Re: guitar questions

tysteel2000@xxxxxxx wrote in news:1122296148.555136.210290
@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:

> Hi,
>
> I've been playing piano for some years, and I'm thinking about taking
> up the guitar. I have a few questions I'd like to ask about how the
> guitar is played.
>
> With the piano, it's like a mini-orchtestra, in an arrangement you can
> balance a lot of different things all at once: bass, chords, melody.
> I think maybe too many different things to juggle, and it can take the
> fun out of it. I know that when playing accompaniment, it is usually
> done with the right hand playing the chord patterns, and the left hand
> playing bass patterns, and anything less is considered "inadequate" and
> frowned upon.
>
> my question about the guitar is, when you play accompaniment from a
> fake book or charts, do you have to juggle bass and chords patterns
> together on your guitar (like we do on piano), or is that even
> possible? I'm thinking that with playing an acoustic guitar, you'd
> just play the chord patterns only and sing along.
>
> Also, what if you were to play a guitar solo...is it possible that you
> can play both straight chords and the melody all at the same time? Can
> all of this be juggled on the guitar simultaneously? I know it can be
> on piano. I know that a lot of guitar bands have someone who plays
> rhythm, and another who plays the lead lines, so I'm thinking that it's
> not very common for someone to play both things at the same time on
> just one guitar.
>
> I'm thinking about shifting away from piano to guitar because I'm just
> looking for a more straight forward instrument where I'm not expected
> to juggle a bunch of things at once in order to sound "adequate" or
> "professional". Also, because of timbre, the guitar sounds like a
> much better instrument of accompaniment than piano for rock songs, like
> what I enjoy playing.
>
> thanks
>
>

To a certain degree it can be done - by very skilled players like Chet
Atkins and Stanley Jordan, but for the most part, when you're doing
accompaniment, it's just chords and the odd lick thrown in. It's a much
less demanding instrument than the piano - all things being equal.
Meaning, on piano you're expected to do two-hand independent stuff,
whereas on guitar, it's a special skill.

On piano, you can literally play ten chromatic notes together - on
guitar, that's near impossible...

Granted, it's another instrument to learn, but if you're comfortable with
theory, you'll have that hurdle crossed...
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Resp to Tooly - long post
    ... now I can't play any pieces or songs and I don't get better. ... Last night after playing a piece for the 10000th time and making the ... I think I love my guitar but she hates me :-) Kinda like a romance- ... teacher to begin with. ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Resp to Tooly - long post
    ... now I can't play any pieces or songs and I don't get better. ... Last night after playing a piece for the 10000th time and making the ... I think I love my guitar but she hates me :-) Kinda like a romance- ... teacher to begin with. ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • very OT: Joy of music WAS: Re: cannot build opencobol-1.1 under cygwin
    ... gave up playing decades on back (Guild F-112, ... I went to see Andre Sovia and never touched a guitar again for over six ... and we play together. ... have great fun when we play and I am not intimidated by his superior skill; ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • Re: I am stuck
    ... Sometimes those old songs are like a mantra. ... I have a DADGAD arrangement of "If I Was a Carpenter" that I cobbled up in '69 that still feels good to play. ... It's really hard for me to pick up a guitar that I'm not bonded to and get whatever it is that I get from playing. ... I'm going to tell you what I tell my students; "never" put your guitar in the case unless you're leaving the house with it. ...
    (rec.music.makers.guitar.acoustic)
  • Re: Practice only what youre going to play?
    ... But I have a little cart that I can wheel along if I was called to play ... When I was able to cop a ride to the San Francisco Guitar Society, ... you are playing background music it is rather high. ... If your employer thinks you do not need ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)