This is my concerted effort to learn how to play the guitar finally. The method of doing this will be to pick a lesson or tutorial online and follow it for a week. For the first week I’ve picked Robert Baker’s “5 Easy Guitar Riffs Every Beginner Should Learn TODAY!!”
I struggled more than I expected, it was quite grounding and a little depressing. I started by staring at the tabs and playing the riffs over and over. However this failed to do two things – I wasn’t playing I was reciting the music and not attempting at all to memorise it. Which gives nothing to the feeling of the song. Secondly, I was doing it with no time reference. I think also that because there were songs I wasn’t entirely familiar with I stopped caring so much.
The second of those was the most horrendous things though, when I went to record I was completely off time… no sense of rhythm at all. This isn’t just a problem from this challenge though, I feel that a life time of noodling the easy bits of songs all by myself might be something I need to spend time undoing.
The video I almost didn’t post follows…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHQs_N78jKM
So from this, I will move on. I will try to work on both my sense of timing to a metronome or click and also pick things more familiar.
Riff 1 (Scorpions – Rock You Like a Hurricane)
D -999-------5-77- A -777-55-77-3-55- E -----33-55------
Riff 2 (Ozzy Osbourne – Crazy Train)
A -----4---5---4---2-------2------- E -2-2---2---2---2---5-4-5---5-4-0-
Riff 3 (AC/DC – Thunderstruck)
e --------------------------------- B -0-4-0-7-0-4-0-7-0-4-0-7-0-4-0-7- G --------------------------------- e --------------------------------- B -0-5-8-0-0-5-8-0-0-5-8-0-0-5-8-0- G ---------------------------------
Riff 4 (The Beatles – Day Tripper)
D ------------2-0----4----0-2 A ----------2------2----2---- E ---0--3-4------------------
Riff 5 (Boston – More Than a Feeling)
e ---------3-----2---------------------------- B ---3--------3-----3-----------3------3----3- G ------2--------------0-----0-------0-------- D -0------------------------------------------ A ------------------------3-------2----------- E ----------------------------------------3---