tailsawaggin
Forum Replies Created
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Just like it’s normal for new typists to hit wrong keys, it’s normal for new guitarists to hit wrong strings and frets. It gets better with practice, time, and most of all patience. Jeff’s suggestion to use a mirror or a screen and camera is good, and I also like to shut my eyes, go really slowly, and find it by feel. Combining the two approaches would likely yield good dividends after a week or two.
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Good suggestions indeed, and I’ll add two more. The first is so obvious it’s easy to overlook, but it’s this — rest. I know we all feel like we want to get good, and we want to keep working at it, and those are good things, but we also have to be reasonable about it. Nobody starts prepping to run a 5k by getting off the couch and running a 5k, after all.
Another thing that helps me with my death grip is staccato playing. By that I mean hold the chord for just one count and let off, so instead of squeeze strum strum strum strum strum strum strum strum release, it’s squeeze strum release, squeeze strum release, etc. This does a few good things — it helps build the synch between the left and right hands, it reduces your fretting hand’s time under tension, and it tends to lead to squeezing more gently overall. I think we all respond to buzzes and dead notes by squeezing harder, when what we really need it to squeeze more cleanly.
My US$0.02, hope it’s helpful. 🙂
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@petemcbean, I’m also one of those “words mean things” kind of guys, and 30 Days to Play took me about 75 days. Of course, if one is being truly literal, then 30 days is 720 hours, so until you’ve spent that much time actually engaged in the lessons, you haven’t truly spent 30 days on the course, have you? 😁
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Cat ass trophy, indeed.
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Yep, happening to me on another thread right now.
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I showed this to Mrs. Tails, and she says they’re inside the missing socks.
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What size guitar do you have now, or if you’re not sure, what make and model is it? What size guitar is “right” is, of course, a matter of preference, and in some cases it can be a balance of conflicting priorities. Myself, I prefer dreadnoughts for the sound, but they’re big, and my concert and parlor guitars are much more comfortable to play, especially if I’m sitting down. If I play standing up, the differences in size don’t seem to matter so much. I’ve never played a jumbo, and I have a hard time imagining it would work for me, but I’d love to be wrong. 😉
Ultimately it’s good to just get your arms around as many as you can and see what feels good. If there’s a Guitar Center nearby, they’ll be happy to let you try some on, and if you have any TAC folks in your neighborhood there might be an opportunity there as well. Best of luck in your quest!
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The top string is the one with the highest pitch, and the bottom string is the one with the lowest pitch, and walk ups go up in pitch, while walk downs go down in pitch.
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Well, I can’t say for sure what Tony’s intent was, but I can tell you what I did. I put enough time into the lesson until I felt like I got it, and like I could do it with some reasonable level of proficiency. I by “reasonable level of proficiency,” I mean a lot more like “fourth grader taking his first music class” and a lot less like “Stevie Ray Vaughan.” 😁
I get where you’re coming from, though. The skills courses are all pretty much self-paced, which is good because it gives us the freedom and flexibility to do them when we can, but it can also be hard to know how to define success and know when to move on. That one kind of just comes down to a feeling and finding your inner Yoda, and basically if you think you have it “good enough” to move on, go ahead and move on, and maybe revisit it in a few days to see if it’s still good enough or if it needs more time.
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Hi @VictoriaTACTeam ,
Thank you for your reply. In this case, the thread is saskia’s “getting bored” thread, referenced above. Since I’ve seen this happen before, as soon as I saw the pink box I highlighted and copied the text of my reply to the clipboard and refreshed the page. The reply was still not there, so I logged out of TAC and back in, then tried to reply again by pasting the text into the response box. I got a message that said “Duplicate response,” so the forum database clearly thinks my reply is there, though nobody can see it. Saskia also indicated above that he was notified that there were responses, and he could not see them.
Taken together these are fairly strong evidence that the issue is server side.
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Yep, that was the thread.
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You might also be going right if you’re going up in pitch and left if you’re going down, or if you’re left handed you’d go left to go up and right to go down, unless you’re playing piano, since then you’d always go right to go up and left to go down, or harp, where in is up and out is down. Singers and bugle players can go everywhere without going anywhere, but steel drum players have to travel across all dimensions of space and time. 😁
I think if you want to go up to go up and down to go down, you have to play the theremin. 🤣
At any rate, what I’m saying is that it’s only confusing if we’re thinking in terms of physical movement instead of musical movement. If we think in terms of musical movement, it’s the same across all instruments, and the physical movement is incidental. It’s how we do what we do, but it’s not what we do. Music is what we do.
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@Salty I’ll second the idea trying out the Guild. I don’t have this particular one, but I have three others. I might like Guild guitars a little. 😁
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This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by tailsawaggin.
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This reply was modified 4 years, 2 months ago by
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@mkjohnsons I shared this with my wife, and she and I agree that A) you were set up in the most wonderful way, and B) she’s a keeper. The advice to learn her favorite song is solid, and I’ll add this — do it in secret and surprise her with it. Turnabout is, after all, fair play. 😁
