Acoustic Dreams

[MJ4H]

My wife had some bizzare bug bite her a month or so ago and made my Christmas shopping for her very easy. She told me not to buy her anything for Christmas except a guitar. Well, buying a guitar for her should've been a dynasty in its own right, but here we are with a pretty decent Washburn acoustic guitar.

She had come down with an itch to learn to play guitar. We both have degrees in music, but play wind instruments. We had a class or two on strings in college (cello for both of us, I think), but that's it. I have decided we will be learning guitar together. It will provide both of us with motivation and be a good gauge of progress for us.

We had a friend give us a half size guitar a while before when she heard we were looking for a guitar. It is pretty crappy, but it is much easier on the fingers when starting out. Basically what we are doing is taking turns on the full-size while the other plays on the small guitar. We are going to start out by working through the beginner lessons on cyberfret.com and then who knows where.

I want to stress that neither of us has ever touched a guitar before, at all. We know ZERO. We do have fairly extensive musical backgrounds, though, so we anticipate some decent progress.

More to come!

[Radii]

Cool! I'll definitely be reading.

[MJ4H]

Great. It helps me stay interested in posting when I get feedback. Anyone that knows anything about guitar please feel encouraged to post whatever you'd like here to add. Discussions are fine, here!

Monday, December 16th, 2005

Our first real practice session. Today we learned the open string notes (I told you, we did not know anything at all) and a couple of chords. We also tuned the guitars first by ear, then with a tuner. Not too hard at all so far.

The first chord we learned was E minor. Pretty simple, the 2 and 3 fingers are right next to each other, and you strum all the strings. It did not take too much effort for us to both be strumming away on an E minor chord quickly.

The second chord we learned was C major. A little bit of a stretch for the fingers, especially so on the full-size, and you don't strum the bottom string. So the difficulty level is slightly higher here. It seems to be a bigger problem for me to not accidentally deaded strings I'm not supposed to be touching (on both guitars) than it is for my wife. She has fingernails, but apparently I have fat fingers. Good for clarinet, bad for guitar.

So the next step was to play a little exercise alternating between E minor and C major with an accompaniment. We piped my laptop through the home theater system in the living room and looped it. The goal was to strum just on beat 1 of each measure, then 1 and 3, then all 4 beats. We worked on this for awhile and decided to learn a third chord.

The G major chord was next. Now this one was tougher than the first two for me by a lot. Very awkward for the fingers and slightly painful (man that top string feels like a razor). We did an exercise similar to the first moving between G major and C major and called it a night.

A pretty good first session. We were both very encouraged by what we had learned. These three chords need more practice for both of us to be able to move fluently between them, but we can get them, and we understand everything so far. I am personally a little disappointed at the amount of what I think of as physical conditioning that will be required to learn guitar. The strings really hurt when you press them sometimes, and the stretches are a bit uncomfortable as well. Still, I'm very confident we will both do well at this. Let's see if I remember all 3 chords tomorrow or not. You know the old saying about old dogs and new tricks.

[Karlifornia]

Keep at it. It will hurt for a while, but your fingers will eventually be able to stretch out enough to make the chords feel more comfortable. You will also grow callouses on the tips of your fretting fingers, and the pain will be a distant memory. Good luck!

[Radii]

Originally Posted by RadioFriendlyUnitShifter

Keep at it. It will hurt for a while, but your fingers will eventually be able to stretch out enough to make the chords feel more comfortable. You will also grow callouses on the tips of your fretting fingers, and the pain will be a distant memory. Good luck!

Yeah, the pain from the strings goes away pretty quickly. I'm suprised your wife can play at all with fingernails on her left hand of any length. When I'm playing(and I'm not very good at all, I basically just know some chords and go mess around with songs I like on olga.net, there aren't many I know well), anyway, when I'm playing consistantly, I keep the fingernails on my left hand cut very short, I find it impossible otherwise.

[tanglewood]

Guitar is awesome, keep it up. When I firs started I had a huge problem both with the stretching and the hurting fingers, but now only notice it if I play for 4 or 5 hours at a time.

[MJ4H]

Tuesday December 27, 2005

I practiced a little on my own this evening while my wife was at work (I'm off until the 3rd). I reviewed the 3 chords I had learned yesterday: Em, CM, GM, and then learned the DM chord, which is kind of tough. The reason it is very close together, and I struggle with hitting the other strings with my fingers. As time goes by, I'm hoping I will get better at that, but my biggest problem by far is getting all the strings to sound.

So I semi-successfully played an exercise strumming once at the beginning of each measure using this progression:

GM - em - CM - DM (repeat) and end on GM

I don't think I ever did it all on time with all strings sounding, but I think I should be concentrating on learning to get to the chord fingerings as quickly as I can. As I do it, I am just doing the best I can at keeping my fingerings clean, but I am not doing a very good job of it at all (most chords have some dead notes and some chords are almost completely dead). I'm sure this will get better.

I also have a little bit of wrist pain trying to stretch to get some of these fingerings in addition to the pain from pressing down on the razor-wire strings. Ouchie!

Still enjoying myself.

[tanglewood]

Originally Posted by MattJones4Heisman

I also have a little bit of wrist pain trying to stretch to get some of these fingerings in addition to the pain from pressing down on the razor-wire strings. Ouchie!

What position do you hold your fret hand in when fingering chords? The easiest postion in to have you palm clamped to the back of the neck, your thumb coming out right over the top and your four fingers curling around underneath. If a classical teacher saw you doing this they'd have a heart attack, but it is the easiest and most comfortable way to play and all the top rock guitarists ever use such a grip. Later on when you are doing hammer-ons, slides, bends etc. it is FAR FAR easier to do in this grip than the 'classical' style.

Also don't worry about the exact fingering when starting out, worry more about the rhythm. Firstly, when you perform a piece it is far more noticable (and annoying) when someone is stumbling through because they want to sound the chords clearly than someone who keeps to a good rhythm whilst making a few mistakes. Secondly, my teacher always says 'Concentrate on the timing and rhythm first. Eventually your fingers will naturally move to where they need to be.' I thought it was a bit silly to not worry about where my finger go, but it was right. After a few weeks I was just switching chords without even thinking about where to put my fingers.

[MJ4H]

Thanks for the advice.

I'm not sure I can describe the position of my hand, but I've tried different things. I will try your method to see how it feels.

What you say makes total sense with regards to rhythm. I understand the importance of rhythm fairly well, so that shouldn't be a problem for me. I already had that idea when I said I was concentrating on getting to the chords in time rather than the precise fingering, which I assume I will gradually get more and more accurate with over time.

[BYU 14]

I will be following this as well, two of my Sons wanted Guitars for Christmas and the 16 year old still lives at home with us so it will be interesting comparing his progress to yours as you go.....I will even throw in an update or two along the way.

[MJ4H]

Have been moving in to our new house the past few days. Lots of work ahead of me so it may be a bit before this is updated, but it will be updated.

[Icy]

Nice, i'm a guitar player myself. I have been playing in a rock band for 8 years until last summer, when we disbanded. I realy loved it, we played as opening band in the most prestigious rock festiball in Spain, we recorded a CD demo in one of the best studios here and the producer was the guitarrist of one of top Spanish metal bands. We were "almost" signed but then we started with the usual problems outside the band, moving for work to different cities, marriages etc (in resume, we got old) so we decided to end it past summer. Sad days, now i'm thinking about selling most of my gear as i can't play loud at home and i can get like $6000 from it that is not bad money for something i wont' use anymore. Will keep just one of the guitars, the Gibson Les Paul that is my little girl.

Here are my beauties:

[johnnyshaka]

I'll be following as well. I bought myself an acoustic guitar about 8 years ago and never really learned how to play. I tried to teach myself how to play and for a little while I was getting better...at least in my mind...but then I got frustrated with keeping rhythm and playing barre chords. So, I just put if off to the side and forgot about it but from time to time I'd go back to it just to end up frustrated again. Well, my wife decided to buy me guitar lessons for Christmas this year and totally caught me off guard. I had no idea nor had I expressed any desire to try and learn again. I'm anxious...both in a good way and in a bad way. I'm anxious to learn how to play but a little apprehensive because I'm rather shy about playing in front of anybody (probably why I haven't gone for lessons previously) so we'll have to see how it all plays out.

[Vince]

Nice! I'll be following along as well. I play the piano, but since I've been living in apartments and small places after college, it's been tough to fit my piano in. My parents bought me a nice Washburn acoustic guitar last christmas, and I've been trying to mess with it here and there. It's fun, though it's slow going.

I love hxxp://www.ultimate-guitar.com -- great site for tablature and other such things. They even have some generic lessons on there, though I've never really sat through them.

Good luck!