Week Ten- End of Semester, and a Review of My Resource

Wow, the university semester’s disappeared already!  While I will be writing a final response to this project for my professor, I also wanted to share my final feelings on the book I chose to use as a main resource.

Hal Leonard’s Basic Fingerpicking: a Guide to Fingerpicking in All Styles contained exactly the style of music I wanted to learn.  Therefore, I enjoyed the lessons.  However, it definitely wasn’t a beginner book.  I found myself having to do a lot of troubleshooting, which I enjoyed doing personally, but I could see a beginner guitarist getting very frustrated if they picked up this book off the bat.  The chords, as I have mentioned previously, are far from being the most player-friendly.  Again, I enjoyed the challenge of stretching out my fingers, but I can see a beginner hating playing these.  If I hadn’t already known how to switch between a few chords, I would have been lost.

This book really needed a better editor.  The student shouldn’t have to be correcting the book all the time- that was just a bit of sloppiness on the publisher’s behalf.  If I didn’t already have a fair background in music in general, I wouldn’t have been able to catch these mistakes, and would have just played the pieces incorrectly.  Come on guys, proof-read what you publish!

The CD was helpful for moments where I struggled to grasp the complex rhythm notations.  It was easier to listen to them and feel them out.  Yet the guitar playing on the CD sounds strangely fake, and the synthesized background music sometimes drowns the helpful guitar line.  Again, this just needed some editing before it went on shelves.

Personally, while I enjoyed using this book, I would not necessarily pass it on to someone who asked for a recommendation.  It needs some fine-tuning.  It’s like a written story that’s still in the works.

I did, however, learn that the Internet is a wonderful resource for common instruments like the guitar!  Whenever I had questions, I found it very easy to search the key word of what I was struggling with, and come up with an answer.  Having attempted to learn some guitar from the Internet about three years ago, I would say that the quality of the information on guitar available on-line has greatly improved, and is easier to access.  I remember it being a nightmare for me previously!

Oh, and concerning my goal song…I’m struggling quite a bit with sounding out “Thank God It’s the Morning” still, but I do almost have the verse down.  Once the verse is down, this is repeated over and over, so not too difficult!  I also noticed while sounding out another piece that I was able to pick out add-ons and drop-offs by ear.

Week 9- GAAAAH! How Do I Tune To Drop D?

At the end of the section in my book, I’ve run across two roadblocks that have completely messed me up- re-tuning the guitar to drop D tuning, and hammer-ons.

The tuning was a big problem because I spent a half hour trying to interpret my lesson books instructions, only to realize mid-way through that I was counting the strings from the wrong direction, and was tuning the wrong strings!  Then I started out again with the right direction, but was still very confused.

The other confusing lesson was hammer-ons, where the book told me that “Hammering-on is sounding a note with your left hand (instead of picking it with your right hand) by fretting it suddenly).”  This just doesn’t seem to be producing any sound for me.  Sooo…to the Internet and You Tube I go with my two problems.

The first video on You Tube seemed fairly helpful for the tuning.  I actually held my guitar and played along while the instructions were given.

This webpage has a nice description along with graphics as well.  What it says about being able to add bass notes to D chords is very true…they sound awesome!  I also like that it gives a few different chord modifications for drop D, and musical examples.

As for the hammer-ons, this helped greatly.

I also didn’t have an explanation of how a hammer-on was written in the tabbed music, however, I figured out that it is represented by a slur over top of the two notes.

Now, I can play the example piece in drop D with hammer-ons.  Yay!

Weeks 7 and 8- Signs of Progress

School is busy right now, so I’m combining the past two weeks on one post, especially since they’ve been very similar.  I’m almost done the first section of my book, and since the second section is shorter, I’m thinking I might be able to finish it before semester’s end!

Anyways, I wanted to look at what I’ve considered to be signs of progress over the past few weeks.  These are the points that have made me feel more confident that I’m getting it, and I was also wondering if any other fellow guitarists noticed these when they were learning too?

1.) I don’t need to watch my right hand at all.- I’m able to fingerpick without looking at which string I’m picking.  I instinctively can move my hand to the string I intend to pluck, and if I miss it, my ear tells me.

2.) I’m watching my left hand far less.- I’m still checking where my fingers are from time to time, however on the most basic cords, such as G, C, A, E, Em, D, and Dm, I don’t usually have to look at the frets in order to find the chord.  This definitely adds some continuity to my playing.  The trouble still comes with the more obscure chords, which for a beginner/intermediate book, my lesson book has a fair quantity of.

3.) I rarely ever have to say, “My fingers won’t reach that!”- I’ve noticed that if I keep practicing a chord, no matter how contorted it may seem to make my hands, I’ll get it eventually.  Also, as I progress, I seem to figure these strange chords out even faster.

4.) I’m listening to my playing more.- I’m able to stop focusing on just producing the notes, and listen to how they sound together.  Do they sound clean?  Do they sound correct?  I was even able to notice a typo in one of my pieces because my ear simply told me that it couldn’t be right- unfortunately the book I’ve been working from, while helpful, does have a few typos in it.  More on the book when I’m done my lessons.

Besides those things, I’d also like to mention some of the neat stuff I’m learning at the moment.  I’ve recently learned about chords that are listed with a / between them, such as D/A.  These are chords of the first letter listed, but start on the second letter listed.  This clarifies so much; I used to go hunting for tabs on line, and get so confused by what that was supposed to mean.  Also, I noticed that All Guitar Chords lists these split chords and their fingerings.  Here’s a clip of me practicing a song containing split chords- the D/F# was giving me a bit of trouble, but it’s coming along.

I’ve also been learning about Bass Runs, which are transitions between chords.  While my book shows how to play them, it doesn’t explain the theory that goes along with them.  In other words, I’d like to know how one knows which notes will create a smooth transition between chords?  Is there a formula?  Could anyone recommend any further resources on this, or explain it at all?

Week Six: Time For Some Shared Learning

A rather uneventful week in the guitar practice world, so I’m thinking it’s time to do some hunting for other guitar blogs, and see what other people out there are learning…

Here’s a wonderful (and active!) blog where someone is just starting to learn guitar, and sharing some of their progress, as well as some neat clips that have inspired them.  Iris (the blogger) is currently dealing with memorizing chords and getting through the pain of pressing so hard with your fingertips on the fretboard.  She’s learning on an acoustic.

Lost n Sound isn’t a strictly guitar-based blog, but rather a music blog with plenty of neat stuff.  A fair bit of it is guitar-related.  I could play around on this site for quite some time…it’s got a diverse range of music to check out.  This is the post I actually found in my searching…very interesting!

This blog got my attention too.  The AA Book of the Dead isn’t about learning to play guitar either, but it has some interesting insights on musical inspiration and experiments.  A very professional feeling blog.

…those were more difficult to find than I expected.  Why have people stooped to using WordPress to make free advertisements?  It makes it a pain to search for anything.  So, if you come across this and know of a blog I should be linking to, please do share.

Image courtesy of Newton’s Eye on Flickr.

Week Five- A Possible Goal in Mind?

Sorry for being a bit slow on the update.  This week was a little less productive than I thought I

Well, whatd’ya know, I actually tried a little harder, and here I can actually play that F chord I was having trouble with.  It takes a lot of hand strength (especially with my tiny hands), but it’s there.  I’m very proud, especially since most of the rest of this weekend was rather slow.

However, I may have come up with an idea for a final song for this class.  There’s this lovely little folk piece that I really wanted to learn to play called “Thank God it’s the Morning Of” by Dennis Crommett.  However, apparently he’s too obscure to have his music tabbed online yet (or to even have lyrics online!).   I was thinking of possibly trying to use what musical listening skills I have to try and sound out some of the guitar accompaniment.  So, I gave it a go…only to get immediately frustrated.  In between trying to play along, I was talking to a friend online, and he helped to give me some advice, saying I should pay attention to the main melody notes to help me figure out what chord they might form.  Soon, I had the first line down!

My friend also pointed out that if I do figure out a way to play the song, I should post it for others somewhere online.  After all, it’s nice to give back when you use all this free information available online.  I’m a little shy that I won’t do an accurate enough job to share it online…but we’ll see.

Image courtesy of SBishop on Flickr.

Week Four- Things Going Good, but Slow

Hi again.  Sorry this post is up a little late.  Truth be told, this week things just seemed to slow down a lot for me and my guitar- I don’t feel stuck or anything, just like I’m going at a steady, comfortable pace.

I’m starting to feel a little skepticism about completing this entire lesson book by March 23rd.  I’m already behind- I had hoped to have section one done by Feb. 9th, however it is the biggest section, and the other two also contain songs that are repeated in different ways instead of re-learned entirely.  Yet I don’t feel like I’m learning too slow, either.  If I took up the lessons in this book any faster, I wouldn’t be learning them fully and polishing them at all, just barrelling through.  Which I could do, but for what?  I only remember music when I repeat it.

Oh, and I’ve learned a lesson that I always struggled with when I played piano- if you really hate playing the piece that much, move on.  There was one piece of music in my book that I just had no interest in.  I decided to play the one afterwards instead, and I’m doing just fine.  In the past, I would have condemned myself to practice it despite my own reluctance.  However, I want to enjoy this process, not make it torturous.

Does anyone know how to play a chord with a bracket over the whole thing?  the version of the F chord that I’m supposed to use in the one song seems just impossible, and I’m wondering if I’m supposed to have a special tool to play it or something.  It looks like this:

In other fun news, one of my practices during week four turned into a jam session of sorts.  I brought my guitar to my friends’ apartment to play for them, and they in turn pulled out their instruments: a trumpet and a saxophone.  We couldn’t really play together, but we had fun playing for each other.  Oh, and one of them then tried to make tenor drumsticks out of a couple of pencils, but that didn’t go too well.

One more bit of info for people looking for resources; stay away from tabcrawler.com (not hyperlinked, because I don’t want you to go there, silly).  When I tried to read a tab there, I had two viruses try to download themselves onto my computer, both luckily stopped in their tracks by my anti-virus system.  I’m going to steer clear of there from now on.

Image by (Tres) “descamarado” on Flickr.

Week Three- Changing Keys and Guitar in the Dark

The biggest thing that I took from the session with our instructor this week was information on how to convert the key of a piece.  I’ve wanted to know that for ages; so many songs that I would love to learn to sing are too low when I find the tabs or chords on line.  For example, there’s a super-simple  song by Sarah Harmer called Coffee Stain that I’d love to just raise to a slightly higher key.

In the version of this song that I found on the Internet a long time ago, this song is played with only four chords, A, D, bm, and E.  Very simple, but too low for me to sing along.  Now, if I want to make the song higher, I just need to  figure out the corresponding chords for a different scale.

I’m going to assume this song is in the key of A, since the most common chords are A, D,  and E, the first, fourth and fifth notes of the A major scale.  I’m going to change the song to the key of C, since it would be a little higher, and I know the chords I would need.  The first, fourth, and fifth notes of the C major scale are C, F, and G.  The b minor in the original version creates a bit of difficulty, however, since I noticed that the base note of each chord was going up by two steps, I’m going to try changing bm to dm.

Verse= C F C F C F dm F

Chorus= G C F G C F G C F dm F

Hey, it works!  Joy!  Still needs some smoothing out and practice, but I can finally sing along with this song!  The strum pattern is just the best I could mimic from the original.

My only other highlight this week was when the power went out one evening, and it occurred to me that guitar practice didn’t require electricity.  Several candles later, and I was able to practice without the power.  Yay for not being reliant!

Fingerpicking is going well, albeit slower than I had originally hoped.  Yet, I’d rather go slow and learn well than rush through and forget everything by next month.

Week 2- Problemsolving, Progress, and Picking with the Class

It seems like whenever I doubt that I can manage something in one of my guitar pieces, if I come back the next day, I succeed.  I don’t know if it’s just that my fingers are already getting stronger and more flexible, or if the time away from a problem helps you better solve it.  I’m making good progress.

While I am liking the book I’ve chosen, it is definitely more of an intermediate level rather than a beginner level.  The chords it starts with aren’t necessarily easy ones, and the patters that it starts with are manageable, but not as simplistic as they could have been for a beginner.  This is ok with me, as I was looking for a little more challenge, but I wouldn’t pass this book on to someone who’s never picked up a guitar before.

Part of what made me realize that the picking patterns that begin this book weren’t really for beginners was our in-class session.  We did some beginner fingerpicking with the whole class this week, where we simply picked four strings from lowest to highest on the three chords we already knew (A, D, and G).  While somewhat less interesting, this feels like more of a beginning for those who’ve never tried fingerpicking before.

So far, I have taken up five of the exercises.  In the process, I’ve run across a couple snags.  First of all, I didn’t think my hands were flexible enough to reach a few of the chords.  The C chord used in several of the pieces has an extra little change to it that makes it more difficult: the first string is held at the third fret, instead of being played unfretted.  I though this was impossible!  Yet, I came back a day later, and managed it.  Later on, I realized that having that string fretted helps you change chords in the rest of the piece, since half the chords use that same fret.  It becomes a matter of pivoting your hand.  The other chord that stumped me was F, as there are two strings fretted with one finger.  This is incredibly difficult to do on a classical guitar when you have tiny hands!  Yet practice is helping, and I’m managing to make this chord ring clear about 50% of the time.  The final struggle has been Gsus, which I don’t know if I’m going to ever be able to reach, although I guess I shouldn’t say that just yet.

The other problem solving that I am really proud of involved an error on the book’s behalf.  While most of the pieces

have chord charts for all of the chords used, a few don’t.  The chords on these pieces aren’t necessarily simple or used already, so I think that they were forgotten.  Instead of struggling to remember these chords, or reading the whole measure of the tabs while trying to change chords, I decided to draw the chord charts in.  Hey, it’s practice at memorizing the chords, isn’t it?  A few of them are altered slightly for use in this song.

My favourite piece so far is a short, repeated exercise called Bayou Rock.  It just sounds really catchy, despite being not that difficult.  Here’s a little listen.  It’s kinda rough in a few spots still, and the chord change really hurts my hands, but it’s coming.  I also realized later that I was counting it slightly off; it should be a straight eighth note rhythm, but I’ve added some swingy-ness to it.  To be honest, I like my version better.

Week One- Resources, Successes, and Injuries

Just cooling down from being somewhat ticked off at my guitar; I strained part of my left hand trying to make it hold down a chord that it disagreed with.  I’m already feeling better, just a little miffed.  I hear that your hands get more flexible with time, but it would really help if my hands weren’t about an inch to two inches smaller than most people’s.

The first week of practice has been interesting.  There’s definitely a lot of challenge to the task I’ve chosen, but it seems achievable.  I’ve gotten too used to being able to look at something and play it right away, and it takes me some time to be able to play even the two short exercises that I’ve learned so far.  But once I managed them, they sounded kinda good.  The CD is really a useful tool.   It’s hard to read the rhythms they’ve written, since the notes overlap each other so that their total value is worth more than the measure, but the book doesn’t always make it clear where to overlap.  Yet, if I listen to the pieces on the CD, I can learn to count the rhythm first, and get a feel for it.  I also picked up on another learning habit where I practice the piece by just strumming the guitar first so that I learn the chord changes, then I add the fingering.  It makes a world of difference for me.

As far as practice goes, I had a couple days where things got backed up, and I missed practice, but I’ve already been catching up with it very quickly.  The end of my week has been less busy, so I have had extra guitar time.

I also thought I’d share a few on line resources that my class has come up with.

Tab resources- ultimate-guitar.com, tabplanet.com (which I’m having trouble finding the correct URL for), OLGA.net (which apparently is currently offline)

Others- justinguitar.com, a free lesson site which I found in my own searches, but didn’t find to be very user-friendly, chordbook.com for chord reference, complete with virtual guitar, and music-notes.com, which I haven’t checked out yet.

Image by DavidDennisPhotos on Flickr.

A Change of Tune

Last weekend, I made a complete change in my goal for this project.  I really would like to work from a book, as using an Internet lesson plan can be inconvenient.  I like the solidity of having an actual book or page in front of me when playing an instrument.  After very unsuccessful attempts at getting some advice on lesson books from emails (I found out B-Sharp doesn’t carry much for lesson books although they recommended other places to find them, and Long and McQuade just recommended the average Fast Track Guitar Method that I had been hinting at my disinterest in when I emailed them), I went down to Cobb Swanson to browse.    Anything I found on playing guitar that was based on chord strumming was incredibly dull (almost every book had Ode to Joy and Aura Lee in them.  Why, I ask you, why?).  Yet with the help of one of the employees there, I found some books on fingerpicking that looked like they will actually hold my attention and present a challenge.  In fact, they might be quite a challenge, but I’m a fast musical learner, and I’m willing to go for it.  Besides, I will still be learning my chords as I go, since most fingerpicking is based off of chords anyways.

I have picked up a book called Basic Fingerpicking: a Guide ot Fingerpicking in All Styles by Fred Sokolow, from Hal-Leonard corporation.  I was trying desperately to avoid anything published under Alfred’s, as I have yet to actually use one of their books that I have liked.  Am I picky, or are they just terribly boring lesson books?  This book and CD set came at a reasonable price, contained music based off of 60′s and 70′s rock/folk/ folk-rock, country, bluegrass, and blues.  The practice drills and pieces are written in western notation and tabs, with chord names listed above the measures, and chord charts each time a different set of chords is being used.

I’ve also created a plan for how often I’m going to practice.  Monday, I’m going to hour long practices at school.  Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, I’m practicing 15 minutes from my book, and  Wednesday and Friday, I’m practicing half an hour from my book.  I’m starting with short practices, and hoping that I’ll want to practice longer anyway.  I also set goals as to where I want to be in the book at various points in the semester.  In short, I’m set to play!

Image by jstanier on Flickr.