I'm Stuck.

[dintymoore]

Be careful - sometimes when you take a technical approach and do something like playing scales a lot your ear can actually turn itself off in self defense. There's some well known players I believe have gone down this route.

I saw a guy go from never playing to world class in demand player in 3 years, one of my buddies growing up.

Yes, he took lessons and spent some time on scales - but actually very little.
He spent almost all his time copying his heroes and learning songs.

I had a trombone teacher who said by the time he was 19 he knew about 700 songs by heart.

It's my experience that when you take songs out of the equation that things start to go weird.

You could never practice a scale in your life (not that I'm recommending that) and just learn song after song after song and everything, I believe would naturally work out just fine.

The key is - keep it musical.

 

[dodgeaspen]

You can also download lessons from the net like bit torrent. I have been able to download lots of drum lessons from sites like that.

 

[apush]

Get a CD or mp3 of a type of music you do not normally play, and sit down and start playing with it.

ditto on this. I was in a major rut and started listening and playing a lot of bossanova. helped a lot.

 

[dintymoore]

ditto on this. I was in a major rut and started listening and playing a lot of bossanova. helped a lot.

There you go.

Learn to play Desifinado and I guarantee you won't be in a rut - you'll learn enough chords to last a lifetime from that one masterpiece.

That's what a lot of rock players did, like Randy Bachman for instance.

 

[Zaphod B]

Thanks, everyone, for all the suggestions.

I think my approach is going to be to first take myself to school and learn a bit more about structures and their interrelationships. I need to do that before I tackle, for example, listening and copping jazz stuff, because I just don't know quite enough to understand what I'm hearing sometimes.

Anyway, there are lots of good ideas here and I appreciate it.

 

[yag]

Oh I'm late...

but try playing (or listening) Django or Piazzolla (if you do not already). Personally I have always found Piazzolla's music fresh and refreshing.

 

[dogonjon]

I've just begun resurrecting my classical guitar repertoire. Initially I was overwhelmed by the formidable bulk of music I had forgotten since dropping out of music school 30 years ago. I lost all my sheet music years ago and just bought a book of pieces I had in High school. To my surprise as I played through some rudimentary pieces I began to recall many other pieces I have no sheet music for. I also discovered dozens of songs I wrote over the years that adapt well to classical guitar. There are also many pop, rock and metal songs I learned over the years with bands that can be adapted to solo guitar. Consequently I developed a list of 60 tunes and pieces in short order. I hope to build on my reputation as a guitarist locally and start playing classical guitar in some of our towns finer restaurants. This will build my credibility as an instructor as a number of people have asked me to teach them lessons. The relevance of this is when you start a new project you don't know going in where it can take you. If it's getting a grip on scales you may find yourself in a whole different crowd of musicians and new directions and opportunities open up for you.