What method did you use to learn guitar?

[Trem]

Yeah we used to listen to records, deciphering the American accents for the lyrical content was actually a lot harder than working out the guitar parts. Some of our translations were embarrassing to say the least. These days it seems easier but I think there is more exposure of accents worldwide than 25 odd year ago when we only had the A team, Airwolf, Battlestar Galactica and the Dukes of Hazzard for reference in our youth.

Lol, really? I never thought of that. But you are just British right? I mean, isn't kind of the phenomena that the British accent just kind of fades away when singing in English? The Beatles didn't sound British when they sing, Ozzy doesn't sound British when he sings, Geddy Lee doesn't sound Canadian, lol, or at least not to me anyway. I guess i could see a Southern American accent sounding odd to a Brit in song, like in country and stuff, but then we can't really understand them either

[ginsambo]

In the mid '80's everyone was like they born on Sunset Strip. After Sabbath, Ozzie always sang with a american accent of you ask me. Also he is a brummie and that accent, Liverpudlian and Manc is arguably the closest to American there is, I mean as least as far as they do a whole heap of extra facial contortions just to say one word, even if they sound dissimilar. I wouldn't understand a strong brummie or liverpudlian accent and I'm British.

Seriously though you do realise how ridiculous the Irish, Scottish and Cockney accents sound in American movies when Amercian accents are being used? They always end up sounding Australian or South African if you ask me. Which is almost right as Australian is basically lazy cockney. Go to Oz and slur your cockney accent, don't move your lips and everyone understands you perfectly and you have pretty much nailed an ozzie accent. I go to the states and they can't understand a feckin word I am saying, especially on the phone and when I try and elocute my words they just stare at me bizarrely, completely baffled.

Any American accent is a mix that mostly developed from Irish and other things, including German, Italian and Scandinavian and Mexican though, allsorts. I think the nearest neutral American accent to British is probably North East and Coast, Penn State northwards to Boston, excluding New York and New Jersey maybe. Everyone else seems to use five or ten syllables when the word only has one and about 300 facial muscle contractions. At speed, that becomes almost impossible to decipher. Yeah seriously it was really difficult at the time. British singer do tend to sing in an American accent as it sounds sweeter and flows better. I don't know why, because they could go the other way and it would be like a bad mix of olde English germanic Rammstein and new world southern Lynyrd Skynyrd, which basically is what a British accent is.

Well that is the way I see it, from my little corner of the world anyway.

Actually I take that back, listening to this, I see parallels between overly pronounced Cockney and American, in OZ it went the other way, it went lazy. I think American is basically Posh Cockney...! Fascinating how accents change over the years though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO1E9GUs9Ak&feature=related

You guys used to sound a lot more British too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JECn1bNZ_Vw&feature=related

So anyway...what are the words?

But seriously though in just 20-25 years accents have changed a lot, many of the local accents have dissapeared and everything is kind of broadly Americanized British these days. You only notice that there are still differences when you get back to watch TV in your home country though and the news presenters sound like they have a carrot up their arse.

[Mr Sandman]

Play like you are the only guitarist in the band, in fact the only one on stage, no drums, bass or singer, just you and the world relies on you to set the groove and the melody and you won't go far wrong. At the end of the day it's an instrument to entertain people. People will soon tire of your out of time, badly composed, one piece widdly set or the eternal chugga chugga.

^^^^Haha... I use a similar mindset to this myself quite often.... Just say you`re playing a tune on an electric with a band,,, but while your doing that try imagining (or thinking about) how you play it (or would play it) by yourself on an acoustic? I can`t exactly say why but for some reason this works for me lol

I also think another good thing to do is (if your in a band or not). Learn how to play and sing. Even if you can`t sing,,, just do it anyway.

I also used to play along to the radio alot, whatever was on really, country, pop, ballads, R&B, rap, Techno... but be aware when you are just tittlelating yourself with a solo and when you need to learn the rhythmesque chunks and groove, whether soloing or rhythm playing to hold it together, be self reliant.

^^^^haha again... this is another thing that I`ve done a lot of,,, though not as much these days. I do it sometimes when I`m just shit of ideas of what to play but still feel like playing...
I put on the `classic hits` station and try to work out whatever comes on... I treat it like a fun little game. A song comes on and I got a couple of minutes to work it out by ear and cut a lead break for it. Best part of it is, if something comes on that I can`t work out straight away or does`nt interest me, either way, 3 or 4 minutes later and I`m onto the next song.
I got quite a catalogue of classic hits from doing this over the years lol

[javert]

lol, ginsambo...

[RR2772]

What method?

That is a very good question. Back in the late '80s in the country sides of Denmark the guitar was new and my ability to play really green. I did have a teacher for a while but a part from 3-4 things that I still remember that was about it. Then I got to another school and I quickly got into metal with Metallica being the kings of it. This was pre black album time! The next step was to save up for an electric guitar and I got my first Applause strat + 2 Tab books with Metallica kill'em'all and the black album.

I got into listning and reading the tab so I could somehow understand what sounds would translate to the guitar and how it would sound. With time I learned also that tab is not always correct. I got some Troy Stetina books but I never studied more than 2% of it if that much.

Basically I always used my ears. I never sat down and had a strict practise rutine but just play when I felt like it witch were and to a degree it still is like that. If a guitar bit sounds cool enough to learn I might figure it out but I do know what to do to take my style in any direction that I want from Hendrix to Malmsteen and all in between.

I learned from bands too and that is basically were the playing comes alive for me. I had the fortune of playing Hendrix with 2 very good musicians were the vibe of the thing sounded incredible. Play the riff, they would come in and then the song would involve. Many times without knowing or having played the song at all.

These days and it has been like that for more than a decade I never worry about playing.

[BigE13]

Wow, awesome stuff guys! ginsambo, you rock brother! To take the time and put all that stuff down...thanks a million for that. This is what I love about the forum, so many ideas and experiences and most everyone is willing to share! Thanks again to all!

[ginsambo]

...OK..here comes some more diarrhea...

IF you ever find yourself getting bored musically, then just a final bit of advice to brush up on your fast picking and picking co-ordination whilst moving up or down a string, no matter which way your pick is moving. Obviously this was my achilles heel, it might not be yours but it works wonders for relaxing your picking hand and fine tuning your picking technique. For me, it helped doing the rhythmical fast picking bits and improvised fills and improved my general pick when changing strings timing, where as before I would hammer/pull off randomly which doesn't always get you the note accents or dynamic you want. It also cut through my muscle memory like acid and helps open up the potential tones and note combinations in scales and stuff which often appear to be overlooked by the 1-2-3, 1-2-3, student who quickly becomes bored with them and dismisses them. I seriously think this is the way scales should be taught as this is the way they are used, especially in classical music. like Adagio for Strings or something.

As well as running up and down scales conventionally. Try practicing scales like this, ascending in groups of 4 notes, 3 notes, 6 notes, 12 notes etc and come back down again in the same sort of way. You can do it for any scales natural or harmonic major/minor or pentatonic scales. It is also a useful warm up if it's freezing and your hands are cold - if nothing else it gives you the confidence that you will hit the right notes, even if you can't feel your fingers.

Ascending in groups of four notes:

E-
B-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5----5-7--5-7-8........etc.
G--------------------------------------------------------------4-----4-5--4-5-7-4-5-7---5-7----7
D-----------------------------------4-----4-5---4-5-7-4-5-7---5-7----7
A--------3-----3-5---3-5-7-3-5-7---5-7-----7
E-3-5-7--5-7------7

And back down again in groups of four notes: (Sorry it's a semitone higher)

E---11-9-8---9-8-------8
B ----------11----11-9---11-9-8-11-9-8----9-8-------8
G ------------------------------------------10-----10-8---10-8-6-10-8-6----8-6-------6
D ---------------------------------------------------------------------------10----10-8---10-8-6
A -
E -

E -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
B -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------6-5
G ----------------------------------------------------------------------------5
D -10-8-6-5-8-6-5--6-5-----5--------------------------------------------5-------------------------------3-5
A -------------------8-----8-6--8-6-4-8-6-4-3-6-4-3--4-3-----3-------3--------------------------------2-3
E -------------------------------------------------------6----6-4---6-4-3

And descending using same pattern in a pentatonic:

E---15-12-------12
B----------15-12---15-12----15-12-------12
G---------------------------14-------14-12----14-12----14-12-------12-
D-------------------------------------------------------14-------14-12----14-12---14-12--------12------(Slide 1st finger)--------------------14
A-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------14-------14-12---14-12-10---------------12-10-------10---
E---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------12-10---12-

These are the obvious ones, you can do interval patterns with any scale in any pattern.

Work out all your standard rock riffs and practice chromatics 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4-5 and normal 1-2-3, 1,2,3 scales runs also and find where they are all over the neck for reference. Don't dwell on stuff like this, only think about it when you are bored maybe or lacking inspiration. As said, definitely the MOST important element is to just keep listening and playing over stuff.

IMO you can remedy a bad technique, sometimes only in a few weeks, but there is no subsitute for having a good ear, finding notes on the fretboard using your ears, rather than using riff or scale muscle memory or TAB or written music and there is no substitute for creating a groove and expressing yourself with a 5 step bend. So much metal and rock cuts across conventional minor/major conformist boundries that sometimes whilst knowledge is a good base for reference, dwelling on it can limit your sound, Sometimes you are better off making sounds with a certain naivity and a good ear for tone because that is how it all started with flattened thirds and flattened fifths and stuff.

If you do learn scales, after you know where the notes are, learn them like this, it will open them up for you.

[Endrik]

Doesn't matter. I'm self thought but familiar with most methods. Recently I started avoiding all that, I threw out most approaches used in guitar playing and started from ground zero. I try to avoid influences. Influences were once great when developing tone, feel etc. to basically sound good on the instrument. But when it comes to melodic and harmonic approach, I don't like what's going on most of the time, specially the scalar dominance. I decided I better stop being a follower and do things my own way.

[tomanyjacksons]

I did the same thing Hellbat did. Sadly I started at age 17. I wish I'd started sooner but it is what it is. My biggest problem was my parents didn't want to hear a second of what I was doing. Making noise to them as they knew of only 2 kinds of music country and western, lol. But now I can do anything I want on a guitar, I'm no Satriani by any means but I'm the only guitar in my band and we cover a lot of stuff that is recorded with 2 guitars. The best advice I can give is practice, practice, practice I used to practice a minimum of 3 hours a day and was in my first band with other really good musicians in 3 years, but playing guitar was the only thing I really thought about then. Now I'm lucky to play 3 hours a week. Wish I still had the fire I used to have. Just get it to where it makes sense to you. Good luck man you can do it.

[ginsambo]

Man, I love Country and Western! Couldn't you get them to buy you a Tele and do a few numbers to passify them?
Hey if it makes you feel better, I started at around age 11, my parents were into Opera and the Carpenters and I wasn't even allowed to play country and western. Bought my first beat up used electric from money I saved from a paper round and to this day I am still shite!


Hey, everyone likes country and western...what's wrong with you? I mean...seriously?

[markD]

In the mid '80's everyone was like they born on Sunset Strip. After Sabbath, Ozzie always sang with a american accent of you ask me. Also he is a brummie and that accent, Liverpudlian and Manc is arguably the closest to American there is, I mean as least as far as they do a whole heap of extra facial contortions just to say one word, even if they sound dissimilar. I wouldn't understand a strong brummie or liverpudlian accent and I'm British.

Seriously though you do realise how ridiculous the Irish, Scottish and Cockney accents sound in American movies when Amercian accents are being used? They always end up sounding Australian or South African if you ask me. Which is almost right as Australian is basically lazy cockney. Go to Oz and slur your cockney accent, don't move your lips and everyone understands you perfectly and you have pretty much nailed an ozzie accent. I go to the states and they can't understand a feckin word I am saying, especially on the phone and when I try and elocute my words they just stare at me bizarrely, completely baffled.

Any American accent is a mix that mostly developed from Irish and other things, including German, Italian and Scandinavian and Mexican though, allsorts. I think the nearest neutral American accent to British is probably North East and Coast, Penn State northwards to Boston, excluding New York and New Jersey maybe. Everyone else seems to use five or ten syllables when the word only has one and about 300 facial muscle contractions. At speed, that becomes almost impossible to decipher. Yeah seriously it was really difficult at the time. British singer do tend to sing in an American accent as it sounds sweeter and flows better. I don't know why, because they could go the other way and it would be like a bad mix of olde English germanic Rammstein and new world southern Lynyrd Skynyrd, which basically is what a British accent is.

Well that is the way I see it, from my little corner of the world anyway.

Actually I take that back, listening to this, I see parallels between overly pronounced Cockney and American, in OZ it went the other way, it went lazy. I think American is basically Posh Cockney...! Fascinating how accents change over the years though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO1E9GUs9Ak&feature=related

You guys used to sound a lot more British too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JECn1bNZ_Vw&feature=related

So anyway...what are the words?

But seriously though in just 20-25 years accents have changed a lot, many of the local accents have dissapeared and everything is kind of broadly Americanized British these days. You only notice that there are still differences when you get back to watch TV in your home country though and the news presenters sound like they have a carrot up their arse.

having a master's degree in linguistics, this made for an enjoyable read!!

[ginsambo]

Yeah the older you get, I guess the wiser you get, the more you turn to history and find out that history just keeps repeating itself. Nothing much has changed since the Edwardian era. I could watch old stuff on Youtube for hours. It's fascinating but the obvious parallels with modern life are also strangely depressing.

Cut to the bone, nothing has changed and it never will. Like the revolution cycle for one, same old pattern since the French revolution. Was a show on last night about it. The pattern of revolution is always the same. Uprising by disenchanted and exploited people. The obvious big villian chiefs get executed, then everybody starts getting executed as factional miltia's start to form in the anarchy and the original cause and message gets lost, then finally a crushing military dictator and the army take control and you are back to square one again, under a new dictatorship. Happened in France with the narcisstic Napolean Bonoparte. Happened in Iran. Happened in Egypt, Iraq, Libya etc etc.

The only exception is Belgium, who seeminging are doing just fine, since their gravy train government was disbanded due to no one wanting to agree to a coalition.

I think the parallels between the big merchant bosses exploiting children in the sweatshops back in the day and the big modern corporations who try to avoid minimum wage..and still employ children in sweatshops whilst paying no taxes is particularly tangible. And the glass ceilings of class and networks that have and will always exist and the fact that people are going back to working 22 hours a day, just to pay a mortgage on a house that has been valued by the banks. It wouldn't surpirise me if if ten years time, workhouses were reintroduced. The words of old songs bring history bang up to date.

So linguistics? Curious to know that if you can pick up languages easily, do you find you also have a good ear for music too?

Funnily enough I think there are parallels between languages and playing the guitar. I mean, I was stuck in Paris for a while once and trust me my French was always shocking, the little I knew, but once you are there and you have to rely on yourself, you just chill out, stop trying too hard with a phoney accent and you just pick it up, in your own accent and the joy of it is that finally people start to understand you and help ou out. Same with the guitar, once you are around other people playing, you just get into the groove and forget all the method stuff, you just play.

Playing the guitar is like sex, you don't read up on sex manuals do yer? You just try and get as much of it in as possible.

Enough of the analogies already.

[Endrik]

The three stage cycle of civilization came from Giovanni Battista Vico who describes it in "Scienza Nuova", the new cycle never begins from the same point as the last one as civilization generally progresses.

Bonaparte was hardly a dictator to his own people, they lived very well, specially considering what happened durning the First Republic when the dictatorship of democracy killed awfully a lot of people. When Bonaparte came to power there was piece in the homeland. I can't justify conquerors but a lot of criticism of Bonaparte originates from anti-semitic reactionaries. When he was introducing civil code, empowering the jews and bringing culture and progress to backward people, surely the Spanish Inquisition and ghoulish calvinists felt offended. The self-aggrandizing puritan critics never want to recall what happened next, the freedom and all that fairy-tail nonsense after Bonaparte worked so well for all the brown people when massive colonial expansions started.