[Ask] I'm a Guitar Teacher (Round 2) - Page 2

Ahh. Ok, we will do one hour together a day.

10 minutes of small warm ups - Alternate pick the open strings, 4 times each, the switch strings, slow and in even tempo. 1 E A U 2 E A U etc etc. These 10 minutes here are about re teaching yourself the basics of guitar here. So, play single notes with the left hand. Picture the energy flowing to the tip of your finger. Try this:

We know what a clean note sounds like, we know what a buzzed note sounds like. Make a buzzed note on purpose. Say, 3rd fret of the low E string. Buzz the note so you hear a bit of the actual note and some buzz. Ok good, now press just a hair harder. You get the clean note. Guitar is a lot more about finesse than strength. Do this every day to remind yourself that you should NEVER struggle with the instrument.

Also in these 10 minutes, review note names. Do the 1st 3 frets on your first and second day the next two days do the next 3 frets, etc.
,
20 minutes on scales. Start with two octave scales. What is most important here is that you pay attention to proper left hand technique, and apply STRICT alternate picking, not going fast at all. Make sure everynote is clear, and occurs with VERY LITTLE EFFORT. TOTAL RELAXATION!!

then 30 minutes on songs. Take your iron man solo , lets learn the rest of it. Here's the catch, spen 15 minutes on just 4 bars of the solo, and divide that further by 7 minutes on each 2 bar sets. TAKE THIS SHIT SLOW. The goal here isn't to just learn the notes, its to be patient , be relaxed, and play cleanly. AVOID TEMPTATION TO PLAY FAST

Then the other 15 minutes is the same thing but on a different song or section.

This should get you on a track which will bring up more questions soon enough. Please ask if you have any questions or ideas about this schedule!!

Ok, so you gotta go in on the WHY of music. LOADS OF FUN MAN. The rewards are infinite and forever.

Here's your task.

This week, twice a day for 2 minutes, you will review your note names.


A A# B C C# D D# E F F# G G#


The week after that, apply this to your first string, all frets up to twelve

So your e string is like this

fret 1 = F 2 = F# 3 = G etc etc.

For every fret you go up, you advance one note , starting on E as the OPEN string.

For each week after, you will do the next string as well as all previous. In about a month from now you will know all the note names down cold and be ready for the nitty gritty of it all .

A month? That doesnt add up you say. Well I trust you will get carried away by your progress once you start to see the patterns. Plus you get a freebie cuz two strings are the same. Let me know if ANY of this is unclear but trust me when I say

YOU MUST KNOW THE NOTE NAMES COLD. Or youll just be stuck as shit again. Do this then lets talk.

Ok , get good at making chords, Learn these types so you can play them rooted on the 4th, 5th, and 6th. Then lets talk more...

AWESOME The classical is SO great for teaching us about music and ourselves..

Ok, the right hand we label

P = Thumb (pulgar)
I = index
M = Middle
A = Ring finger (annular)


put the I M A fingers on strings 3 2 1 respectively. P will go on string 5 for now


First arpeggio

P I M

So just pluck P, then I, then M, even tempo, one after the other, over N over.

then when you feel good

P I M I

so up and back again

P I M A

all fingers

P I M A M I

all up and down


DO THESE SLOWLY . DO NOT RUSH. REMAIN FUCKING CALM haha.

Now, the right hand is a very important force in the classical style. Close your first. Open it. Watch again this time, close it, open it. - THATS how you will pluck the strings. Many people try and get underneath and pull. This gives a harsh tone. PUSH through the stings as if they werent there, just as if you were closing one finger on your hand, then reset comfortably. Let me know if this makes sense. It's not easy to have good right hand technique.

Flamenco? Do you mean like, real flamenco stylez? The hardest part is getting it in your ear, the rhythms are very foreign to us and grouped in ways that are uncommon. Maybe you could link me to a youtube of what you mean by flamenco, there are many definitions this days. What part of it do you like?

Thanks man I appreciate it. Good job stickin to it BOSS HYPE SWAG SHIT MAAAAN!!

Here's something you can practice - Can you count?

1 2 3 4 with a down strum on each count.


EZ PZ


1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +

Now we do twice as many strums. Say "1 AND 2 AND 3 AND" and you are going Down Up Down up.

EZ PZ

Now to divide a beat further

1 E A U 2 E A U etc "One EEE AND UH two EE AND UH etc"


So now we have a way to count four strums to a beat. So, grab a piece of paper

write

1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4


and at your whim, write Es As Us (not too many to start! very few..) and assign a direction to strum above each . Try and land on the number counts with a downstrum. With this method you can expose yourself to new strums, while writing them in a way that is logical and can be dissected instead of having to rewind a tape over and over.

Let me know how this goes, or if it doesnt make sense.

Can you read sheet music?

Do you have desire to?

Ok here we go, BARRREE CHORDDSS

Before you fuck with that, this excersize is needed.

5th fret.

Barre two strings. Finger nice and straight, dont strain, only apply whats needed. Can you do this confidently? Ok

Move on. Barre three strangs, Same applies. Keep adding strings until it gets a bit messy. We need to identify what the problem is. Are you pushing hard enough ? Are you nice and tight behind the fret? Try rolling your finger different sides to see if the strings are getting stuck in your knuckle creases.

As you progress at this, go back to barring just two strings. heres the rub - WHILE barring , use finger two to play the 6th fret of your first string. NOW see if your barre is still working. Good? Ok, move over a string so its on the 6th fret of the 2nd string. Both notes sounding clean? Then add a string to the barre. Keep going. After you get good at this, do the same, but with your 3rd finger reaching for the 7th fret, then repeat the process.

Do this for 5 minutes a day for about a week. Hey, thats not too much to ask right? Let me know how it goes .

Do you know any thing about keys, and what chords go in what key and why? Knowing a bit of how music works can REALLY save time transcribing since you have thoughts on how the music is likely to be moving, even if your ear is having troubles.

Learn your major scale if you dont know it, because EVERYTHING relates back to it. then boot up this app:

http://www.good-ear.com/servlet/EarTrainer

Or if you are willing to do a small download, this program is VERY comprehensive and highly reccomended as it charts your progress and has little lesson plans

http://www.earmaster.com/

Just get the trial.

Take it slow. At first, your ear can take only so much training. Dont do more than 5-10 minutes. Dont move on until you you are scoring upwards of 80 percent.

WHILE using one of those programs, take REALLY small melodies and figure them out. BEFORE you aim to play them on your guitar, sing them out loud. You HAVE to sing , even if you dont like your voice get over yourself, just sing. We want to connect what we hear to our hands, and singing is the connecting force in that.

So take Eleanor Rigby by the beatles say, and just get the first part of the vocal melody

"IIIIiiiiii look at all the lonely people!" . Just figure that out. Look how it relates back to the key. If you dont know how to do that, ask me more questions and we can learn.

The mistake to make here is to bite big pieces. NO NO NO . Just a measure here, a measure there. Dont worry about doing more than 2 measures of fresh material a day. Take it slow, enjoy it. You are basically training a magical skill, its pretty fuckin cool to slowly take stuff out of the air and make it real. Wow.

Let me know if you need more on this or I'm unclear on what you should do.

Ear training tools
Real Life transcribing (SHORT MELODIC FRAGMENTS)
How does it relate to a scale


oh shit, just saw you are interesting in fingerstyle. I'm going to draw from an earlier answer I gave

****
Fingerstyle shit is really great and enables your guitar to sound more like a piano, very full even when playing alone. First things first

the right hand we label

P = Thumb (pulgar)
I = index
M = Middle
A = Ring finger (annular)


put the I M A fingers on strings 3 2 1 respectively. P will go on string 5 for now

Do the following two arpeggios for a week to ten days before advancing. DO THEM SLOWLY and relaxed.
***
First arpeggio

P I M

So just pluck P, then I, then M, even tempo, one after the other, over N over.

then when you feel good

P I M I

so up and back again



Then move onto these for two weeks while playing the old ones.
******

P I M A

all fingers

P I M A M I

all up and down


DO THESE SLOWLY . DO NOT RUSH. REMAIN FUCKING CALM haha.

Now, the right hand is a very important force in the classical style. Close your first. Open it. Watch again this time, close it, open it. - THATS how you will pluck the strings. Many people try and get underneath and pull. This gives a harsh tone. PUSH through the strings as if they werent there, just as if you were closing one finger on your hand, then reset comfortably. Let me know if this makes sense. It's not easy to have good right hand technique.

This can be hard to explain over text but I'm on the slow process to get equipped to put up videos for all yall.

http://www.stormthecastle.com/classical_guitar/Collection/120studies-for-right-hand.pdf

Even if you can't read sheet music , I can still explain how to use those to understand the information.

IF you can play 120 of those cleanly at a decent tempo, you are doing well. There are a lot of cool right hand things you can do that dont come up in the regular rock ballad dust in the wind type thing

Do you like this piece at all? It's fairly aggressive and prettty cool, maybe you'd like to learn something like this

Ok gonna talk a bit about your left hand here.

I'm seeing your 4th finger (pinky) is completely stiff about half the time. Worse yet, look at say about 16 seconds, and even more so at about 29 seconds. Where are your 3rd and 4th fingers going? The guitar is over that way >>>!!! hah. Seriously though, what in your head you might be thinking "I cant go faster, I need to practice going faster" is actually "I need to make my fingers have less work to do for every note" . One way to do that is to minimize the distance, which right now in your technique is a decent amount.

Even if you are thinking "my pinky? I dont use it much anyway!" Well, while I think if you want to have the skills you seek you have to, there's another thing with the pinky sticking out like that. That means you are tense. That little bit of energy that is required to pick the pinky up is just adding up, fatiguing the hand when it shouldnt be. It's like walking around with your arm all day. RELAX.... Here's how

Here's two things I see that beginners rarely get taught with / without a teacher , they both pertain to the left hand.

Dont squeeze to hard

** guitar is a finesse instrument, rarely a strength thing, like golf, say. Here's how we want our left hand technique to go. Imagine you are crushing a can. Open, close, open , close. That's the sort of muscle group we want to engage while using our left hand. Imagine the energy going to the finger tips. Use the finger TIPS not the PADS to press down on the strings. always come DOWN on the strings as best you can, behind the fret nice and close.

Now to the squeezing thing, how hard is too hard?

Well try this, play a single note on the low E string (the big boy). Ok, nice and clean. Now, release pressure and pluck until you get a bit of a crunch sound , but can still hear a bit of the actual note. It'll take a second to find this sweet spot. Ok, now, push just a HAIR BIT MORE in pressure. THATS what it takes to press a string down. Just a bit more then pushing down a key on your keyboard. The problem is, people get exciting and CRUSH the fuck out of their guitar. Plz dont ; ) . The first thing you do when playing is start with about 30 seconds of this buzz technique, to remind yourself that its a relaxed pursuit, not one of strength.

fewf, ok good.

The other thing?

Space Case Left Hand Syndrome

wtf?

Well basically you'll be playing something and have the left hand just flyin off the fretboard, ESPECIALLY FINGERS 3 AND 4 (ring and pinky) . This is the cause of so much inaccurace because the fingers have to travel so far to get to the next note. No we dont want this. Here is your drill to be done after the above:

Play the chromatic scalenow, DO NOT LIFT A FINGER UNTIL IT IS NEEDED AGAIN. So, I play finger 1 2 3 4 , then as i switch strings to place finger 1, I will not lift fingers 2 3 4. finger 1 lands, then finger 2 has permission to leave since it is needed else where. I call this THE STICKY FINGERS DRILL.. It's not how you ACTUALLY play, but it will fuck with your head and teach your fingers not to stray far from home.

Fewf.

Let me know if this doesnt make sense. I'm working on some videos once I get equipped. GL HF

As for your tuning thing well.... dont use a floyd rose >_<

For some left hand ideas, read my above response. Here's some things to keep in mind with left hand technique

Your hand should curve nicely, as if you were holding something like a can, or something phallic or whatever hhaaha. You want the fingers to come straight down on the strings , so that you play with your finger tips, and not the finger pads. RELAX! Relaxtion is speed and comfort.

Let me know if you want more music ideas, you should be able to find the sheet music for that piece with not too much effort.