QUOTE (Kristofer Dahl)
QUOTE (rhys)
Also, now i'm pretty unhappy that having never had a guitar teacher, there are a few problems with some of my technique that aren't getting better particularly quickly. It's a pretty bad feeling to feel like you're playing wrongly.
What things have you done wrong? This could be interesting for others to know about.
Well, there's all kinds of things, many of which i've had to go back and retrain myself out of doing, i'll go through them as i think of them:
- Using downstrokes exclusively. I still do this even now, sometimes. It's a nightmare. Spending forever trying to learn to always use alternate picking. It's a different matter for chords, of course, alternate strumming is a natural and simple thing, but alternate picking can sap all of your concentration when you're used to downstroking. I can play a solo through using downstrokes, and then trying to do it all through with alternate picking is a real challenge (if i didn't learn it that way originally). Not just that it's awkward to adjust to, but account for the rhythm can be equally as hard to adjust for. You're suddenly playing a lot more slowly when you start alternate picking, which takes some getting used to also, especially when trying to match it up against the rhythm of the song.
- Metronomes. Never used one for the longest time. Then when i learnt that i was supposed to be using them, i didn't really know how. The problem with this is that people always say 'always use a metronome', but to a person who's never used one, that's pretty difficult. For example, if you've never used a metronome, it's pretty difficult to work out -how- you're supposed to be using it when playing a song; what bpm do you put the metronome at? The same as the song? What if you don't know the song's bpm? Then, what if the lick has a rhythm, how do you play something with a rhythm like a song, against something that has no rhythm but just a standard interval like a metronome? How do these two things coincide with each other? Those were the kind of things that troubled me.
- I didn't know -how- to learn. For example, i started out trying to learn little riffs and licks and songs. That worked eventually, but i didn't know a thing about scales and so on for ages. I learnt by just trying to play songs, which was pretty difficult to begin with, because the simplest thing is so hard when you start out. It didn't even occur to me that people get better by doing scales or excercises involving scales or arpeggios, i just assumed the more you practiced licks, songs and riffs the better you'd get eventually. Which is true; but it's messy.
This is an awkward thing to think about, even now, i don't spend my time going over stuff like scales. I imagine we can all agree that we tend to judge our own ability on how hard the last solo we just played was, or how fast the last riff was you successfully played, not how good you are at your scales. It's too hard to judge like that, so really there almost seems like there's no incentive to do them. Of course, eventually i learned that things like pentatonics and the blues scale were useful for improvisation and understanding a little more about how songs work, but i never really used them to get faster or better technically.
- Using my little finger, this wasn't all that hard to fix really. I never used to use my little finger, except for doing power chords (Which was pretty much the first thing i learned how to do). I actually fixed this with the blues scale. Play the blues scale properly at the 1st fret and your little finger is doing all the work. Even now though, i sometimes notice that i'm avoiding it over a fast riff. If i can get there with my third finger i tend to do so.
- Getting stuck. A teacher is the perfect way to not get stuck, as it was i didn't have one, so when something was too hard to play generally i'd just stop trying and go onto something else. A teacher will keep giving you the appropriate content to try, it won't be way above your ability or too far below it. You know how it is, when you're just starting out, you might go and look at the Sweet Child of Mine tab and have a little go. You then realise it's completely out of your reach and don't even try practicing it because it's so far ahead of you. You play other stuff for a few months, come back to it, and it turns out you're a little closer to being able to play it. Which means that without a teacher it's more like gradual progression than flat out practice practice practice, which is ok, but it's too easy to just sit there with a few riffs, going nowhere.
- Also, without a teacher, if you're not playing constantly in a band your idea of rhythm simply doesn't exist. You play stuff you know too fast, or off the beat, and so on. It doesn't seem like a big deal when you're just playing on your own, but if you ever want to play live it's something you have to fix, and it's something i've been a victim of. Basically, now if i want to make sure i'm playing it right with the rhythm i'll crack out guitar pro, find the song in question and make sure i'm playing it right to the backing track.
- Motivation, if you don't have a band, without a teacher you lose motivation. This ties in with having other things to do, if there's more in your life than just guitar and you don't have someone pushing you to get better, you tend to sit back too much.
- Legato. I got really sloppy in this area. You tend to start picking where you're supposed to do hammer-ons/pull-offs, because it starts out easier that way. This is because it can be so hard to sound the note, depending on your guitar and the amp and your settings, without some guidance. It seems like it doesn't make a big difference, initially, but after a while you'll start wondering why you're never quite happy with how you sound and how it's just never as good as it sounds on record, which brings me nicely to:
- Equipment. You start blaming your tone and technique errors on your equipment, and start spending money instead of perfecting your techniques, and no matter what stuff you get it never ends up sounding any better because you don't realise 90% of it is down to doing it -right- and not just having the right tone and amp settings. Like, for fast legato in solos, it can be really hard to understand how someone is sounding that and getting it that good with hammer-ons/pull-offs, so you start picking instead because it seems faster, and then try and get better equipment for the tone.
Those are pretty much the main things that have occurred to me just now. I could probably think up some other stuff, but that's a lot as it is. I'd be -way- better if i'd known about that kind of stuff to begin with.
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- however there are (sincerely( a lot of things I would like to be better at... 
" mayb Im lucky but i could have started earlier because I've always found guitars interesting when I was young (younger!!) 
