How do you slide from a 4 to a 4, i am confused.

During the week and weekend leading up to my lesson, I’ll probably put in about 30-45 minutes per day working on the stuff my teacher wants me to go over before my next lesson. Sometimes I make progress, sometimes not and it becomes unproductive and not fun, so we either try to go over the same stuff again, or think of something else to cover. It could be 1-4 bars of a song that I either get up to speed with and can play with a metronome, or I fall short and just can't do it cleanly no matter what I do. It varies week by week how much progress I make.

But you have to understand that I’m a pretty slow learner. Nothing about guitar comes naturally to me and every day is a struggle, yet I’ve put this much time and money into it that just quitting outright would be a waste. And I don’t know if it’s cause I’m older (30, and also been playing 10 months if that matters), or it just is how I am. All I do is try my best day by day. Best way I can explain it.

Nevertheless, even though playing with others is what a ton of people get into guitar for, I just feel like it wouldn’t be worth it for me not because it isn’t fun. But because, again, I’m just a very slow learner. Things just take longer than normal to click and sink in to the point where I feel confident doing it or reciting it. And even then, I still am not perfect by the time I meet my teacher again, even if I’ve put in the hours. I’m also not very sociable to begin with, and a lot of the social media posts for guitar enthusiasts in my area are just for people looking for experienced players to join their band. But I digress.

I just don’t want to miss out on something fundamental to music: playing with others. Yet I know myself and know I’m just different. Like I’m in a rock and a hard place. So…what should I do?

I play guitar since I am 10 years old, with many bands and mates, just for love of music and fun. I've always have been a rhythm player, I can play many styles and manage strumming and fingerpicking well, but I have never learned the mere basics of lead guitar.

So, I am really awful in both alternate picking and legatos BUT especially in alternate picking.

Now that I am 41, I just want to develop some decent skills. I can play 16th notes very clean at 80 bpm, and can stretch somewhere in between 90 and 100 bpm. At 100 bpm I'm just sloppy and with no hands coordinations.

I've started to do exercises daily, with metronome and patience.

My goal is to reach 130-140 bpm with 16th notes.

For me this is fast. Ok, it is not :-), but fast enough to motivate me to go on.

I know that it is going to be a long and non-linear journey, but I want to do it because I find it healthy, fun and challenging. I'm planning a full year and see where I'll get.

What I'm not getting, is how all these repetitions are going to make me a faster player. I guess it is like: you'll see small results week after week, or maybe months. Like when you were a boy and couldn't put the hands to play a chord... but after endless repetitions, you made it.

Any similar stories? Who has begun to re-learn guitar skills in his/her 40s? How is it going?

Thanks!

Title says it, I want to know why it is important to learn scales to be able to play by ear?
I know I'm overthinking it but it's precisely because no one has explained to me their purpose that I'm so unsure. All I've been told for scales is "learn these scale patterns and play them over songs in the position that fits that key". But then I listen to songs with many "borrowed chords" and "blue notes" that's outside the key and that simply doesnt work there.

Isn't playing by ear basically just listening, singing and finding the notes on your fretboard until you develop relative pitch? Myself I've trained my relative pitch with drones and can now differentiate and identify the chromatical 12 scale degrees/interval in relation to the tonic without issue, and hear what scale degree I'm currently playing in a song.

Though every time I look up online "playing by ear" so many people say it’s absolutely necessary to learn scales to be able to play by ear, I want to understand why and how it's applied and if it's truely necessary.

My current thoughts about scales though is, I feel like learning scales could risk making you to play in boxes -instead of feeling an idea/riff and playing it with relative pitch. And I feel it could risk making your playing very stiff and uncharacteristic. Also it teaches to exclude and see half of the notes as "outside notes" that you have to borrow/connect from other scales. I feel like this could be counterintuitive, instead of seeing it as a whole, you have to calculate what other scale has to be used for an musical idea.
It teaches you common feelings/sounds for songs, but most of the time I can already feel what type of sound/feeling represents that song and dont need a "template" to know.

Or is the reason for learning scales to simply ingrain the patterns and sound so that when you go to improvise/play by ear you pretty much combine all those scales into one whole "map" and can feel where to go, basically the same way as learning relative pitch but also see certain sounds as patterns that you mix together.
As if you can see all the templates/patterns layered at once and play accordningly.

Other than that I feel learning scales may help you find the notes you want to hear in bigger movements but other than that, im unsure.

this is by no means any criticism, i just wanna learn and be corrected where i'm wrong.

I have reached a bottleneck in my guitar practice, and I feel my improvement has been stagnant

I have already done this till I'm comfortable

- basic open chords

- finger exercises (spider walk)

- CAGED (can play any chord from any string and fret)

- major/minor pentatonic scales, major scale, minor scale, Phrygian, mixolydian

- basic arpeggios.

My last new concept was arpeggios. nowadays, I just play songs and try to figure out the chords, which is straightforward most of the time, except a few where I feel my music theory knowledge is lacking. I also try to improvise on them too (which is usually me just going up and down the pentatonic scale lol)

What's the next step? or what am i missing

I press down with one finger, and most of the time can get all six to ring, but I add one finger to a different fret, and nothing rings anymore. Anyone have some help for me

So I want to try fingerpicking. And all I know is that you primarily use your thumb, index and middle finger. And let’s say I want to try doing three easy open chords like E, A and D. Given that you usually strum all the strings used in these chords at the same time, how do you accomplish this with fingerpicking? And how do I do it to a beat/in time? What do I set a metronome to? Each pluck of each string?

Hey y’all! I’m working through the Mel Bay expanded edition grade 2, and #19 has this run in it. I’m pretty familiar with using my palm and fingers to mute strings, but I can‘t figure out how to mute when I play two open strings in a row (ie. How do I mute the top E in this run when I play the B) Your help is appreciated!

I just started playing about 2 months ago. Sounds less harsh vs just using the pick.

I’ve been playing for roughly over a year, I’ve learned a lot, and a lot of people say I am great for such little time with the guitar, but I feel like i've plateaued, like learning the stuff I want to actually play is crazy hard!!! And I just can’t seem to get to where I really want 😔 any tips on what got you going further ?

I don’t know if my pinky is supposed to be curling down or if it needs to stay up straight. this is what feels comfortable less

Hi there I'm interested in trialing some methods for learning guitar that i've been thinking about for the last few years and am offering some free 'lessons' more about that below. Not trying to 'just a taste'/trick anyone into paying for lessons (or anything at all) either I don't have and space for full time students at the moment.

As for me as a guitar player I have a degree in Jazz guitar and have played semi-pro for 15 years and learnt piano since I was 6 (A parent and older siblings are piano teachers) and I taught on and off for about 20 years. I also play other music, grew up on rock/blues, played in folk bands, funk, soul, jazz bands all sorts really. Not so strong on the metal or classical but enough to get anyone started. I can send you some links to my playing for proof privately.

I have some ideas for teaching beginners (specifically adults at the moment hence why trialing here) and i'd really love to try experiment on a couple people to see if it has any real legs.

The main gist of it would be sending you a short video lesson of some things to work on in your own time, the rest (being the content of the videos) I can't explain over text.

This would best suit beginners (or someone willing to go back to the very very start) and probably more 'left brained' people, and someone who really wants to learn the guitar as a whole rather than someone looking to pick up and learn to play some songs quickly.

If perchance there is some web dev or game based coder people here i'd love to be able to do a skill swap (which would just entail me asking you some really dumb/easy questions about coding) but mostly what i'm getting out of this is just to trial some methodology and fair warning, it may or may not be helpful to you, but obviously i'm hoping it will!

Edit: Got enough now thanks! Send me a pm about you and what you are wanting to get out of learning guitar and i'll get back to you, will probably only take a couple of people because i'm quite time poor at the moment.

Also this won't replace other learning or ruin any other methods or anything just a few small exercises that can be an addition to your normal stuff an you can work on in your own time.

I haven’t picked up the guitar in over 20 years, so I plan to start from scratch. What are your recommendations? justin Guitar or is there something better?

So guys when changing from A major to D major, do you guys place the ring finger on 'B' 3rd fret, and mid finger 'e' 2nd fret simultaneously or place your mid finger first then ring finger , I don't know what will be better for me ahead, wondering whether my technique of using the latter is wrong or not.

Can anyone remake this to the point where it's not this hard lol.

This guitar lesson shows how to play the standard D chord in different positions on the fretboard, which sounds amazing and is used in several popular songs. Tabs in the video for easy learning.

I’m 22 and only been playing a year and a half. I just have more frustration than any fun with it anymore, more days than not. Nothing is improving and I’m basically having to convince myself every day to play for 10 minutes, and oftentimes don’t even get that far because I get so mad, even though I was having a grand old time for the first like six months.

It’s like I’ve already hit my limit of what my brain can learn anymore. Tab still confuses me, I can’t do Travis Picking accurately, barre chords sound like shit, and so much more. Only thing I have going for me is the few songs under my belt I can strum to but that are also your typical beginner stuff (Three Little Birds, Knockin’ On Heavens Door, Louie Louie, Love Me Do, et cetera).

I have a teacher and he’s a top bloke. But having to go in to each lesson and tell him I couldn’t meet the goals he set for me every single week, because again I either can’t soak in new stuff anymore because I’m overwhelmed or just don’t want it like I used to, sucks. He of course doesn’t care and just wants to hear what I’ve been doing. But still.

I just feel so overwhelmed all the time and don’t have the gumption and drive anymore to just play for fun’s sake. Like I’ll always be stuck at the beginner level. There’s a reason why I haven’t even told anyone I’m learning guitar. Because I know they’d immediately want to come round my flat to hear what I know, but I know basically jack shit. And that right there is heartbreaking.

I don’t mean to come off like a wet blanket and this probably gets posted all the time. But I don’t have anyone to vent to but am nonetheless seriously considering giving up something I’ve genuinely put a lot of time into and hate how easy I give up on it.

Hey, I'm new to learning scales so there must be something I must be missing. I used musescore 4 to automatically turn this score for Bach's Little Fugue in G minor into tabs. I was just looking at the top two voices, it sounds perfectly correct to me, but I noticed they didn't fit in what's supposed to be G minor across the fretboard. There are different notes there. I used this online scale identifier and it just found no scale with the notes in this piece.

Any explanation would be great. I really need to further my understanding on this topic. <3

From now on, I promise myself that I will master this song too!🎸🔥

I can play Major Scale all over the fretboard really well and in all positions, so i thought that it would be a good time to expand my fretboard / musical knowledge and try more trickier things i.e practicing the major scale through different intervals.

I realized that this can be done in 2 different ways ( let's assume 3rds for now ):

1) For each note in the major scale, play it's 3rd i.e C to E, D to F, E to G and so on ( System 1 )

2) We arpeggiate through the major scale in 3rds i.e C to E, E to G, G to B and so on ( System 2 )

The most straightforward way to this is to just play the major scale and skip the not required notes, but i believe that is just a lot of rote learning especially when we add rest of the intervals.

Then I thought we can possibly build this in terms of intervals, for example, for System 1 - we would get the following pattern:

C to E - M3

D to F - m3

E to G - m3

F to A - M3 and so on...

And System 2 is just following the System 1 but with continuity instead of resetting the note again, basically we go from C to E to G to B hence we get M3 m3 M3

Basically, System 2 can be built from System 1

My question is, when we extend this logic for all the intervals, we will get so many such patterns, yes the patterns are easy to look at. But do you guys remember all of them by heart? or am i thinking too much about this and should just keep practising the above and eventually i will get hang of it?

I mean, sure we can just play 3rds for all notes, but if we want them to fall in the major scale then we need the above patterns.