Subject: RE: absolutely beautiful guitar work
From: Tim Leaning - PM
Date: 11 Mar 10 - 04:21 AM

"Bit of thread drift here but as a novice guitaree,I am find a lot of the instruction Books do tend to say that we should practice a piece until we can play it with equal expertise in any key."

This sounds completely unrealistic to me and (just my personal opinion) I also think it would be 1. very boring and 2. a waste of time.

"Now If I am a strumming in my very basic way that is fine,but when I is a finger pickin' not so."

When finger-picking, it makes sense to use the open strings. It also makes sense to use harmonies that aren't too complex and not to change chords too often. Using more complex chord changes seems to result in a different effect.

"There fore I tend to larn it in whatever key it comes to me. Then capo up so that I may sing or join in with others."

Sounds like a reasonable approach to me.

"I don't normally want to learn the bloomin things more than once and the notes are all in different places and the hammering on and off etc just seems a bit awkward."

Actually, if one learns to play by ear, it eventually becomes easier to play things in any key. It also helps to understand the harmonies, i.e., to be able to think in terms of chord relationships (tonic, dominant, sub-dominant, etc.) instead of just the chord names in a given key. I suggest trying this with simple tunes. I never really specifically practiced this; it eventually just started to come to me.

"I know I am lucky in the amount of free time I can find for all this but it still seems a waste of life.
Am I evel or will it just come to me eventually?"

Music and practicing aren't wastes of time.

If you keep practicing, lots of things will come to you. I strongly recommend trying to play melodies by ear. Don't worry about mistakes, if you play a wrong note, just try to find the right one. Don't worry about chords. Don't worry about the names of the notes or what key you're in. You will eventually get better at this.

I believe the ability to play a melody by ear on one's instrument is the one single most important musical skill. I don't mean that one should practice this _only_; there are lots of other good things to practice, but I recommend doing it often. (If you don't like it, practice something else. It's not the One True Way, just something that has helped me.)

Transposition can be learned. It takes a bit of practice, but it's not that hard. I have to do it for the trumpet all the time. For what it's worth, I never do it just for practice, but only when I actually want to play something in a different key. On the other hand, I'm not a session or orchestral musician, a choir director or a professional accompanist, so I don't _have_ to be able to do this.