The Guitarists Confessional Booth - Your 6-string sins

[WholeLottaIzzy]

I'll bite... from the hot wives thread...

http://www.mylespaul.com/forums/backstage/354558-start-social-revolution-hot-wives-matter-10.html#post7410858

Ask and thou shall receive!

 

[E1WOOD5150]

This list is gonna be long...

-I don't know the fretboard as well as I should.
-I struggle with scales
-Music theory are just a couple words. I certainly don't have the knowledge I should.
-I tell myself to "make musical sense," but the muscle memory doesn't care what I want. The patterns I have committed to memory, and the patterns my muscles have committed to memory are 2 different things. In the heat of the moment, I end up playing the same patterns. Thinking about the right patterns messes with my zen.
-I rely too much on distortion and/or overdrive. I'm not sure if it helps to hide my shortcomings from my ears, or I just dig that sound.
-I bought a strobe tuner to get my guitars in tune with themselves. I think I got them right. But sometimes, they don't sound right.
-I have no fear of taking apart an electric guitar, adjusting the intonation, string height, and/or overall action at the bridge. But messing with the neck worries me. And doing just about anything on an acoustic guitar scares me.
-I am primarily a "jam along with the Ipod" kinda guy. I have played in a band, and we played out. I currently jam a couple times a week with my best friend, who is a helluva drummer. But I fear that if I were to jam with others, my lack of knowledge will come back to haunt me.
-I rely too much on barre chords. Barres based on the E and A chords make up about 85% of my playing, with the rest made up of cowboy chords. In my defense, the barre chords seem to impart a bottom end to the overall sound of the song/band/jam that I personally cannot live without, even if a bass player is involved.
-Practice, to me, means jamming. Not a structured "sit and put your fingers here, here and here" thing. I learn the intro to the song, and usually, from there, I can figure out the bits.

There is a LOT more that I could add, but in a nutshell, I am a hack guitar player. But I love it, and (my drummer buddy tells me) I have an internal groove that kicks (his) a$$, and so he and I mesh together well. I am rather like Joe Perry, in that I want to crank it up and rock it out, not worrying about tuning, key, time signature or anything else other than the "does it rock?" test. The guitar is therapy to me. It is my psychiatrist, my Xanax, my Ritalin, my confidant...my signature says it best...

 

[rcole_sooner]

Really ... if I had any drive .. I'd learn...

• pentatonic box positions (I'm only really comfortable with the 1st. Other scales would be great too, but need to start somewhere.)
• Common song progressions (like 12 bar blues and such)
• roots and 5ths
• keys (maybe just some numbering system to switch between them)
• singing (I think having a voice would help me with guitar playing)

In other words learn the basic ... I mean basic ... crap needed to be able to jam.

I just play by number.

But, it is all because I too lazy to really practice. I "play" several hours a week, but always just jamming over songs.

 

[Laggspike]

i hate hearing my self play :/

and i am too embarresed if i am in the same room with someone listening to my music

i barely know the names of all scales, and i can barely play them

i have a thing for female drummers (Been with 2, and it was scary)

When i mean "im playing" i usely means i have made a loop and then just jaming on it for 40 hours a week.

i cant play guitar after 2 beers.

i love sweating as a pig while playing.

im a better player standing up.

i cant read any notes or tablets, barely chords

tend to use my ears,

 

[Joeydego]

some of you guys are confusing practice with learning. It takes 3 minutes to learn the skill, then countless hours to assimilate said skill. You need to do both or there is no progress. My students come to me to learn. No one really assimilates the skill they learned in 45 minutes. They need to take it home and work on it all week and bring it back to me finished.

 

[WholeLottaIzzy]

some of you guys are confusing practice with learning. It takes 3 minutes to learn the skill, then countless hours to assimilate said skill. You need to do both or there is no progress. My students come to me to learn. No one really assimilates the skill they learned in 45 minutes. They need to take it home and work on it all week and bring it back to me finished.

Exactly. I am currently learning all five positions of the major scale. Only ever knew one and never used it. I've learnt the first two in an hour yesterday. I can run up and down them, back and forth and name all the scale degrees. But can I improvise with them? Can I ****.... That's gonna take quite a while longer yet.

 

[StonedCrow]

Stoned Crow,

Not a sin at all. In fact I read somewhere that the guitar's ancestor, the lute, was invented by a lefty who built it in conformance with the right hand guitars of today, and fretted with his left, dominant, hand. When I started trying to play in 59 and, as a righty, was told to fret with my left hand, I thought "what the hell is this". So maybe we've all been doing it wrong all these years!

Your dominant hand drives rhythm, in fact your dominant hand drives your guitar playing, I actually found it a lot harded getting used to holding a pic and picing with my left hand than I did fretting with my right hand, I can't finger pick to save my life with my left hand, yet my guitar playing started with a classical guitar with classical guitar lessons so I'm very good at finger picking with my right hand to the point where I even use my little finger to finger pick, and to make matters stranger, what I like with my right handed guitars and the picks I hold in my right hand is completely different from my left hand - I actually have two tins of pics, those for use with my right hand, and ones for my left.

some of you guys are confusing practice with learning. It takes 3 minutes to learn the skill, then countless hours to assimilate said skill. You need to do both or there is no progress. My students come to me to learn. No one really assimilates the skill they learned in 45 minutes. They need to take it home and work on it all week and bring it back to me finished.

Ain't that the truth, I've been playing Sweet Child Of Mine with bands since I was a teenager, player properly using a proper guitar, a right handed one, when I decided to have a laugh and experiment with lefties, it took me almost a month to play the intro left handed, I was actually embarrassed and almost gave up messing around with cock handed guitars because of it.

 

[SJJMcGhee]

I only ever learned the major and minor pentatonic, I have no idea what other scales I play if I'm doing lead I just learned them by nicking them off someone else or trial and error

I also can't read music, but I doubt I'm alone in that one

 

[Dilemma]

some of you guys are confusing practice with learning. It takes 3 minutes to learn the skill, then countless hours to assimilate said skill. You need to do both or there is no progress. My students come to me to learn. No one really assimilates the skill they learned in 45 minutes. They need to take it home and work on it all week and bring it back to me finished.

Here's my take on this; I equate the technical aspect of guitar playing to welding. Hear me out now,,,,

When you're learning to weld it's all about the mechanics of it. How fast you move your right hand, how much filler rod you add with your left, how wide is your puddle, what are you doing with your wrists, hand position, travel speed, rod angle, etc.

Playing guitar is a similar exercise. Of course some people will have better mechanics than others, but the technical aspect is motor memory to a large degree. The trick, and this is the trick, is to pay attention to why you can start on a downstroke and play through your run but struggle with starting on the upstroke. I've gone so far as to videotape my right hand to see WTF was happening. Low and behold, my wrist is positioned differently in each case. My solution is to adopt a more neutral position which I'm working on. One thing I'd like to add here is breaking bad habits or re-learning your technique is a B I T C H.

The genius is the songwriting though. The rest is just mechanics.

 

[roeg]

I have picks made from turtle's shells.Kinda like braz rosewood,ibtl.

 

[EDS1275]

having too many guitars for one person to devote enough attention to each. feel guilty about that

 

[Freddy G]

some of you guys are confusing practice with learning. It takes 3 minutes to learn the skill, then countless hours to assimilate said skill. You need to do both or there is no progress. My students come to me to learn. No one really assimilates the skill they learned in 45 minutes. They need to take it home and work on it all week and bring it back to me finished.

I'm still working on a single lesson I took in 1986 from Dave Whitehill

 

[StonedCrow]

I have picks made from turtle's shells.Kinda like braz rosewood,ibtl.

I can top that but I'm not goona post it on an open forum where I risk being prosecuted for possion of endangered and rare species.

 

[Joeydego]

Exactly. I am currently learning all five positions of the major scale. Only ever knew one and never used it. I've learnt the first two in an hour yesterday. I can run up and down them, back and forth and name all the scale degrees. But can I improvise with them? Can I ****.... That's gonna take quite a while longer yet.

I dont mean to keep pushing this guy because I'm not a huge fan of his actual music, but Andy James brought my playing leaps and bounds with his online guitar academy. I hurt my right hand a couple years ago and wasn't able to play very well anymore because of it. I was really bummed out. I got depressed and then determined to fix my hand better than it was before. I searched high and low for the BEST of the best pickers out there and landed at this guys E doorstep. Little by little, I taught my right hand to play again and low and behold its twice as good as its ever been today, solely because of his online lessons and direct critique of my playing. Check him out, for mechanics, I really don't think it gets any better.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__bGc5-2BM[/ame]

 

[freebyrd 69]

I play by ear. I can read tab a little, but, self taught by ear for the most part. I gig regularly, but, I can't tell you the notes on the fretboard past the 5th fret on the d string.

I wish I would have learned to read music at some point...I'm sure I'd be better off for it, but, I didn't. I consider myself a decent bar band guitarist. I just love to play....never gave a sh!t about theory, it bores me.

 

[iavera]

I can't remember scales to save my life! once I stop playing them for a few minutes I would need to look at the book again...I can remember a "shape" of a scale just don't know what it is!

 

[iavera]

I play by ear. I can read tab a little, but, self taught by ear for the most part. I gig regularly, but, I can't tell you the notes on the fretboard past the 5th fret on the d string.

I wish I would have learned to read music at some point...I'm sure I'd be better off for it, but, I didn't. I consider myself a decent bar band guitarist. I just love to play....never gave a sh!t about theory, it bores me.

...and this! exactly this.

 

[WholeLottaIzzy]

I dont mean to keep pushing this guy because I'm not a huge fan of his actual music, but Andy James brought my playing leaps and bounds with his online guitar academy. I hurt my right hand a couple years ago and wasn't able to play very well anymore because of it. I was really bummed out. I got depressed and then determined to fix my hand better than it was before. I searched high and low for the BEST of the best pickers out there and landed at this guys E doorstep. Little by little, I taught my right hand to play again and low and behold its twice as good as its ever been today, solely because of his online lessons and direct critique of my playing. Check him out, for mechanics, I really don't think it gets any better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G__bGc5-2BM

Andy James is a beast. I've got a few of his lick library dvds. I got a lot of theory to get on with for the next month. After that, I'll probably focus a bit more on technique and the right hand. I'll definitely check out some of his technique videos, thanks.

 

[CherryBurstChaser]

I'm a very lazy player.

 

[Dilemma]

I'm a very lazy player.

I'm a lazy drinker, worker and spouse too. I'm really quite the catch.