turfguy - Posted - 03/05/2010:  09:21:48

Help! I have been playing for about 5 years and just can't seem to get better as fast as I want to. I can strum chords and sing, but no leads. By the way, I have three kids that limit my practice time, but one of them(7 yr old son) is expressing real interest in guitar. Are there any resources out there or practice techniques that can help me maximize my practice?

flash of the gap - Posted - 03/05/2010:  10:13:47

hey turf guy, i,m playin guitar bout 10 years 3 chords thats all i ever played i,m really a banjo player, hence i put myself down as a novice, i,m on this site about six months now because i have a deep love of wanting to learn blue grass i,m not telling a word of a lie when i say in never flatpicked a tune or played lead on guitar but i suppose my banjo playin would stand to help, but i cant beleive that with an hour a day or two in some case,s and with the help of some of the coolest guys on the planet i,m actually playin fiddle tunes and bluegrass on guitar now and actually have the nerve to post them on the site to me it,s a simple as this the better you wanna sound the more time you gotta put in it,s like try,n to lose weight, it just does,nt fall off you gotta work at it , it takes me about a week some times two to learn a tune the harder the tune the longer it takes , the mistake i think people make myself included is they think it should be easier or should,nt take so long but this is not the case , as the sayin goes practice makes perfect even the good guys sit and practice to perfect a peice of music just because they make it look easy does,nt mean they learned it over night, i know kids are hard work an all , but forsake an hour of tv or something , i might have phrased this wrong but if you take even half of it serious you cant go wrong , practice , best of luck with your music i hope this helps

MitchellB - Posted - 03/05/2010:  12:26:28

Well there is no substitute for practice. No matter how long you play or how good you get, you still got to practice. A couple of things that has always worked for me is practice your scales. Learn a scale in a different key each day, or week, or what ever time works for you. Practice those scales until you can fly through them up and down. Play along with recordings always trying to play a lead line instead of chords (since you say you know your chords) Try to learn a few simple breaks either by ear or tab and practice those over and over until you have them memorized and then throw the tab away.

robatsu - Posted - 03/05/2010:  22:24:46

To improve as a musician, you have to be constantly pushing the envelope rather than staying in a safe zone and hoping for lightning to strike.

If you can't play lead (and want to, though), what you have to do is start playing lead, now, today, and work on improving it. Take a break in a jam, sure, you'll suck, but then you go home, lick wounds, work on what gave you problems.

Rinse, repeat (forever...).

It is a truism that to be a great guitarist, you have to put in your hours behind the box. But it also matters what you do with those hours, and for best effect, those hours are dedicated to doing something that isn't yet in your reach, but also isn't too far off (clear, achievable goals).

So to play lead, ya gotta start playing lead, take your lumps, use them as insight for what you need to work on, work on that, go take some more lumps.

plowboy - Posted - 03/06/2010:  02:32:54

I'm by no means a whirl wind lead picker but I am able to play a lot of melodies perhaps because I devised my own methods. ( as do other self starters) .I would suggest for starters you find melody notes in one chord pattern and stick there until you no your whole way around in that key. Soon it will click inside your head that no matter what key you play in all the notes are where you think they are in those keys. You'll be sailing away in no time.
Pick the easiest songs first and learn them well.

Edited by - plowboy on 03/06/2010 02:35:56

jazzrambler - Posted - 03/07/2010:  05:53:44

May I suggest separating playing time from practice time. 10 minutes a day of focused practice was all it took for me to really see improvement. Of course, I was gigging 5-6 nights a week. Now I practice irregularly on guitar, spending more time on mandolin. I used to work with a band leader whose mantra was, "Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect."

Over the years I and many other musicians have fallen into ruts, the end result being practicing screwing up. I worked with a sax player, a really talented kid, he'd get frustrated on these difficult bop lines and every time he hit a clam he'd stop and say "SH!T!!!" under his breath. I warned him about doing it onstage, because it was completely habitual. Sure enough, he got lost in a moment and said it right into the vocal mic...Moral: You will preach what you practice.

Don't let struggling with something that vexes you take the fun out of playing. Make sure you maintain good technique, break it down into parts and then try to string it together like pearls. If you stop and start over every time you screw up, you will in essence be practicing stopping at the difficult point. I have found that practicing playing through mistakes helps me more than stopping to start over.

As for kids, I have 5 between 8-14. One of the best things you can do is acclimate them to the idea of ignoring their old man. It's a fundamental life skill. Teaching them to ignore guitar players is important to teach daughters, too. Just kidding. I actually go to my kids school and play guitar a couple of times a month at least. All the adulation you wanted when you learned "Stairway" or "Smells like Teen Spirit" you can get from a 2nd grade class singing "You are My Sunshine" and "Froggy Went A Courting."

Bottom line of it is, if you want to improvise, you need a vocabulary of licks that you can seamlessly apply to a melody. Start with playing the melody, apply licks as if seasoning stew.

Renoflatpickin - Posted - 03/08/2010:  07:49:33

Jazzrambler...5 kids? You have been rambling quite a bit brother..
;)

Paul0169 - Posted - 03/08/2010:  16:28:13

5 kids? I have 7 and one on the way!

jazzrambler - Posted - 03/09/2010:  05:14:45

It ain't the ramblin' it's the staying home, right, Paul0169?

DeltaJewel - Posted - 03/09/2010:  10:26:02

Try picking out your melodies by ear with your flatpick for starters. try doing it for a few minutes each day with simple tunes like, wildwood flower, or oh susannah, amazing grace etc,,, your ear will start to learn where the notes are on the guitar.. then ( believe it or not) the secret to being a good lead guitarist for me was knowing my bar chords. for bluegrass. country, blues, its all in the basic I IV V format.. People who play past the 3rd fret know all this stuff because they understand how to "play in the box" the scales everyone talks about are in those "bar chords" You can play lead all night up and down the neck of the guitar if you know where ever bar chord is...Thats always been my secret..
Julie

turfguy - Posted - 03/09/2010:  11:35:15

That's good info DeltaJ. Now I just need my fingers to work fast enough to make the scales sound like music and not typing on a keyboard.

tomm - Posted - 03/09/2010:  12:35:47

A well know "secret" indeed, well put and should be allot of help to ya.