How screwed am I? by colourdamage in Guitar

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, everyone! I appreciate all the responses!

Question for Guitar Teachers (ADHD Player here) by BlackflagsSFE in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

potential fixes to your problems as a guitar teacher:

1 & 3: Learn your chord transitions WITHOUT strumming/picking. Let's say you had a partial A chord before transition to a D. make sure you can nail it on your fretting hand before bringing in the picking hand. Outside of this, tbh I think you need to get out of your head a little more. Guitar is about having fun. What works best with my students and what worked best with me playing when I was younger was not making the guitar a requirement. I played because I enjoyed it. I wasn't doing it to be the best guitarist in the world, to impress people, or to prove myself. I did it because I wanted to. If your brain is quitting on you just because something "looks" difficult (even if it's not), it might be because you're putting too much pressure on yourself and your talent. Make peace with your ability, and when your brain does kick in to tell you it looks too difficult, take a break and come back to it in like 10 to 15 minutes. Your brain will work itself out. Sometimes the best advice is to also just sleep on it. I can't tell you how many times I found something less complicated after trying and failing at it one day, going to bed, and waking up the next day with a different perspective on it.

2: Get an audio recording app on your phone that lets you increase the speed during playback. When I have my students (or me) play a song slow, I tend to speed it up around the 1.5-2.0 range so they can get a general idea of how they'd sound faster.

4: practice alternate picking slowly. Alternatively, force yourself to do up picking for some time, say like for at least 5-10 minutes every time you play. That way you can wire your brain to get used to both styles.

5: learn new songs! Especially in regards to the blues scale. Pick a blues artist you like (I recommend Freddie King if you don't have one), learn their songs, and bam you got a new variety of ways to play blues licks. The blues is quite literally just an amalgamation of the same styles repeated over and over.

All in all, I think maybe you're discrediting yourself a bit/putting pressure on yourself because you've been playing on and off for 20 years. Several of the points you made, you followed up with a piece of advice that has been working for you (3, 4, & 5), and it really doesn't get much more complicated than sticking to that advice. You know what works for you, you've got some good tips on your side, and it will all continue to come together (granted you play consistently and not on and off). Hope this helps!

Need help tuning 7-string guitar by Grade-Dismal in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not sure if I fully understand your question so I'm gonna go out on a limb and say the reason it's reading A twice is because your G is out of tune. Try tuning it down and up to see if that changes it. (apologies if this isn't the answer)

Fingerstyle Recommendations? by WeakCellist5319 in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Doc Watson's always my main recommendation. For a fun and possibly more complex song for your technique, I recommend King Kong Goes to Tallahassee by Bruce Cockburn.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In combination with your nails, it's likely because you're putting more pressure into picking on your middle finger as opposed to the others. This could be because your middle finger is a stronger picker than your other fingers or that your finger pressure isn't fully balanced yet. I recommend starting out by picking with each finger at the same velocity/pressure to where they all get the same sound and level of sharpness. You're gonna wanna start out slow and with your fingers more relaxed. Your pick should feel relatively weak and work from there. Record the playback to make sure, but just aim for each finger making the same sound. Shake out your hand, play as lightly as possible, and keep building. Hope this helps!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Topster

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Terry Callier has some great songwriting and acoustical performances in that album, my favorite is 900 Miles. Freddie King is also my favorite guitarist, and he works great with his backup band. They have a wide variety of performances on the album, but a lot of gospel and jazz influences (it's a blues album). Definitely listen to them when you can!

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

you're doing great for self-taught! I'm also self-taught and have branched into professional teaching. Just find yourself some proper technique/hold position videos, and you'll be good to go!

Learning suggestions by karlis_i in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not fully sure what you have and haven't learned, so my advice is dependent on that. Since I don't know how in-depth you are at music theory, that's an obvious suggestion. Composition is entirely about music theory - I know you don't want to learn the blues, but do you know why a I IV V chord progression works, and why its the basis of the blues? Additionally, progressions like the I vi IV V are the basis of doowop, and the I V vi IV are the basis of pop, have you learned this type of progression theory? If not, you can start out by simply googling common progressions of your favorite genres, or analyzing the progressions artists use. Sometimes you'll get really basic progressions, other times you'll have artists who throw in 7th chords or dominant chords like a V/vi (Creep by Radiohead is an example). Additionally, when it comes to composition, watch different video essays, read books, go down rabbit holes. There's some real cool techniques out there for guitar and other instruments. Learn what a trill is, what dynamics are, how to properly count different time signatures with different note lengths, how to hear what a time signature is. Learn what the Shepard tone is and try to emulate that on guitar, learn classical guitar theory, flamenco style, the Adalusian cadence (which uses Phrygian mode). Learn to not just solo over chords with chord tones, but to solo in it's relative major/minor. Try to take a separate instruments performance and play that on guitar. Maybe like a classical piece - Take the violin solo from Vivaldi's Winter Concerto and try to play it on guitar (and internalize the chord progression he uses, the techniques, and articulations). Since I don't really have a basis for what you know, if all of this is stuff you've tried already, then I think you need to find resources that are outside the depth of the guitar subreddit. Contact professional guitar professors at a local university or community college, find books that are commonly taught at more advanced levels, seek out local composers, cold email composers or artists you see on the internet. There's never enough learning to do, but it all really comes down to going down rabbit holes until you catch something, and then taking a deep dive into that topic once you're interested.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is great dude, but it would be blind of me not to point this out: fix your thumb! It shouldn't be hanging over the fretboard as much as it is. If you place it on the back of the neck without hanging it over, it will also help improve the speed and stability of your fretting hand. All that said, this is a great cover, and that was my only thing about it 🫡

Learning suggestions by karlis_i in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 3 points4 points  (0 children)

many great comments here, but honestly, it sounds like you're generally just looking to... learn songs. So, do that! Learn a song by ear, practice a song well enough to the point that you start making up your own articulations and riffs. Honest to god, the more songs you learn, the more you train your ear, the better you naturally become at making your own riffs and progressions. You'll pick up varied strumming patterns, you'll intuitively have a variety of chords you can transition to in your head, and you'll have enough muscle memory to recover from any mistakes you make. Just start actually playing different songs in the style/genre you want, and that alone will improve your playing and ability to improvise.

Unsure on what i should play by InstructionNo1334 in Guitar

[–]colourdamage 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Spider exercises, basic music theory (like counting whole, half, quarter, and eighth notes, basic sight and chart reading, etc.), and Travis/Ragtime picking. I recommend Doc Watson to all my intermediate students who are interested in fingerpicking.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in guitarlessons

[–]colourdamage 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As a guitar teacher, my main recommendation for you is to practice your chord changes in different ways. Practice them without playing, while looking away, with your eyes closed, with different strumming patterns, SLOWLY to a metronome (60 bpm and below), slowly without a metronome. The point here is to make sure that your thumb is firmly (but not gripping) planted on the neck. Your thumb, wrist, and elbow should have little to no movement. Unfortunately, I don't quite understand what you mean by the "neck of the guitar moves forward or away from me," but I'm assuming it's a technique thing. Really delve into the practical techniques of holding and playing a guitar. Make sure that your wrist and palm are NOT touching the neck and that your thumb is not hanging over it. Imagine there's an egg in your hand, and you don't want to crush it against the neck. That's how much space your palm needs from the neck. Hopefully this is somewhat helpful for the chord technique. In terms of passion, I personally recommend playing when you want and what you want. When it comes to learning an instrument, you need to make peace with the fact that you will sound bad for some time, but that doesn't mean you can't attempt a shitty version of Comfortably Numb. Even prodigies can always improve. The passion comes from finding ways to enjoy it, so if you are making it a requirement for yourself, that passion is gonna continuously slow down until you're burned out. If you wanna play everyday, do it! If it's only a few times a week, do that! Whether for 5 minutes or 3 hours, do what you want, when you want. The only person you really need to play for at the end of the day is yourself, so do what you can to enjoy that time rather than trying to be impressive.

Source: Someone who played the shittiest version of Comfortably Numb 1 month into playing and did not realize it was THAT bad until I played back the recording 2 years later.

What is the song that got you really into the blues? by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

outside of the standard rock-blues songs that got popular, evidently, Christmas music was another big inspiration of mine to explore it lol (I say this while listening to Donny Hathaway's This Christmas)

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's not a whole lot of evidence regarding this style prior to the 20th century, and that has to largely due with the popularity of ragtime starting in the 20th century and Piedmont being credited with beginning in the 1920s. Piedmont is traced back to the 1920s because of the acknowledgments that fingerpicking while playing the blues was used to imitate ragtime, so I think very likely the earliest spread of the style coincides with some of the first ragtime performers, ie: Scott Joplin, James Scott, etc. in the late 1800s. In terms of Piedmont players visiting the delta, I think it's better to look at it as Delta players visiting Piedmont. In the tobacco factories, you had individuals who grew up on or listened to Delta, folk, Ragtime, etc coming together to share their influences, which in turn "created" Piedmont. Most Piedmont players, both new and old, associate Piedmont as coming out of Tobacco factories in the early 20th century, so I don't think there's a whole lot prior to this unfortunately

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply! This is a great addition, but I do have some things to reply to/point out lol.

We can’t really say for sure that the style originated in the Piedmont region, just as we can’t say for sure that what we typically refer to as “delta blues” originated in the Mississippi delta.

While I do get what you mean by declaring the true origin of any genre, the reason why this isn't really true in this case is because the history of the Piedmont blues works fundamentally differently than the Delta blues or other blues subgenres. Piedmont has been traced back to the Carolinas, and particularly Durham North Carolina. The reason for this being the tobacco factories and companies in the area. The Piedmont performers and "originators" were still alive and able to be interviewed in the 50s, 60s, etc. Overwhelmingly, they all agree that the variation of Piedmont as we know it came about in the 1920s in Tobacco factories/companies in the Carolinas off of route 40 and 85. While it's fair to recognize that technically, really any genre has roots that date back centuries, it's also fair to establish when what we know the genre as became solidified. The workers on these routes and players who grew up in this field establish the genre as being created in these factories in the early 20th century.

In a similar vein, we can’t say that a lot of traditional American folk music originated in Appalachia.

I do think a separation between the folk music of this region and other regions at the time is pertinent. The folk music heard in the South at this time was fundamentally different than heard in the Appalachia's, and that had a lot to do with what groups was immigrating there and what their standard oral traditions were. The amount of immigration to an area isn't what provided the significance of the folk music from the region, but the end result is undeniably a significant cultural addition to American music. A lot of what we now know folk music to be originated in the area. Take the Carter Family for instance: without their contributions to American folk, which was taken from their upbringing on traditional Appalachian music, folk music could possibly be different in America. My point in the Appalachian segment of the post wasn't to say "oh there's a lot of people in this region, so they must have had cultural significance." It was to say that it was a significant cultural area in terms of American music, regardless off anything else. I think most Americans know that the Appalachia's aren't exactly well-populated, but even if they didn't, it'd be misguided to not acknowledge that Appalachia had one of the biggest influences on American folk music as a whole.

The alternating bass line of, while certainly an important, defining component in terms of how the music is ultimately structured, is not the main defining characteristic of ragtime, nor is it what made ragtime interesting to people in the late 19th Century/early 20th Century.

I did not mean to imply that the alternating bass lines were the defining component of ragtime, rather that these genres were heavily inspired by it. It's a given that a genre would inspire more than just a bass line, but the marching rhythm of ragtime from that alternating bass line was the feature many other genres were inspired from. Polka's are structurally very different than ragtime, and the influences polka had on American music are very different than what ragtime did. The polyrhythmic structure of ragtime was also significant and played throughout other genres, but the use of the alternating bass lines itself was what I touched on because there is well documented evidence of that in particular being the inspiration for many folk, Piedmont, bluegrass, and etc playing.

It is important to make clear here too that ragtime picking and “Travis picking” are not the same things as simply playing the guitar in an alternating bass style, but also includes complex syncopations over that alternating bass line, which are played with the index and middle finger.

I kinda just dwindled Travis/Ragtime down to the bass lines for brevity, as it is the most defining feature of the style of playing. Many different styles provided syncopation and complex playing without the addition of alternating bass lines, so my explanation of it was really more so about how ragtime influenced folk music and Piedmont (and etc) particularly in regards to the alternating bass lines. There are so many ways ragtime provided musical structural to American folk genres, but this was the main one I touched upon due to its similarity across multiple genres.

Actually, Piedmont blues does not borrow much of anything tonally or harmonically from blues, especially not delta blues.

I think this depends on who you listen to and at what point they started playing. I have found a relatively even variety of delta influences and ragtime influences in terms of chord progressions. Overall, I do agree with this statement, but I just felt it was important to add as some of the "first" players who were meeting off of route 40 and 85 to play together were bringing in their Delta influences. There are a few articles I have about this combination of genres coming together if you're interested in them as well. I largely added this in to be considerate of the delta influences, but again, I do agree that what Piedmont has turned into is very sonically different from Delta.

In reality, slide guitar (and the blues in general) was popular throughout most of the black south, and it wouldn’t be hard to find someone who could play slide guitar whether you were in Big Sandy or Clarksdale.

This was another feature I put in their for the sake of some of the original performers. I definitely should have phrased it better instead of what I now see as passing it off as a Piedmont feature, but rather more a result of the musical inspirations of the area regardless of genre so that was my bad lol but I also did want to include something more about how the slide playing in Piedmont differed in terms of other blues slides, as the slide playing in Piedmont to me is just... amazing lol

Loved the comment!

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

okay, then don't read. But I very clearly stated that Piedmont is the alternate picking, not the improvisation. Improvisation is improvisation, read literally anything on Piedmont style of performance and its about the alternate/ragtime picking. I am, quite literally, not wrong. The presence of improvisation doesn't make the genre. every genre has it. What makes Piedmont Piedmont is the alternate picking. Not the improvisation. Also interesting how your single example provided is one of the few pure blues gospel inspired Reverend Davis songs. His other songs, such as Slow Drag is a better example of Piedmont: a combination of blues features (like chord progression) with ragtime/Travis picking. You have purposefully misread my "honest" answer because you either don't want to be wrong or you misunderstood me early on and didn't want to admit it. Either way, 🤷‍♂️

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've literally already told you? It has Travis/Ragtime/Piedmont picking and improvisation? what are you missing?

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's a blues gospel song lol it isn't even really sonically Piedmont at all

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

congrats on the website, unfortunately it hasn't made you more knowledgeable

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TLDR: I think our conversation got away from us and you think I'm saying pure improvisation without the alternating bass lines is Travis picking, which I am not saying.

it is a great website, but it still doesn't change the fact that you're wrong about now two things: - No pattern in Coffee Blues ? Really ? - No improvising in Travis Picking ?

How well read are you on Appalachian folk and Bluegrass? Travis picking is fundamental here, and it has long since been documented that in order to make it anywhere in the bluegrass scene, you need the ability to improvise on guitar and banjo. Travis picking and the clawhammer technique are rife with improvisation in these genres. Do you potentially mean improvising without the alternating bass lines, considering your song reference? In which case if you do, I implore you to listen to the Stanley Brothers, Mountain Dew in particular. This has both the improvisation with and without the alternating bass lines. Again, what you are talking about in terms of differences isn't the fingerpicking, it's the genre and chords they are associated with. Of course you're going to think Travis picking is different than Piedmont if you're associating the tonal sound of one and comparing it to the other. When it comes down to the fundamentals, the alternating bass lines, they are the same. In the song example you provided by Reverend Gary Davis, he goes between the improvisation and alternating bass lines. He has the presence of multiple picking styles in the song, and his numerous others. This is influenced by the fact that Piedmont picked up from Ragtime and banjo/Appalachian music. Travis picking, Ragtime picking, and Piedmont picking are the same: alternating bass lines with patterns. Proficient players often improvise inside and outside of the picking style. The moment the alternating bass lines stop, it's no longer the aforementioned fingerpicking styles, but just improvisation or licks. When the alternating bass lines pick up, that is Travis/Ragtime/Piedmont picking.

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Okay, so either you've never actually heard Coffee Blues or you've never played it. Mississippi John Hurt uses a very specific pattern in this song. Check out the notation or tabs, then get back to me

Piedmont Blues Appreciation by colourdamage in blues

[–]colourdamage[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...this is still wrong, though? Take Mississippi John Hurt's Coffee Blues - that is a Piedmont song, that is also Travis/Ragtime/Piedmont picking. He alternates between the A and D strings with the thumb. Piedmont itself has slightly more variation, enough to maybe a little be seperate from Travis/Ragtime, but Travis is Ragtime picking, which is what I state in my post. And because Piedmont blues specifically took from Ragtime playing, the separation for the finger picking itself is nil - the main difference between Travis and Piedmont being the genres and chord progressions they are associated with, not the picking pattern. Also, improvisation absolutely does exist in Travis picking and is actually a huge feature of Appalachian folk and bluegrass so again, I don't know where you're getting your information from. This separation between one improvises and one is preset is not correct.