. If you search for raleydude (my user name) you will see
it. I'm still a beginner but I thought that what I did could help
other beginners so I posted it.

Sometimes tabs are more complicated than is necessary. You can
frequently drop a few notes and still get a good rendition.

3) I finally got a metronome, but I still have no idea how it is used. Is
there a site that explains this? I set it at quarter notes and 120 and get
the beeps, but for songs like smoke on the water...the beats doesn't match
the pace of the song in real life (in other words, if I played a chord for
every beat it doesn't match up with how the song really sounds if I listen
to it on the radio). Isn't that what it's purpose is (to help you keep
beats). Or for instance for "symphony of destruction", I can do the "buh,
buh, buumm" part but that seems to happen a lot faster than the beats in
that metronome imply. I'm not sure what I'm missing as I thought you
played a chord for each beep.

You need to use the drums in the song you are playing with for
timing. It's probably near impossible to get a metronome in sync with
an actual song. The metronome is for playing by yourself.

4) As for lessons..I live in Houston. My local guitar shop offers lessons
by 5-7 different people. Am I likely to get anything of value from these
guys or are they just players who want to earn a little money? Would they
be "real" teachers who could help me or players who can only help me with
chords/scales? Reason I ask is if it's just the latter, I'm already
learning those on my own.

I wish I had taken lessons way back when I first wanted to learn and
gave up (more than a few times). But nowadays there are a lot more
tools available to learn on your own. It never hurts to give a lesson
a try. I've never had any but I'd probably know a lot more today if I
had started earlier and taken lessons. The computer and internet
resources have finally enabled me to learn on my own.

5) related to lessons, I have a community college nearby. Would it be
worthwhile to go to some basic music classes? Or is theory not so important
at this stage?

Some theory is important. You can and will pick it up from the
internet if you look.


.

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