Knowing then what you know now.

[Solodini]

I wish I'd learnt theory when I first started!

Did you start the standard way of "just put your fingers there and hit that"?

 

[octatoan]

"So you want to play guitar? Here's an F major chord . . ."

 

[Neilzord]

Did you start the standard way of "just put your fingers there and hit that"?

Well I learn't classical to start with, learnt basic music reading / writing /theory / scales but then that just wasn't cool enough and my idols at the time didn't play classical guitar. ( I Wish I'd carried it on) But I didn't & I started learning electric guitar which was taught to me with tab and just showing me how to play songs I wanted to play. So once I understood tab and could play some iron maiden I quit.
The knowledge of music reading slowly went out the window and only recently have I started re-learning.

It's so much harder to take in at this age. I was a sponge when I was younger!

So if I could say anything it would be to learn theory and how music works / scales before you get too far ahead.

So when you're writing / jamming in the future it's not so much trial, error and ear.
But you KNOW what your going to play is going to work.. because its a musical fact.

And just to put it into perspective, I consider myself pretty able at playing.. and writing (the style I want to write). and I can play pretty much any tab I'm given with practice. But what you'll realise is that's not what it's all about - at least not for me! ( I think that made sense?)

 

[Solodini]

That's the cloud to the silver-lining of guitar: it's easy to pick it up and belt something out, easy to transcribe something in tab without understanding it, and similarly to learn cool songs that way, but that means it's easy to miss a lot of that useful information, people develop mechanically without mental development and then end up teaching and just show things they can show with little explanation, so students miss out.

 

[Neilzord]

That's the cloud to the silver-lining of guitar: it's easy to pick it up and belt something out, easy to transcribe something in tab without understanding it, and similarly to learn cool songs that way, but that means it's easy to miss a lot of that useful information, people develop mechanically without mental development and then end up teaching and just show things they can show with little explanation, so students miss out.

100% !!

Back to the music books for me. I intend to work my way through my grades as I think that's a fairly solid way of making sure I don't miss too much!

 

[tedtan]

When you guys in the UK refer to the grades, is this some type of formal, standardized approach to teaching and testing like you would find in other subjects (e.g., history, algebra, etc.)?

 

[Solodini]

Yup, grades 1-8 then diploma as the highest level. Grade 7/8 is usually expected for undergrad university study of music. There are a few organisations which have their own syllabuses.