Guitar Help: Intermediate Books/Lessons?

[turnipmonster]

my advice is to forget about learning things from books, tabs or any sort of visual medium, music is a game of the ear.

to develop your ears, play along with some of your favorite records. try to learn the chords and also the melodies. playing melodies is how you learn to solo, playing a solo is really just hearing a melody in your head and playing it on your instrument.

learn to play melodies that you already know really well on guitar, start with something simple like "happy birthday" or a beatles tune. it may be hard/frustrating at first, but eventually you can get to a point where you can play anything you hear right away. nothing magic about this at all, just experience and practice.

also, a great way to get better really fast is to find some people to play with that play better than you. find a good bassist and drummer and rock out.

--turnipmonster

[RunDownHouse]

wrt ear training, when I played regularly I could turn on the alternative rock station and pick up the chord progression for just about everything pretty quickly, and the melody and lead parts with enough fiddling around (I'd try for a couple hours at a time sometimes). I'm fairly confident that I could still pick up basic stuff (Green Day's latest, etc) within 10 minutes.

That's kind of the problem. I have this foundation, haven't played in forever, and have no idea where to go. Short of private lessons, I think learning theory inside and out may be my best step. I'd love to hear I'm wrong though, as well as more suggestions. Thanks to all.

[OrangeCat]

Most every book by Hal Leonard publishing is great. Their transcriptions are very accurate.

Sheetmusic.com is a good source.

Except for very simple songs, most of the free tabs on the net are crap.

For jazz Jamie Abersold is the best.
http://aebersold.com/Merchant2/merch...ry_Code=GUIBOO

Get some kind of recording setup. Even if it is a really crude low fidelity rig, it helps a lot to listen to yourself on playback.



The best thing to do if find something you like that is hard to play, get the book and learn to play it. Or is you have the ear, teach yourself from the CD.

honestly...i would recommend lessons. i know the analogy isnt exact...but think about the difference between reading Phil Hellmuth's books and posting hands on 2+2. Most (non-academic) music theory books read at the same level as "Play Poker Like the Pros." and the seriously academic classical texts (those by Schoenberg, Piston, etc etc etc) dont necessarily have much bearing on what you're trying to accomplish. i think its really important to have someone to talk to about music, especially if you're interested in theoretical concepts.

it took me months to understand what a tritone substitution was. if i had thought to even mention it to my teacher at the time, he would have just said "dominant 7th chords a tritone apart share the same 3rd and 7th. the 3rd of one is the 7th of the other, and vice versa. and since the 3rd and the 7th are the important notes of the chord...you can substitute F#7 for C7, if you feel appropriately inspired."

so...i know you dont want to pay for private lessons....but i think you should reconsider. find someone who's young, talented, and up-to-date on modern music, and the lessons will be well worth the money.

jon