On March 11 2015 06:11 FFGenerations wrote: hey guys it suddenly occured to me that the guy in video is still using his little finger in places where i dont feel like i need to use it , but maybe its because i'm playing "flat fingered" instead of on my fingertips???
so i made this very quick clip, maybe you can tell me if i need to be playing on my fingertips and with my wrist further behind the guitar (which will make it harder for me and force me to use my little finger in spots where my 3rd finger can no longer hit), or if this is actually OK?
see at 26s the guy in video uses his little finger whereas i use my 3rd finger....
ps if you want to record something quick try http://webcamera.io/ instead of loading up camtasia
Sometimes it's easier just to use 4th finger instead of 3rd because you don't have to stretch too far
For instance if I were to play what you did in the first few seconds I would use my 4th finger to reach the "4th" fret My hands are pretty small though I would suggest using more 4th just to be more comfortable using it so it would be easier in situations you need to use it
yeah people play that bit differently depending on the vid
for me using 4th (pinky) is worst to do by far but ill try for a while longer to see if i can use it a little more.
it seems like i have to move my hand (curl my wrist behind the guitar) a lot when i go to use the 4th finger to get it to reach
no worries if not, i can practice it in other spots without wanting to cut it off.
so long as my general finger positions dont look too awful ill just keep going and post more videos (this time with webcam) to make sure im not going astray
ok after a while i am starting to adjust a bit to using the 4th and sort of see how if you are strong in using it then it is slightly better aligned than using the 3rd (of course unless they are needed elsewhere). i guess i just assumed that the DEFAULT thing to do when jumping 2 notes is to go from the 1st to the 3rd since the 3rd reaches that pretty well .... however maybe the default behaviour (given even finger strength) is to just jump from the 1st to the 4th... ( i guess it makes sense if u have 4 fingers and 4 strings)
Dunno it seemed natural to have one finger per fret, since it lined up that way If you try playing towards the headstock, the frets are actually pretty big, so you really need to use one finger per fret Guitar books have you practicing 1234 all across the strings
Also wow its been 5 years since I made that video haha
lol youtube comments for the actual song , one guy says "These lyrics are awful. He repeats the same thing 100 times lol. Get some lyrical skill please." lol there's always one
this is awesome (but i think my fingers are going to bleed) <- good song name?
i just realised that i should be practicing standing up not sitting down hunched like a leper . i tried sitting straight a bit but i dont really have the right proportions . done a google and it sounds like most people practice standing up anyway. and when i tried it is so different to sitting down!! you cant see for shit (i hiked the guitar real high up)! but it feels nicer
man what with using my little finger and then alternate picking and now standing up... hard instrument yo
Something like this would work just fine. Comes down to personal preference. If you play on playing with people getting used to standing up is pretty much a requirement so don't neglect that.
Justin Guitar is the shit. His band is something I haven't really looked at, since We Came as Strangers doesn't make as much of the stuff I try to mimic. I just got my guitar back from the shop and he was one of the first things I started watching.
On a sidenote, do any of you guys have experience with boutique strats? I tried a Suhr strat a week ago and it was like an orgasmic experience in my hands. Granted I can't imagine ever trading in my strat for anything, since I love it, but still I was wondering if anyone felt this way about boutique strats.
well no1 replied so i will since i listened to it a week ago lol . your voice sounds so professional , if you just work on staying firmer on the notes it would be really great.
i just made this video coz someone was saying he is shit at picking and i was doing some afk practicing earlier
I'm not sure that's a great idea, why would you practice alternate picking on a single string without doing anything with your left hand? Surely it's more beneficial to at least practice scales while you're at it, or do SOMETHING other than just flicking your wrist up and down for ages...
Anyway...
Now that Spring has finally arrived in Germany, I love hanging out with my guitar in the sun, but it's a bit annoying that I have to always carry about a collection of my tab. I usually play 'fingerstyle' arrangements that I can't really learn by heart...
So I guess my question is, how do you emancipate yourself from tabs and play from memory or 'from the heart'?
I guess you could learn how to improvise: learn what sounds good over a chord and why, and then just practice that. There is a lot of stuff you can do, from reasonably simple arpeggios and pentatonics, to crazyass jazz scales that don't make sense but somehow work. Honestly my ability to improvise was really awful until i went back to a serious music school and learnt some theory.
Tbh I think that if you want to improvise (I guess that's what you mean by "from the heart") you just have to know some theory (obviously the more theory you know, the easier it is to do complex improvisation) and then work ideas with the theory that you know. Don't forget that theory is here to guide you, and don't get locked into a narrow-minded way of seeing and thinking your music though. Ultimately your ear (and other's) is more important than pure theory. As for playing from memory... I dunno, I never used tabs that much, so playing from memory is kinda normal to me. Basically it comes down to three things : repeating over and over what you want to memorize, using your ear to really pay attention to what you're playing and engraving it into your memory, and here again, knowing the theory that is behind the song. Additionally, if what you're playing is a previously recorded song, then listening to the song and trying to "see" what the guitarist plays (as in, seeing your hands and the fretboard in your mind) can be a useful thing to do too.
On March 21 2015 22:25 SixStrings wrote: I'm not sure that's a great idea, why would you practice alternate picking on a single string without doing anything with your left hand? Surely it's more beneficial to at least practice scales while you're at it, or do SOMETHING other than just flicking your wrist up and down for ages...
well it worked to improve my hand speed massively over the course of a few hours while i could sit on my bed and not worry about thinking or getting worn out. there is no reason why you can't gradually make it more complicated which obviously is what you do
(this is not aimed at you: )i seriously can't understand the enormous amount of disapproval for the video. it is literally aimed at people in their first week or whatever showing the most insanely obvious simple-as-possible exercises and saying "look, they do help if you do them over a period of time, i know because i just done them, so try them"
i cannot believe my eyes. its like if i said "practice cloning your scvs, it makes you better at them (obviously, but here's a video to demonstrate)" and got a barrage of responses telling me not to give advice . obviously you make exercises more complex as you progress , what the fuck?
edit: ok i figured it must be because of the intro line of my video which said "A good way to practice guitar as a beginner...", edited it now :
It's great that you're confident enough and try to help other learners, but for all you know, your method is at best useless and at worst detrimental. Not sure why I'm even argueing about this, two of the 15 clicks of this video are mine, but you might want to consider using your videos to track your progress instead of trying to make them educational.
As of this moment, you have nothing to offer. This will certainly change over time, as you seem committed, but for now consider sticking to learning and not teaching.
The UG community members have explained this in the nicest, most contructive way. I'll just quote the best response:
Fine.
Here is what is wrong with your playing:
You are picking extremely quietly, which means you have no tone to speak of. You shouldn't need to "give it a swing to get going": you practice the way you want to end up playing so putting a swing on your slow playing is not what you should be doing at all, unless you want to practice your swing playing. Your timing is inconsistent, at all speeds, particularly changing strings. Your string changing exercises are flawed because you're allowing strings to ring together, which is generally not what you want when you're alternate picking. Also, and this is a more minor detail, you're actually economy picking through your string change exercises.
Here is what is wrong with the exercises and what you have to say about them:
The way you advocate using these, they're actually not of any particular use: they don't develop any co-ordination (which is usually the real barrier to playing well for beginners) and there's no musical value to them at all. At this stage of your playing you're actually developing just by the act of playing, so sitting and playing a single string with absolutely zero musical content is actually a worse use of your time than you could get by playing literally any song. That said... playing in front of the TV and calling it practice is still very flawed, you're not improving your muscle memory, you're just reinforcing the habits you already have, which might work fine up to a point but if you're not concentrating on what you're doing you have no idea if you're ingraining bad habits in to your playing: there are many bad habits that can so easily creep in to your playing if you're not thinking about what you're doing. Practice without concentration is bad.
Now, none of these things are your fault. You're a beginner so no one expects you to be able to do much of anything. Not knowing is also not your fault, because you're a beginner and your ears are super undeveloped. No one expects you to be amazing or to know anything, you literally just haven't had the time to learn these things.
That said... the fact that you don't know these things is why you shouldn't be advising anyone on playing or practising: you do not know why you are bad, you have very little conception of how to get better or why anything might work, and so you are in no position to help anyone else. The fact you have only been playing two weeks is not why you are wrong... but it's why you don't know that
I didn't watch the video but there are some flaws in the argument you posted SixStrings. The fact that a practice exercise has no musical value is not an issue at all ; mechanical practice is not meant to have musical value, that's what musical practice/song learning/theory learning/attentive listening is for. Besides, the facts that it doesn't help coordination and that you have to focus while practicing are not entirely true ; while at first it is necessary to focus a lot, the next step is to do things subconsciously, that is, while focusing on other things. When you learn Travis picking for example, the first thing you want to do and to learn to do is the alternating bass with your thumb, and you just stupidly alternate the bass, without playing any chords at first, and you want to be able to alternate that bass even when watching TV or some shit. Before you can work on coordination between your two hands, you have to know how to use one hand first. Although since alternate picking isn't that complicated, it would be useful to quickly switch to another exercise which includes the left hand.
EPT
