learning to play guitar better... with $0

[kayagum]

...kinda hard not to rant when you preface your topic with "... with $0".

$0 because i haven't got it-- i'm in the red at my bank as it is. in debt. school to pay for. gas is going up. i have my money in too many other places right now to pay for guitar lessons... i wouldn't mind at all paying for guitar lessons, in fact i'd prefer to. there's nothing like hands on learning! but since i don't have the money, i could either ask for a little advice and go about my way... or the worst option: not bother trying until i can afford a teacher. but why would that make any sense? i'm ready to learn!

On the money part.... money is actually math. Either earn more money, or spend less. The tricky part is prioritizing: for example, school is a long term investment where you may not see a return for a long time (or ever). Some of your gear purchases may take a while to learn, or to use and get an income in return.

However, you have clearly enough cash or credit to buy all of the stuff you've described in your 2000+ posts, and you live with your folks (from what I can gather). Maybe it's an issue of priorities and limits... maybe you don't need that extra analog doohickey, and instead pay for some guitar lessons. Now, I'm no saint in the personal financial management department, but I did make the choice of foregoing a car payment and living in a cheap studio apartment, and plowing the $$ difference into gear. And even though I had formal classical piano training, I needed to put in the time to unlearn it, and learn the guitar styles I liked.

The good news is that you don't necessarily need formal lessons to learn how to play guitar. The bad news is that the less you spend on lessons, the more time you need to figure it out on your own. Of course, genius helps, but that didn't stop the great guitarists from putting in the time (we're talking decades, folks, not months). Proficiency and training in other music disciplines help, but I don't think it necessarily flattens the learning curve; on the contrary, you may have more to unlearn (try going from Debussy to bluegrass or Megadeth).

If you really want to get better with guitar, either increase the $ or increase the time. Prolly both.

[joeysimms]

It costs nothing, in the words of Frank Zappa, to "shut up and play yer guitar!"

Hell, the pages of awesome responses to your questions are lessons in and of themselves!

Copy some simple chords out of a book at the library. Cost: 15 cents a page.

Learn and practice those chords. Learn the inversions of those chords, so that you can play an E chord in 4 different places on the neck. In my opinion, that makes you 4 times better than the guy / gal who can't. Don't worry about solos yet.

[JGriffin]

I also have really small hands, but have no problem with barre chords. It helps that I've been doing it for almost thirty years, but: kayagum's advice was right on the money about where to put your thumb. A little towards the headstock is good, and the other important thing is that you don't let your thumb come up over the top of the neck while playing barre chords. It's okay (though not terribly good form) to use your thumb, say, to fret an F# while playing a first-position D chord, but for a barre chord, letting your thumb drift up there will force your index finger to curve and cause strings to get muted. (an old guitar teacher I had used to keep a drumstick handy during lessons, and if one's thumb appeared over the top of the neck, one's thumb got whacked with the drumstick.) The earlier suggestion of actually using your thumb to barre the low strings while barring the upper sstrings with your index finger will likely not work for a small-handed person.

I know a dead horse when I beat one, but I will add my $.02 to the "other people's songs" discussion. It's invaluable. Learning other people's songs, and playing them, can be a fantastic ear-training exercise and a moderately good substitute for theory classes (far too few "musicians" know music theory). I played in cover bands for a good part of the last twenty-five years, and learning all those songs has helped me to write better songs of my own (I'd like to think). If I have a melody in my head, I don't have to hunt around for the right chords; I already pretty much know how certain chords will complement certain melodic ideas. You can stumble onto this all by yourself or be lucky enough to have a great natural instinct for it, but the Beatles Master Class can help a lot. I remember one guitar player I worked with who would write songs like a touch-typist. He'd get himself going on an E chord, then when it came time to switch chords he'd play a G--no, that ain't it, let's try an A. Nah, doesn't do it. Bb? not quite right. Hm. What if I go to D? Shit, still isn't right. It could go on all afternoon, or longer if he decided to try a bunch of minor chords. This guy had no ear-training for chord changes, but I did, having learned dozens or even hundreds of songs by ear and figuring out the patterns that ultimately are defined by the rules of music theory (something I learned later when I went to college and actually learned some theory). Training programs for other art forms include an imitative phase: writers are encouraged to attempt to write like Hemingway, Dickens, Shakespeare, to see how those styles work, how they differ and how they are similar. Artists (and this is since waaay before Da Vinci, even) start out learning techniques of other artists. It's a fairly well-proven learning technique.

[swingdoc]

hey swingdoc... i agree with most of your pointers. however, i would respectfully disagree with the idea that you can't just learn guitar without a style. i love everything. rock, jazz, folk, blues, i like a lot of different stuff from different eras. there is nothing i would want to restrict myself to. i don't just want to learn to play rock guitar.capisce?

Sure, ones always welcome to disagree, but I disagree with your disagree.
If you want to be "good" at "guitar", then focusing on a style is truly important. You can be "ok" at a few styles, but most of the great players have a style they excel at, and then have others they do for fun etc.
"Guitar" is too vague of a notion to attempt to get "good" at. Its like, "I want to be good at track". Well, do you mean 4 mile, 100 meter or long jump? The styles are all vastly different as to chord structures, picking techniques etc. etc etc. Pick a style that you see fits your personality, then get after it.
Its just my humble op. that its way too easy to sit and spin wheels if you dont have a focused stlye in mind. Get great at one style, then you might be good at others.

[Brian Brock]

Well, it's true that one should have specific goals, but I think wing's problem may be a distaste for playing any one "style" of music. To take the track metaphor, rather than learning track, maybe wing wants to learn something in which running and jumping are equally important, like speed mountain climbing.

I think you can invent your own style - but, the musical traditions are there like a big library/school for you to learn from.

[wing]

Don't worry about solos yet.

well it's not "solos" that i'm looking for... just the ability to know how to play more interesting patterns than just strumming chords. playing notes and melodies!

[wing]

hey swingdoc... i agree with most of your pointers. however, i would respectfully disagree with the idea that you can't just learn guitar without a style. i love everything. rock, jazz, folk, blues, i like a lot of different stuff from different eras. there is nothing i would want to restrict myself to. i don't just want to learn to play rock guitar.capisce?

Sure, ones always welcome to disagree, but I disagree with your disagree.
If you want to be "good" at "guitar", then focusing on a style is truly important. You can be "ok" at a few styles, but most of the great players have a style they excel at, and then have others they do for fun etc.
"Guitar" is too vague of a notion to attempt to get "good" at. Its like, "I want to be good at track". Well, do you mean 4 mile, 100 meter or long jump? The styles are all vastly different as to chord structures, picking techniques etc. etc etc. Pick a style that you see fits your personality, then get after it.
Its just my humble op. that its way too easy to sit and spin wheels if you dont have a focused stlye in mind. Get great at one style, then you might be good at others.

i see your point.. i just meant i don't want to be limited to one thing. like on the drums, i can play pretty much all styles really well. i don't want to hold myself back on any instrument.

i think styles are all subjective anyway... to me, knowing an instrument is just intimately knowing it, regardless of the styles that have been known to be played on them. i do agree with what you're saying in part, but i guess my point was just that for me to learn something means i want to learn everything i can.

[wing]

THANK YOU ALL!!! all these replies are extremely helpful. i feel more encouraged that i really can do this, despite the fact that everytime i get on guitar everyone laughs and thinks i'm a joke. whatever. screw them. screw everyone. i'm going to be the first man to play a guitar on fire that shoots lasers and saw blades and tigers in the face of unbelievers as i wail like nobody's business. you just wait.

[beebe]

Beginning students often ask, "How long will it take me to learn the Way of Zen Guitar?" My answer is, as long as you live--that short. Your playing may progress enough to impress your friends in a year's time, perform onstage in two years, or turn professional in three. But if those are the ends you seek, your concern is not Zen Guitar. The Way of Zen Guitar is learned day by day, minute by minute, second by second, now, to eternity. There is no faster way.

Beginning students also commonly ask, "How long until I get my black belt?" To them I say, you'll never earn a black belt so long as you ask that question. To be obsessed with the destination is to remove the focus from where you are. The only way to progress in Zen Guitar is to put everything into this step, right now.

How will I progress?

While it's true that in some schools a student formally graduates from one belt level to the next, in the Zen Guitar Dojo, there is no such graduation. Students here receive one belt and one belt only: the white belt. Those who put in the time, training, and effort will find their belt getting so soiled that eventually it turns black of its own accord. Only then will they have achieved black belt status.


In Zen Guitar, the black belt is not a goal or an end. At other schools, the black belt may signify ultimate achievement, but in Zen Guitar, it is only a point along the path. I have great respect for those who reach the black belt level; it takes sincere commitment. But the true Way of Zen Guitar asks black belt players to redouble their training until their belt becomes so worn and frayed it begins to lose color and returns to white. Only through completion of that circle--white to black, black to white--can one know the depth of the Way.

[AstroDan]

If you're not Steve Vai, then you shouldn't even be playing a guitar, cut and dried. Because he is the best guitar player in the world and no one else matters as long as he is breathing on the earth whilst holding his tye-dyed guitar with the built in guitar-handle.

I think the best way to be good at playing is to just play. Go to a Seymour Duncan or Mel Bay website and get a standard blues scale and practice. 99% of all contemporary American popular music is composed from the so called "blues" scale, or I guess, pentatonic 'do, re, mi' scale, regardless of what genre it evolved into. You don't have to play blues with the blues scale. I don't know, it's all about simple ratios and overtones and all that crap.