Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 18 Mar 07 - 11:44 AM

yeh I do that with the tv, doesn't half get on the wife's nerves.......

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Stringsinger
Date: 18 Mar 07 - 01:43 PM

Fumble Fingers, I have taught guitar for over fifty years.

The best way for you to go is to find for yourself the kind of music you want to play and start from there. What songs do you like? What sounds do you like on the guitar?

Once you know this, the information is out there and you can ask questions today and find answers.

Age is not a factor. What does count though is that a propensity for finger dexterity enables certain people to learn faster technically but not necessarilly musically.

The advancement you make is in proportion to the amount of time you want to spend on it.
The best mode of practice is "distributive" rather than "mass". A little at various times each day is preferable to doing a lot on one day and skipping 2 or 3.

Much progress can be made if you keep a positive attitude and interest in the learning process.

Frank Hamilton

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 08:16 AM

Research showed that classical music students needed about 3,000 hours of practice to reach a Graduate level of proficiency. Those wishing to pursue a career as a performer needed about 10,000 hours.

Imaging of the brains clearly showed the changes in brain structure.

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Don Firth
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 06:13 PM

Yeah, Robin, it sounds like you've read This Is Your Brain on Music : The Science of a Human Obsession, by Daniel J. Levitin.

A friend of mine, who is not a musician but a poet by trade, and is also interested in brain research, discovered this book and was so impressed by it that he bought several copies to give to his musician friends such as me.

Thank you, Richard! Much appreciated!

There is a real wealth of information in this book, both fascinating and useful. Get it. Read it.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 19 Mar 07 - 10:16 PM

I heard that info on the Aussie ABC Radio Science Show - keeps me up to date. Actually, it might have been on their Music Show, if not both.

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 11:03 AM

Try a new tuning - DADGAD or an open G

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: GUEST,Patrick Costello
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 12:40 PM

Everything you've heard about playing the guitar comes either from bad guitar players or weak guitar players trying to could the issue to make a buck foisting lessons on the unsuspecting public.

Look at it this way, making music on the guitar, banjo or anything else is nothing but taking a set of simple skills and learning how to apply them together. Instead of worrying about how somebody with twenty years or more experience applying those skills it's a lot smarter to just start simply and make the most of what you can do right now.

Go here: http://www.youtube.com/Dobro33H

Mixed in with the banjo stuff is a series of free guitar workshops.
Start with lesson one, work your way through the stuff there and then move on to lesson two.

After lesson two, go to the folk song archive here and sing a few thousand folk songs. Then go to lessons three and four.

It's all you need. It's free. It works.

-Patrick Costello
http://howandtao.com

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 26 Mar 07 - 11:00 PM

"making music on the guitar, banjo or anything else is nothing but taking a set of simple skills and learning how to apply them together."

But, anything with a keyboard is dead easy for me. I can pick up (and have done so) any keyboard instrument instrument, even piano accordion rapidly. The Stradella Bass worried me for a while, but now it's not impossible, and working on that basis, the autoharp has suddenly become clearer. Even the hammered dulcimer was pretty easy to get started on.

But for me, the mouth organ and guitar have always been less intuitive. The Appalachian dulcimer seems to have much of the same sort of hassles, but solo instruments like the whistle, etc are easier to start form nothing.

For me, I just haven't clicked with what 'the fundamentals' are on some instruments as easily as on others.

Maybe its something to do with "either ... bad guitar players or weak guitar players trying to cloud the issue"...

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 04:55 PM

I think you would be very fortunate to find a dog of any age that played the guitar.

Where are the great canine guitarists in the history of music - largely a a footnote in someone's fevered imagination.

If I had a dog, I would not pay for it to have guitar lessons. There is little or no precedent.

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 05:30 PM

..."Everything you've heard about playing the guitar comes either from bad guitar players or weak guitar players trying to cloud the issue to make a buck foisting lessons on the unsuspecting public " ...

that is one hell of an assertion ...

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: chrispin
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 05:37 PM

I'd go along with GUEST a few posts back who suggested changing your tuning to DADGAD... and then finger pick. Try to play as few notes at a time as you can! Less is definitely more in different tunings....

I've been playing the guitar for nearly forty years and try not to be falsely modest about my level of achievement... ie I'm ok... but it was only in the last eighteen months that I tried DADGAD and it has opened up a hugely liberating way for me to play. It certainly does have its limitations: it's very easy to fall into the same note patterns for accompaniments etc, but just as a way of freeing up your mind and your fingers I think its fantastic. And playing in that when then has an positive effect when you use conventional tuning.

Oh, and the other thing is that with 6 chords in normal tuning you're pretty much there especially if you've got a capo. There's no shortage of chord books around. As long as you've got a "Key's worth" of chords you can just slap a capo on and play in pretty much any key!

If that doesn't make sense to you then do pm me and I'll explain more clearly what I mean, but most chord books will offer you chords related to the keys in which they work.

Best of luck
Chris

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Don Firth
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 05:48 PM

"If I had a dog, I would not pay for it to have guitar lessons. There is little or no precedent."

Well now, ya just never know. I got to talking to this fellow in a bar, and he was feeling a little guilty. I asked him what about, and he told me the following story:

It seems that earlier that evening he was sitting next to a guy at the bar when he reached into his pocket and took out a tiny grand piano and piano bench and set them on the bar. Then he reached into his pocket again and brought forth a mouse. Not just any mouse. This mouse was wearing a tuxedo. The mouse sat down on the piano bench and proceeded to play—Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt. . . . The fellow next to him sat there in amazement. Then the first fellow reaches into his pocket again and sets a canary down by the tiny piano. The canary was wearing an evening gown. The canary started singing. She sang arias by Puccini, Verdi, Bellini, and Rossini, then several Schubert lied.

The man says, "That's amazing! You must be making a fortune with them!"

"No, they just entertain me at home. Actually, they're for sale."

"For sale? How much do you want for them?"

"Oh, I dunno. Twenty bucks?"

The second fellow sat there in amaze, his mouth open. "Twenty bucks? Just twenty bucks?"

"Yeah."

"Sold!" the fellow sez, proceeds to fork over a twenty-dollar bill, and walks out with the mouse, the canary, and the piano, saying, "I'm gonna take this on the road and make a fortune!"

"That," the guy said to me, "is why I feel guilty. I cheated that poor sap."

"Cheated him!??" sez I. "How do you figure you cheated him?"

"Well," he sez to me, "that stupid canary can't sing a note. The mouse is a ventriloquist!"

So, a dog that can play the guitar. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Guitar: can an old dog learn tricks?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 27 Mar 07 - 07:51 PM

Different species...you can't generalise in that way.