brianr2
C.O.G.
Posts: 3,056
My main instrument is: Brook Lyn guitar
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Post by brianr2 on Jul 19, 2023 8:55:32 GMT
minorkey I heard something the other day that put the whole thing in perspective. It went something like this - my paraphrase. What you are trying to do is to make a strong connection between your brain and your fingers i.e. you are simply trying to create a strong motor connection between a thought in your brain and a physical part of your body - think of a novice learning a movement. This is the reason for the principle of 'going slowly'. It should perhaps be 'go as slowly as you need to in order to be able to place your fingers, or combination of fingers, where you want them to go: just behind the fret wire, as lightly as is needed to be able to play a pleasing sound'. It doesn't really matter how slowly you go, and it is important not to go too fast, as what you are doing is creating or strengthening this connection between the brain and a motor movement. After a while the part of the body will be able to follow what the brain is telling it. Going quickly defeats the whole object of the exercise as there is a danger of cutting corners and what you don't want is the brain sending a partly incorrect message. The right message is lightly behind the fret wire in the place where you want - you don't want to train the fingers to do anything different than that . Once the motor movement is created you then have 'muscle memory' and the brain can then take a rest and you can 'just do it', and by repetition, as the muscle gets stronger, will be able to do it faster. So, as slowly as it takes to get it right i.e you train your brain to place your fingers where you want them, as lightly as possible, as close behind the frets as possible to make the sound you want. That was a help for me: Scales, or exercises, or a small snippet of a tune, for me, just got more interesting. This is fascinating. I have the attention span of an elderly goldfish and cannot cope with repetitive scales. Had I been limited to these I should have given up guitar long ago. Instead, I go though TAB books playing tunes that I can enjoy even if the result is far from perfect. I play for about an hour a time and probably cycle through half a dozen tunes and then start again. I change books when I feel the need for something different, probably once a week. Although this no doubt a very inefficient way to learn it works for my grasshopper brain. This said, it does build the co-ordination and connection you mention and you start to recognise patterns in music. You also start to learn specific tunes by osmosis, albeit slowly. For me, this process is as much as anything an exercise in mindfulness and respite from the harsh realities of our sad world. It is has increasingly been recognised that motorcycling - another enthusiasm of mine - makes an important contribution to mental health, because of the focus, concentration and coordination needed. Playing an instrument has similar traits and benefits.
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Post by borborygmus on Jul 19, 2023 9:11:35 GMT
Eric Roche is good for fingerstyle exercises which are not (boring) scales. Get The Acoustic Guitar Bible and do his warm-up exercises. (This message is brought to you by the Jonny Moss Appreciation Society. He makes me do these.)
Peter
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Post by Onechordtrick on Jul 19, 2023 9:32:23 GMT
Eric Roche is good for fingerstyle exercises which are not (boring) scales. Get The Acoustic Guitar Bible and do his warm-up exercises. (This message is brought to you by the Jonny Moss Appreciation Society. He makes me do these.) Peter Make sure that you get the right book. There's a songbook of the same name - have no idea if it's any good - that Google found first for me and it would be easy for a careless person to almost buy the wrong one accidentally. Please don't ask how I know that
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Post by borborygmus on Jul 19, 2023 11:27:51 GMT
Eric Roche is good for fingerstyle exercises which are not (boring) scales. Get The Acoustic Guitar Bible and do his warm-up exercises. (This message is brought to you by the Jonny Moss Appreciation Society. He makes me do these exercises.) Peter
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Post by borborygmus on Jul 20, 2023 8:33:26 GMT
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Post by delb0y on Jul 20, 2023 8:38:59 GMT
I recall reading somewhere once that Howling Wolf always tried to find a guitar teacher in whatever town he found himself in order to keep learning, right through to the end if his days.
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Post by borborygmus on Jul 20, 2023 9:06:19 GMT
Eric Roche is good for fingerstyle exercises which are not (boring) scales. Get The Acoustic Guitar Bible and do his warm-up exercises. (This message is brought to you by the Jonny Moss Appreciation Society. He makes me do these.) Peter Make sure that you get the right book. There's a songbook of the same name - have no idea if it's any good - that Google found first for me and it would be easy for a careless person to almost buy the wrong one accidentally. Please don't ask how I know that This one: www.amazon.co.uk/Acoustic-Guitar-Bible-Eric-Roche/dp/1844920631
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Post by Vinny on Jul 20, 2023 9:15:40 GMT
Make sure that you get the right book. There's a songbook of the same name - have no idea if it's any good - that Google found first for me and it would be easy for a careless person to almost buy the wrong one accidentally. Please don't ask how I know that This one: www.amazon.co.uk/Acoustic-Guitar-Bible-Eric-Roche/dp/1844920631This is the best guitar book I’ve ever seen. Even the practice pieces are musically pleasing. Interesting insights throughout.
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Post by Onechordtrick on Jul 20, 2023 10:28:22 GMT
Make sure that you get the right book. There's a songbook of the same name - have no idea if it's any good - that Google found first for me and it would be easy for a careless person to almost buy the wrong one accidentally. Please don't ask how I know that This one: www.amazon.co.uk/Acoustic-Guitar-Bible-Eric-Roche/dp/1844920631That's one I have coming - if anyone else is interested World of Books have some cheaper second hand copies
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Post by sweyne1 on Jul 20, 2023 17:28:24 GMT
Well i'm very glad I read the latest replies to this thread. I had a bunch of tuition books and about six months ago I decided to refer to one of them. Could I find them ? NO. I looked everywhere (well, obviously not everywhere). After reading the replies I wondered again where they were. And found them in the first place I looked. I'm just dull I think. They are Eric's bible, 'Play Acoustic' by Dave Hunter and 'Solo Guitar Playing' by Frederick M Noad. Time for another look John
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Post by shez on Aug 22, 2023 14:43:15 GMT
This is the best guitar book I’ve ever seen. Even the practice pieces are musically pleasing. Interesting insights throughout. After such accolades I decided to invest. Got to 'In the beginning' P27 to find two of the longitudinal exercises (3rd and 6th) impossible. If that's the beginning, the book is doomed to failure (or should I say I am!). I cannot see any amount of practice deforming me sufficiently to make those stretches....
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Post by delb0y on Aug 22, 2023 15:43:17 GMT
I've spending a lot of time practicing recently with little improvement to show for it. So, the last week or so I've been thinking about practicing and how to get more out of the time I put in. Few conclusions, yet, but I think specific goals will be the answer. Today's gypsy jazz jam session was quite revealing if I'm honest. I know what I need to work on and setting the goals accordingly may well work... hopefully. Because, at the moment, I feel like I'm not a great deal further forward than I was when I was twenty.
Best guitar books are obviously a very personal thing, and it probably warrants another thread, but for fingerstyle you can't beat (IMHO):
The New art of Ragtime Guitar by Richard Saslow Contemporary Travis Picking by Mark Hanson
For Gypsy Jazz: Gypsy Picking - Michael Horowitz
For Country Blues Guitar How to Play Blues Guitar Vol 1 and 2 - Stefan Grossman
These are about the only guitar books I've "finished" in my life, and yet I still go back and review them frequently.
Derek
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Post by Vinny on Aug 22, 2023 16:10:45 GMT
This is the best guitar book I’ve ever seen. Even the practice pieces are musically pleasing. Interesting insights throughout. After such accolades I decided to invest. Got to 'In the beginning' P27 to find two of the longitudinal exercises (3rd and 6th) impossible. If that's the beginning, the book is doomed to failure (or should I say I am!). I cannot see any amount of practice deforming me sufficiently to make those stretches.... I’m similarly doomed as regards accomplishing playing everything. I skipped anything that didn’t sound good to me, ie. stuff I couldn’t manage! I wouldn’t attempt every exercise, but find I still play some just because they sound nice. For example, pages 34 and 35 (tracks 10+11 on cd1) or p40-45 (track 19) are nice tunes in their own right. When it comes to the performance pieces at the back of the book, I only play Sí Beag, Sí Mór, and that far from perfectly. You’ve encouraged me to root out the book again. I think it’s a very comprehensive book, with fingerstyle, strumming, and lots of interesting tips. I can’t read standard notation but use the tab. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to play all or even most of it, but found it a good resource and a good read too. Plough ahead, I wouldn’t treat it as an incremental course, there’s more than enough to leave some of it out! Good luck.
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Post by borborygmus on Aug 22, 2023 18:28:16 GMT
This is the best guitar book I’ve ever seen. Even the practice pieces are musically pleasing. Interesting insights throughout. After such accolades I decided to invest. Got to 'In the beginning' P27 to find two of the longitudinal exercises (3rd and 6th) impossible. If that's the beginning, the book is doomed to failure (or should I say I am!). I cannot see any amount of practice deforming me sufficiently to make those stretches.... You're right, it can't be done. Peter
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Post by shez on Aug 23, 2023 8:56:08 GMT
After such accolades I decided to invest. Got to 'In the beginning' P27 to find two of the longitudinal exercises (3rd and 6th) impossible. If that's the beginning, the book is doomed to failure (or should I say I am!). I cannot see any amount of practice deforming me sufficiently to make those stretches.... You're right, it can't be done. Peter Thanks for confirming that Peter, my feelings of physical inadequacy are diminishing....
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