Any experienced guitar players have advice on how to learn better?
I played very little in highschool and now, 15 years later, I have the urge to go back to it. I’ve been playing for an hour or so most days for the last month which I know isn’t a lot but lets be honest, it’s just for my own enjoyment, I have no illusions of being a middle aged rock star.
Anyway I was wondering if people had any advice, good resources, sheet music that isn’t garbage?
In my position would you go the self taught route or is it really important to have a tutor? I’m particularly concerned about picking up bad technique and then practicing that, I feel like that was a big part of why I gave up in the first place - fucking up the same things no matter how many times I did them because I learned them wrong.
Thanks all.
Hey, really interesting to read your perspective. Some stuff here that’s different to what other said and a bit different than my intuition, but your reasoning also totally makes sense to me. Both the lack of printed music and the fact that rock music relies on having a full band to create a full sound is something I’ve found frustrating in the past - even if I could play just like Paul McCartney, I still couldn’t sound like the Beatles.
The idea that fingerstyle/nylon strings represents the fundamentals is something I’d have been inclined to write off as (no offence, just laying out my thought process) elitism, but I cannot deny there is truth to the idea that the guitar was, historically, designed to be played that way. There are plenty of fingerstyle players in rock that I really like and am in awe of too. I mentioned elsewhere Knopfler’s riff in Money for Nothing, but I believe that’s a fingerstyle riff, and playing it with pick is impossible.
Your description of how you went about learning is also helpful, particularly reducing boredom and breaking through “plateaus” with pieces.
When you say acoustic is not a good way to learn fingerstyle, is that because of the physical difficulty of playing the heavier and more abrasive strings? I am interested in learning fingerstyle in general, as you say being able to play rhythm and melody, or multiple melodies seems like a real boon, but I don’t know if I want to go all the way and buy a nylon string guitar given that the kinds of sounds that inspire me to play come from the steel string.
Another question for you is how did you keep your motivation up at the beginning, playing music that (from what you say) you didn’t have much existing passion for?
And yes, being a part of an social, cultural legacy of producing music - connecting us to just about every other human who ever lived - is such a cool idea. I love music and as I get older I realize I don’t want to spend my whole life without making it.
So thank you for writing that up. Some stuff there I never would have thought of, stuff I’ll have to mull over.
No problem!
Your first point is one reason that I’d reccomend ‘fingerstyle’, because I’ve personally found that you can play ‘the beatles’ with higher fidelity with one guitar using that technique, than with a pick on steel string, simply because transcriptions for fingerstyle expect you to imitate both rhythm and melody aspects - this is true of rock and pop music. You can’t play Blackbird by strumming chords and have it sound good enough that you want to play it, and while you can’t get the exact studio sound from one guitar, you can get a lot closer with ‘fingerstyle’. Even duets, like Dire Straits Sultans of Swing (I think is two guitars I might have the wrong one) can be somewhat accurately produced on one guitar with fingerstyle, compared to the alternative. Of course, it will always have the usual ‘nylon string’ sound, but again, starting from nylon means you can fingerstyle on acoustic (for limited periods at least before it hurts too much). In the case of songs that are just chords, you can with fingerstyle technique turn them into something more complex and interesting. I’ve found that singers find being accompanied by fingerstyle somewhat easier too, since it often gives better note and timing cues/calibrations, compared to multi-note rhythm chords.
I see what you mean about elitism, I should clarify my terms - while the nylon string guitar is called ‘classical’, really I don’t mean ‘classical’ music, there is a huge range of music that isn’t 18th/19th century orchestral pieces that is commonly played on nylon strings, such as Spanish, Portuguese, Balkans, Greek, Irish, and so on, more kind of ‘folk’ music, not so much the conservatoire of the European elites. And even with traditionally ‘classical’ in the common sense of the term, theres a fair amount like the Baroque period, or Bach for example, written for Lute (which is very close to nylon string guitar). And also, as I mentioned, replicating piano or even violin and wind instrument pieces is easier with fingerstyle than with a pick. Its more accurate to describe it as ‘fingerstyle’, and I do think that broadly speaking its a more versatile method than using a pick and an acoustic or electric, since those are recent inventions and we’ve been using ‘fingerstyle’ for a lot longer.
Yes, I mean the ‘acoustic’ strings exactly, they’re harder, but also a nylon stringed guitar has the strings and frets placed further apart (to accomodate fingers rather than a narrower pick), and there are some other differences in the neck and other pieces, all of which are tailored to the style. You can play fingerstyle on an acoustic but it tends to be harder not being built for the style - although I would be surprised if you couldn’t find acoustics built with that style in mind, since electric guitars vary in string placement for styles, though I haven’t looked. I understand not wanting to buy another guitar, but it will be more challenging to learn fingerstyle without a nylon string. However, there are players who produce very complex results with picks, it isn’t necessarily such a barrier, or combinations of picks and thumb (for the bass line), and also finger attachments you can buy that are essentially plastic nails so that you can pick on a steel string (though again, string placement will make this more difficult even with such picks, and it also is a style in and of itself to learn).
In terms of keeping up motivation, I acquired a wide range of different materials, including transcriptions of music styles that I was a lot more into, but also including those that I wasn’t so into in terms of listening, so that if I got too bored I could switch to an entire different style. I’d reccomend (again, budget permitting) getting materials for jazz, pop, rock, folk (of differrent kinds and traditions, like Spanish, Samba etc etc), classical ‘elite’, and so on, becasue ‘variety is the spice of life’ and it both helps you improve and keeps interest up, and even a favourite song will get tedious if its all you know or play. I also didn’t treat it like a kind of structured or targeted thing (some of my favourite songs I can’t play on guitar, because I can’t find good transcriptions or because a single guitar just can’t replicate them), or give myself particular goals or times, but that does work for some people. Its sort of different enjoying listening to something vs playing it sucecssfully - sort of like if you hate watching golf and even the idea of it, you’d still be pleased with yourself if you learnt how to get a hole in one or whatever its called. Or even if you hate soccer, but you learnt how to do a backflip kick and score with it. Or if you find sculpture fundamentally boring, but learnt to produce a lifelike bronze horse or something. I suppose I’m interested in the process/mechanics/technique, so that I don’t mind so much what the aesthetics of the result is - I’ll happily play songs that I would never listen to, as long as they have something interesting about the arrangement that isn’t just strumming three chords if you see what I mean. But then I don’t sing, which I think is where it becomes fine to just strum chords, because you’ve got two instruments so it can be more complex.
I think fingerstyle helped me keep up motivation, because of the wider array and complexity of the techniques being learned, compared to strumming which I started with but was hard to keep interest in, like I said because its harder to reproduce music satisfactorily, and also because there is a limit (to a degree, there are advanced techniques like rhythm flamenco too) to learning once you’ve got rythm guitar nailed.
Music is a very good pursuit for your whole life, since you get better with age, compared to lots of sports where you inevitably decline to the point where it becomes somewhat pointless. The best players I’ve seen have been completely outside the music industry (either elite or pop), playing traditional music in street cafes, and have always been very old, just playing with friends.
Question, do you grow out your fingernails?
I can’t, not to the extent I think you mean like with some professional players, because of my work - I’d break a lot of nails!
What I do is let them grow sort of longer than somebody who doesn’t at all, and it means that I experience a kind of cycle of playing - when they’re short I have to adjust and use fingertips, and when they’re longer I get a louder sound and can do certain more ‘aggressive’ styles easier. But it makes it a slightly different play style depending on how long they’ve grown. Also, I think those players grow their nails so long also shape them to be more pointed than normal, but I’m not sure. Broadly speaking, it isn’t necesarry for most styles of playing, and you can satisfactorally approximate the ones where its most common without doing it. With a steel string, I would buy the plastic fingertip things rather than relying on nails, or just play quieter.
Ah, cool. Yeah I was just feeling out how necessary it was. I’m guess some styles and sounds it’s more beneficial, others it matters less. I like to keep them quite short though as a matter of preference.
Cheers.
You’ve pretty much sold me on it to be honest. I mean I knew I wanted to learn fingerstyle one day, and I’ll continue picking as part of my practice, but starting tomorrow I’m going to add some fingerstyle. I love the idea of going wide with “classical” styles too, I hadn’t considered just how broad the pool of musical genres and traditions under that heading is, I just kinda lumped it all in as “classical (as in Euros with powdered wigs)” and “Spanish” which in retrospect is pretty silly. I love the idea of having more variety and more genres with which to play and having access to the teaching traditions and printed material available to those genres would be an advantage.
As for getting a nylon string guitar… I’ll have look at it! I must admit I’m quite attached to the sound of the steel string but you’ve got me curious enough to at least try.
My Dad got me into music, he’s a self taught guitarist and he just played around the house or with friends, I played with him when I was young. He loves music and played music he loves. I said in another comment he’s unfortunately getting arthritis in his hands but I totally get what you mean. Making music is an amazing thing, no matter who or how or where.
Even if you don’t get a nylon string, you can start with breaking up chords on the steel string - start with just playing the notes up and down (in pitch) in a row, then change the chord varient (like C major to C7 etc) and do the same, then start trying more complicated patterns. A basic one is just to play the bass note first (with thumb) and then the rest as a chord, or broken up. Try playing songs you know chords to, with the same timing, but broken up into individual notes. You can also try reducing the amount of notes in a chord, like strum most as usual, then pluck a two or three note chord for some to give it a different pattern. A lot of melodies and so-called ‘riffs’ are just broken up chords anyways.
Yes, there is a huge amount of different traditions, and with very different styles, both in rhythm and melody, it keeps you interested and its a nice feeling to learn something completely different, like if you’re used to blues to learn for example ‘latin’ or arabic styles. Unfortunately you then end up encountering different tunings and it gets complicated… though you also encounter that with Country.
I can understand the love for the steel string, its a very nice sound, especially for ‘Americana’ kind of genres like blues and country. Of course, there’s plenty of Americana that will sound just as good on a nylon, like Guthrie for example, and a personal favourite (though advanced in terms of techniques) is Leo Kottke.
Its good to continue your familial tradition! Although sad to hear of the athritis, I’m sure he’s proud to see you picking it up again!
Yeah, I’ve been trying to learn Neil Young’s Old Man, which has a lot of broken chords (I think I’m using that term right) with some variants added. I think that one is a bit beyond me at this stage but I’ll give what you suggest a try and see how my skills develop.
I think nylon fits quite well with the “folk revival” sound, which Guthrie definitely fits under. I wasn’t familiar with Leo Kottke before but I just had a listen to Vaseline Machine Gun and WOW! Very cool.
Thanks for this, I think that he is proud. I’ll definitely have to thank him when I see him next though. I certainly didn’t appreciate how lucky I was to have that kind of influence until recently.
So, I don’t know how to play that song, but I just watched him perform a bit of it on youtube… I don’t think he’s using broken chords (I mean by this arppegios, or when you break the chord up into multiple more separate notes, in the same way that when you strum a chord you sound the bass first, or the treble first in reverse, and it continues ringing with the slightly later notes - but more slowed down or in a different sequence to the one you get when you strum, which is achievable when you pick instead of strumming - I hope this makes sense). The chords are broken in the sense that he changes their notes (and therefore the chord) partway through, but he’s still using the full chord each time in the sequence you get when you strum really.
He seems to be strumming throughout, but achieving a more complex pattern by ‘hammer-ons’ and ‘pull-offs’ and also some degree of differing emphasis (via the right hand) on striking bass and treble strings with differing force (like when he goes to the G7, he emphasises the bass a lot more). I haven’t checked the tab, but from what I could see he uses hammer-ons/pull-offs a lot on the D and C, which is common because they’re a lot easier to use on those chords due to the fingerings.
If I were going to learn that song, I’d first omit all the more complex techniques, and focus on a slowed-down correct strumming pattern, and transitioning between the chords smoothly - perhaps starting with a much more basic strum pattern to get transitions and timing correct first. Then I’d try to learn the hammer-ons and pull-offs (if you don’t already know them, this is where your left hand, usually one finger, changes the chord by lifting off a note or pressing on a different one mid-note - you can practice this best by starting with one note, and plucking it once letting it ring, then lifting your finger off the fret and putting it back, to get a feel of the sound change and basic idea), and start by just holding the D chord, and finding all the changes you can make to it using those techniques - like if you lift your middle finger off the second fret on the highest pitch string during a strum, you get Dsus2 (I think thats the right name) and if you put your little finger onto the third fret on the same string (hold the usual D shape with your other fingers so you can lift it off again and change it back to D) you get Dsus4 (I think). Or you can lift your second smallest finger from the third fret (forgot its name) and get D6, and there are others of course, but while holding one chord like he’s doing you can produce a complex pattern even if you’re strumming rather than picking. From what I could see, he’s doing a lot of this in that song. You’ll also see that when he’s doing the more complicated stuff, he doesn’t sing and has to look, but when he’s singing, he’s strumming more basically - for obvious reasons.
Once I was happy with the smooth transition between chords (and knowing the chord fingerings themselves), the basic strum pattern, and the ability to add or remove notes to chords, I’d try to put it all together one part at a time and work up. But I would try all the separate parts first. At that stage, I’d not stop or fixate on a part I was getting wrong, but try to get the whole song through even with mistakes, even with slow downs or at the wrong temp, then maybe go back to parts again to get them better, then back to the whole song even with mistakes, if you see what I mean. And if I was getting annoyed, I’d try one more time, then drop it for something else.
Keep in mind as well, that every chord shape can be moved down the fretboard by 1 fret to make the next chord in sequence - D to Dsharp or E and so on - although you will need to change (add, or omit by muting the string) the notes that are left ‘open’ when the chord is in its usual top of the fretboard position. He does that in this song with the C shape, which he moves down the fretboard to get a different chord.
If you liked Kottke, check the song ‘morning is a long way home’ (this is on 12 string)!
edit: it’s d6 not d7… apologies
I think I know what you mean by broken chords, in his case I was referring to the way his strumming pattern grabs only part of each chord of each strum, so downstrum the whole chord, then upstrum only catching the high 2 strings, then down grabbing the low 3 stings creating that texture where he’s playing only one chord by each beat he gets a distinct sound from it. It’s not quite the same thing though.
And yeah I saw the hammers ons, I can do them super slow but even at a low tempo I just get a bit overwhelmed. Ah, that’s what practice is for though.
I’ll keep in mind what you said too about playing the whole song through, mistakes and all. I have a bad habit I need to break where I screw up and immediately stop and go back and I think it does make it harder to learn because you aren’t getting used to the “flow” of the music.
I remember that from before with moving up and down the fretboard. It’s something I think is pretty cool about guitar in particular.
Kottke is great, I can’t believe I’d never heard him. He plays like he was three guys.
Ah ok got it, yes that for the right hand will be precision that comes from practice, something you have to make your hand learn by repetition (I saw that he keeps his hand very close to the guitar, the movements aren’t big except on certain chords, so I expect this is a way to achieve that control by forcing some of the movements to be smaller on the upstroke). But, since I’m not good with picks at all, if I had to approach it, I think I would try to replicate it if using a pick by using the left hand, muting the strings I didn’t want played in a given chord on a beat. Its something worth practicing in any case, left hand (and right hand - ‘palm muting’ which he may be doing some of given how close his hand is to the strings, but sticking with left for now) muting - you can achieve it by maintaining less pressure on a given string at a fret, so it doesn’t sound properly (but not so little pressure that it makes an annoying sound). You can apply this to neighbouring strings with a finger, by pressing on the string you want to ring, and sort of flattening the rest of your finger a bit in the direction of the string you want to mute, so it presses one and also covers another (sort of counter-intuitive to how you’re supposed to want to use your fingers, i.e. very precisely pressing). For chords that don’t use one or more bass string, you can curl your thumb around the other side of the fretboard to mute those.
With hammer-ons, don’t worry about it being slow to start. Again, with ‘classical’ guitar, Baroque music happens to have a ridiculous (over) use of them, called ‘trills’, where they shove a hammer-on pull-off combo onto the end of so many parts, and its a good way to practice them, by taking any given individual note and repeatedly hammering on or off to produce that kind of ‘trill’. A good riff to practice them is the intro to ‘Layla’, because minus the effects its quite simple, so you can slow it down to start with and build up to the correct speed.
Another useful thing about other genres (including classical) is that playing them teaches different timings, since most music of the genre you’re talking about is in 4/4, and it helps to understand that timing by also using different ones, like 6/8 or waltz etc.
Here is another area where I think ‘fingerstyle’ helps more, because you’re playing individual strings, you kind of ‘hear’ and ‘feel’ better the effects of hammer-ons or offs compared to incorporating them into strumming patterns. I mean that your brain is, I think, better able to get what you’re trying to do, because the chord + strum is comparatively ‘chaotic’ or a finished product, whereas with individual notes, you’re showing your brain the building blocks first, so to speak.
On playing the whole song through - its partly to get a sense of the broader ‘flow’ of the music, but its also so that your brain doesn’t get backed into a corner with a specific problem that it (or it in combo with your fingers) isn’t currently able to solve, so I think its best to move on from persistant roadblocks to give your brain something it can solve (an easier part) to prevent it getting too frustrated. While you’re sorting the easier parts, your brain will still be working on the greater problem, but the easy parts may help it with a new perspective on the difficult bit, I hope that makes sense. So its good to switch back and forth, and also give your brain a sleep cycle to make progress on a particularly difficult roadblock. Again, switching styles (genres, and ways of playing) helps because the differences will help your brain work out the roadblock, give it new ways to approach the problem, and keep it from getting too frustrated and giving up or going too far down a ‘wrong’ path solution. Brains need sensory data, the more the better, to solve problems. Of course, going back to a difficult part multiple times isn’t a terrible idea, because it also teaches your brain that its a crucial problem that must be solved, as long as you’re not getting frustrated or fatigued with it.
One thing I remembered that somebody told me, applicable to pick users, is to try to practice a pattern when picking individual notes, of alternating each string. So you’d play the E string (bass) with a down pick stroke, and the next string (A) with an up pick stroke, and so on. I was told this is a good habit to force yourself to learn (it’ll be slow at first) because it will allow for greater speed and finesse later on, if you’re picking out notes in a riff or chord for example.
A final note on theory - you often get people tell you that its crucial to learn this stuff. I wouldn’t disagree, and I think theory can help you ‘shortcut’ some stuff that might take longer to appreciate by ‘doing’, and also give you a better understanding of the subject as a whole, which will no doubt be useful for the ‘doing’ part.
However, personally (and I don’t want to contradict hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge here), I wouldn’t overemphasise it. I’ve never tried to learn music theory in a formal sense, just picked bits up here and there from general reading, but mostly its just intuited from playing. Like I learnt chord shapes, and some scales, but I found out that there isn’t really a ‘D Scale’ but rather arrangements of notes in sequences to create patterns that is dependent on style and cultural tradition - that is, most music theory is basically aesthetic, not ontological. Like you don’t need to learn theory to paint, but there are certainly colour arrangements that people have proposed as ‘canon’ or recommendations, to create an aesthetic they find pleasing (like with fashion). But of course, it isn’t really a hard and fast thing, and in fact different cultures have their own aesthetic rules - like a minor scale or chord in Western European tradition is considered ‘sad’ or ‘meloncholy’ but in other places (some of Eastern Europe and Balkans) it can be considered the opposite - happy and uplifting, or celebratory. People argue over the correct tuning (in hertz) of the A string.
It brings to mind for me when Ho Chi Min apparantly remarked about peasants in his country having a far better grasp of communist ideas than French intellectuals (I think this is correct, I may be misremembering) - because those peasants were doing, while the French intellectuals (aside from usually being fools) were just theorizing. Or a recent case, where a tiler discovered a particular pattern of tiles that eluded theoretical mathemeticians and was considered too difficult to solve, and of course the articles written about the breakthrough had a sort of “oh a talking dog” tone about the tiler, but really the tiler by doing understood geometry better than a theoretician.
So I don’t want to dismiss it, and there is value in it, but I wouldn’t worry too much about learning music theory (again, often what is meant is Western European theory - for example Jazz theory was a reaction against that classical teaching) if you don’t enjoy it - you can always come back to it, and it isn’t necessary to learn to play and get good at playing. The best way to learn imo is with a guitar, not with books about guitars.
I did intitally try in this reply to write you an exercise for hammer ons & offs plus descending bass line, but I think the formatting was causing issues so it didn’t post with that, so sorry about that.
Edit: I forgot, but another tip that really helped me learning, is that where guitars have dots to denote particular frets (usually 5th, 7th, 12th and sometimes 9th), I found these reference points too sparse in a visual sense, so I bought small circular stickers (the kind you get in arts & crafts stores, or for children, in packs with different shapes) and stuck them on each fret, so I could better visually see the difference between frets - I don’t know if this would help you, but it did for me, being able to have a bright coloured marker showing each fret, otherwise they all kind of blend and you can lose your place. I mean, its easier to quickly count four bright stickers than the alternative. If you care about your guitar’s aesthetics you might not want to do this (though you can gently wash them off with soapy water), but I am function over form mostly. If I was trying to learn piano, I’d write in marker the notes on the keys, for example.
Muting of string is definitely useful, thought right now it’s another thing I need to physically get the hang of, maintaining the right amount of pressure, etc. I saw the trick of thumb muting the bass strings for the first time recently and it was a bit of an “a-ha!” moment for me. Palm muting is also something I need to practice, it’s a challenge to time and coordinate it in conjunction with everything else but I’m sure I’ll get it.
I definitely like the texture hammers add to a rhythm, so I’ll be practicing them. If you can write up that exercise I’d definitely appreciate it, but if it doesn’t really work with the formatting on here that’s ok, you’ve already helped a lot.
Your point about different timings is a good one too, I’m going to start using a metronome, so being more deliberate about timing is going to be important. Mother I think actually swaps between two time signatures but I’ve just been doing it by intuition so far.
As far as music theory, I take your point. I’ve come to understand it in terms of a concept in my day job called “design patterns” - which are abstractions of common techniques for designing software (for example peer-to-peer and client-server are ones a lot of people recognize but there ones for almost every category of problem). They give you conceptual tools to recognize and solve common problems, and a common language to describe complexity in a high level way, but they aren’t intended to be prescriptive and dogmatic adherence to them is counter productive. So while I recognize the usefulness of theory, I’m content to learn it slowly.
In terms of the tiler analogy, I think it takes a lot less time investment to learn the mathematics of geometry than to develop the type of intuition that an experienced tiler would have. So I think both approaches have their place. Bit gross how little value the academic press put on the experience and skill of the tiler for sure. I think this type of arrogance exists in just about every field.
I’ll give that alternating picking exercise a try too. I might try marking the frets, I’m sure I will get used to the existing fret markers in time but it does take me a minute to count them right now and having more visual distinction would help, I’m of two minds though I because I think the more I use the existing marks, the quicker I’ll learn to use them.
Also, I’ve started learning The Wind by Yusuf Islam as my first fingerstyle song. I’m really enjoying the complexity of melody you can create and the feeling of deliberateness compared to strumming. I think it’s also good for learning to play with that added precision. So far it hasn’t been too hard on my fingers but we’ll see how it goes.