Bare Knuckle Pickups Forum
At The Back => Time Out => Topic started by: Nadz1lla on May 01, 2009, 07:22:26 PM
-
My band supported this awesome Prog band called Icaruss last night. They are 10 years younger than me and put my playing to shame...in fact they pretty much put everything musical about me to shame, they were absolutely fantastic, I can't say enough good stuff about these guys.
However, it brought sharply into focus that having "played" guitar for 12 years (and I write all the songs for my band, even though I only do vocals live), I've not really broken any ground as far as my actual ability goes. It's time to actually learn how to play. I have no money for lessons as I was recently laid off and am still unemployed. On the bright side, I now have an abundance of time in which to play until my fingertips bleed, and i can break out the John Petrucci Rock Discipline DVD I have been hiding in the cupboard all these years.
Can anyone recommend any good sites / free stuff to help me learn, bring my technique up to scratch and finally get out of the little rut I've been sitting in for 8 years? I seem to have learned a pentatonic scale and how to drop-d my axe and then my enthusiasm fizzled out. I really want to start writing more intricate guitar parts a-la Opeth and start learning how to shred properly.
Am into:
Dream Theater
Opeth
Machine Head
Porcupine Tree
not forgetting Red Seas Fire and The Safety Fire cos those riffs are damn inspiring, lads!
That kind of stuff really.
Throw me a bone guys! Also if anyone has any kind of pre-practice "rituals" they find useful, or any little bits of advice actually, chuck that in too! :lol:
Thanks in advance for any advice! :)
-
Stay off the interwebs if you have any hopes of getting good fast. Practice, don't just play, under the tutelage of a good teacher 4-8 hrs every day. There is no easy way.
-
Not true IMO.
With a disciplined approach one can achieve things perhaps even quicker than with private tutelage by 'playing' the techniques rather than 'exercising' them.
You can do as many skill drills as you like but you aren't going to get any better at a sport without actually playing and I think the same applies here.
That said tutoring will help lay the foundations more easily from which your playing should be built.
-
I really would get proper lessons, but as I say, unemployed and very much in debt, heh. :?
-
Get a good teacher, I would say! There is no easy way out process. Good luck!!
-
Ah yeah fully aware there's no "easy" way out, am prepared to work. But I'll probably get the teacher to treat me as if I'm a complete beginner. Unlearn all the bad stuff I have no doubt taught myself, hehe.
-
Not true IMO.
With a disciplined approach one can achieve things perhaps even quicker than with private tutelage by 'playing' the techniques rather than 'exercising' them.
You can do as many skill drills as you like but you aren't going to get any better at a sport without actually playing and I think the same applies here.
That said tutoring will help lay the foundations more easily from which your playing should be built.
Agree to disagree. Making music is not a sport and can't be treated as such in my opinion. But if that method has worked for you -- more power to you!
-
Hmm having never had a lesson, perhaps I find myself once again in solitude...
At least I don't play a c**ting tele.
Roo
-
Aha! once the old knots have been untied, learning process is fast foward!
-
Hmm having never had a lesson, perhaps I find myself once again in solitude...
At least I don't play a c**ting tele.
Roo
Look, now you're just making yourself angry Roo, go sit in the corner. :lol:
-
Ok, yes, tutor, it's worked weel for Sue so far.
However, I did actually read the bit where you said you can't aford one right now (good luck on the job hunting btw), so maybe take a look on YouTube, I think there are a number of video's on there that have been done by professional players, and probably tutors as well. The only probaly is figuing out which is useful and which is just someone talking cr@p, and you might actually be better spending that time with an axe in your hands.
Have you got any friends for contacts that might be able to teach you some techniques for free (or beer).
-
Never had a lesson myself either, so it can be done.
It might be nice if people stopped continuing to suggest a tutor, as you have plainly said you can't afford one. If you are disciplined and identify the right areas to work on, there's no reason that practice on your own will not improve your technique hugely.
The key thing is "hours" on the guitar. You gotta practice, gotta put in the work.
Personally, I hate scales and "technical" practice. I've always learnt lots of new stuff by simply learning new songs. So, be realistic, choose songs that inspire you, but are within yout grasp, technically. And simply have fun learning music that you love. If you are also motivated enough to do the "technique" and scales thing then all power to you !
-
yeah, my problem is motivation. Much as I like JP, I keep getting bored of Rock Discipline quite quickly. But then, the clue is in the name, "Discipline", I just have to be tougher with myself. I was quite impressed I watched it for an hour last night with my axe and I was only going over the 1st couple of exercises. but it's a start. If I can be tougher and keep it up for 3 hours at a time just learning, I might get somewhere, hehe.
Thanks for the good luck message too, Ailean!
I used to just learn songs from tab on the internet, but as we all know, you can't trust everything on there these days. I think I'll try Deliverance by Opeth as I seem to have the majority of the chord-work down already.
You tube vids is a good idea, thanks, as you say though, it's sifting through the rubbish to find those diamonds in the rough. :)
-
Whether it's playing tutorials, excercizes or songs, the key is repetition.
The more you do it, the better you get at it.
At some point you might hit a ceiling and that can be very frustrating. By that time it's best IMO to step away from it for a while but not too long.
Get yourself motivated. Listen to music that inspires you, go to see great live bands. Keep it fun.
-
Not true IMO.
With a disciplined approach one can achieve things perhaps even quicker than with private tutelage by 'playing' the techniques rather than 'exercising' them.
You can do as many skill drills as you like but you aren't going to get any better at a sport without actually playing and I think the same applies here.
That said tutoring will help lay the foundations more easily from which your playing should be built.
Agree to disagree. Making music is not a sport and can't be treated as such in my opinion. But if that method has worked for you -- more power to you!
I was referring to improving skill and fitness in both examples.
I was just using the latter example to illustrate my point and I do agree that music should not be treated as a form of competition, though benchmarking against superior players does help to motivate me to push my playing that bit further.
-
Have a go at those 'Spider Exercises' they're on a sticky. They will help with technique in the long term. :wink:
There are loads of tuition books on amazon.
Lick Library do loads of DVDs there is bound to be some that appeal to you. It costs but its not going to rape your wallet like a teacher can.
Ask yourself what you want to achieve, find the material you need to practice with and keep doing it. Over and over, the hard stuff takes so much time to get right. The really good players would have sacrificed so much of their time to get that good.
Record yourself.
-
Cheers all for the great advice so far! Am taking a lot of it on board. :)
-
for fast alternative picking I learnt from michael angelo batios speed kills, although I only ever did exercises 1 and 2 and the practising how fast you can tremolo pick part is useful as that's your speed limit
I've never had a lesson but I used to analysis other people's playing a lot, it's how I got my pinching technique down watching loads of youtube clips of different people's technique and they applying it in my own way
for my own alternative picking technique I use completely stiff picks and hold the pick quite firm but not too firm, just enough so it doesn't flap about hitting the string with a tiny bit of tip showing, basically I'm trying to make sure I don't waste any energy what so ever
I recently got mark tremonti's DVD and that covers a lot and has some good stuff in it
-
This is incredibly usefull.
Divine every usefull shred of information from it and apply to your practice regimes.
http://www.newenglandconservatory.edu/studentLife/documents/PracticingandCurrentBrainResearchbyGebrian.pdf
-
I think that reading about theory could probably help you.
Search around for some interesting texts on classical music theory - I'm not talking about the neo-classical metal stuff, real classical music. Start thinking about modal playing, work out what works over what progression. Technique is something else - practising scale speed with a metronome or a drum machine is fine, if that's what you're after. But playing something interesting and clever is, I think, more of a challenge - and all of this can be find in classical texts.
Mark.
-
Yeah I want to finally crack reading music. My piano teacher and all the teachers for my music course did try to teach me how to read proper sheet music but I could never manage it. A friend suggested I might actually be written-music dyslexic as I literally can't get my head around it at all. I can only just read tab. :?
I'll give it a crack but if still no joy I might have to go and see someone about that dyslexia theory.
Cheers for the links so far too!
-
I share a similar history, no real formal training, got to a point I was happy with and stayed there etc.
Recently I went on the hunt for a cheap way to improve my playing and stumbled across the Guitar Tricks website. I've found it to be really useful in increasing my theory knowledge, and you can pick and choose the lessons that interest you it comes with tab, videos and often backing tracks for the lessons and it would appear that they've been trying to update the lessons with higher quality videos. Now as with all things there is a catch, this being a subscription, it's $14 a month I believe, which equates to about £9 a month but you can cancel it at anytime and most if not all lessons are downloadable (beats paying £30 per hour when cash is scarce). There are some free lessons you can try, so it's worth a look perhaps.
www.guitartricks.com (http://www.guitartricks.com)
Now that I've progressed a bit further I've bought some secondhand books by good old Troy Stetina to have a crack at so we'll see how that goes.
The only thing that I have problems with is sorting out habits I've developed over the years and not adding to them. So far I have a friend who's given me a couple of pointers but I guess if you go down the "No Teacher" route you make sacrifices.
-
a good website for theory is http://www.musictheory.net/
I found the presentation made it a lot easier to understand over other sites
-
Hmm having never had a lesson, perhaps I find myself once again in solitude...
At least I don't play a c**ting tele.
Roo
you're not alone...
-
Stay off the interwebs if you have any hopes of getting good fast. Practice, don't just play, under the tutelage of a good teacher 4-8 hrs every day. There is no easy way.
I think you can get pretty good without 4-8 hours a day of serious practise IMO. Unless you are training for some kind of speed competition...
Play with as many musicians as you can
Go to see as many guitarists / musicians as you can
mix some fun into the discipline
play clean sometimes
And you'll be as bad as me in no time :D
Git to admit though when you can afford a teacher, even if you only get 10 lessons at some point it will be worth it, until then books/dvd's are the best way forward.
Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)
-
Stay off the interwebs if you have any hopes of getting good fast. Practice, don't just play, under the tutelage of a good teacher 4-8 hrs every day. There is no easy way.
I think you can get pretty good without 4-8 hours a day of serious practise IMO. Unless you are training for some kind of speed competition...
Play with as many musicians as you can
Go to see as many guitarists / musicians as you can
mix some fun into the discipline
play clean sometimes
And you'll be as bad as me in no time :D
Git to admit though when you can afford a teacher, even if you only get 10 lessons at some point it will be worth it, until then books/dvd's are the best way forward.
Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)
I pretty much agree with all of that. Learning to play clean is vry important - distortion hides a lot of mistakes.
Another thing I have started doing is playing along with live DVDs as you can generally see some of the chords/notes. It's good for the ear as well!
-
Cheers guys! yeah I am definitely going to look into a teacher when I get a job. That playing clean thing is so true! The amount of times I don't sound a note correctly when I play something clean is a big eye-opener.
-
Most important you got the Hunger! That will help you out get the job first, then everything else will fall into place! That Hunger to learn is the drive!
-
Youtube is good but there are just to many distractions on the web (like this forum and naked women :oops:)
agree on naked women... ;)
and i'd add even full dressed girlfriends who don't care too much about your playing skills and kill you if you vaguely think to spend a couple of hours with your guitar instead of being with them... :?
-
Just You Tube. "Paul Gilbert lesson" he has so many DVDs and lessons on it you can't fail if technique is what you want
-
find a really damn good guitar tutor and make sure you find the right one.. try 5 or 6 before u settle on one that you feel is giving you the goods.
then practice like a mother $%&#er.