Darren Addy <[email protected]> wrote:
> Don't know if anybody here plays or not,
We guitarists are a dime a dozen; there's no way a mailing list this
size could fail to have a few of us on it.
> but I've decided to stop
> putting off things I've always wanted to do and decided to learn the
> guitar.
Mazel tov!
> decided to get a Seagull S6 (original).
Concept #1: the guitar has to be good enough that the student isn't
fighting the instrument. Seagull, Yamaha, and Washburn are all good
choices for a first axe. I prefer Yamaha (both of my main stage/studio
guitars are Yamahas and one is the very guitar I learned on), but I have
found every Seagull I've touched comfortable to play and good-sounding.
Learning on an Alvarez would be even easier, but justifying an Alvarez
price for a first guitar would be a lot harder. (I wish I could afford
one now -- they feel really nice in my hands.) Unless the S6 is
radically different from the Seagull's I've seen, Seagull is a good
choice. As good a choice as the Yamaha I wound up with by luck.
> Anyway, any words of wisdom from The Collective who play would be most
> welcome.
Concept #2: The single biggest factor in how quickly and how well you
learn will be _how_much_time_the_guitar_spends_in_your_hands_. You want
a decent case or gig-bag for carrying it outside your house, but at
home, at least for the first several years, it should Not be kept in its
case! Get a stand, or pick a suitable corner to brace it against -- the
corner formed by the front of a desk and an open drawer is a good choice
-- someplace where you will have to notice it several times as you go
about your day, where picking it up will be almost as easy as walking
past it (or easier!). Pick it up every chance you get, even if it's
just for a mere few seconds of reminding yourself that it makes pretty
noises when you touch it, or getting your fingers a smidgen more
accustomed to a chord shape you're learning. Time spent _playing_ is
even better ... or practicing, practicing is good too, but even if
you're just noodling and exploring on it, that's doing you some good.
Play, play play. Practice, study, then play some more. Even before you
can do much on it, play what you can do so far, and experiment.
If the guitar gets a few extra dings and scratches, maybe a small dent
on the back of the neck, that is, ultimately, a _tiny_ price to pay for
the constant reminder to Pick Up Your Axe and play. Keep the guitar
long enough, and it'll get marks like that _anyhow_, unless you're
operating a museum and keeping it in a glass display case. Any guitar
that gets played will eventually get dinged. Be careful, sure, but
don't freak out about it -- it's inevitable, so it doesn't much matter
whether some of the dings come a little earlier for the sake of making
sure you get the instrument into your hands as often as possible.
After those two key ideas, there's a whole lot of stuff less important
than either of those but worth paying attention to ...
Get a mirror and put it where you can use it to watch your hands while
you play. _Looking_at_your_hands_ is no sin at first (or at all except
when you're performing for an audience who can see you), but
_hunching_over_ to do so _is_ a problem (I wish I'd had this advice when
I was learning). You don't need to use the mirror every time you pick
up the guitar, only when you're working on something you stilll need to
look at your hands for, or when you're trying to adjust your playing
posture and how you're moving your arms. (This is especially important
in that last case, because hunching over to look changes all the
angles.)
Learn to read Spanish tabulature (the kind of guitar tabulature you'll
see in magazines and on the web)[*]. If you don't already know how to
read modern standard western notation (y'know, with the five-line staff
and clefs and such), learn that too. Missing either will severely limit
you, but the standard notation is most likely going to be the more
important of the two.
Change your strings. When they start sounding a little "thuddy" and
un-bright, change your strings. If they ever start showing rust, or if
the silvered ones start turning black and feel rough to the touch,
change your strings. When you can see a bit of winding missing where a
fret has worn through it, change your strings. Violin strings are
expensive. Guitar strings are _not_. The first few times you buy new
strings, try different kinds (different brands, different weights,
silk&steel, phosphor bronze, Elixir, ...) until you know what you like.
(And when you get another guitar, do this again -- you may well like one
kind of strings on one guitar and other strings on a different guitar.)
I know you're not likely to really follow this particular advice, so a
fallback approach is to set a schedule, like every three months.
Play as many different _styles_ of music as you have time to explore,
not just the genre you were thinking of when you decided you wanted to
learn. First, you may well discover more music you like than you knew,
and/or some that's just fun as hell to _play_ even if it's still not
your favourite to listen too. Second, each new style will teach you
something about technique, something about music theory, or both, and
you can take that new knowledge back to the other styles you're working
on.
As far as learning music goes, ideally you want to be really good at
four ways: reading, by-ear, memorizing, and improvisation. You're not
going to be equally good at all of these, and which ones are most
important will depend on the styles and environments you're playing in,
but work on all of them at least a little.
If you arms or shoulders or back hurt, your posture is probably wrong.
When you have time to play more than a couple of minutes, play until
your fingers hurt and then stop. Once your fingers have toughened up,
you can abuse them by playing past the point of pain; for now, you're
still toughening them up -- stop when they hurt, and pick up the guitar
again when they stop. Play _often_, but don't play holes through your
skin. (If you do wind up playing long enough at a stretch to bleed, use
Crazy Glue (cyanoacrylate) on your fingertips as a bandage/armour.)
Keep the thumb of your fretting hand on the middle of the back of the
neck, _not_ wrapped around the neck and hooked over the edge! There are
imes when you want to hook, but in general keeping the thumb on the
centerline of the back of the neck gives you better reach, better
flexibility, and better speed. Hooking your thumb is a _very_ hard
habit to break -- I've been trying for a long time -- so avoid forming
that habit in the first place! Consider putting a wee bit of gaff tape
on the neck behind the first fret to remind you where your thumb should
be when you're in first position, at first.
If you have trouble changing between a particular pair of chords, spend
a few hours just playing those two chords over and over, no matter how
stupid it feels or sounds, until your fingers start to get it.
I can go on with more advice, but the biggest, most important thing I
can tell you remains: play, play, play, noodle, practice, play. And
keep the guitar where you'll be most often tempted to pick it up.
When you're happy, see whether you can make the guitar sound as happy as
you are. When you're sad, see if you can make the guitar sound
sympathetic. When you're nervous, play until your attention is all on
your playing and you relax.
My brother learned when he was in high school. He took his guitar to
school with him every day. When he had a free period, he played guitar.
At lunch, he played guitar. Walking between classes, he played guitar.
All that playing paid off. Adults don't have as much time available to
devote to practicing and playing as kids do, in general, so make the
most of what time you do have for it: spend as much time as you can
holding that guitar. Until it feels like an extension of your hands,
and then some. Until you're not even thinking consciously about where
your finger is going and it just lands on the right fret.
At first you'll be looking at your hands a lot just to try to get your
fingers to the right places. Eventually you'll be playing in the dark,
or with your eyes closed, ... or looking at the audience or sheet music
instead of at your hands. This _will_ happen; give it time, and give it
lots and lots and lots of practice.
I'll close with the final verse of one of my songs:
Now some boys love girls, and some love other boys.
Some love power tools and other fancy toys.
Some love chocolate, and some, they love their cars,
But that's just because _they_ don't have _guitars_!
-- Glenn
[*] Modern guitar tab is just Spanish lute tabulature from the
Renaissance. A lot of people think tabulature is "just a crutch" for
people who can't read standard notation, but a lot of lute music was
written in tabulature in the first place. Personally, I read tab much
more slowly than I read standard notation, but even with that handicap,
it's still sometimes useful for more than just being the notation you
find so many tunes in online -- most notes on guitar can be fingered
five or six different ways, and it's not always obvious from reading a
score which will be the easiest or which will give the particular tone
you want, but tabulature shows you the _fingering_ rather than the
pitch. In magazines it's common to see the same notes written in both
notations, one above the other. An historical note: Italian lute
tabulature is just like Spanish tab upside-down, French lute tabulature
is similar to Spanish but with letters instead of numbers, and German
lute tab is ... different, very different. Spanish tab is also used for
banjo, mandolin, bass guitar, and probably a bunch of other instruments.
--
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