Technobabble

Learning to Play Guitar

Posted by on Mar 1, 2007 | 9 Comments

I tried to learn how to play the guitar back when I was a kid. It was a miserable experience. My hands were far too small, I had no patience, and there was no Internet to help me find my way. Flash forward a few decades and I’m learning how to play the guitar, once again. Thank the stars my hands are large enough, that I’ve found the patience, and that I have a broadband connection.

So what got me started back on the guitar kick?

Blame it all on my son. He got a beginner’s Fender Stratocaster a couple years back for his birthday. It took a while to finally set him up with a guitar instructor, but he’s been improving ever since. After he belted out “Smoke on the Water” for the 1500th time, I finally picked up the guitar and set out to learn a few riffs of my own.

Now I still can’t read a conventional sheet of music to save my life, but I have no problem reading an enthusiast’s interpretive guitar tab. The music industry might not like guitar tabs, but they have been a boon for me. I need to see the chords in character form and the diagrams are a huge help.

Learning how to play the guitar is more than therapeutic. I’m trying to build my repertoire up so that when I’m cast out on the street, I’ll have learned enough songs on ye old axe to keep my tip cup filled up …

[tags]Learn to Play Guitar[/tags]

  • http://www.don-guitar.com Lisa Miller

    I identify with your situation. I wanted and tried to learn to play the piano-twice. The teachers I had insisted that I had to learn to read music. I love music but it doesn’t quite make the trip from my head to my hands.

    Now that I’m old ;-) and set in my ways I find I have the opportunity to learn keyboards and guitar. My husband plays both and he can teach music theory as well. The only problem now is packing a couple more hours into every day.

    “Well, it just goes to show you, it’s always something.”

    Lisa Miller

  • James

    Hello,
    I can sympathize with your situation. So which internet sites for the Tabs do you recommend? I have played drums and percussion for 30+ years. Over the years I have acquired a few guitars and basses. I really want to dedicate some time this year to learning to play them. Do you recommend to start with the bass or guitar.
    Thanks,
    James

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/jifester/ jifester

    Stick with it, i swear by sheet music. That may be because i have been playing classical for 11 or so years. I think tabs are great for beginners, as you said they lay it out in a much more easy to read manner. By the way, i just posted up how to tune your guitar with harmonics on my block, check it out it may come in handy!

  • http://twitter.com/CrowScreech Rob Sommerfeldt

    Don’t just blame the Mastering Engineers. Sometimes the Recording Engineers send their mixes for mastering already compressed, so there isn’t much they can do with those ones. Then there are the Producers and Artists who insist on having their songs AS LOUD as possible in the hopes that it will sound better to the average listener who is listening thru earbuds trying to drown out the real world. Unfortunately audiophiles are few and far between and while they spend large on gear, they don’t tend to buy much music as they are really picky about quality, so the market is not geared towards them. It would be nice to just tell everyone that there is a volume knob/button on their player, but that just doesn’t seem to make a difference.

  • Matt Hughes

    I was very happy when trent reznor was releasing flac copies of the ghosts albums

  • http://twitter.com/chrismorrell chris morrell

    absolutely and as this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Magnetic#Criticism_regarding_production row demonstrated , “Hi Fi” is NOT the preserve of classical music geeks.

  • http://www.facebook.com/paddy260991 Paddy Gordon

    Compression makes sense for DJs at clubs etc to keep the volume solid during a song, there’s nothing worse than going from a loud song to a quiet intro and folk thinking the music’s been turned off. Then the main part coming in VERY LOUD and getting folk moaning that it’s too loud etc. or worse, it blowing your speakers/amp

    Makes some sense for people in busy cities etc with headphones, but iPods should have software compressors built in by now.

    The only place compression makes no sense whatsoever is in the home when there’s no external noise such as large crowds or diesel engines going by etc.

    I’ve routed my iTunes through logic’s compressor before when going to bed so the music stayed at a constant volume and I wasn’t woke up half an hour later with my playlist nearly finishing and a loud part coming on etc.

  • http://twitter.com/high_frontier high_frontier

    Actually, I would not consider you a purist at all, as a real purist would not be listening to mp3s unless under duress of some kind.

    Part of the reason so much of music is compressed today is the poor equipment that many people have. To reproduce real music at realistic levels takes power, and lots of it. I does not matter what type of speaker we are talking about, lots of power is needed with even the most efficient corner loaded horns. [The problem with horns is that they introduce their own colorations and distortions due to their design.] The very best speakers are very inefficient and require levels of amplifier power most are not willing to purchase or live with.

    One anecdotal point that Bob Carver was said to make was how much power was needed to properly reproduce the shearing of a piece of paper with a scissors. At normal [same level as the real event] it took a couple of thousand watts to get the transient attack correct – this is why he was famous for high power amps throughout his career, like the Phase Linear 700 and various models that bore his own name.

    It is no wonder then, that for semi-realistic reproduction in the home, several hundred watts of clean power are needed, and we are not talking car stereo exaggerated wattage here. The amplifiers that reproduce this amount of power usually are 5 to 7 rack spaces in height, usually about 20″ in depth, and weigh in at at least 50 pounds. That is for a two channel amplifier. [ Don't let anyone kid you, two channels of proper recording is all you need with the right equipment! ]

    I should also say that this amplifier is usually found at a price of over $1000, which is more than many people will ever spend on a sound system, thinking that the need is not there, or that differences cannot be resolved that make the investment worthwhile.

    That would be for each person to answer for himself, but if fidelity is desired, not only is compression to be avoided, so are sup-optimal digitization techniques, and low-fidelity playback equipment. [That would tend to be 95 - 97% of the equipment found in homes today.]