Sorry, I’m completely new to playing guitar, and was trying to look through the posts to see if this was already answered, but to be honest almost everything in the first 3 pages was completely over my head. So I play a little acustic guitar. Took a couple classes, but mainly played for a couple months with some people I met in school. We’d meet at someone’s house get the grill going, chill a few beers, and just play different stuff, anything goes, kanakapila Sundays kind of thing. To be honest, the most fun I had and I learned a lot, but almost everyone was just here for college so when a bunch of them moved back home, I haven’t had a chance to play at all. Sorry for the background, jsut so you know where I’m coming from.
So here’s the question, and they’re really basic, but:
I can’t tell how people can listen to a song and say oh, that’s an F chord. Is this something that will come with time or am I tone deaf? How would I know if I was tone deaf? To clarify, if someone just plays a random chord, I wouldn’t know what it was, but if someone tells me it’s an E, and then plays another E, I can tell that it’s an E. I can’t tell if it’s flat, sharp, or higher/lower pitched, etc. Just that it sounds like an E, and I’m not always right.
Asuming I’m not tone deaf, is there a way to train my ear to hear the difference, or is this just something that will come to me with time?
How do I tell what (I don’t know if this is the right word) scale I’m in? I know how to tune my guitar to itself, and while I can’t hear the difference between the E chord I’m playing and someone else is playing. To me, it sounds the same, but most everyone else can tell I’m too high or too low. Is there a trick to this? I know I’m not in tune with others because I can feel the vibration in the guitar when we both play the same chord, but I have no idea how to tell if I’m higher or lower than them. basically, right now, I play the chord, and adjust, if the vibration gets worse, I tune the other way until it’s gone. However the entire time, aside from the buzz, I couldn’t tell the difference.
Will an electronic guitar tuner help with this?
I have a hard time with a lot of the chords because I have short, fat fingers. Are there certain guitars outt here with smaller or thinner necks I should be looking at? Some of the posts I read seemed to imply as much, but I wasn’t sure if it’d make a difference. Am I destined to be a subpar player because I don’t have the right hands? I was looking at “Tears in Heaven” and Clapton has this insane F chord that uses his thumb. o_O This is impossible for me to play because I need to drop my thumb t the bottom of the neck to get my hand in the right place to play the F chord. Does this mean I should just give up the hobby as I’ll never be able to play properly?
What do people mean when they say this guitar has a fast fingerboard?
Is there a major difference between electric and acoustic guitars playstyle wise, or will I be able to pick up and elctric with no problem? The reason I ask, is I’d like to be able to play the elctric later, and should I get one now if they require a different skill set to play?
Again, sorry for the simplistic questions, especially if they were asked before, but I honestly don’t know enough about guitars or know anyone that does either to give me a honest answer to these questions.
Well, I’ve been lurking in this thread from time-to-time, but I’ve only been learning to play for the past year and a half so I haven’t posted anything because I don’t really feel qualified to talk about guitars and I don’t like posting unless I think I have something to add.
Okay, so I went back into the Sam Stone magazine archives (my wife hates those!), and dug out a few different magazines at random. Bear in mind that most of my guitar mags date back to the 1990’s. But here’s what’s in them:
**
“Guitar World” - Oct 1992.**
Sheet music/tab for Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight”
A column by Wolf Marshall on rock theory - “Triads, Part 4”. He talks about harmonic rhythm, chord theory, etc. It’s documented with sheet music, tab, and chord notation.
A breakdown of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”, notated in sheet music and tab.
“Guitar (For the Practicing Musician)” - June 1989
Transcriptions in standard music notation and tab for a bunch of songs.
An article on two-handed bends, with exercises notated in standard music notation and tab
An analysis of Peter Buck’s guitar style, in standard notation and tab
“Bass Secrets” - Pentatonic scales, Pt. 2. A bunch of scale exercises and description of pentatonic scales, with exercises notated in standard notation and tab
“Guitar Secrets with Joe Satriani” - Harmonized Minor Pentatonic. Joe covers the A minor Pentatonic scale, and provides exercises in standard notation and tab
“Total Guitar”, June 1997
There’s tons of stuff in this one. This magazine is an import, and comes with a CD of backing tracks for the songs and licks in the mag. The magazine has performance notes for each one with sheet music and tab, sometimes accompanied by music theory describing what’s going on in the song. There’s an article on Jazz chord theory for beginners, with sheet music and tab. An article on blues chord progressions, and at the back of the magazine a complete tutorial for reading sheet music and tab, and how they relate to each other.
Guitar Player - Sept 1996
An article on fingerstyle walking blues
Theory on Whole-Half Step scales
Chromatic fingerstyle turnarounds
Cycles a l a Mode, a theory article by Alex Skolnick talking about the seven modes of the major scale
All of those notated with sheet music and tab
**
“Acoustic Guitar” - June 1995**
Not as much music in this one - a couple of song transcriptions, an article on the “Hawaiian Slack-Key Masters” with sheet music/tab illustrating techniques, and a few other technique articles.
This is a representative sample, and pretty much all my magazines follow this pattern - a few theory articles, a few song transcriptions, an artist profile with some licks or partial song transcriptions, etc.
I have new guitar mags as well, and I don’t remember them being much different than the older ones. But my guitar mag buying really dropped off as more information became available on the internet.
Now, almost everything that has standard notation has tab under it, but some of the articles on theory have music snippets are pure standard notation with no tabs. So while a guitarist can certainly pick up these magazines and learn a lot from the tab notation and never learn sheet music, I would think that anyone who reads this stuff seriously would pick up an awful lot. Certainly enough to recognize major and minor scales, to know the names of the notes, to recognize the key signatures, and other stuff like that. But not necessarily be able to sight-read standard notation and play it.
Don’t be sorry at all - pull up a chair and make yourself at home. If you don’t ask questions, you won’t learn what you don’t already know.
Do you mean with the guitar in your hand? Or do you mean with no other frame of reference at all? There are people who have perfect pitch (The Master Speaks) but the rest of us can’t do much more than give a good guess when we hear a pitch or a chord without some means of comparing it to a note which we know. (Tuning fork, guitar, piano - something where we can play a note and say 'Okay, that’s an ‘A’, and the note I hear is a minor third below that (Think of the first two pitches of 'The Star Spangled Banner - o-o say…) so then I know I’m hearing an F# in this example.)
If you mean that you are playing an ‘E’ (major) chord and someone else is playing an ‘F’ (major) chord, then the answer is ‘There is a difference that you might need to train yourself to hear.’
Yes, you can accelerate the process by taking Ear Training. It is also something that comes in time, but it doesn’t hurt to work on it. I’d suggest to start with the intervals between single notes and then move into chords.
The PC version of ‘Band in a Box’ had some ear training software bundled with it, but I haven’t mucked with it since I went Mac a few years ago. I’m also not sure what BiaB costs these days, and whether that ear training software is bundled with the basic package. I’ll have a look-see to find out what’s out there for Ear Training stuff - get back to you in a while…
I’m not quite sure I get you here - do you mean you have trouble telling if you’re in tune with other players even though you think the guitar is in tune with itself?
Umm. An electronic tuner will help you keep your instrument in tune. It will help keep the group’s instruments in tune with each other.
It will not help you develop your ear for fine tuning, which it sounds like you could use some work on. (Apologies if I’ve got the wrong impression.) It’s better, in my opinion, to develop your sense of tuning by starting with a reference pitch and tuning your guitar to itself from there.
Experiment with it - this is something I have done with my students. I tune their guitars for them for the first couple of months, but I do it in front of them, and I make them listen. Then, after a couple of months, I deliberately mis-tune one string before I hand it back to them. They have to figure out which string is out, and which way it needs to go. I’m right there, and I warn them when a string might snap from them tuning it too high.
Then again, if you’re going to muck with tuning it on your own, you might want the tuner so you can quickly correct any mistakes. They’re pretty easy to get these days - most iPhones, iPods, BlackBerries and other [del]shackles of Satan[/del] communications devices have applications that will work like tuners. I have a combination tuner/metronome that cost about $40 that has worked out very well.
It does not mean you should give up. Not everyone does thumb wraps. I almost never wrap my thumb around the back, even in playing pieces where the original guitarist did. It has to suit your hand, not somebody else’s.
All I can say is try out as many different guitars as you can to see how they feel. My fingers aren’t particularly fat, but they are quite short. For all that, I prefer a wide neck - 2 inches at the nut - so that my fingers don’t accidentally ‘clam’ an open string.
(By the way, if you’re playing ‘Tears in Heaven’ in the same key as Clapton, there is no F major chord. I’m assuming you mean the D/F# (D major with an F# in the bass) or the passage that goes f# minor to C# major/E# to A/E to f# minor? There are ways of fingering all of that so you use your four fingers and not your thumb.)
That the guitar is set up in such a way that they find it easy and comfortable to play fast single-note passages, I’d assume. It’d be easier to ask the person who says that what it is they find ‘fast’ about that fingerboard - it can be radically different for different people.
I’ll let others speak for themselves, but I know that many people who contribute regularly to these threads find that electric guitars are easier to play, in terms of how they feel to your hands.
Not at all - in case you hadn’t noticed, I love to talk about guitar, and I’m not alone in that. We can always use another guitarist around here.
Awesome! Wait, are you sure it’s not just me refreshing like a monkey?
Okay, so my guitar gets weirder and weirder.
I’ve established that I have two guitars. The Pig, and this. http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-50206111187217_2111_8982905 (picture), the XV-585 http://store.guitarfetish.com/xaxvchcamaso.html (description)
Now, this guitar has been a source of puzzlement to me since I got it. Not that it’s bad. It’s fantastic. But… it’s odd. It’s a Les Paul copy, right? Not really. It’s chambered, it doesn’t sound like a LP at all. http://store.guitarfetish.com/xvso3matoflm.html This, the XV-500, not the 585, is the LP copy. I decided to re-read the copy on the 585 today, as I was ordering my pickguard for the Pig.
I was amused to realize that yes, it does say the neck is thinner than a LP. This is something I’ve noticed on my own.
But the other oddness on it is the pickups. Why a P90 at the neck and a humbucker at the bridge? Well, re-reading, I noticed something that ties in to what we’ve been discussing.
Well. Thaaat would explain that, wouldn’t it. So, I’ve got a thin-necked, LP-like, guitar, designed for speed playing, with a Van Halen like bridge and a blues neck. Man, I’m gonna have to grow a lot to be worthy of playing this thing, aren’t I?
Still, it’s really neat how what you guys said made sense out of some puzzlement I’ve had over why a guitar would be built this way. (Apparently, it is that good: a friend’s already tried to buy it off me for an offer of a few-couple bucks over what I paid.)
Still, it’s not a LP copy at all, it just looks like one. http://store.guitarfetish.com/veviexhotzep.html Sounds like the MP3s in here, though. Sort of. I can see the potential for it to sound like this, I just don’t know what to stuff it through to make it do that. Right now, I’m getting the Clean sound pretty right, though.
If you notice, Staver, I started in pretty much a worse position than you. I’d had some lessons about (mumble) years ago, and was basically restarting from scratch. Read on through, dive in, and look for my posts: I’m the one asking ‘stupid’ questions, and Wordman and Squee and the rest have been kindly replying.
1: I was kinda wondering this in the shower this morning myself.
4: There are two kinds of tuners. The kind that just show the EADGBE (Eddie Ate Dynamite, Good Bye Eddie) and Chromatic Tuners. Get a Chromatic Tuner, the Korg CA-1 is pretty standard, like $20, it shows you all possible notes, and is much easier to tune with.
7: Playing electric is much easier than acoustic, I’m told. Physically. Learning… there are different techniques, but focus on one, and swap to the other later, you’ll pick up the differences fairly easily, god knows everyone else seems to have.
I can’t always tell exactly what key something is in, but once I do know, I can figure out what the rest of it is, by listening for the differences, the invervals. You get so you can just know that this chord followed that one, by how they sound in relation to each other. It’s easier than I’m making it sound, it just takes a little time and practice.
Maybe. I use them so I don’t have to deal with the noise around me.
As you keep playing, you can and will have an easier time of it. Also, don’t be afraid to use a different “inversion” of the chord. There’s more than one way to play the chord, and you will want to learn them. Again, it takes a little practice but it will make sense. It’s funny, but a lot of people seem to prefer big “baseball bat” necks. They may have big beefy fingers, to the point where they can’t stand a skinny neck.
Opinion time: Unless you plan to be a “shredder”, don’t even worry about this. It probably won’t matter to you for a long long time, if ever. Example: Various guitars, some Ibanez for example, are reputed to be very fast so to speak. Yet, there are people who are plenty fast and can’t stand these boards / necks. Some of the most famous “shredding” happened before the fast shred guitars even existed. Quite often, these recordings were done on an old beat up Fender with a “slow” baseball bat for a neck (Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc etc).
Again my opinion: If you can play an acoustic and play it well, an electric will be easy. Why? It will be you playing, and not relying on effects or gimmicks, or “riding the gain” to cover up sloppiness. It’s the same skill set. As we say on another board, one devoted to guitars, The Tone Is In Your Fingers.
So I went to the E-Sabbath guitar magazine library, and discovered… I had like four, and only one’s left. One copy of Guitar World from 1994, and the sheet music to Pretty Woman. It’s a pretty good Guitar World, though, it’s got a lot of Who songs and some Nirvana. And a Pantera clinic.
Wonder where the other magazines went. I think I must have pulled them out when I started learning again, and put them somewhere safe. Is Guitar World still decent?
I think this is a technique that you pick up after a while, although it’s never perfect. For your basic open major chords, you can listen for the fundamental, the bass note that’s the root of the chord. Some examples, all open chords – for open E, the root is the open E string, the sixth and lowest string. For open D it’s the fourth string. For A, it’s the fifth string. You get the idea – the lowest played string in an open chord is almost always the chord name. That might get you started, but there’s a lot more ear-smarts that you build up over time as you listen to different guitar progressions. Give it time. Also, I think very very few people listen to music and says “Oh, that’s an F”. What they do, and you should do, is listen to the song while holding a guitar and fiddle around to find out what chord matches what they’re hearing.
It’s a skill, it comes with time.
I’m not sure what you mean here – are you talking about how to tell if your tuning is correct, or if you’re playing the same chord as someone nearby? If it’s the former, go buy a tuner, they’re really very cheap and very helpful. If it’s the latter, I’m not sure what to tell you except look at the other person’s hands on the guitar to see if you’re playing what they’re playing.
Asked and answered – yes, go get one now. Also learn the technique of tuning your guitar given one correct pitch (comparing low-E or A are a common method). Tuning.
Yes, there is a wide variation in neck shape and size. Acoustics tend to have wider necks and higher action (the distance from the string to the neck), electrics have narrower necks (but again a wide variation) and lower action.
No. Look at Django Reinhardt, who managed to play with two fingers after a disfiguring injury. You can play fine with your fingers, just don’t get discouraged and keep playing, that’s all that matters.
This chord? If the thumb is a problem, just forget the low-e string fretted with your thumb, don’t fret it and don’t pick that string. It’ll sound fine.
No. You’re just in that miserable early stage where everything about an instrument seems impossible. Everyone goes through this. Persevere! You can do it, and it’s worth it, and you’ll have to trust me but it’ll actually become fun eventually. Really!
They mean the neck is narrower or the neck has less depth, or something along those lines. What they really mean is the neck suits their hands well. Someone else may use that neck and disagree. A “fast” neck is specific to a given player, and that neck may work for them and not for you.
There are huge differences, but most of them would work in your favor. As WordMan would put it, on electric you spend 50% of your time making sure some notes sound, and 50% that some do NOT sound.
It’s a pretty personal choice. I’d say you should go try one and see if you like it.
Wow, in the space of one hour Staver808 got a firehose of responses to his questions about beginning guitar. Thread mission accomplished! Staver808, please follow up with more questions as needed, you’re most welcome here.
Part of why this is an ongoing thread is to centralize all the other threads that show up. And part of why this is ongoing is to document the learning process people have for other people. Go on and ask some stupid questions. It can’t hurt any.
Argh! I’ve been busy (still am, fracking XPath) I was planning on a post on guitar cross-training - how practicing (say) classical stuff can suggest new rock options. Sounds obvious but I have got some some crossover improvement playing lead electric rock stuff from praticing accoustic ragtime, didn’t expect that.
Entirely fair - thanks for pointing that out and welcome to lurking; we’d love to hear from you, especially if we are over-geeking and not bringing you along.
Cool - sounds interesting. I don’t know what XPath it, but good luck with that, too.
As for **Staver **- jeez, what good inputs, hope it helps you. Nothing to add. And while hearing from varying levels of players was particularly insightful, special kudos to **Le Ministre **- what are you, a professional musician and teacher or something? ;) (for newbies - yes, yes he is).
E-Sabs - excellent research and connecting-the-dots regarding your guitar. I know nothing about that brand other than what I have heard (supposed to be decent, like a good Agile or Edwards), but your Sherlock conclusions are sound. Have you played any VH on the guitar? And? Also - pick the neck pickup, put the Volume at about 8-9 and roll the tone completely off. Play Sunshine of Your Love by Cream (through a gained-up amp, of course). Report. You like? Sound like the real song in a good way? If not, what’s different?
Here’s the XPath to the quote link in your post /html/body[1]/div[@id=‘posts’]/div[16]/div/div/div[@id=‘edit12731256’]/table[@id=‘post12731256’]/tbody/tr[3]/td[@id=‘td_post_12731256’]/div[3]/a/img The stuff I’m having to play with is worse.
The ‘Woman Tone’ never made sense to me until very recently, the trick is a really really overdriven (valve) amp. All the harmonics come from the amp, and yes, for me it does sound just like the record. Of course when I first read about it and tried it out I was playing a Telecaster. Good luck getting a woman tone out of that.
I undestand none of that, but I feel strangely compelled to buy you a pizza.
That’s why I dropped in a humbucker-sized P-90 into my two homebrew Tele’s
And as for overdrive - yes, you need a very gained-up amp, but at that point, I really dial in the Volume on my guitar. There’s a fine line between overdrive and out-of-control; I try to find that line. The difference between 9 and 9.5 with my on-board Volume control can be HUGE…
My sympathies - I had thought that XPath was some video game/computer game system to which you had developed an addiction. That looks significantly less fun than what I’d come up with.
On the other hand, that also looks like one of ‘those’ chords that, by the time you’ve figured them out, the piece is long over.
ETA - How interesting - when you put that thing in a quote box, it makes Safari open up a horizontal scroll bar at the bottom rather than break the word. Is that what it’s supposed to do? And what happens when I click this li
No way. Play Sunshine on 1 string - look at the opening riff here - do able.
AND - this particular youtube lesson is revealing - why? Because his tone SUCKS! Just listen to it - tight, nasally, waspy - argh! Hurts my ears!! Now listen tothis guy- maybe not as good of a youtube instructor, and he could have more gain on his amp, but listen to that tone - far, far more pleasing to the ear: rich, warm, tubey…
(for newbies - yes, yes he is).
