I used to play piano. I was never very good at it but I understood it fairly well. Tell me to play a C#m9 and my fingers go straight there. Ask me to transpose something into Bb, or move everything up a fifth - no problem.
I have been learning guitar for a couple of years now and I am MUCH better at guitar than I ever was at piano but I don’t understand it at all. I have to learn every piece by rote. I just made it through Clapton’s solo in While My Guitar Gently Weeps but I had to learn it note by note.
If I need to know a note, I have to count (now, let me see, so 12th fret string six is an E , so, F, F#, G etc). I still get surprised when I find that a note on a different string sounds the same.
The best way I have to envision my problem is by analogy. I can speak a little french, but I can’t think in French. I have to translate everything into english, figure out an answer, and then translate back into french. On the guitar, I have to translate everything via piano-ese.
How can I learn to understand my guitar as well as I understand the piano?
I understand that there is no royal road to geometry, but maybe there is a shortcut that I don’t know about? Can anyone suggest exercises or lessons that will help me break though my ignorance barrier?
Something like this book, might be useful. It sounds like you know music theory, but maybe it would help to look at a condensed refresher that relates it all to the guitar.
There’s a series of books called Fretboard Logic that might help you get over the hump. The method it teaches is all about learning chords at different positions of the fretboard.
With your piano background, once you get all of the intervals (both ascending and descending) under your fingers, the fretboard should make more sense. Up a m2, same note as down a M7, up M2 = down m7, up m3 = down M6, up M3 = down m6, and so on. There are different ways to play the intervals depending on what position you are in. Just remember that the patterns change one fret when going up [in pitch] to the B string or down from the B. I’m a bassist, so I’ve got fourths across all of the strings. I’m sure Wordman will jump in with some good 6 string advice.
Just want to commisserate: I play passable piano and guitar, and it’s SO much easier for me to learn/use Music Theory on the piano. It’s because my brain is very mathematical, and I can treat the keyboard like a LINEAR progression… a line with numbers, if you will. So I can take a “minor 7th” and “map it out” in any key: “Okay, I want the tonic, the minor third, fifth and seventh. So I’ll count up one and a half steps, two more and one and a half more.” D,F,A,C or G#,B,D#,F#. IF each string of a guitar was a G string I’d be fine, but it’s like each string is a keyboard starting with a different note.
Fretboard Warrior in my case started off with Mnemonics (called Fret2Fret): Arnold (Schwartzenegger),
Bill (Gates), Cher, etc…
But then it also came with the actual “game” of Warrior which shows you the frets and asks you to press the corresponding string to get a particular note.
I found it a fun way to learn where the notes are and hope this may help you as well.
Did you learn Clapton’s solo (and other guitar music) by reading the tablature (fret numbers) and then pressing your fingers to the fingerboard? Tab is an excellent method for quickly learning a piece (since it removes ambiguity of which string to play) but the drawback is that it doesn’t promote memorization of the note-pitch-to-fret mapping in the brain.
As you’re aware, there is no “numerical tab” for piano music – the named notes you see on the sheet music matches the notes your hand plays. From day one, the individual keyboard keys are referred to by their note name. We don’t refer to piano key middle C as 40th key from the left and C#Db as 41st key from the left.
One thing to note (heh) is that with standard tuning the strings go from low to high in a 4th, a 4th, a 4th, a M3rd, and a 4th. This makes sense in terms of useful fingerings, but doesn’t help and sense of linearity. There are notes that can be played in 4 different places, gag.
Yes, but not just any old note. There’s a pattern to it. It’s perhaps like having six keyboards adjacent to each other, but offset/staggered so that 30 different notes are available in a span (5 frets) that only offers 6 notes on one string.
I… uh. Got it upside down the other day and accidentally tuned my guitar upside down, so the B was an A and so on. Only blew my B string out. Course, I did have a fever.
You can do that if you like, but I think the biggest thing that can get you over the hump is to learn scales and intervals. Learn how to play an a major pentatonic scale across the strings, then learn how to play the A minor. Learn the patterns that your fingers play in each position. Then do the same for the diatonic scales. Stick with A for now.
Now, you can play the a major and minor diatonic and pentatonic scales. To play the scale in any other key simply move the root note to that note on the E string and play the same patterns. Learn your scales, learn how they move. Practice them until you can play them in your sleep. Minor pentatonic will always be played the same way no matter what the key, the same is true with major, diatonic, and any mode you can think of. The pattens of movement stay the same.
Then incorporate the interval knowledge that was mentioned up thread to help you expand that world from simply pattern recognition to actual recognition of music. Try not to think up and down the strings but across the fretboard. It’s not six pianos, that way madness lies. Work in chunks about 5 frets wide and learn how the notes interact from low E to high E. I like starting with Am myself, so I would say work frets 4-8 with the root A being on the low E fifth fret. But do it how you want.
Anyway, the above is what worked for me coming from a similar background musically.
And don’t forget the barre chords! Trust me on the barre chords, they’re fun!
Don’t pay any attention to me, I say that to everybody!:rolleyes:
However, I concur with all that has been posted here about the transition from piano to the fretboard and I think it’s cool that you’re going to be so versatile!
Bye was my most difficult chord to make, but I kept at it, and I find that’s the problem with many first-timers: They’re great with E, D, G and A, but throw a C or F at 'em, and they have to stop and place their fingers, and you can just feel that sigh coming on.
I am having the same problem teaching my grandson with his smaller-scale guitar. He’d asked for one 2 Christmases ago, and during a recent visit, I asked him to bring it out and play me a simple progression.
Uh-Huh. You guessed it. He gave up.
You HAVE to keep at it!
Even if you have arthritic hands/fingers like me! Somehow your brain will help your fingers compensate!
Thanks for that! I’m a beginning guitar player also (and also coming into it from a piano background, and having the same troubles as the OP) and am having the darnedest time remembering this. The other mnemonic I’ve learned is “Every Angry Dog Growls, Barks, Eats.” But I always forget “Eats” (even though I know the outside strings are the same :smack: ). Eddie’s sad story is much more memorable.
Thanks also to everyone else for their tips, which will help me too!
I don’t mind C but I’m having a really hard time with barre chords (and I’m convinced that F is called that for a reason. ) Gotta just keep trying and building finger strength, I guess.
