jumpinjeff
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The way that works best is the one that brings you back tomorrow. All the songs fit forms. Play songs long enough and you will recognize the form and not think about what the chords are but how the form is being made to sound unique. What ever it takes to keep playing, do that, because recognition took me a long time to see. I would not have found it had I not learned here at TAC to making play my practice instead of practicing songs. I would not have lasted long enough to gain song form pattern recognition. The only wrong that can be done is having a bad time under the influence of expectations. Play, play with the sound, the string, the technique. Play without fear let go of expectations and you may find the fastest path to “proficiency” (okay, here is where I crack wise: is that your proficiency or my proficiency.)
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Congratulations @Bayvu2 . Now to design life with more time for playing!!
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Keep going. I have learned over and over that boredom is a sign of impending breakthrough. I remember periods of time when playing was about as fun as watching paint dry and then when I settled in for the long haul, …breakthrough… and some new to me ability manifested. I learned later on that making “play” my practice was also a good strategy. Boredom is now part of my process and does not cause me any concern, it is the opposite, I know good things are on their way!
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Hi Barbara, I had this same question. I kinda still do…? The solution I came up with: I listen carefully and knowledgably. I had to learn to listen to the vibrational waves as they align or seperate. When I tune a string using another string as the gauge for pitch when the tones start to get close there is a harmonic vibration that starts. It is a fast wah wah sound in the harmonic the two strings make. It is not the intitial sound the string makes when plucked but rather it is the sound of the wood of the guitar vibrating. As the two strings get close to aligned pitch the Wah Wah gets slower and slower until it just turns into Wahhhhhhh. The second pulse is lost when to two tones align. Here is when it gets fun….using the tuner and tuning two strings at the same time using the tuner as the guage. This is where I can mess around with the vibrational alignment and really hear the oscillations go from Wah wah wah wah to Wahhhhh wahhhhh wahhhhh, to Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I love playing with this stuff and I think it is because it elluded my sensory comprehension for so long. I can tune for 15 minutes messing around with different sets of strings and I don’t even realize the 15minutes has passed. I may be in the rabbit hole too deep. Good thing I have a flash light : )
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Congatulations @petelanger , in the best of ways it seems like you have always been here! Your contributions help me in ways difficult to explain. Keep going though and you will know.
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Nicely done. And to think, it keeps getting better and better! Most of the time : )
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Hi Barbara, The softest sounding pick, on the thin side, is the Jim Dunlop Nylon, .60. The sound of thin picks (to my ears) include a lot of sound from the slap of the pick on the string. Your discovery of playing softly is part of this equation. Thin picks give up tone as you demand volume or maybe not give up tone but you hear the sound of the pick contacting the string more and more as volume is increased. A thin pick delivers amazing tone but at low volume.
Are you holding your pick between thumb and index? There is a little trick in here that is slight of hand (takes forever to learn but when your get it,…magic) the place my index finger touches the pick has gotten smaller and smaller over time. As my precision increased the amount of contact between my index decreased. The point is….try playing as lightly as you possibly can…barely any sound…the hidden volume button is precision not force. Check it out and lemme know what you find. The best pick I found to get the hang of thicker picks was Dunlop Ultex 2.0. I love the thick Blue Chips picks but price of admission makes the risk reward ratio unfavorable. The risk is I loose and 80.00 pick vs. the reward: a cool sound and feel. Nothing like the sound of Santa Cruz strings and a Blue Chip Pick but I have bought whole guitars for less. : ) -
Your left hand movement is nothing short of miraculous!! I gotta say Loraine, the thing that kept me engaged was your right hand skills. It was one of those things that I hear and go, Huh!…what is going on there and can I do it. Keep on keepin’ on.
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I like how you got to the essential question! It took me a while to even figure that out. : )
The answer is acutally both and yes. What ever it was that kept you playing yesterday, capture it and bring it with you today and hopefully you will have something left so you can bring it tomorrow too. There are no prerequesites or qualification for any of the lessons. The beauty of music is the most comlex things can be parsed and simplified. It is not easy to see at first. The distraction of the whole concept would keep me from seeing even the first part of it. If you find yourself totally engaged in a 5 day challenge, mission accomplished. If you are enaged in one module of the 5 day and you are engaged and on fire for your alotted time (newly centered around an old habit), mission accomplished. Here is the caveat: too much time spent trying to do something your body has not wired itself for either metally or physically is going to lead to stagnation. It is really difficult to see at first when progress stops on the account of force. It is why doing the challenge on a layer where you will find success is the fastest way to progress. It is also where observations of small wins are honed. I paid Tony to be my teacher for two years and I was still trying to teach myself. When I started doing it the way Tony suggested my progress ramped up. Once I figured that out, the whole thing got easier. Not that it was easy but it was easier. The other suggestion I have and you will get tired of me saying it soon….slow down. One beat every two seconds. Play as though you are playing in super slow motion to get your brain to rewire. It is rub your head and pat your belly all over again. You cant chase speed but you can sneak up on it.
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My Tinnitus rings between C# and D sometimes B. I suspect it is all three and depends on my focus at any given moment on which I hear most prominently. Sound is such a funny thing.
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If you have 15 minutes of fun while tuning your guitar then you have met one of the non-exclusive bars for guitar geekdom. Funny and cool. The trick is getting your audience to have fun too. I am trying to remember: I think Neil Young was one of those who could tell a story while tuning for 15min and nobody seemed to mind. : ) Me?, I get my dogs howling when I start playing with those wave oscillations.
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I hear you Pete. Leave it to me to get in my own way with this “one great idea”. You would be amazed at how many times I did this in my early TAC days. I learned.
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Perfect position holding the pick. It is like I hold too. Imagine, instead of squeezing the pick to hold it, try and touch the pick with as little skin as possible touching the pick. Imagine only one square mm of skin on both your index and thumb touching the pick. It is more but the mental exercise is that. It forces you to jettison absolutely all of your tension…you cant touch it that lightly and make sound if you have tension. I think @Skyman911 makes an excellent point about too much digging in with the tip. The stiffer pick does not allow for that. It flips out of your fingers. The thin pick bend forgivingly but give you that sound. The sound of the thin pick is not softer but rather it is more forgiving causing what you described as the chain saw on metal post sound. (love that BTW : ) ) I know exactly what you mean too. To get rid of that effect, less tip contact. To produce that sweet sound with a thin pick you ultimately give way to some of the volume the guitar is capable of producing or use amplification were volume can be controlled with electronics. Speaking of the chainsaw…there is a cool effect where you intentionally use that thin pick to get the snaredrum sound, kinda?
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bingo!!
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What Gary says here bears repeating, we all tend to press too hard when we barre more than one string. This was my key to getting my bar chords to ring. I found I was pressing strings too hard that were already covered and this took the wind out of the precision pressure needed for clear bars. That advice on pressing as lightly as possible to make your bar ring clearly is Solid Gold