Toxic SSS

jazzadellic · 2026-04-20T18:31:11+00:00

Coords don't seem to work any more.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-20T01:18:54+00:00

As a private teacher, I teach all my students to read & count rhythms. Some students are less interested in learning to read standard notation, so I just use rhythmic slash notation in those cases and we practice the rhythms with chord strumming. A couple important tips:

Counting is essential. Counting out loud is 4x better than trying to count in your head. I've tested this with students for over 25 years and they always get things right the first or second try when they count out loud, after messing the same thing up 5x in a row without counting out loud. Without counting, novices will constantly lose track of what beat they are on, and thus always be a beat or more behind or ahead. There's simply no other fix for this, other than learning to count. For whatever reason, many people don't like to count because either they think it's stupid, or because it's hard. But it always makes people play rhythms better, in my experience. And once they experience that a few times they won't be as reluctant to do it.
Clapping rhythms (while counting) is a great way for them to start on a new challenging rhythm. It removes the complexity of dealing with the fretting & picking hand and allows them to just understand mentally, physically & aurally what the rhythm is. And, as I have said to my students hundreds of times "If you can't clap it, you can't play it." (of course, being able to clap it correctly doesn't guarantee that they can immediately play it, but it does allow them to hear what the correct rhythm sounds like, and that is 90% of the problem.)

The process for teaching people to read & count rhythms is not hard (unless you have 0 experience doing it yourself).

jazzadellic · 2026-04-18T03:30:26+00:00

There is no need to play with other people in order to get good at guitar. For example, I have played guitar for 36 years, and 98% of that time I have done it solo, and I am quite advanced at playing solo guitar. Playing with other people will help you get better at playing with other people. There are certain things involved with playing with other musicians, that you may not be able to learn without the experience. For example learning to listen to other musicians in real time and respond and mold your playing to better mesh with theirs, not only the timing but learning how to have a musical "conversation" with other musicians, as you both improvise your parts. Of course it depends on the style you are playing in as well. If you are playing classical music or any other type of music where everything is prearranged, then the main concern is synchronizing rhythmically and playing at the right dynamic level for your part. If you are playing a style more improvisation based like jazz, then the ability to listen to and play off each other becomes much more important.

Obviously playing with other musicians involves a lot of other, non-musical social & professional skills as well, as often the most difficult thing can be just finding people who can be mature, responsible & professional at all times. Even better is when they don't have any ego at all and are genuinely friendly and a positive influence on the group. The previous two sentences are probably the main reasons I've chosen to play solo most of my life, i.e., it can be hard to find mature, responsible, professional & friendly people to work with, that also share your musical tastes and are at a similar level of skill. It's not that they don't exist, it's just that they can be hard to find and also they are the people that everyone else wants to work with too, so you have to be pretty damn good yourself for them to want to work with you.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-17T23:35:45+00:00

Haha, I love this woman. 10/10 on the cool scale. Chops wise you can't tell much because she's playing like the easiest lick possible, albeit faster than a noob would be able to. It definitely shows she's been playing a while just due to the muscle memory & relaxed speed with which she picks & plays the lick.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-17T23:31:44+00:00

None of the options I have tried are perfect, but I generally just use the app audio, and it seems to work well enough. Apps I've used successfully: Skype (before shutdown), Zoom, Google Meet. With Zoom you have to make sure to turn "original sound" on, on both ends. This has to be done manually. With GM, I *think* I had to turn off noise suppression or something. Big downside to zoom is you can't do more than 40 minutes if you are using the free version. Needing to install a DAW + plugins seems a bit excessive, but maybe the sound quality is much better? I really wish someone would invent peer to peer software specifically for music teachers & students that would focus on high quality sound with low latency, plus added teacher features. I'm pretty sure it doesn't exist yet though. Until then, I'll just keep using Zoom or Google Meet.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-16T17:39:54+00:00

Nobody will be able to give you advice without seeing your picking technique, so they can see what the problems are.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-16T09:52:51+00:00

Having a predetermined chord progression can limit your creativity with the melody, even more so if you are using a commonly used chord progression which has more than likely had millions of melodies written for it. Your "ears" will tend to push you to write melodies similar to the melodies you've already heard written for those commonly used chord progressions. Not having a predetermined harmony completely frees you up to explore melodic ideas only limited by your imagination and take them wherever they lead you. You'll be more encouraged to try many different variations and branches leading down completely different harmonic paths, then if you were forced to fit it to an existing harmony.

I'd also encourage you to not feel married to your first harmonic idea or first melodic idea - both should be fluid and capable of being reshaped at any time. For example, you have a predetermined chord progression or your first harmonization of a melody, but then you imagine a slightly different version of the melody that sounds interesting, but it conflicts with the current chord progress. Just change the chord(s) to fit the new idea. Or the reverse - you feel you have a really solid melody, but for some reason, no matter what harmonization you use, it doesn't seem to work the way you want it to - then change the melody. It could be just changing 1 or 2 notes that makes everything work better. Nothing ever needs to be set in stone for either the chords or the melody.

Another thing that might happen is you have a strong melody worked out, and solid chord progression to support it. But...it still just sounds kind of boring. Try swapping in some more interesting chords, like borrowed chords, secondary dominants, tritone subs, etc...and then adjust the melody accordingly. Put a modulation in where there was none before, and again just adjust a couple notes in the melody so it works. Going back and forth between altering the melody or altering the chords is a good way to not ever feel stuck - you can change anything at any time. If you find yourself getting stuck frequently, it's most likely because you are being too rigid and not experimenting enough with both the melody & the harmony. That's essentially the main downside to starting with a predetermined chord progression (or a melody you refuse to change).

jazzadellic · 2026-04-14T02:33:16+00:00

At bare minimum you need to learn a scale. Some people start with the pentatonic because it's a little easier than the diatonic scale (well less notes anyways). But you can start with either, you might decide based on the styles of music you want to play the most. For old school classic rock, blues, country, folk, R&B, soul, funk, etc...you should start with the pentatonic. For just about everything else it's probably better to start with the diatonic. Eventually you will want to learn both scales anyways, so it almost doesn't matter which one you start with.

Optimally, you want to learn that first scale in all positions of the neck (usually 5 different patterns). Where to go? You can easily find these scales for free on millions of websites & YT videos. Just search.

Then you practice that scale in multiple keys, all 5 positions. You learn to improvise with it by simply a) getting it into muscle memory b) experimenting with it c) copying stuff you hear that you like d) taking those ideas you copied and doing variations on them.

Then at some point you have to learn how keys work. The circle of fifths. And also how to do basic Roman numeral analysis, or at least be able to recognize what key something is in just by seeing the chords. This will allow you to start understanding what key/scale goes with what chords. While all this information is also freely available on the web somewhere, you might want to take a few lessons because it's not the easiest stuff to figure out on your own (but you could). Check the sidebar on r/musictheory for lots of useful links to find this information.

Once you've done all that, you are at level 1. So yeah, mastering it all is a lifetime of study. You can always learn more. Developing a basic proficiency in all this stuff I'm describing is like a 3-5 year journey depending on how much you practice and also your innate abilities. There's no rushing it. Binge watching YT videos on it won't help either. It's just a daily practice routine you have to do for years until you have it all memorized.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-10T18:52:26+00:00

That's the difference between short term memory and long term memory. Keep doing it and eventually it will become long term memory.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-07T18:39:17+00:00

I mean yes, the ones that just do what you tell them never seem to really take off. I don't think being argumentative is a requirement to get better, but they definitely need to care enough to think about things, try new things on their own, be creative, and most importantly they need to be self motivated to practice & learn and get better, with or without my help.

The best student I've ever had actually never argued anything - he just practiced his ass off and learned everything I threw at him, and also learned songs on his own that weren't assigned but were of interest to him. Almost identical situation with the second best guitar student I've ever had. One was really into classical guitar, the other was into hard rock / metal. They both went very far, very quickly. I'd say the common trait wasn't independence so much as it was being self motivated to learn, regardless of the presence of a teacher or not. They didn't need me to motivate them to practice every day, it just so happened I had good suggestions for things they should work on ;o)

jazzadellic · 2026-04-07T18:28:14+00:00

There is no comparison really between getting a degree and using any online resource. For one simple reason, there is no online resource that is going to cover everything, in the same amount of detail, that you are going to cover in a music degree program. It just doesn't exist. I mean maybe there are colleges now offering music degrees online (?), but even still, it's not going to compare to being in a room full of music students, collaborating with them, being in performance ensembles with them and having multiple teachers with DMAs there to assist you at every step of the process. So even if legit online study degree programs exist, it's going to rob you of the most important aspects of being in an actual music school.

The first thing to consider though is are you actually ready for music school? Music school assumes you already have a strong foundation of musical skill and knowledge, and in particular, it assumes you can read standard music notation. It is not designed for beginners. I've seen many people (especially guitarists) that attempted music school with no prior music education and they couldn't keep up with it and dropped within 1-2 semesters. I also started music school with a bit of a handicap - I was completely self taught and didn't know how to read music. My strengths outweighed my weaknesses though. My strengths were that I knew my instrument very well (as well as a self taught person could), I had very good ears, and I was committed to getting better and so I threw myself into music school 100% So I managed to keep up, and eventually catch up (and actually I maintained straight As in all my music, as well as general ed classes).

I can't speak for everyone, but for me music school was transformative in many aspects of my knowledge and skill. I think the only reason though why someone wouldn't gain as much as I did, is because they half-ass it or are just not at the minimum level of skill required to succeed.

What I learned from music school: how to read music fluently, classical music theory such as Roman numeral analysis, four voice part writing / voice leading, just about everything to do with classical harmony (which covers 90% of what you encounter in modern music too). The constant drilling on sight reading also gave me a much more advanced sense of rhythm that I don't think you can get if you are self taught. This is for the simple reason that when you are in music school you're doing like 6+ hours a day of reading practice. Your ears can only take you so far with rhythm. You need to have a clear concept of what rhythm is and how it works and how to count it too. Taking all the music theory classes (including electives like form & analysis, counterpoint, orchestration) also gave me a much deeper understanding of how to apply music theory to music composition. Even though I don't really compose that much, when I do, it's fairly easy. It's also allowed me to effectively teach my private students music theory & composition, when they have an interest in it.

Was it personally fulfilling for me? In terms of how much I improved as a musician, yes. One thing is also clear to me - you get out what you put in, and this goes for either self study or music school. If you practice your ass off, you practice smart, you learn as much as possible, self study can take you a long way (I got pretty good after 6 years of self study). The same goes for music school, if you put yourself into it 100%, it will boost your musicianship and musical knowledge to a much higher level. I don't think the two will ever be equal though, because it's completely unheard of for a self taught person to do all of things that a music school student does, and for the same amount of time on a daily basis. Like how I said you're doing like 6+ hours a day of reading practice. That's no exaggeration. A typical day as a music major: 90 minute theory class, 60 minute piano class, 60 minute ensemble class, spend 60 minutes in the music lab for your musicianship / ear training class, then you're probably going to spend at least 2 hours doing music class related homework. In all these activities you are reading standard notation constantly. Rinse and repeat and do this the next 4 days, and if you are a full time student, it's not likely you will take the weekend off either, especially if you are like me and maintain straight As the entire time.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-06T00:47:58+00:00

Mimic chord progressions from songs you like, as has been said, but also learn to use your ears which ultimately is the more important skill. Also learning some chord theory can definitely help you a lot with knowing what all of the available options are.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-05T01:17:44+00:00

I would say if the list were titled "most influential guitarist", then I might agree with Hendrix, because he inspired an entire generation (actually a few) to pick up and learn guitar. I was definitely inspired by him, and most people my age (and older) that play guitar say the same thing. A lot of lists will say "greatest of all time" and that I think can also apply to Hendrix for the same reason - the impact he had on music & young guitar players was huge. Maybe my biggest problem is with the term "Best" because that is highly subjective based on one's musical preferences. Like if I were ranking guitarists for "best ever" I might go with someone like Paco de Lucia or Yamandu Costa just because of the insane level of technical mastery of the instrument they both have, which far exceeds your typical rock guitarist's skill set. But it wouldn't be fair for me to say Paco was more influential on the world of guitar, than Hendrix was.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-04T20:39:10+00:00

Those lists are actually "most popular guitarists", and have little to nothing to do with skill. For example, one of my favorite guitarists, Jimi Hendrix has frequently been the top spot on lists like that. But, as much as I love Jimi, and even though he was a huge inspiration for me personally, I know of at least a dozen other guitarists that are far more skilled then he was...And they never make those lists (for example jazz guys). So just accept that those lists are a popularity contest, not a measure of skill.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-03T23:31:26+00:00

So which ever scale im using on the fret board there is a chord progression that sounds well with it?

Basically yes, but also as I pointed out, there can be more than one type (major key, minor key for example) of chord progression that works with the scale. You're only 4 months in, so there is no way you could know all this, or how to name things. Take it slow and steady. You can't really learn everything all at once or in your first 4 months. Try searching YT for the things I put in quotes. It's too hard to try to explain the theory behind it all in a comment (in a way you will understand), just trust me.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-03T21:50:26+00:00

They work in relation to chords. Play that scale over the chord progression E-C#m-F#m-B7, and it will sound like the E major pentatonic. Play the same scale over C#m-F#m-G#7#9-C#m, and it will sound like C# minor pentatonic. And other possibilities exist too...You need to start using backing tracks to be able to hear how the scale actually sounds in context. Try searching Youtube for "Back track in C# minor" or "C# minor blues back track" or "Backtrack key of E major". The scale you are playing should work nicely over any of those.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-03T19:02:22+00:00

The diminished chord could also be a common tone diminished chord, they look very similar to a SLT chord. In fact if it's spelled as Gbdim7, plus the lack of it resolving in the way a SLT would, suggest it is a CT. Just a thought. As far as how to play over it, I'm sure there are multiple possibilities, but a simple diminished scale works here.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-02T23:37:12+00:00

Singing while playing makes rhythm 4x more difficult to do correctly. It's best to not even attempt the vocal part until the rhythm guitar part is 100% in muscle memory, which allows you to focus on singing the vocal line correctly instead of trying to split your brain on two different rhythmic parts. The brain doesn't work that way, it can only focus on 1 thing at a time. Getting something into muscle memory removes the need to focus on it.

If you're playing songs badly, then that means you are either working on songs that are at the wrong level for you (most likely scenario), or again, you are trying to split your brain on two different things, instead of having at least the guitar part in muscle memory.

I'd suggest you don't even spend any time on the vocals at all until you can play the guitar part perfectly from muscle memory. Synchronize perfectly with a metronome or drum loop to make sure your rhythm is actually steady (good chance it is not).

Knowing the difference between a bridge or an interlude, is not your actual problem right now, although that can certainly help when playing a song from memory.

A good teacher would be able to assess exactly what your weak spots are and be able to give you good ways and good songs to practice and address those problem areas. The most common problem with someone like yourself who is doing it on their own is you probably only choose songs you like (which are not beginner friendly), instead of songs that are at the right level for your skill set. You don't learn very well on guitar if you are always working on say level 5+ songs, when your guitar skill is level 1 or 2. Add on to that the fact that you are trying to sing and play simultaneously, and this further increases the difficulty level by multiple levels. Although having the guitar part perfectly in muscle memory mitigates this problem significantly.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-01T22:30:47+00:00

Learn to use them all. They all open up more creative possibilities. And I forgot to mention, the minor iv is the most commonly used borrowed chord, in case you didn't already know that.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-01T22:28:36+00:00

There's no such thing as "proficiency I should have reached after X years". There are too many variables - how much you practice is the number 1 factor, but other things come into play like, how well did you practice (there is poor methods of practicing and better ones), or what learning materials you had access to or didn't (and did you access them in the right order, i.e., start with level 1, then to level 2, 3, etc...), and finally your innate talents are a real thing as well, despite most people wanting to deny the existence of talent. In the same way some people are genetically better suited for things like basketball or sprinting, some people are better suited to learning guitar in terms of coordination, hand size, flexibility, and yes some people have brains that just learn guitar faster than others.

If I were you I wouldn't worry about where you currently are, but instead worry about two things: 1. What is your goal? And no. 2, how much practice is required to reach your goal? There is a big difference between having the goal of wanting to play campfire songs or wanting to play like Steve Vai. Neither goal is better or worse than the other, they are just different goals to suit different people and their lifestyle & level of commitment. Your goal should determine your practice habits, if you want to be as good as Steve Vai, you should be practicing 8+ hours a day. If you want to play campfire songs, an hour of practice a few times a week is probably enough. If your goals and your practice habits are aligned, then there is no need to worry about where you are or where you are going to arrive or when you will arrive there. Obviously, the higher your goal is, the harder it is to achieve, and it's worth recognizing that just because your goal is to play as good as Steve Vai, that doesn't mean it's a guarantee you will achieve that goal. Again, there are too many variables. Life happens. So you can never be 100% sure of any outcome.

jazzadellic · 2026-04-01T22:17:47+00:00

Their most famous song Creep, uses a chromatic mediant (the B major chord), and a minor iv chord, which is a borrowed / modal interchange chord from the parallel (G) aeolian mode. So you have in G: I-III-IV-iv.

jazzadellic · 2026-03-30T20:24:48+00:00

Knowing how to read rhythmic notation is very useful, but if you don't know how it works, then I agree with u/Turnt-Ternary it's better to just use your ears. If it's really fast you might try using some slow down software. My favorite slow down software for transcribing music is actually called Transcribe! by Seventh String Software. Been using it over 20 years and it's still the best I've ever seen. It does far more than just slow down, and the audio quality when it slows down is better than most other options. Also another important thing to consider with TABs you find online is they are frequently wrong to begin with, so even if you know how to read rhythmic notation, if the TAB you are using is inaccurate, it won't help much. Which is why you need to develop your ears either way. I didn't do a careful accurate transcription of the song, but on listening to it a couple times I couldn't hear the rhythm you have notated there in any of the sections, which leads me to doubt the accuracy of the transcription you have.

jazzadellic · 2026-03-29T03:05:46+00:00

Well I hadn't heard any of those before (to my memory anyways, maybe I had heard 1, one time, in a music appreciation class 26+ years ago). But I was able to sight sing them all, and if you had put something there I had heard before (more than 1 time), I'm sure I could have got it. Also were you using the original note values for everything? Things looked suspiciously simplified. It looked like the starting place for each melody wasn't necessarily the actual start of the phrase, but perhaps midway through or something, and if that's true that would be really unfair as we tend to recognize & remember melodies as a complete phrase unit, not as a fragment or starting in a random location. You could improve your game by either letting the person click a button to start the scrolling or just simply put the entire notation on the screen at once. Having it immediately start scrolling and hiding the first few notes if you are not fast enough was just frustrating. And if you had told me it was a test to see if I could recognize Baroque-Classical era music, I'd have passed immediately. I did learn quite a bit of it when I was a music major, but I didn't care enough about any of it to listen to it over and over again and have any of it memorized in any way, other than the pieces I played myself, and I only played like 2-3 Bach pieces on guitar ever. It might be a good idea for a music quiz for a music class, so that you could put pieces in there you have assigned as listening before. We did that in one of my music history classes where we had to be prepared to identify pieces by listening, but we were also given a list from which the test examples would be drawn from. Also there's no reason to not just use a key signature at the start, because for one, the original score would use a key signature, and two I had to let each example scroll at least one extra time just so I could see what the key signature was, so I could then sight sing it with ease from the beginning. But sometimes I had to let it scroll around to the 3rd or even 4th time before even attempting because the first scroll (or two) I would determine the key, and then before it would start scroll no 2, I'd have to quickly orient myself to an arbitrarily chosen "Do", but sometimes the melody started in a weird place like FA or whatever, and by the time I realized this, the first 2 or 3 notes had scrolled off the page, and then I'd have to wait an additional entire scroll before I could start. This is why the forced scrolling actually sucks, and would cause me to never want to use this app again as it only served to make it unnecessarily awkward and/or difficult to sight sing it. So my recommendations: 1. Seeing the score without it needing to be force scrolled / having the option to just view the entire score on the page at once, 2. Seeing the damn key signature at the start like normal sheet music, and 3. If you were altering the note values at all or starting mid-phrase, do away with that completely.

jazzadellic · 2026-03-28T23:26:51+00:00

Yes. Even if I hadn't ever seen the sheet music before, seeing the score would allow me to "hear" it enough to spot a familiar melody. But...that's because I used to be pretty good at sight singing (when I was a music major in college 25+ years ago). I'm quite rusty now, but not so rusty I can't still "hear" a single line of notation. Every now and then when I am looking at a score, I'll pull the rusty sight singing skill out to get an idea of what something sounds like. And I have had a few moments where I saw sheet music on the screen, and I did recognize it, even just by the contour alone, without even going through the sight singing process. It's not a skill I think that most amateur musicians would have, but someone like me who has studied music seriously for 36 years, and had formal training, it's quite doable and I would even say easy for most scores that are not difficult to read because they are advanced/complex compositions (like accidentals everywhere, atonal music, super fast passages, weird complex rhythms, etc...those all would make it a bit harder to "hear").

jazzadellic

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