Still plugging along. I had a busy weekend and didn’t have time to record a video. It’s been a humbling week, though, I’d say.
I’m working on Greensleeves and it’s been a lot harder to get to a satisfactory point than I expected. I am not sure what happens—I can play the chords find if I am not finger picking them but as soon as I add that additional thing to think about it does something in my brain and the transitions become much harder. It is slowly, slowly improving but it’s not where I thought it would be after practising it for a few weeks.
A couple of other things have been a lot harder than I expected as well. Number one is Justin’s lesson on picking individual strings while strumming, which I mentioned before. The second one is an exercise from a Truefire rhythm guitar course I’ve been doing that is really about efficiency and maybe mindful movement when playing chords. There have been a couple of exercises that, when I look at them on the screen, look really simple. But then when I try to play them, I find it very hard to do them cleanly and consistently. The one I’m doing at the moment is based on the key of F. It even uses the “cheater” F chord rather than the full barre. But there are a couple of movements that really trip me up.
One thing I do like about that course is that the teacher, Dave Isaacs, talks about chord fingerings and how and when he might use different fingerings, such using the pinky on a D minor chord to set up the transition to a Bb minor. It’s a good exercise in musicianship, not just playing the right notes.
I think this has been good about showing me things that I probably would have taken for granted but might be the kind of thing that’s been holding me back when I try to progress.
It’s funny how thing go. Yesterday I felt like I couldn’t play anything right. Everything was coming out wrong. Today was much better and some of the things that were giving me fits came easy. Hopefully that’s a sign of progress and not just that I had one good day!
I think one lesson I took way too long to learn is that it is well worth it to slow down and spend a long time on any lesson. I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week on the Grade 3 “Picking Individual Note While Strumming” exercise in the last week. In the past, I probably would have done it one day and then moved on just to feel like I was making progress. Of course, moving past something just to check it off or mark it as “Done” isn’t progress it all. This has actually prompted me to slow down and look back at some of the Grade 2 lessons to see if there is anything else I might benefit from revisiting.
The flip side of this is that I worry about perfectionism. If I can’t do something just right and I keep at it for too long, I’ll get frustrated and it won’t be fun any more. I’m worried I am getting there with “Greensleeves.” I’ve spent a lot of time on it the last couple of weeks and there are things that I just don’t get right. The maddening thing is that while there are some parts that I consistently find challenging, other times I’ll be playing and something I’ve been able to do a dozen times suddenly eludes me again. I think I’m going to just try to record where I am at to get my progress on the record then add it to my list of things to come back to.
As part of my focus on picking, I’ve also been playing the Wilburys’ “Handle With Care.” I learned it a while ago, but tried to pull it out again and found I was quite rusty. It’s coming back and it’s a lot of fun to play. Hoping to record that, too. I think that my practice routine still skews way too far on the exercise side of things and I probably ought to spend more time learning songs, since this was supposed to be my year of building my repertoire. Something I should take a look at.
Well, I promised to record something and I did. This is “Greensleeves,” such as it is. It was the best take from a bunch of bad takes but I decided to call it because I was getting frustrated (not just with my playing, but with technical A/V stuff). Probably would have been better on an acoustic but I don’t have an external microphone and when I tried the ones on my devices just didn’t pick things up very well.
I think I am going to set Greensleeves aside for now. I’m frustrated I can’t seem to play it very well or consistently after as much time as I’ve been putting into it. I am not sure what it is. If I were to strum the chords, I wouldn’t have a problem, but as soon as they’re in this context it’s like I lose my ability to change them cleanly. It’s like it’s too much for my brain to process or something.
One big thing that I have become aware of recently that really stands out to me in this video is how much my fretting hand moves when I change some chords. That’s a lot of wasted motion!
I tried to record “Handle With Care,” too, but the technical stuff was really starting to drive me nuts. It was nothing serious, but my computer seems to slow to a crawl when I record video and it was affecting the backing track. It’s hard to play along with a track that slows down spontaneously in the middle of a song. Another day.
Greensleeves came out pretty well, but putting it aside is perfectly fine. Plenty of other tunes to hone skills on.
Your important observation of excessive movement should help you tighten things up alot; it’s something I’ve worked on alot myself over the years, both on the fretting and picking hands. It makes a huge difference when movement is economised.
Having said that I know a guitarist in another environment whose hands literally splay all over the place, and he’s an incredible guitarist who plays all sorts of fast, intricate stuff.
I think that there’s a huge emphasis in the guitar world (and especially in a lot of online guitar influencer discourse) around speed and picking and horizontal movement in the form of spider exercises and scales and things like that.
Hugely important skills! But all the noise around that stuff can really drown out the importance of practicing stuff that is not as impressive—like being able to cleanly play and change chords consistently, and other skills that are useful for rhythm guitar but not always used for soloing or hot licks.
I think that I’ve spent way too much time on that “horizontal” stuff and as a result a lot of my other basic skills are not as well developed. When I started playing guitar again a few years ago, I thought I had a good handle on cowboy chords and things like that, so I never really moved past the bare essentials. Now I can play a scale at a pretty good tempo in five positions, but more complicated chord shifts slow me down significantly.
All this to say, I think I am going to be spending more of my practice time on chords and strumming to try to make up that balance. There are a few exercises in Grades 2 and 3 that I think will help, and I have some others in my stash as well.
Alongside that, I’ve continued to work on Handle with Care. At this point I am working on increasing speed and I hope to record it at tempo. I might take a crack at recording two guitar parts and see how it goes. I also pulled out a couple of other songs yesterday—Crazy Little Thing Called Love (which is a blast to play!) and Fake Plastic Trees. The latter is not that difficult but there are a couple of tricky chord changes. It’s also a great song for playing with dynamics. Radiohead’s my favourite band and I’d like to learn more of their songs, but they can be difficult with all of different effects, three guitarists, and lots of studio trickery.
A couple of recordings today! Neither came out perfectly and I spent way too much time messing around with Tonex and Amplitube trying to get a tone I liked before I gave up and just hit record. I am not sure why none of the backing tracks came through again. Sorry about that—you’re stuck with just my guitar.
First, Fake Plastic Trees by Radiohead. I don’t know why I didn’t learn this a long time ago—I love the song and it’s pretty simple. A couple of odd voicings but nothing that’s out of reach.
And Handle with Care by the Travelling Wilburys. This was trickier with a lot of repeated arpeggio picking. None of the chords are difficult but there are some quick shifts and of course the picking accuracy is important. I always seem to miss a few here and there but I am not sure of any consistent pattern.
This week I think I am going to try taking on Californication in hopes it will help me get the F chord more comfortably. I can play it just fine but if I have to hold it for very long it feels like my thumb starts to cramp a bit. I think I need to build some strength there.
