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Post by bluesbruce on Oct 2, 2022 15:18:24 GMT -6
Pretty quiet week here on the forum. Hope everyone is well. Phil, did you fare okay with that hurricane coming through your area? Again, I think I missed playing only one day this week, so am getting back into a little bit more of a routine of playing again. It's always hard to know where to pick up again when I have not played for several months. I don't really want to start BYCU all over, but I just need to pick out something kind of simple just to get going again. I think I may pick some studies out of "Basic Blues For Guitar" by Fred Sokolow. I've had this book for years - probably even had it before I got BYCU. The book is pretty much of a mess when it comes to a source for self-teaching - lots of typos, lots of inaccurate tabs, and (one of my pet peeves) many songs that are split onto the front and back of a page. He also offers really poor explanations of techniques - he refers to bending as "choking" for instance, and never states that you need to "choke" to a specific note... In spite of my many criticisms of this book, some of the studies sound really cool, and most include both lead and rhythm parts. Unfortunately, they include only one chorus, and no intros or endings. Anyway, I think I'll try my hand with some of these studies over the next few months, see what I can come up with. I'll probably also get going again with "Rock Me Baby" by B. B. King. It's a pretty simple and straightforward 12 bar blues with a repeated riff and a one-chorus solo, so seems like it should make a good choice to learn and "easy" blues song.
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Post by Phil on Oct 2, 2022 16:41:00 GMT -6
Bruce,
We lucked out on the hurricane. Not even a downed tree in my neighborhood.
Didn't Fred Sokolow do some Jazz instructional videos? The name sounds familiar.
I'm still plugging away trying to play stuff beyond my skill level. But at least I'm playing regularly after hardly playing at all for so many months.
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Post by jack1982 on Oct 2, 2022 17:51:42 GMT -6
Good to hear you didn't get hit too bad by the hurricane Phil! I hear you about trying to play stuff beyond your skill level - the solos in "Mr. Crowley" are pretty insane lol. But It's only October 2 and one can hope that by the 26th (next fixit session) I'll have something presentable. I've got probably 90% of it memorized, so at least I've accomplished that. Been having lots of fun with my new keyboard - I can "play" the intro of Mr. Crowley, just need a few thousand more rep's to program it in lol. I even got a book on sight reading which I'll start tomorrow. One of the YouTube piano teachers says you only need to do it 5 minutes a day...I think I can handle that  Here's her playing some examples from the book: Pretty rockin' stuff! Take care everybody |
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Post by Phil on Oct 2, 2022 18:41:47 GMT -6
Jack, That video brought back memories of Sister Ann teaching me piano when I was in 2nd grade. That's the way to learn. You associate the note on paper to a key on the piano right from the start. Also, I'm a firm believer that learning new challenging things like this exercises your brain and keeps it functioning properly. My brain needs all the exercise it can get.  |
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Post by jack1982 on Oct 2, 2022 20:43:12 GMT -6
Jack, That video brought back memories of Sister Ann teaching me piano when I was in 2nd grade. That's the way to learn. You associate the note on paper to a key on the piano right from the start. Also, I'm a firm believer that learning new challenging things like this exercises your brain and keeps it functioning properly. My brain needs all the exercise it can get. I've always felt like tab makes perfect sense for guitar, but now that I've got a keyboard...well darn it anyway, regular sheet music makes perfect sense for that lol. Pretty much everything I've learned on guitar comes from tab, so if I'm gong to do anything with keyboards I guess I'll have to learn that instrument's equivalent. Trouble is I'm so damned farsighted that those little circles on those little lines are all a blur  |
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Post by bluesbruce on Oct 2, 2022 21:06:56 GMT -6
Bruce, We lucked out on the hurricane. Not even a downed tree in my neighborhood. Didn't Fred Sokolow do some Jazz instructional videos? The name sounds familiar. I'm still plugging away trying to play stuff beyond my skill level. But at least I'm playing regularly after hardly playing at all for so many months. Phil, good to hear you weren't effected much by the hurricane! Yeah, Fred Sokolow has done books and videos on just about every guitar topic known to mankind over the years - including jazz, rockabilly, blues, country, and on and on. I hope the quality of this "Basic Blues for Guitar" book that I have is not indicative of the quality of all of his work... Also good to hear you're still playing regularly. I was afraid storm damage might slow down your video output - it's reeked havoc on mine, and I'm halfway across the country! |
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Post by grampalerxst on Oct 3, 2022 5:12:46 GMT -6
Hey guys, I'm back in the mundane real world. Sucks waking up and not hearing the loons say good morning.
I did play for about 5 minutes last night to keep my streak going. Today I'm going to get everything set back up, connected, tuned, etc. Then this week I'm going to experiment with increasing my guitar-in-hand time to see how my LH holds up. Hopefully I can progress quickly enough in that regard that I can work long enough each day to justify picking things back up with my local sensei.
What I see as the real deficiency with tab is that you have to have standard notation with it to discern the note values. For a while there was one of the mags who came up with a tab modification that included that information (essentially, the fret number was the head of the note) that I thought was brilliant, but it never really seemed to catch on.
Phil, I too learned some piano by taking lessons with a sweet old nun. It got me out of "music class" which in my little grade school was just singing, something that to this day I hate doing. My problem was I sort of cheated in that I leaned all the notes based on their staff position, but got all the rhythmic information by listening, so except for pretty basic stuff I still cant read the rhythm very well. I even worked though parts of a few books on "rhythmic reading". I can now work stuff out by thinking about it, but can't sight read that information. Then, of course, I decided to get into blues music, which defies traditional western notation in both rhythm and pitch. Sigh.
Jack, looking forward to some ELP covers soon!
Bruce, good to hear you're still getting back into the swing of things.
Glad no one got seriously impacted by the storm.
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Post by Phil on Oct 3, 2022 8:22:46 GMT -6
Jack - Time for new glasses. You gotta come to grips with this "getting older" thing. Bruce - Yeah, that storm set me back on my video output. Hopefully I'll get back on track within the next 5 years. I thought Sokolow sounded familiar. Must have seen him on YouTube. Gramps - One of my biggest regrets in life was talking my mother into letting me drop piano lessons so I could have time for Little League. Turns out I was a terrible athlete and spent most of my time on the bench. I would have been much better off on the piano bench. |
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Post by grampalerxst on Oct 3, 2022 12:09:25 GMT -6
Gramps - One of my biggest regrets in life was talking my mother into letting me drop piano lessons so I could have time for Little League. Turns out I was a terrible athlete and spent most of my time on the bench. I would have been much better off on the piano bench. For me it was two dudes that wrecked my piano studies: Alex Lifeson and Eddie Van Halen. Although I'd heard of Rush and heard some of their stuff on the radio prior, around 1978 is when I really got enamored by them, and that same year the first Van Halen record came out. I continued to dabble at the piano on my own, because I was still into bands like Kansas, Styx, REO, Yes, and ELP, but the lessons went out the window as that same year I started high school and wasn't motivated to take lessons after school (sports and a first job were priorities).
If wishes and buts ...
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Post by salvatierra on Oct 3, 2022 13:12:00 GMT -6
I remember asking my parents for a keyboard for Xmas when I was 8. They bought it for me but then they didn't consider necessary to enroll me in music lessons. Probably they expected me to be the new CHopin or something. A self taught genius of the sort. hehehe As you can understand I abandoned the keyboard after two weeks creating several dissonant pieces of incoherent progressive nonsense. It felt me with guilt and it wasn't until way later in life that I approached music again. hehehe That's my story. Ps. I tried to upload some of my BYCU studies but the files are too big. Ps.2 Glad that everyone is ok after the storm. |
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Post by bluesbruce on Oct 3, 2022 20:11:20 GMT -6
Ps. I tried to upload some of my BYCU studies but the files are too big. You've got to post them somewhere else and just put a link here. For videos, most of us use Youtube. For audio, Soundcloud has been a popular choice. I think I've succeeded in loading some really low bit rate mp3's on this board before, but there is a pretty severe limit to the file sizes you can upload here (I can't remember exactly what the limit is), so it is generally preferable to post files elsewhere and just put a link here. Good to see you are sticking with BYCU! After your keyboard experience at the age of 8, are you taking guitar lessons now? A teacher can be a great help, but if you are self-teaching then BYCU is an excellent progressive program. An on-line support group like this can also be a real help to offer advice and encouragement. If you are just learning to play guitar, BYCU may very well take over a year to complete (but you will improve by leaps and bounds during that time). Feel free to share recordings here (you can ask for feedback or not - it's up to you). Also feel free to ask questions about any of the lessons in BYCU - there's a good chance one of us has stumbled through it before. Most importantly, keep playing! |
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Post by salvatierra on Oct 4, 2022 10:34:59 GMT -6
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Post by bluesbruce on Oct 4, 2022 15:13:06 GMT -6
Well, firstly, congratulations on the first child! That'll challenge your guitar time for, oh, the next 20 plus years LOL! It sounds like you're doing well with these first five studies. Thanks for sharing. I wouldn't worry about sound recording quality - just getting your fingers working on the guitar and your timing and rhythm in line is enough to worry about for now. You can spend a lot of time on recording audio (and video), and that time is probably way better spent practicing the guitar. You can make a lot of progress using a small bedroom amp, or even just playing amp simulators through your computer (be careful, those may also result in great consumption of time). Sorry to hear that you've had to quit your guitar teacher, but with the current economic downturn and a baby on the horizon, it sounds like that was a wise decision. You can definitely make a lot of progress if you just continue to follow BYCU. Good luck!
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Here's her playing some examples from the book:
