Guitar Noob Strikes Back!

Timing in paranoid is a touch out...I only know this from playing a terrible cover of it too many times at gigs. I would post some recordings of me on guitar (im a bassist, not a guitarist, I play both though..) but its late and I have no mic.

That's good for just a few months.

I think the distortion should be turned down a bit on some of the tracks. I could tell that you made some mistakes in there but the distortion seemed to cover them up.

My advice would be to practice to a metronome as much as you can (several parts felt out of time) with a clean tone. By clean tone I mean absolutely no effects at all, because effects can mask the mistakes in your playing. I know everybody says play with a metronome, but it's just so freakin' important :). I practiced to a metronome all the time in my early beginner stages, and I still do about 75% of the time when I practice now.

Other than that, the recordings sounded pretty good. I liked your take on "Iron Man," not too many beginners add the vibrato in on the verse (I think it's the verse), that sounded very nice.

What equipement do you use?

Thanks for the replies guys [smile]! Yes I have noticed my timing is off, looking into getting a metronome. Maybe someone makes a good freeware metrnome. I will look into that and get to work on my timing.

Thanks again for the quick replies!

Hedos: I'm using an Ibanez GRX40 with a Ibanez IBZ10G amp.

I just listened to your Paranoid and the timing is indeed a bit off, but it's very impressive for only two months! I really gotta get myself a guitar too some day soon... how much did you practice in these two months?

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Original post by remigius I just listened to your Paranoid and the timing is indeed a bit off, but it's very impressive for only two months! I really gotta get myself a guitar too some day soon... how much did you practice in these two months?

I practice about five hours a day, if not more, depending on my mood. Every once in a while I'll take a break for a day. I actually played so much that I lost the calises (sp?) I had after two weeks. [lol]

Impressive, I started 6 months ago, but I don't have FIVE hours a day to practice! Nice selection of songs though ;)

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Original post by MrWeet Thanks for the replies guys [smile]! Yes I have noticed my timing is off, looking into getting a metronome. Maybe someone makes a good freeware metrnome. I will look into that and get to work on my timing.

keeping time with your foot works fine too, thats what I did when I was too poor (on a student salary) to buy a metronome.

I am sure there must be some free software metronomes out there... in any case, its not that hard to write one.

Sounds fine, though, yes you do tend to speed up at times and slow down at others, "short solo " sounds like the intro to Metallica's "Am I evil".

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Original post by Kwizatz Quote: Original post by MrWeet Thanks for the replies guys [smile]! Yes I have noticed my timing is off, looking into getting a metronome. Maybe someone makes a good freeware metrnome. I will look into that and get to work on my timing. keeping time with your foot works fine too, thats what I did when I was too poor (on a student salary) to buy a metronome. I am sure there must be some free software metronomes out there... in any case, its not that hard to write one. Sounds fine, though, yes you do tend to speed up at times and slow down at others, "short solo " sounds like the intro to Metallica's "Am I evil".

Indeed it is the intro to Am I Evil!

When you practice for five hours a day, what are you practicing? If you're serious, I would make a practice schedule. I make a practice schedule most days, and write it in a journal, and take notes on what I've done.

The first step, is determining the categories. For me, I have it arranged as follows: Technique, Repertoire, Sight-Reading, Note-Recognition, Scales, Chords, Arpeggios, Endurance.

Technique generally consists of things from the Scales, Chords and Arpeggios section that I've mastered. By mastered, it means, if I can't play it steadily to a metronome, it doesn't get put in that category.

Repertoire is your songs. These can be cover tunes, classical tunes, peices out of a jazz fake-book, whatever you're into learning.

Sight-Reading is learning to read notes off of a page. This can be a bit tricky if you don't know the notes on a guitar yet, which is where the next category comes in. One excellent way to practice sight-reading is to get your hands on some manuscript paper, and draw random notes on it. Then turn your metronome on, and set it to a speed where you can consistently read the notes without making a mistake.

Note-Recognition isn't something I spend a lot of time on any more, but it's basically just excercizes to learn the notes on a guitar, so that instead of seeing strings and frets, you can put your finger down somewhere and know that you're playing, say, a Bb. There's lots of ways to approach this, but what I found useful is to set my metronome to 60bpm, and play all of the C's that I know, then go through the circle of fifths, or a random, predeterimined pattern. If you can't do it at 60bpm, it needs a bit of work, so put your metronome a bit slower. There are many approaches to this, that's just the one I found most beneficial for me.

Scales are pretty straight foreward. You can start with a major scale. I would reccomend learning what are often called "white" note scales, in position. A good guitar teacher will be able to explain what these are, and how to find them. Basically, they're just all of the notes on the gutiar without accidentals, in a good vertical position. By "vertical position" I mean that on the left hand, your second and third fingers will always be at the same two frets, and your index finger will stretch up towards the nut, and your pinky will stretch down towards the bridge, but you consistently keep the second and third fingers at the same frets. Also in this category are Arpeggios, where you skip through the scale pattern in a specific sequence. (Say, 1,3,5,7,1 of a major scale, for a major 7 arpeggio)

Once you master major scales, you can start learning the modes, harmonic and melodic minor, and lydian b7 scales. If you do this, you'll be well equipped for improvising.

Chords is pretty straight forward. It's just learning whatever chords you need to play. Playing through diatonic triads is a good way to get started in being able to build a variety of tone colors and expand your guitar vocabulary.

Endurance is taking your technique and playing it for extended periods of time to increase your ability to play for long periods of time. If you are keeping track of your M.M. (metronome marking) for a given excercise, your "playing M.M." should be the speed you can maintain sixteenth notes at for a good 3 minutes. Probably longer. By practicing playing through a scale pattern for a specific number of times (without making a mistake, and up to tempo with a metronome) you will also be able to increase the speed and accuracy of your playing.

If you schedule your practicing, you will improve so much quicker than if you just noodle around for five hours. Noodling is fun, and beneficial, but I reccomend a more focused approach to see faster improvement.

A good site for general music knowledge is Musictheory.net The "guitar trainer" is very useful for learning the notes of the guitar.

Hope this helps.

Wow skjinedmjeet that was quite useful information. I definitely don't have as much time as the OP to practice but still...rating++

I would also like to say if you are learning songs that are somewhat technical you might want to look into software like Guitar Pro or protab or whatever it's called. These tabs have drum backing and metronomes built in so you can learn the song properly instead of half assing it and not "knowing" when the beat is for the song. (This helps a lot when it's time to get together with other people...)

Two suggestions: 1. It's all in the wrist. 2. You can play on the up-strokes, too.

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Original post by JohnBolton Two suggestions: 1. It's all in the wrist. 2. You can play on the up-strokes, too.

The 2nd one is of course true, but the 1st one can vary. I myself use circular picking instead of wrist picking. You hold the pick the same as in wrist, except the back and forth motion comes from the thumb and index finger. I have gotten *far* more accurate and fast using this method than I have with wrist. I still use my wrist to switch strings but most of my alternate picking is from the thumb+index fingers.

The only technique I'd advise against is elbow picking (using forearm and elbow motion to pick the strings). You run serious risk of injury if you don't do it properly.

Google for "Weird Metronome." I've used it for years, and it's free. It's pretty simple but it gets the job done.

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Original post by blueEbola Quote: Original post by JohnBolton Two suggestions: 1. It's all in the wrist. 2. You can play on the up-strokes, too. The 2nd one is of course true, but the 1st one can vary. I myself use circular picking instead of wrist picking. You hold the pick the same as in wrist, except the back and forth motion comes from the thumb and index finger. I have gotten *far* more accurate and fast using this method than I have with wrist. I still use my wrist to switch strings but most of my alternate picking is from the thumb+index fingers.

I do that sometimes too. But I get in trouble when I use the wrist to switch and still keep up the fast alternate picking (especially if it's more then 1 string skip). Well, more practice, I guess.

Does anyone do alternate palm muting? It seems like no one does it, but I swear some songs are so fast I can't see how they are doing it otherwise. And it would be so much less tiring...

skjinedmjeet: Thanks so much for all the useful information!!!

For a beginner I strongly reccomend alternate picking with the wrist. As you get faster, you will probably eventually start circular picking without even thinking about it.

One thing to watch out for is anchoring yourself to the guitar with, say, the fourth finger of your right hand. At first it is much easier to play quickly doing that, but it will become a stumbling block later on. Since you're just starting out, the more bad habits you can avoid, the less time you have to spend unlearning them. If I could go back and relearn the guitar, I would do things quite a bit differently.

Alternate picking serves a lot of useful purpouses. While it is not the most effecient technique for playing lines that require you to play notes consequetively on neighboring strings, the basic upstroke/downstroke pattern creates a built in "rhythym generator" that will help you play in time much better. Sweeping is more effecient, and you can often play faster by sweeping, it tends to be a lot harder to keep the sweeps in accurate time.

Eventually, you should aim to be fluent in all picking techniques, as they all have different applications. Diversity will serve you better than specialization. If you do specialize, at least be fluent at more than just your favourite technique. Guys like Steve Vai are so amazing because of their fluency in a plethora of techniques.

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Original post by risingdragon3 Quote: Original post by blueEbola Quote: Original post by JohnBolton Two suggestions: 1. It's all in the wrist. 2. You can play on the up-strokes, too. The 2nd one is of course true, but the 1st one can vary. I myself use circular picking instead of wrist picking. You hold the pick the same as in wrist, except the back and forth motion comes from the thumb and index finger. I have gotten *far* more accurate and fast using this method than I have with wrist. I still use my wrist to switch strings but most of my alternate picking is from the thumb+index fingers. I do that sometimes too. But I get in trouble when I use the wrist to switch and still keep up the fast alternate picking (especially if it's more then 1 string skip). Well, more practice, I guess.

It takes tons and tons of practice. Originally I was doing wrist picking, but after a while my wrist hit a plateau and it just didn't feel natural anymore. So after that I switched to using thumb+index because I heard a lot of my favorite players used it. At first it felt strange and seemed hard. But after I loosened up and practiced at it more it felt much more natural. The most important thing is to start out slow (dead slow, like 60bpm on a metronome) and work on getting the picking to be clean and efficient. Only then can you bump the metronome's speed up.

The second most important thing is that your picking technique when you play slow should be just like when you play fast. For example, say you play a certain passage slowly using the wrist. If you were to play that same passage at a high speed it should be with the wrist too. I see so many beginners picking with the wrist at slow speeds and then switching to elbow movement at higher speeds. This is bad technique, and will become a serious handicap in your playing.

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Does anyone do alternate palm muting? It seems like no one does it, but I swear some songs are so fast I can't see how they are doing it otherwise. And it would be so much less tiring...

Yes, take a listen to many of the guitarists who shred out there. Specifically Paul Gilbert and John Petrucci. They both use alternate picking extensively when doing palm muting. I do too, but I when I pick fast I don't do any palm muting.

The best advice I can offer to you MrWeet is practicing with a metronome and focusing on complete relaxation while playing. Catch any tense muscles you can in the beginner stage, and try to loosen them up. By doing this I know your playing will improve and your timing will sound great.

Skjinedmjeet gave some very solid advice, making a practice schedule is the best way you can improve.

Hmm, I think it's been a while since the last "GameDev ultimate guitar thread" .. we're due for another one soon :)

I would like to thank the GDNet people who responded to this thread once more for your opinions and help. I am working on some new recordings, and I will post an update soon. [smile]