Dro_1 - May 2022 - Tears In Heaven + People Are Strange + Shallow + Stairway To Heaven + Light My Fire + Sleep Walk

Thanks Rod, there’s not much to it :slight_smile:
I’m envious of players that have a good voice to sing along haha. I just checked your cover of ‘Have you ever seen the rain’. Nicely done mate.

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Sandro, perhaps you just sing along to something, not necessarily an entire song. Then let’s give you feedback on your voice. In my experience, nearly everybody learning to play says they have no voice for singing. And when we hear most are quite OK, some already sound pretty good, and a on the rarest of occasions there are folk who are a little harder to listen to.

I probably fit the latter rare category :laughing: But I might try to mess around with vocals on a short song eventually and just post it up for a laugh, if nothing else.

:rofl:

Maybe, you will only know when you try. And as I said that is what they all say.

It’s funny what is easy (or easier) to some and what is hard (or harder) for others. There are so many details/techniques with this journey and once you get one thing down decent, here comes another thing that puts you back on the struggle bus! Never got into this for the singing thing, never even thought about it and now I can’t stop😀. There is a hiker saying of “hike your own hike”. I think that can apply to your guitar journey too. Keep it fun but an excursion here or there may bring you a surprise you didn’t foresee or a skill you didn’t think you could do.

I think you have to be ready to grind on something that you don’t immediately pick up to see if you can breakthrough and really do it. That’s what I’m counting on for finger style :grin:. Maybe that’s the same for singing on your journey. Whatever “ hike” you take on this guitar journey make it your own!….Rod

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Me likey:

@Rod58 Great outlook to have Rod.
For finger pattern, I started off with ‘Dust in the wind’. Maybe lookup a youtube tutorial for that song and see if you want to give it a go.
As you pointed out, after grinding through it I was able to sort of get it up to 1/4 speed and then 1/2 speed. Eventually by the time that I got it up to normal speed, my thumb got used to living on the low 3 strings to take care of the root notes.
Once you have your first pattern sorted, you can try some different songs and patterns or just make up some of your own stuff while holding down any chord.
I’m sure that there are plenty of better experienced finger players here that might be able to give you more useful advice, but that’s how I started off with it anyway. Hope it points you in the right direction though.

@CT Thanks Clint, that gif had me laughing :rofl:

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Hi all, here’s a video of my playthrough of Sleep Walk by Santo & Johnny.

If you don’t know the original artists but the tune kind of sounds familiar to you, then you probably recognise it from one of the movies it’s been in. I heard it in La Bamba for the very first time and always associate this song with the very last scene of that movie - no I’m not crying… you’re crying

This playthrough doesn’t really showcase chord or strumming techniques, just mainly hitting basic notes for the most part - so it’s simple enough for any beginner to play along to a backing track if they want to have a go.

I believe the original was done using a pedal steel guitar, and the song is probably more suited to some type of steel or Electric guitar for covers of it.
Nevertheless I thought I’d give it a try on my Classical guitar with a backing track to see if it came out ok, because I really like this old laid back tune.

Since I don’t have to worry about root notes (and such) whenever I pick single notes like in this song or in any solo section, I usually break away from the traditional fingerstyle placements of the thumb and fingers. In these cases, I tend to use my thumb on the thinnest strings quite often when it feels comfortable for me to do so.

Below are the links to the video that I did yesterday, as well as an old audio file which was done without a backing track. Cheers

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Mellow Monday Morning !! Enjoyed that Sandro, just sat back and listened, did not have to thinking of offering advice on this one. Twas cool. :sunglasses:

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Real nice Sandro. Definitely recognised the tune, even though I didn’t know what it was called. Like Toby said, mellow.

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Nicely played and chilled.

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That was terrific Sandro. It sounded great on your classical guitar.
Like you say, it sounded familiar but I don’t know where from.
Well done.

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@TheMadman_tobyjenner Thanks Toby, much appreciated. Glad you liked it.

@jkahn Thanks mate. I’ve known of this tune since I first watched the movie La Bamba when I was a kid, but never knew the title. So when I was trying to find easy things to play at the start of my guitar learning, I thought of this tune and googled something like “name of song in final scene”. It’s very laid back and beginner friendly.

@skinnyt Thanks Trevor. That’s also why enjoy listening to it… very chill, laid back, mellow, all of the above.

@sairfingers Cheers Gordon. It’s been in a few movies and it was a hit for the artists at the time, so I’m sure it’s been used in many other things over the years since the 60’s.

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Delightful, Sandro. Sounded fabulous and enjoyed watching your hands at play. Lots of skill on display there.

So if that’s beginner friendly, what level of player am I, cause it looked pretty tricky to me, lots going on for both hands.

Bravo, keep 'em coming.

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That was wonderful Sandro.

Yes, I recognise the tune but I don’t know where from. I have seen La Bamba but that was back in about 88, so I’d be amazed if my brain was still that good. :smiley:

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You’ve captured a mellow vibe here Sandro. Good work.

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@DavidP Thanks David

I also left a reply on one of your recent threads that I just saw. I don’t think you’d find anything tricky about this one :+1:

@SgtColon thank you Stefan

Yeah, funny how the brain works. If I rewatch something after a couple of decades (which I used to love as a kid), the amount of lines that I could probably repeat verbatim after such a long time is a pretty cool and scary thought.

@batwoman Thanks Maggie. That’s the way it feels to me when I here this song, so I’m pleased that it seems to have come across that way to most of you too.

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That’s kind of you to say, Sandro. I thin the movement between chord shapes and the finger-picking patterns and the single note lines would be challenging for me. And the shifts on the right hand.

I am currently working on a beginner friendly song but finding the shift I want to make between finger-picking the verses, and then a mix of pumping 8s and old faithful strumming for the pre-chorus and chorus, specifically getting back into the finger-picking after the chorus mighty tricky. Needs lots of practice but I’ll get it eventually.

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Mellow flow, man-.so that’s where all those doors open to… :sunglasses:
For a Covid-axe-man, you’re flying! Keep on with whatever you’re doing.
I can’t get over how fat that fretboard looks.
phat sound though :wink:

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@DavidP Rod mentioned an expression “Hike your own hike” on one of my other threads, which I liked (and I have officially stolen now). I think he has a point, as everyone has different pathways to reach a similar goal. So I might have been a tad naive to think that everyone might share the same strengths and weaknesses.
My path so far has not been too linear… I’ve zig zagged my way to this point and after skimming through some of the beginner grade course when I joined this site, it’s evident that I had bypassed a lot of basic essentials.
I’ve left a note to myself to check out the Blues module a bit more in depth. Because it would be cool to be able to do something in that style, so I’m planning to go through and see if I can fill in some gaps and mess around with it.

I think Richard previously suggested that a learning log might be a good idea, so I’ll see if I can finally start my own one sometime this week to help me keep better track of things for myself.
Let’s keep on truckin’ at our own pace :slight_smile:

@brianlarsen Thanks man, much appreciated. I guess it was just the amount of spare hours that I had while passing the time (and boredom) when we were all stuck at home during lockdown.

Yeah, another member mentioned something similar about the fretboard previously. My hands are more built for a kiddy sized guitar :laughing: So starting my learning on this old thing with a “fat” fretboard was probably not the smartest choice. But it was the only thing that I had to mess around with at the start, so I just persisted with it and it’s all I’ve ever played with so far.

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