Well, not much is happening. I went to "my country retreat" over the holidays and even though I have a steel string and a nylon string there, I only played once in 2 weeks, and even then nothing new, just a refresher on all my standard stuff.
So as it stands, I'm still working on getting "Mad World" up to playable; noodling with "Head over Feet" to make sure it plays well; I'm still also noodling with "Space Oddity" which is coming along nicely.
I recently got in touch with a guy who had been playing with some of my Pink Floyd stuff and does Pink Floyd stuff of his own. I've been working on a guitar arrangement of "Great Gig in the Sky" for a long time now, it's coming along nicely but it is not high priority and it would be years before I finished it. I sent him a copy and a quick vid of my playing it and discussing what I'm doing with it, he seems keen to run with it.
I may have mentioned before that I have a long long term ambition to do a fingerstyle arrangement of the whole of "Dark Side of the Moon". He likes the sound of that and may put his hand to assisting - which means something might come out within a decade!
JAW
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Monday, 22 December 2008
What's happening December 2008
With some summer holidays up my sleeve I've grabbed some spare time to do some guitaring...first up I came across a kiwi named Oliver Batchelor who had some responses to my videos, while checking them out I saw "Mad World", and that he had tabbed it. Man after my own heart! It was Ulli's version, copied by Sungha, transcribed by Oliver and I though, ah, why not learn a song from a tab!
It's been straight forward, a little tricky to co-ordinate, it's funny how the stuff you work out for yourself is "easy" but the stuff you are playing from a tab is "hard". Well it's not funny at all really, you arrange your own stuff in your own style, which is what comes naturally to you.
Anyway, it's played capo at 8th fret, dropped D, which makes for something interesting for sure. What it has done however is broken my spirit, or something - it has shown me that my guitar is badly intonated. I've been running fairly high tension strings on it (still coming off steel string), next set will be normal tension. That should help improve it, but if it doesn't, it will be time to take matters into my own hands.
Problem with intonation on a classical is there is no adjustment at all - playing intonation means filing up bridges and possibly nuts. I did anticipate the needs for fiddling and grabbed a couple of bone bridge blanks when I bought the guitar. I need to read up a bit more about it before I start hacking, but the physics of it is quite straight forward...
About a week ago a potential fingerstyle tune popped into the brain, usually these things happen to me in the shower. Hot water heating the brain up? Anyway, and old favourite of my missus, Alanis Morisette "Head Over Feet". I remember the missus buying "Jagged Little Pill" and noticing that one was a glimmer of hope in an album of anger and pain, not to mention it was melodically quite nice. Never got the headlines like the other songs on the album, until later. Perhaps when the world had had enough of the anger and needed that hope ;)
Had a noodle last night and whaddaya know, perfectly suited to fingerstyle. In about 2 hours I had a tab done. Just gotta learn it now.
How did I get the tab done in 2 hours you say!?
First, I youtubed the song. Found a nice acoustic version she did a few years back. Listened to it a few times. Searched internet for the chords. Easy. Couldn't quite pick the melody (have I mentioned my ability to pick a note is really poor?) so I downloaded a midi. This is a good trick by the way - normally tabs won't ever have the melody. Why bother, you sing the melody don't you? But midi files usually have the melody. Powertab can import midi files and display as tab (you have to choose the correct midi instrument that is playing the melody. Not always one, not always easy). Play the melody. Pick out a bassline, work in some chord strums. You are there :)
It's is quite hard to play, and I still need to add an outtro, possibly might try to get the harmonica solo in the middle in as well.
I'll probably do a video of it sometime early next year. Mad world will be soon too, if I can get over the bad intonation that is...
JAW
It's been straight forward, a little tricky to co-ordinate, it's funny how the stuff you work out for yourself is "easy" but the stuff you are playing from a tab is "hard". Well it's not funny at all really, you arrange your own stuff in your own style, which is what comes naturally to you.
Anyway, it's played capo at 8th fret, dropped D, which makes for something interesting for sure. What it has done however is broken my spirit, or something - it has shown me that my guitar is badly intonated. I've been running fairly high tension strings on it (still coming off steel string), next set will be normal tension. That should help improve it, but if it doesn't, it will be time to take matters into my own hands.
Problem with intonation on a classical is there is no adjustment at all - playing intonation means filing up bridges and possibly nuts. I did anticipate the needs for fiddling and grabbed a couple of bone bridge blanks when I bought the guitar. I need to read up a bit more about it before I start hacking, but the physics of it is quite straight forward...
About a week ago a potential fingerstyle tune popped into the brain, usually these things happen to me in the shower. Hot water heating the brain up? Anyway, and old favourite of my missus, Alanis Morisette "Head Over Feet". I remember the missus buying "Jagged Little Pill" and noticing that one was a glimmer of hope in an album of anger and pain, not to mention it was melodically quite nice. Never got the headlines like the other songs on the album, until later. Perhaps when the world had had enough of the anger and needed that hope ;)
Had a noodle last night and whaddaya know, perfectly suited to fingerstyle. In about 2 hours I had a tab done. Just gotta learn it now.
How did I get the tab done in 2 hours you say!?
First, I youtubed the song. Found a nice acoustic version she did a few years back. Listened to it a few times. Searched internet for the chords. Easy. Couldn't quite pick the melody (have I mentioned my ability to pick a note is really poor?) so I downloaded a midi. This is a good trick by the way - normally tabs won't ever have the melody. Why bother, you sing the melody don't you? But midi files usually have the melody. Powertab can import midi files and display as tab (you have to choose the correct midi instrument that is playing the melody. Not always one, not always easy). Play the melody. Pick out a bassline, work in some chord strums. You are there :)
It's is quite hard to play, and I still need to add an outtro, possibly might try to get the harmonica solo in the middle in as well.
I'll probably do a video of it sometime early next year. Mad world will be soon too, if I can get over the bad intonation that is...
JAW
Friday, 12 December 2008
Audiences, again
What's it all about?
Okay, so we all like to play guitar, but why? I used to enjoy the personal challenge of being able to play music and everything it involved - learning new skills, memorising songs, developing the speed and dexterity to play a tune accurately. The satisfaction of hearing a song come out from a guitar in my hands. Eventually that wasn't enough, I wanted other people to hear it. Pride and ego? I don't really think so, it's more of a case if you owned the entire world but didn't have anyone to share it with, would that be satisfying?
Playing for an audience...there are two ways of doing that I can see - play what you want to play and hope that there is an audience to suit you...or play what you think an audience wants.
Having been reasonably well accepted on youtube I have a perhaps overinflated expectation of what listeners think of me. Out of say a billion people who have had the oppurtunity to look at any of my work, there has been about a million and a half who _have_ looked...which means just over one person in 1000. In two and a half years of being there. Now if you were sitting on the street playing for random people, 1 in 1000 equates to, well, almost nobody.
To lift the odds I have decided to play more for an expected audience. I've approached that by examining what my most popular videos are, and examining the most popular videos of other players. Naudo is an excellent indicator because (a) he is an unknown - that is, nobody is searching for his videos unlike say Tommy Emmanuel; (b) he has a lot of videos of covers to form some good popularity statistics.
Oh, I probably should mention that playing for an expected audience means playing stuff that they will know. People like to hear stuff they already like. If you were a big popular artist then you can play original stuff, but the guy playing original stuff on the corner needs to be either stupendously engaging, or playing on a corner that a high number of passers by are into his form of art. Open mike is probably a good scenario, otherwise both cases are otherwise unlikely.
Another part of the puzzle is you probably need to be able to sing. This is a double edged sword. If you can sing and play guitar you will attract far more listeners in my humble opinion; but singing is a land of personal taste and has a lot of room for error. For example, when playing the guitar most people won't notice the odd non-fatal stuff up, but stuff up singing and people recognise it in a heartbeat. Then there is whether the audience likes your voice - the personal taste thing. You do kinda need to be a good singer.
To avoid singing you unfortunatley need to be able to play the guitar really well, dare I say fingerstyle covers - catch a whole song on one instrument. I recommend learning to play simple guitar and developing your voice ;) Oh, if you are a good-looking girl then that helps immensely...
I'm not sure if there was a point to all this, lets see if I can summarise:
(a) Eventually you will need to play to an audience;
(b) Play stuff that people know;
(c) If you can't play oustanding fingerstyle covers of stuff that people know, then concentrate on your singing.
I promise I will reassess these statements when I start playing to an audience :)
JAW
Okay, so we all like to play guitar, but why? I used to enjoy the personal challenge of being able to play music and everything it involved - learning new skills, memorising songs, developing the speed and dexterity to play a tune accurately. The satisfaction of hearing a song come out from a guitar in my hands. Eventually that wasn't enough, I wanted other people to hear it. Pride and ego? I don't really think so, it's more of a case if you owned the entire world but didn't have anyone to share it with, would that be satisfying?
Playing for an audience...there are two ways of doing that I can see - play what you want to play and hope that there is an audience to suit you...or play what you think an audience wants.
Having been reasonably well accepted on youtube I have a perhaps overinflated expectation of what listeners think of me. Out of say a billion people who have had the oppurtunity to look at any of my work, there has been about a million and a half who _have_ looked...which means just over one person in 1000. In two and a half years of being there. Now if you were sitting on the street playing for random people, 1 in 1000 equates to, well, almost nobody.
To lift the odds I have decided to play more for an expected audience. I've approached that by examining what my most popular videos are, and examining the most popular videos of other players. Naudo is an excellent indicator because (a) he is an unknown - that is, nobody is searching for his videos unlike say Tommy Emmanuel; (b) he has a lot of videos of covers to form some good popularity statistics.
Oh, I probably should mention that playing for an expected audience means playing stuff that they will know. People like to hear stuff they already like. If you were a big popular artist then you can play original stuff, but the guy playing original stuff on the corner needs to be either stupendously engaging, or playing on a corner that a high number of passers by are into his form of art. Open mike is probably a good scenario, otherwise both cases are otherwise unlikely.
Another part of the puzzle is you probably need to be able to sing. This is a double edged sword. If you can sing and play guitar you will attract far more listeners in my humble opinion; but singing is a land of personal taste and has a lot of room for error. For example, when playing the guitar most people won't notice the odd non-fatal stuff up, but stuff up singing and people recognise it in a heartbeat. Then there is whether the audience likes your voice - the personal taste thing. You do kinda need to be a good singer.
To avoid singing you unfortunatley need to be able to play the guitar really well, dare I say fingerstyle covers - catch a whole song on one instrument. I recommend learning to play simple guitar and developing your voice ;) Oh, if you are a good-looking girl then that helps immensely...
I'm not sure if there was a point to all this, lets see if I can summarise:
(a) Eventually you will need to play to an audience;
(b) Play stuff that people know;
(c) If you can't play oustanding fingerstyle covers of stuff that people know, then concentrate on your singing.
I promise I will reassess these statements when I start playing to an audience :)
JAW
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Solar Guitar Amp
I resurrected my solar guitar amp project about 3 months ago, I'm planning on doing the buskey thing, which only allows for battery powered amplification. I need to play to a real audience "to get to the next level". You'll have to take that on face value, I can't explain why.
Anyway, lets talk solar guitar amp.
A while back I built a battery powered amp. 12V lead acid gel cell; unfortunately amplifiers like wider voltages than 0-12V, in fact ideally they like a negative rail (have I mentioned that in my day job I'm an electrical engineer?) Anyway, car amplifiers have to use 12VDC so there are plenty of power amplifier chips for 12V. The one I built was around 5WRMS, which was pretty boring. The enclosure was small and heavy so I rarely used it.
This time I want more power. Instead of building up a amp circuit from scratch I thought I'd get one of those rice boy duff-duff car amps. I grabbed a fancy schmancy blue LED backlit type amps. I tried to get the least lairy and lowest power one but it is still 150WRMS. Man they are cheap for what they are, paid about AUD$150 for it.
The thing I was worried about with car amps is input sensitivity - car stereo equipment has quite high outputs, guitar output is quite low. It worked out well though, I put it on the bench and found a sensitivity knob on the back, wound it right up and the power level coming out of a single channel un-enclosed speaker was plenty adequate. More importantly, the unit is power friendly, it was only pulling just over 1 amp on one channel when I was belting out maximum volume. Important for battery life.
To really make the amp a talking point I've decided to mount my little 5W solar panel and regulator on it; it has been running fine for many years. Sure you could just charge up the 12V battery before each use, but where is the public interest in that?
Speakers - I've looked at car speakers, in the past it was all about 3-way blah blah all-in-one, but nowdays you can get 3-way but it is split into multiple speakers, so I'd only use the big one and chuck the little ones out...seeing as the maximum note on a guitar is about 1kHz - but you'd want more kHz for "tonal quality harmonics". The speaker usually peaks out at 3-4kHz. Should be plenty.
I'll just stick with 4Ohm speakers, one per channel. I could parallel them for 2Ohms one channel but the amp isn't recommended for that. I could bridge the amp and drive just one as well but meh, I'll drive it "just as nature intended".
So I need to build an enclosure as well. I decided seeing as it has a lead acid battery in it to start with, I should make a lightweight but extremely rugged enclosure, as it will also be my playing seat. I've got some 3mm marine ply and a lot of tassie oak strips to brace out the middle. I've got a bit of foam for a seat on top and some marine grade vinyl to cover the whole thing. I decided I would mount the two speakers in the front (complete with porting) but face them outwards slightly. This will help eliminate resonance frequencies because the enclosure is no longer regular, and will also "spread" the sound out a bit more which is useful because my legs will be in front of the speakers ;)
Anyway, it is a work in progress, watch this space!
Anyway, lets talk solar guitar amp.
A while back I built a battery powered amp. 12V lead acid gel cell; unfortunately amplifiers like wider voltages than 0-12V, in fact ideally they like a negative rail (have I mentioned that in my day job I'm an electrical engineer?) Anyway, car amplifiers have to use 12VDC so there are plenty of power amplifier chips for 12V. The one I built was around 5WRMS, which was pretty boring. The enclosure was small and heavy so I rarely used it.
This time I want more power. Instead of building up a amp circuit from scratch I thought I'd get one of those rice boy duff-duff car amps. I grabbed a fancy schmancy blue LED backlit type amps. I tried to get the least lairy and lowest power one but it is still 150WRMS. Man they are cheap for what they are, paid about AUD$150 for it.
The thing I was worried about with car amps is input sensitivity - car stereo equipment has quite high outputs, guitar output is quite low. It worked out well though, I put it on the bench and found a sensitivity knob on the back, wound it right up and the power level coming out of a single channel un-enclosed speaker was plenty adequate. More importantly, the unit is power friendly, it was only pulling just over 1 amp on one channel when I was belting out maximum volume. Important for battery life.
To really make the amp a talking point I've decided to mount my little 5W solar panel and regulator on it; it has been running fine for many years. Sure you could just charge up the 12V battery before each use, but where is the public interest in that?
Speakers - I've looked at car speakers, in the past it was all about 3-way blah blah all-in-one, but nowdays you can get 3-way but it is split into multiple speakers, so I'd only use the big one and chuck the little ones out...seeing as the maximum note on a guitar is about 1kHz - but you'd want more kHz for "tonal quality harmonics". The speaker usually peaks out at 3-4kHz. Should be plenty.
I'll just stick with 4Ohm speakers, one per channel. I could parallel them for 2Ohms one channel but the amp isn't recommended for that. I could bridge the amp and drive just one as well but meh, I'll drive it "just as nature intended".
So I need to build an enclosure as well. I decided seeing as it has a lead acid battery in it to start with, I should make a lightweight but extremely rugged enclosure, as it will also be my playing seat. I've got some 3mm marine ply and a lot of tassie oak strips to brace out the middle. I've got a bit of foam for a seat on top and some marine grade vinyl to cover the whole thing. I decided I would mount the two speakers in the front (complete with porting) but face them outwards slightly. This will help eliminate resonance frequencies because the enclosure is no longer regular, and will also "spread" the sound out a bit more which is useful because my legs will be in front of the speakers ;)
Anyway, it is a work in progress, watch this space!
Friday, 28 November 2008
Nails
I'm going to go all girly on you now and talk about nails. I play with my fingernails, so that means I need to have good nails in order to play...if you don't play on nails then excellent & great stuff, you'll never have to be girly, just cut them off at the base and go!
Nails...I can offer a few tips - unfortunately the first one is "be born with good genetics for nails". My nails are quite strong, I can play on steel string with natural nails and although they do wear, they can take it. On nylon, well, I have to keep filing them down.
I've used nail oils in the past, the stuff that is supposed to strengthen your nails and cuticles, I don't know if it made any difference. I don't bother anymore.
I shape mine fairly often - the moment there is a small nick in one I quickly file it smooth again. The little nicks can turn into cracks and rips real quick. I keep nail files all around the house and in my car so there is never an excuse not to keep them trim. If you "break a nail" <sob> you won't enjoy playing for at least a week!
Word on the street is only file in one direction, but I haven't found any difference if I file in both directions. Shape down the sides of the nail so that you don't let rips start through the sides. Keep them as long or short as what give you your favourite tone. Don't bite them and don't use them as screwdrivers!
If you are not blessed with good nails then try cutting them off to the base and play hard on fingertips on a steel stringer for a while until tough callouses start to form. You'll find that playing on callouses gives a good feel and sound on steel strings when you are used to it, and you never have to worry about breaking a nail. I triend this once, but I just didn't like it, so I've gone back to playing with nails on nylon. Nails are nice for that classical sound - even the non-classical sort of stuff I play.
To protect your nails further do things with your left hand that you normally do with your right. Open doors, scratching dried food of the babys high chair, etc - keep the right hand away from potential nail breakages. Wear gloves when you wash dishes. Don't play immediately after having a shower when you nails are waterlogged and weak.
This is only about the thumb and 3 fingers on the right hand (I keep my pinky on right hand short, I don't pick with pinky so there is no need to look after that nail). On the left hand I used to cut them off at the base but I found that leaving just a tiny bit of nail stops your skin from trying to push up over your nail when fretting. I just cut left hand nails with clippers, I rarely bother shaping them.
Learn you nails too; my right middle fingernail has a ridge that grows through it making a weak point, right on the striking bitey part. I'm careful to keep that section of the nail smooth. My right ring fingernail grows really fast but is prone to tearing through the side so I make sure I file both sides low and smooth.
If you have bad nails, maybe consider getting acrylics. I looked into it once when I was playing on steel, decided against it because of the maintenance. I think you'd only bother with acrylics if you were fulltime professional and playing on steel.
JAW
Nails...I can offer a few tips - unfortunately the first one is "be born with good genetics for nails". My nails are quite strong, I can play on steel string with natural nails and although they do wear, they can take it. On nylon, well, I have to keep filing them down.
I've used nail oils in the past, the stuff that is supposed to strengthen your nails and cuticles, I don't know if it made any difference. I don't bother anymore.
I shape mine fairly often - the moment there is a small nick in one I quickly file it smooth again. The little nicks can turn into cracks and rips real quick. I keep nail files all around the house and in my car so there is never an excuse not to keep them trim. If you "break a nail" <sob> you won't enjoy playing for at least a week!
Word on the street is only file in one direction, but I haven't found any difference if I file in both directions. Shape down the sides of the nail so that you don't let rips start through the sides. Keep them as long or short as what give you your favourite tone. Don't bite them and don't use them as screwdrivers!
If you are not blessed with good nails then try cutting them off to the base and play hard on fingertips on a steel stringer for a while until tough callouses start to form. You'll find that playing on callouses gives a good feel and sound on steel strings when you are used to it, and you never have to worry about breaking a nail. I triend this once, but I just didn't like it, so I've gone back to playing with nails on nylon. Nails are nice for that classical sound - even the non-classical sort of stuff I play.
To protect your nails further do things with your left hand that you normally do with your right. Open doors, scratching dried food of the babys high chair, etc - keep the right hand away from potential nail breakages. Wear gloves when you wash dishes. Don't play immediately after having a shower when you nails are waterlogged and weak.
This is only about the thumb and 3 fingers on the right hand (I keep my pinky on right hand short, I don't pick with pinky so there is no need to look after that nail). On the left hand I used to cut them off at the base but I found that leaving just a tiny bit of nail stops your skin from trying to push up over your nail when fretting. I just cut left hand nails with clippers, I rarely bother shaping them.
Learn you nails too; my right middle fingernail has a ridge that grows through it making a weak point, right on the striking bitey part. I'm careful to keep that section of the nail smooth. My right ring fingernail grows really fast but is prone to tearing through the side so I make sure I file both sides low and smooth.
If you have bad nails, maybe consider getting acrylics. I looked into it once when I was playing on steel, decided against it because of the maintenance. I think you'd only bother with acrylics if you were fulltime professional and playing on steel.
JAW
Thursday, 20 November 2008
Loss of Cohesion
I was just messaging with a guy on youtube about "loss of cohesion"...you know, when you are playing a song, maybe one you know exceptionally well and have been playing it for 5 years, and still you'll be midway through and you completely lose the plot and basically have to stop and start again. Possibly the most embarrassing thing you can do as a guitarist eh?
I don't think loss of cohesion can be prevented. Guys like Tommy Emmanuel can simply launch into some default "recovering" improvised thing, then eventually get back on track and people will never even noticed he fluffed it. I used to occasionally terminally brain fart and basically have to start over again but these days worst case is having to stop and replay from the last key section. Most of the time if I fluff it I can sort of strum some nonsense and reconnect back to where I should be without dropping the beat, but it is still obvious that I've lost cohesion. I've got a long way to go before I can fudge past it like The Greats can; I think that requires an extensive knowledge of music theory and being well practised in improvisation.
I think getting over losing cohesion isn't about practising to death note for note, it is more about learning what to do when you _do_ lose cohesion. So, when practising if I lose cohesion I don't stop and restart, I keep going maybe strum the current chord or do some percussive slaps, at least keep a bass note alive, but keep on beat and meet up at the next key intersection. For this reason if I am going to start playing a song I already know quite well, I will _always_ play it from start to finish, irrespective of whether I botched it midway through. The more you botch it, the more you will learn what to do to "play through".
We will always botch it. The important bit is how you recover.
As for miss-struck notes or fret buzzing or some other awful single note mistake - well that's a different matter. At least you can play through that without missing a beat ;)
I don't think loss of cohesion can be prevented. Guys like Tommy Emmanuel can simply launch into some default "recovering" improvised thing, then eventually get back on track and people will never even noticed he fluffed it. I used to occasionally terminally brain fart and basically have to start over again but these days worst case is having to stop and replay from the last key section. Most of the time if I fluff it I can sort of strum some nonsense and reconnect back to where I should be without dropping the beat, but it is still obvious that I've lost cohesion. I've got a long way to go before I can fudge past it like The Greats can; I think that requires an extensive knowledge of music theory and being well practised in improvisation.
I think getting over losing cohesion isn't about practising to death note for note, it is more about learning what to do when you _do_ lose cohesion. So, when practising if I lose cohesion I don't stop and restart, I keep going maybe strum the current chord or do some percussive slaps, at least keep a bass note alive, but keep on beat and meet up at the next key intersection. For this reason if I am going to start playing a song I already know quite well, I will _always_ play it from start to finish, irrespective of whether I botched it midway through. The more you botch it, the more you will learn what to do to "play through".
We will always botch it. The important bit is how you recover.
As for miss-struck notes or fret buzzing or some other awful single note mistake - well that's a different matter. At least you can play through that without missing a beat ;)
Monday, 3 November 2008
Play for an audience!
Now it's only taken me 30 years to realise, but GO PLAY FOR AN AUDIENCE. Let me explain.
When you first start learning to play the guitar, it's pretty rough, go and hide out of earshot when you are practising. This will help the people you live with not hate you and guitars for the rest of time.
Typically you will get the right hand reasonable early on, bit longer if you are fingerpicking. There are only so many patterns you can do with 6 strings - okay, there are infinite, but you'll use only a few in most of your stuff. The left hand you'll get chords going early on too, but the left hand has to do so many different manoeuvres that you'll be "learning" that hand for the rest of time.
When you start to be able to play a whole song or two, you'll probably have really bad tempo and you'll do lots of pausing while your brain is trying to co-ordinate left hand and right hand. It's okay, it's how we learn! Eventually all that stuff going on in your "fore" brain moves into a very convenient "muscle memory" part of your brain. Convenient, because you don't actually have to think to play the stuff, it just happens. You can actually have a rudimentary conversation while playing, or after a few quiet ales wonder how on earth your hands know what to do because "it sure ain't me doing that!"
But while we are trying to push the song into muscle memory that's when we get a bit bored and tend to move onto something different. The curse of half-song playing guitarists. Don't do it! This is where audience comes in.
Unless you have a really, really, REALLY good friend who will listen to you, ie, an audience, I suggest you use a video camera as an "audience". What an audience does is force you to firstly learn the whole song by memory, but secondly, learn it to an acceptable level that won't have the audience looking for the door.
The video camera is great; you feel like you are performing for an audience - you'll probably feel anxious - but importantly you can watch yourself and see where you are getting it wrong. You can then practise the areas you struggle until they are smooth, aim to eventually post video on the internet to see what the world thinks of you ;)
The next battle, once you are comfortable playing for a camera, is finding a real audience. I recommend music shops - "test" a guitar and play your songs. Okay, nobody is _really_ listening but it still feels like an audience so you have to be able to play the songs well.
Where I'm coming from with all of this is about turning your music into that is something "about you" to something that is "about the listener". Going from being someone who entertains themselves into someone who entertains others. Playing the riff from smoke on the water with bad tempo hitting the occasional wrong note might amuse _you_ all day; people have been put in jail for trying amuse others doing the same thing.
Only by playing to an audience do you become an entertainer - which is where I think we should all be aiming. What's the point if you can't share your stuff with your fellow man? Ultimatley would anything, even if you had the entire world at your disposal, be fun if there was no-one to show it to or share it with?
Obviously the next audience is a real audience - open mike, busking, cafe gigs. That's where I'm heading - I'll let you know how it goes when I get there :)
When you first start learning to play the guitar, it's pretty rough, go and hide out of earshot when you are practising. This will help the people you live with not hate you and guitars for the rest of time.
Typically you will get the right hand reasonable early on, bit longer if you are fingerpicking. There are only so many patterns you can do with 6 strings - okay, there are infinite, but you'll use only a few in most of your stuff. The left hand you'll get chords going early on too, but the left hand has to do so many different manoeuvres that you'll be "learning" that hand for the rest of time.
When you start to be able to play a whole song or two, you'll probably have really bad tempo and you'll do lots of pausing while your brain is trying to co-ordinate left hand and right hand. It's okay, it's how we learn! Eventually all that stuff going on in your "fore" brain moves into a very convenient "muscle memory" part of your brain. Convenient, because you don't actually have to think to play the stuff, it just happens. You can actually have a rudimentary conversation while playing, or after a few quiet ales wonder how on earth your hands know what to do because "it sure ain't me doing that!"
But while we are trying to push the song into muscle memory that's when we get a bit bored and tend to move onto something different. The curse of half-song playing guitarists. Don't do it! This is where audience comes in.
Unless you have a really, really, REALLY good friend who will listen to you, ie, an audience, I suggest you use a video camera as an "audience". What an audience does is force you to firstly learn the whole song by memory, but secondly, learn it to an acceptable level that won't have the audience looking for the door.
The video camera is great; you feel like you are performing for an audience - you'll probably feel anxious - but importantly you can watch yourself and see where you are getting it wrong. You can then practise the areas you struggle until they are smooth, aim to eventually post video on the internet to see what the world thinks of you ;)
The next battle, once you are comfortable playing for a camera, is finding a real audience. I recommend music shops - "test" a guitar and play your songs. Okay, nobody is _really_ listening but it still feels like an audience so you have to be able to play the songs well.
Where I'm coming from with all of this is about turning your music into that is something "about you" to something that is "about the listener". Going from being someone who entertains themselves into someone who entertains others. Playing the riff from smoke on the water with bad tempo hitting the occasional wrong note might amuse _you_ all day; people have been put in jail for trying amuse others doing the same thing.
Only by playing to an audience do you become an entertainer - which is where I think we should all be aiming. What's the point if you can't share your stuff with your fellow man? Ultimatley would anything, even if you had the entire world at your disposal, be fun if there was no-one to show it to or share it with?
Obviously the next audience is a real audience - open mike, busking, cafe gigs. That's where I'm heading - I'll let you know how it goes when I get there :)
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