Not exactly new to guitar, but still very much a newbie.
As I’ve met more people who have tried guitar, my journey sounds pretty common.
I got my first guitar in college, about 24yrs ago. I had played trumpet for a few years in middle school until my only choice to continue with that instrument was to do marching band. I should have taken up a stringed instrument then. Anyway, I wanted to take the guitar class for my music credit, but learned it was reserved for music majors. I ended up taking piano and enjoying it. But after that, I didn’t really do anything with music. I sold that guitar because I had no idea what to do with it on my own, and was too poor to hire a private instructor.
Fast forward several years, and in about 2008 or so, I bought another guitar. A Yamaha acoustic. Not expensive, but it sounded awful nice.
I started taking private lessons right away, but progress was extremely slow. I just couldn’t get comfortable with chord changes. I’m a righty and doing those kinds of things with my left hand has always given me a challenge. It was troublesome for me in that college piano class, too. My piano teacher let me re-write the pieces we played so I could do just chords with my left hand when the music was telling me to do other stuff.
I got accepted into graduate school and moved to another state. But I hired another private instructor and kept up with my lessons for awhile. Until my schedule made it really hard to keep those going. And then I had a major illness that kept me away from the guitar for awhile after that, even. And then habit took over.
I kept thinking about it, though. A few winters ago, I took a group class locally at the community college (a couple more relocations later). A few more things started to click for me, but those chord changes were still giving me trouble. The 2nd half of the class left me behind and I didn’t get as much out of it then. Got frustrated and put the guitar down again. But still kept thinking about it.
Last fall, I decided I was going to dive in again. But I wanted to try something different to see if I could make it stick. I had recently gotten some medication for ADHD, so I was hoping that would help me keep to a practice schedule. But I really wanted to see if I could find a way to specifically address my trouble with chord changes and approach them with smaller steps and a smoother progression into it. There was just too much out there for me to put together everything myself, so I found an instructional site (a competitor to this one I guess you could say) with a sale running and bought a few lessons to try.
The first lesson did introduce those chord changes with much smaller steps than they’d been taught to me in the past. I started to get smoother with them. And I actually was able to play songs on tempo along with the videos! I’ve never been able to keep up with an instructor before. I’m still working through those lessons I bought.
It appears that it really takes me a lot of work to start getting better with new material as those challenges increase. Most recently, I’ve added the “baby F” chord and I’ve noticed that this has really opened up a BUNCH of songs I’ve been wanting to play. I won’t say I’m smooth with that chord yet, but I do find myself wanting to play more songs than the lessons I’m working on have been teaching me. Currently working on “House of the Rising Sun” (complete with arpeggios, also) in those lessons.
I ended up here because I keep getting referred here for song how-tos. I tried out a local guitar jam group that’s reportedly beginner friendly and I didn’t even play a note. I was SUPER discouraged by this. I just watched everybody else, trying to pick out a rhythm to play and I just had no idea. The group leader was doing some complex strumming with embellishments and her fingers were a blur. I couldn’t pick out WTF she was doing even remotely. When was she changing chords? Good question. All those embellishments made it hard for me to tell. Everybody else in the group looked to be having trouble, too. The group just sounded like chaos.
Afterwards, one of the guys in the group reached out to me and we chatted a bit. He sent along some music for songs that were sortof in the neighborhood of where I am, along with links to JustinGuitar how-to vids. Also with encouragement to keep coming to the group. I don’t think I’ll be going back until I have more figured out.
In particular, it seems I really need help determining what to do with chord sheets that give just the lyrics and the chords. With everything I’ve done, nobody has really addressed what to do with these. I’m not singing with anything I play yet. I’m focusing so much on getting my rhythm and my chord changes that I don’t have the bandwidth to also sing. And from what I’ve tried, I can’t even play a basic quarter note strum with these song sheets without singing along.
I’ve been using TABS (not the crappy ASCII ones) that give you a whole lot more information about the rhythm you’re playing, chords you’re playing, and any little extras you might also be doing.
While I’ve been working on the guitar, my wife decided to take up the uke. She’s progressed a lot quicker than me. She has a stronger music background than I do and having only 4 strings to keep track of sure seems a little easier. We’d like to be able to jam together but have just been playing different songs so far. She just started playing “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” and I decided to check it out to see if it was a song we could try. Again, I ended up here. I’ve started working on it and am working on the intro. Particularly the changes into and out of F (using the baby F I’ve been working on). It’s slow, but I’m getting better.
I was poking around the rest of the site to see what else was available and I think I might also start working on the beginner lessons here. There will be lots of repetition (which, for me, I think will probably be a good thing), but it also looks like Justin introduces a few things in a different order, so I’ll still be building new skills. It won’t all be identical.
Given that the tabs feature on this site appears to be one of the few things behind a subscription, I think I will probably pay for access to them. Right now, it seems to be one of the things that helps me most. But I really do want to learn how to handle chord sheets because of how pervasive they are. My wife got referred to ozbcoz.com for a big ukulele songbook, and I noticed that the site has all those songs also transcribed for guitar. So I’ve got a few thousand songsheets stored on my computer now…and really no idea how to use them.
So here I am, hoping to continue learning.
, Welcome to the group. Yes, it’s very common.
, but he gives you strong guidelines, that helps a lot to stay on track.
