Your “boredom” is actually a great sign, it means you’re ready to progress! Playing guitar is a lifelong “Stairway to Heaven,” every step you take up the ladder unlocks new steps. Its limitless, which can be sort of demotivating because there are so many directions you can go. It’s time to pick one!
One instructional songbook that really helped me was “From Liverpool to Abbey Road” (Hal Leonard, online backing tracks included). Yes, it starts with basic stuff you already know, but midway through it combines chords and melodies and they get progressively harder. It’s a great way to add interest to, very importantly, simple songs, and you already know them by heart. The point is that once you learn how to do this with simple songs in the book like, Yellow Submarine, House of the Rising Son, Yesterday, Knockin on Heaven’s Door, you can apply the chord melodies and add interest to almost any song.
Also, don’t underestimate Xmas carols in this regard – a simple song like Silent Night is a great way to learn how to spice up chord rhythms with melody notes. You can easily find an arrangement on the internet. And its great to learn how to play and sing.
Songs mentioned on this thread like Knockin’ on Heavens Door or House of the Rising Sun are developmental building blocks precisely because there are so many things you can do with it to add interest.
You can learn the arpeggio for House – which for me unlocked other songs like Wonderful Tonight or Hotel California (might use Capo on fret 7). The bonus is that once you learn to pick out the melody notes in a chord, you can easily use that to add interest for the listener (maybe that’s just you). And if you let yourself go, you will naturally start to add dynamics – vibrato, hammers on, pull offs, slides.
Maybe you’ve already done this, but one of the easiest “cheats” to add interest is to learn the “sus” versions of each of the basic chords. Try this on a D chord with a basic DD DUDU rhythm – on the DUDU just put your pinky down on string one 3rd fret. Oh, wow, what a difference.
No one told me this, but if I were starting with barre chords all over again, the first one I’d learn is Bm! It’s in so many songs!! Another poster suggested songs with simple lead parts. For me that was Wicked Game by Chris Issac – not only did it force me to learn Bm (if you’re not yet comfortable with barring all 6 strings, you can start with index finger on string 1, which itself is an epiphany), but it put my wife in the mood!
Once I learned Bm, I went to the Am jam version of While My Guitar Gently Weeps and now, oh wow, suddenly you’re learning a base line walk up. Those chord charts look scary at first but they’re actually pretty easy. You can jam with Tom Petty, Jeff Lynn and Prince! And another aha moment – playing those base lines really anchors your timing which, in turn, actually makes it easy to sing!
Singing is a great next step. I used a simple song like House to learn how to play and sing at the same time, which is so rewarding, and once it clicks, you’ll find it gets easier with other songs! Justin has great advice on this – slow it down, pick a song for which the lyrics are already etched into your head, and commit the chord progressions to subconsciousness (play it until you are sick of it). Learn to do two things at once – play the rhythm while talking to someone or watching tv.
The hard part is when the chord changes don’t line up with the lyrics/melody. The program Chordify is a great tool for this because it visually breaks the song into measures and beats; you can print out the diagram and manually write in the lyrics where they pick up within a measure. The Wish You Were Here verses are good for that, you probably already know the lyrics by heart, and as someone else suggested, playing the intro is a great stepping stone. You can always come back and learn the solo later.
You mentioned you know basic scales – that’s the key to heaven, pun intended. You can create your own simple solos or lead lines to spice up a song and interject them between verses. Improvisation is the big “aha” moment – yes, you can make the song your own – suddenly you’re really “feeling the song” and becoming a musician! The Animals version of House really unlocked this for me.
BTW, playing Tom Petty songs are great for all of the above – advancing your rhythm playing with fast mid-measure chord changes, pretty simple intros, lead parts you can work on over time, learning to sing and play, and they’re really entertaining to play for others.
Good luck and stick with it. Every step you take will unlock new things to learn on your journey to guitar heaven!
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