BC-101 • Common beginners questions answered

[joueur de guitare]

This might be a silly question but how long should we be on stage one of the beginner course before moving on?

It's been a week since I started and I already notice that my fingers aren't as sensitive anymore and don't ache as much when I press down on the strings. The only problems I seem to have are muting of the strings which I try and correct as much as I can but I just wonder to myself sometimes how long students should theoretically take at this stage. I want to know so that I know if i'm doing too much or not enough in my practices.

Thanks!

Read this. When to move on to the next stage.
http://www.justinguitar.com/en/BC-119-PRACTICEstage1.php

Have you got all the bullet points down?

[suzidownunder]

My sticking point seems to be the songs.  I feel comfy with chords and chord changes now, but when I play, or try to play the songs, grrrrrrrr.  I have a hard time both memorizing them and then remembering the strum patterns.  I do ok if I am playing along with Justin, but when I attempt the song with no backup rhythm I get frustrated.  Any advice?

Hi I suffer from life long chronic silent migraine and as a result my recall is very bad. I too have a great deal of trouble remembering the order of chords in songs. I write them down as I go even though I have them already in front of me. It really helps!

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[Khatru]

I was having a few bad days where I couldn't seem to do anything right. I think maybe I was staying at the same thing for 2 long. Trying to play brown eyed girl for about a month but it just didn't sound right and forget the intro, I can't get that with any accuracy. I am in stage 4 but hadn't tried any of those songs. I decided to try killing me softly and things just seemed to turn around and things were going right again. After about a week of seemingly going nowhere or maybe backwards the last 2 nights have shown great progress except changing to B7, that's fairly slow. I also started playing Show Me by Jon Anderson which is fun and fairly simple.
 Learning songs just takes repeatedly playing them, eventually you get it, at least once, then you'll forget for a few more tries. Quite the adventure at my age.

[Fmaj7]

. After about a week of seemingly going nowhere or maybe backwards the last 2 nights have shown great progress except changing to B7, that's fairly slow. Quite the adventure at my age.

For me it´s a bit like climbing a hill:  a bit upward a bit downward but while walking consequent we reach the top. And the 50+ can climb on Everest, K2, so what:  B7 is not really a problem 
Fmaj7

[stanleyarmstrong]

I know that the "A" chord is made up of the triad A,C# and E.  What makes the chord an A and not C# or E?
Has it to do with frequencies?

[nickboothmusic]

I know that the "A" chord is made up of the triad A,C# and E.  What makes the chord an A and not C# or E?
Has it to do with frequencies?

It's basic music theory at that point.

An A major chord is made of of A (the root), C# (the third), and E (the fifth).

A C# minor chord is made up of C# (the root), E (the minor third), and A# - the fifth in this one makes it not an A major chord. If you changed the E to an F, you'd have C# major.

An E chord is E (the root), G# (the third), and B (the fifth). The only note that has in common with an A chord is the E.

Now, of course, all of this is assuming basic major chords. It starts getting more fun to figure out what a chord actually is when you get into flat 7 9th Augmented chords.


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[shadowscott007]

Tweak:  C#m would be C# E G#.

Shadow

[nickboothmusic]

Tweak:  C#m would be C# E G#.

Shadow

Yes, that. The correct way. Lol.


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[jtbrown1]

I know that the "A" chord is made up of the triad A,C# and E.  What makes the chord an A and not C# or E?
Has it to do with frequencies?

You're starting to dive into music theory. The answer to your question will just cause you to ask other questions, but the A chord (really, the A major chord) is made up of the root, third, and fifth of the A major scale.

An E chord would be made up of the root, third, and fifth of the E major scale, which would be E, G#, and B.

Same theory goes for the makeup of a C# major chord.

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[Majik]

As others have said, you're venturing into music theory here.

One of things alluded to in the answers above is that it is about intervals (the "root, third, fifth bit"). To understand this you need to start delving a bit into scales and scale theory and, possibly most importantly, to understand intervals and their role in scales and chords.

At the end of the day, the short answer is certain combinations of intervals played together have a certain "character" and we have standardised on how we name these. There are sound reasons behind this standardisation (it's not totally random) but until you start delving into music theory you will struggle to understand the reasoning behind it.

If you do want to start to learn this stuff, Justin's Practical Music Theory is a great place to start.

Cheers,

Keith

[Nocturnal1961]

How should I take care of left fret fingers. I got good hard callouses on finger tips but still get grooves. The deepest grooves seem to come from doing E. So when doing minute changes like D to E or  A to E the finger fall right into place for E but flub up trying to do D or A. I thought when callouses came These groves would not get like this any more. What can I do to remedy this?

[de_conne]

@Nocturnal,

I would say practice, practice, practice.

Callouses have little to do with how your fingers change chords. They will just make it less painfull after a while.

Keep at it!

regards,
de_conne

[Rossco01]

@nocturnal I remember this well and thinking that the grooves wouldn't disappear but they do. At the moment it's because you're only moving between the three chords you know. As you learn C, G, minor chords, slash chords etc, you'll be placing your fingers slightly differently and this means the grooves will start to disappear. It happened to me it'll happen to you.

[guitar65riff]

I've been playing for 40 years and still get grooves if I play for a long time. Ignore them. It's not important

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[Joerfe]

I get grooves after playing a few hours but they even out during the night.
When I was a quite new beginner I had to use an emoryboard to deal with the skin but now I never have to anymore.