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“Beginner’s effect” and TAC
There is a cool thing about learning guitar, I call it the beginner’s effect. And I’m sure you’ve all seen it to some degree. Hear song, think “I wonder if I can play that?” Find a tab: “can’t play this chord, can’t play that chord, I can capo down like 5 frets, but then I only have to play one barre chord.. close, but not fast enough to play at speed…”. One month later, you hear it again, and you’re like “oh, I can play more chords now!” Maybe you can get through it with a capo now, or maybe you can even get through it almost fast enough without one! This keeps happening as you lear more. Soon, you can throw embellishments on the chords that last a couple bars, or play a little riff as a fill, or maybe you can even play it better now with barre chords cause you are better and the transition is just a slide! Maybe you’ve learned enough theory now that you can play enough of a chord to get the sound without a (so far) unreachable pinky extension.
Last week I had my guitar in drop d for tac, and started to play one of my standard tuning songs. The first time I hit that low “E,” and got a D I decided to play through it without retuning. The song goes Am, F, C, G, Dm mostly with a a few big e major moments. I realized that that D string was only going to be a problem for the G and E chords. I knew from screwing around with drop D that avoiding the top two strings and hitting Open D and G with B and E fretted on 3 still gave me a good-enough G, I just strummed it harder. I figured I could omit the open (low) E in e major and there would still be an open HIGH e, technically an inversion but I was still getting the triad. It sounded almost as good! This was a major win for me, I do know my theory ON PAPER but applying it in real time? Without stopping to count semitones and stuff? Major first!
Another big win this week. I’ve been working on Layla. At first I was committed to just learning the unplugged version, but I was screwing around with the solo on my electric, cause it sounds cool and started looking at tutorials for the rhythm part. One version used a lot of power chords, which I’ve played with, but not much, so I was just following Tab. when I got to a particular pair of power chords, I saw in a flash of insight that they sounded like two of the barre chords I used in one acoustic arrangement (I mean, of course they do, but it “clicked”) and I could sort of understand how the same roots were happening visually. It didn’t translate in that moment into better playing, but that moment of recognition makes it feel like on the verge of unlocking a new level of understanding the fretboard, not just on paper, but in my mind and hopefully in my hands!
I’m sure it helps that I finished my first pass through fretboard wizard a week or so back.
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2 Replies
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I think they use the term Wizard because it unlocks an understanding of what used to be Magic. I love Fretboard Wizard. Appreciate that your guitar journey is on the path.
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Thank you! It’s been a great journey so far!
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