Originally Posted by: 13coldspidersHey all
I'm a 38yo guy who's been playing guitar( on and off) or about 20 years. I grew up on grunge and 'chuggy' nu metal, and that's all I played. Lots and lots of drop D tunings and distortion, and not much else.
I've tried to learn 'properly' by myself in the past, a couple of times, as my musical tastes have expanded over the years (I still love chuggy metal though!) but I've never stuck with it.
My eldest son got a guitar for his birthday recently (proud dad moment!) which was awesome. What wasn't awesome was when I sat down to try and teach him. I realised just how little I know and how limited a player I am.
So that's what's prompted me to sign up for GuitarTricks, Im determined to learn properly this time, and the fact that I'll be learning alongside my son will hopefully be a great motivator to not give up this time!
Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and then got thrown out of the joint!
I mean, I worked very hard at getting to be a good guitar player and did pretty well. As the old-timers used to say, I could shred. I just had no understanding of the theory that underlied what I played. I knew scales and knew how to use them but no idea what they were called. Self taught, by ear and all that.
I fooled myself in to thinking that was just fine. Now I see the gaping holes in my playing. It's part of why I joined GT originally. Less holes now.
Even recently I noticed how insufficiently capable I am at 'strummy' stuff. I never, ever really bothered getting good at acoustic strumming. I could do it but didn't really care to have the metronome ability to strum. Recently, I was doing a guitar duo 4 song thing of acoustic stuff with a couple of Eagles songs, an old Eric Carmen song and a recent country song. Particularly on the Eagles songs, I could tell I had to work at it. Well timed chords changes during a strum takes skill. One I never practiced.
Moral of the story: You'll always find a playing deficit. That's a good thing. You always have something to learn and make it fun. Sure, sometimes you wanna kill the thing but...It gets very boring playing the same old stuff.
