Fucking hell.

[chaoswolf]

I have been looking forward to playing the guitar for at least 3 weeks. Now I've finally got one, and I have this sense of dread that I can't play it or make the commitment to noodling with it every day for at least an hour. This gets me all depressed. When I try talking to mdlbear about it, he tells me to stick with it, learn some filk & learn classical, see if I should continue with it by the end of the quarter. He tells me all these things about the chords and shit like that I am not willing to comprehend because of my level of discouragement/depression.

I manage to go upstairs & noodle a bit, breaking open the book & reading the first set of excercises, notes on the 1st string. E, F, & G aren't that hard. It's when I got to 6 that I started having problems. B, C, D + E, F, G = difficult time with music. Scribbled letters underneath the notes on excercise 6, still don't think I can pull it off. Haven't gotten past that one well enough to try moving onto 7 yet, but from what I did see of the first actual song in the book, they want us to at least have those 6 notes down. I can't read music notation to save my ass, much less anything else. It's a fucking nightmare for me to try and understand this shit because I don't understand it! I can't even get past the 6th excercise, so how in the bloody fucking hell am I supposed to stay with this until the end of the quarter?!?

Just a thought.......mabey it's not my insturment after all........

Comments

[johno.livejournal.com]

Maybe you should stick to the basic till you have them down cold.

You are training your mind to read the music.
You are training your fingers to find the notes.

Forget the f'ing music theory. Just

get to the point where you don't think about the notes,
your eyes see them and your fingers play them.

If that means playing the first 6 lessons over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over ....

... then so be it.

Then you can start working on the music part.

Remember: Wipe on, Wipe off.

[mdlbear]

There's one very good thing about classical, as far as I can tell -- it starts out one note at a time, so you can learn to connect the notation with the sound of the note and the position of your fingers on the strings. Another good thing for you, I think, is that you haven't had piano, so your fingers aren't having to unlearn a lot of old stuff. I can still read music (after more than 40 years!) on the piano, but not on the guitar. By the middle of the quarter you'll be a lot better than me at it (it would be difficult to be much worse).

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

I'm learning just to accompany myself, so chords, not classical, so I can't speak to your exact problem. But everyone keeps telling me the same thing-- eventually muscle memory will kick in and your hands will remember where to go without looking. After a week it takes me 100 years to go from one chord to the next, but I am at least remembering where some of them are now without checking the book every time. So you'll get there.

As they say in Russian: repetition is the mother of learning. (Only in Russian it rhymes.) Like JohnO says, it just has to be done over and over and over and over until your hands remember. And they *will*.

If an old spoiled brat like *me* can do it, I'm sure you can! :)

One thing that's helped me, and I don't know if it would help you too, is instead of just doing chords abstractly-- which meant I kept forgetting them-- I started going over actual songs. I couldn't play them at anything like recognizable speed, but having a context to put them in actually did help me remember better where they were on the frets. Does your book have any actual songs in them using all those notes, and have you tried them yet? 'Cause even if you can only play them at glacial speeds, it does seem to help to have something with real meaning instead of just scales. Actually that helped me with violin, too, where I was doing individual notes like you. So that might help you, too.

[mdlbear]

I'm not sure whether her book has songs in it; I'll have to go looking for slow, three-chord filksongs for her to practice on. "Bugs" comes to mind, and I happen to know that it's one of her favorites.

[carol-kitty.livejournal.com]

It is harder to learn an instrument once one is passed the age of 10. This is because young children can pick up tasks easier than adults. It takes a lot of patience to learn so keep at it. The best thing...practice. I know. I struggled with the piano for years. The rule of thumb, Practic, patience, and have fun!!!

[sdorn.livejournal.com]

I'm going to dissent from everyone else here: have fun with the thing. Forget learning anything by a specific time, unless you want to see this as a Test of Character. That would be fine, too, but it has to come from your heart (and signified by the shift from I have to practice to I get to practice).

Also, if the workbook you have doesn't work for you, get another one! You're the boss in this, dear. Fire the instruction if it doesn't suit you.

[mooglepower.livejournal.com]

I can't agree more with what sdorn has to say. Just let loose and have fun. Even if it's hard at first, you'll find that it gets easier as your fingers get used to the strings and the fretboard. Try out some chords, too!

[jilara.livejournal.com]

You are at that point all of us hate: just starting. Whether it's learning a martial art, or a language, or whatever, it's frustrating not to be able to really DO anything yet. (I'm seriously trying to learn Spanish right now, and equally frustrated.)

I joke that I play at guitar, rather than playing it. But that's mostly because I just didn't keep noodling at it constantly. You get there by repetition, at least at this point. And yes, you want to scream. I've always envied those folks who are naturals, who can just go to an instrument and play, without a lesson or anything. But that's a rare talent. It gets easier the more you do it. Just play with it for a while, and get the feel.

[chaoswolf]

I soooo envy Alex Bohnhoff. I believe he is a natural, and I have seen him play on electric guitar and acoustic. He's a natural, I think. I hate him for his talent, wishing I had it.....but grr...

Chill

[super-star-girl.livejournal.com]

I love you and you know it. Alex B is a natural, but you and I both know that you can do whatever you want if you set your mind to it. And for all he knows you might get as good or better than Alex. Keep at it and as Dr. T would say " Practice,Practice,Practice makes perfect!!!!" Love ya!

[asahoshi.livejournal.com]

I learned how to read music when I learned to play the flute. When I started learning guitar, (I'm still learning...), it was hard for me to remember where my fingers wnet on the strings. I'm still having a difficult time with it. Just stick with it and you'll get the hang of it.

[eleccham.livejournal.com]

Interesting... I've heard at least one person express the opposite, that being able to see a staff as an analogy to the piano keyboard helped them greatly when learning the theory. Then, that was easier to apply to other instruments.

[mdlbear]

Piano definitely makes learning and understanding notation and theory easier. But it may complicate putting the notation together with a new instrument.

This is especially true with stringed instruments, where the left and right hands are doing different things, and the strings aren't a full octave apart. Woodwinds don't have the same problem -- the sequence of holes maps directly onto one octave of the staff, just like the keyboard.