petelanger
Forum Replies Created
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@buzzcarla-cgmail-com I am also a member of Ultimate Guitar, I haven’t used the app, I just login on my laptop. I do have a collection of chord sheets and Tabs downloaded, but playing songs hasn’t really been too much on my radar. I’m trying to get to a point where learning songs would come quickly because I don’t want to spend weeks trying to learn a song and have this be a detriment to my TAC journey.
I use UG to learn riffs that I like and just have fun with playing those. I know full songs will be there when I’m ready. That’s just me, everybody has their own guitar journey. Rock on!
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I don’t know how long you have been playing but from your question it would seem not very long. You will get used to it! One instructor suggested to always carry a pick in your pocket in order to get comfortable with it. I can’t say I heeded his advice, but it definitely feels more natural in my hand after about 18 months of playing than it used to in the beginning.
There are a good many variations in picks and you might try some different kinds to see if something speaks to you.
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So I definitely intend to learn barre chords and have already played (or rather formed) a number of them successfully. But it’s interesting that you always have options on the guitar, in other words, there are workarounds. Andy Summers never played them at all:
“I’ve never played a barre chord in my life. I hate them”
During the interview, Summers touched upon how add9 chords with no major or minor third became one of the staples of his playing style. He said:
“And very purposely so. I mean, a lot of things influence one in life, and you can point it back to where it came from, as I often cite Béla Bartók. I had studied Bartók at college, so it was sort of already in my bag, where you could express chords without using the minor or major third, but instead use the added second or the ninth.”
“And this became very much a part of the style I used in the Police. I’ve never played a barre chord in my life. I hate them. You don’t need more than two or three notes to express a chord.”
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Yeah the G was definitely one of the harder in the group of first 10 chords that I learned. Not as bad as the B7, but harder than the C and the E.
Yes the E chord! It didn’t seem hard while learning to play it, but then months later I discovered I was frequently muting the G string.
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Might look at using a capo as well to help you move further up the neck to the narrower frets.
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Common question @buzzcarla-cgmail-com . If you search the forum you will find many good explanations. Tony doesn’t teach you how to play a song from start to finish and there are good reasons:
1. There are dozens of ways to play any song
2. He teaches you the skills that are used in hundreds of songs, perhaps thousands.
3. When a lesson is focused on a song he gives you about 75% to 85%. You get the chord progression for verse and chorus. What may be lacking are the bridge and vocals
4. He doesn’t just teach one way to play the song, he will often give you different strumming or picking styles for whatever level you are comfortable with.
5. The challenges are designed to teach players from absolute beginner to advanced, those with 0 days to 10+ years of experience. If he focused on just how to play a song, 95% of members would tune out. Instead he has nuggets in each lesson for players at all levels.
6. The songs posted here are by individuals who may have learned a certain song from the challenges but then spent their own time rehearsing it. Some of them are literally an exact reproduction of one of the PLAY videos with or without vocals
Others who post songs here have learned those songs in a myriad of different ways.
7. If you trust the process and stick with TAC, you will eventually have learned the skills to play thousands of songs; not that you will know them completely but you can learn to play it very quickly. (Multiple times faster than a new player just working on a single song at a time)
8. In a nutshell, TAC teaches you to become a guitar player. It doesn’t teach you the process of playing song1, song2 ….song10 from start to finish. If it did that, you would only be able to play those 10 songs at the end.
Also you would now focus on perfecting elements of the song in order to sound like the original artist. Tony frowns upon perfection because it leads to frustration and quitting. He wants members to have fun giving their best 10 minutes each day, marking complete and coming back tomorrow. Return consistently to your guitar and you will grow!
Final thought: there is a Song Vault on the site that is more tailored to teaching a few songs. I understand it’s from the earlier days of TAC, the new site no longer links to it, but it still exists. https://hub-lkx8655w8n.membership.io/
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I see where this confused you:
The TAB starts in the “A” Section which indeed starts on the A string.
But Tony teaches you the Boogie as a repeating pattern using the E string as the model for the rest. He calls it the “E” Section, which logically begins on the low E, then moves and finishes on the A string. This is the example for the other sections which he flies through much quicker because they are the same thing on a different set of strings: ” A” Section (A&D strings), “D” Section (D&G strings).
Tony will not always teach the parts in the order they appear, he will often work from top to bottom or the other way, which is quite logical.
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Just wow! That has to be one of the most difficult songs ever written to sing while playing. You do both so well, it’s a delight to watch!
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Very nice playing and that while singing! Wow, Sammy Hagar doesn’t even do that because it’s hard!
I see you live in Germany, but from hearing you sing it would seem you are not a German native.
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If you are new to tablatures, I certainly was 18 months ago when I started, there are bunches of videos on YouTube on the subject. Just search on guitar tablature explained!
The hardest part is getting used to the fact that it is sort of upside down. See yourself bending over the fretboard so that the high(thin) E string is at the top and the low E at the bottom. The numbers represent the frets: 0 means open -
@Skyman911 while the sound may not be identical to the full barre chord, not using them didn’t stop the Police from selling 75,000,000 records while only recording 5 Studio Albums
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The notebook isn’t my everyday GO TO. It started out that way but I realized that unless I had a proper stand for it, it wasn’t going to work. Two months in I switched to OneNote for daily challenges where I copy and paste the TABs in and type my notes as needed.
I’m not so much an old school guy when it comes to computers, I worked in IT for most of the last 20 years of my work life.
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I do have an electric guitar also. I fool around with all of my guitars. The finger is definitely heeling. Now it’s already a lot better than 8 hours ago. Thanks for the advice!
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@sjessen that is an adjustment to make! Most of us have been trained by our families, school teachers and bosses to be more or less perfectionists. Many instructors will want you to hold in place until you have “mastered” a certain skill. I had to unlearn my perfectionism too when I came to TAC.
I still remember like it was yesterday, I was in a wood-working class at 12 years of age. We were carving animals; only not with knives but using a rasp (kind of a file but with rough bumps that do the cutting). I had mine in the shape I wanted and I asked the instructor for sandpaper. But he said that I wasn’t ready for sandpaper yet. I needed to have my hippopotamus much more evenly smoothed out first. I couldn’t have any grooves on it that didn’t belong and it had to be uniformly smoothed out all over before I could move on to finishing. I could not go to step 3 until step 2 was perfectly done. In the coming weeks I had to go to him several more times and he would examine my work and then point out little scratches to work on. I felt like I was being held back from finishing my project. It turns out, I was.
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Welcome to TAC Ang! Trust the process and you will achieve you guitar playing goals.