not sure if this was posted seriously or as a joke, but i do listen to a lot of similar things.

i don't want narratives. i don't care about your lyrics. the more far removed the music is from the mundane human experience, the better. i just want a space to exist in

there is wondrous music everywhere

anyway. here's Wondrous.

You omitted the one that gives it away, I think

Maybe you can be fuzzy's backing band for his rap battle oh hi everyone I'm back :)

This thread makes me feel like it might be nice to pick up an instrument and take it seriously again, but I am so, so shitty at playing. Is it sad for a 35 year old to take guitar lessons? Asking for a friend.

hey welcome back

it's hard to know how hard it would be to start as an adult, probably REALLY hard. I think there's nothing wrong with lessons at all. it definitely is a kind of "never forget how to ride a bike" thing. like yeah i'm not as good as i was of course but like, i don't sound bad even though i haven't played regularly for a while. starting from scratch is a whole different thing.

SP/corg songs i've been playing around with since i started again:

in my body
methusela
luna
glynis
here is no why
silverfuck
desire
with every light

and songs i could never forget even with 10 years off:
tonight tonight
cherub rock
disarm
1979
today
rocket

ok i guess most of the singles and also
purr snickety
soothe

and a bunch of my old songs. in fact there's this one song i wrote when i was like 13 and honestly it sounds incredible. i'm extremely good at percussion-y rhythm guitar and it's coming back to me, but i was so much better then. maybe i'll record it eventually. but i'm impressed with my young-ass self

no ruby??


hinw is one of the two ultimate tsp guitar playing songs, the other of which is galapogos.

oh fuck i forgot to play galapogos. another one i know by heart

hell yeah the whole thing is interesting but especially that sliding part near the end.

i think. it's been a long, long time.

Yeah, thankfully not starting from scratch completely, but then again, I feel like if I ever wanted to become a competent guitar player, I'd have to forget everything I had already "learned."

Also, again, props for digging back into an old hobby. I say this with the utmost sincerity: you are an inspiration.

aw thank you. it's been really fun. i just bought a nice stand and cleaning supplies as well. going to try to be good to the new guitar :)

Yo Globes, good to see you. It is absolutely not sad or futile to take lessons. I used to believe I would have to "unlearn" a lot of what I was doing if I wanted to ever be competent, but tbh it's not true. A good teacher will be able to feel out what you know and go from there

I think it depends on what we're talking about "unlearning." Like, unlearning bad ingrained habits that are keeping you from progressing? Unlearning inefficient picking methods that are burnt into muscle memory, or unlearning the habit not to make use of the pinky finger when fretting? Yeah, it's useful to unlearn things like that. It's more painful than if we just learnt to do it right the first time, but who can really claim to have done that? We're all guilty of taking shortcuts and then regretting it later.

But, if we're assuming that there is some universal, sequential path to learning any instrument, and that anybody who did not follow this one correct sequence will have to unlearn everything they've learnt and start again from square one, then no, this is not so. You can always keep what you already know and build on it and also fill in the gaps in your knowledge. Don't sell the strengths you've already got short.

t. somebody who hasn't practiced in a century

I had organ lessons as a 32/33 year old; they were great. I had tried to teach myself about 5-6 years earlier, with very limited success. I didn’t have to unlearn anything though - just learn a lot of new stuff - the bad techniques I had developed were pretty easily forgotten. Music lessons are amazing, definitely get lessons!

Nah just download as many tabs as u can and play stuff u like

Never had a single guitar lesson in my life, didn’t keep me from playing in butt ton bands, some of which got some traction locally

Imo lessons can interfere with finding your voice, b/c some yahoo is trying to tell u how u should be tocar la guitar

But i may also be trying to justify my total dearth of technical knowledge by decrying lessons

So whatever, don’t listen to me, or do, if u want, i guess

as someone who up until a few years ago had really terrible technique (e.g. doesn't play with pinky, attacks the strings too heavily, grips the neck in an un-ideal way) I don't think "unlearn" is really accurate for how to progress, and I think that word makes it sound more daunting than it is. It is possible to fix some of these things naturally as a part of getting better without any kind of specific focusing on NOT doing something you have been doing previously. Could be different for others but I suspect not since I only took lessons the first six months I played and developed most of my bad habits after that, then went through a period of unprecedented growth when I just took it a lot more seriously

I'm just saying, don't feel daunted. You don't need to go through some kind of painful process where you get worse before you "learn the right way" or something

I don't think having a higher understanding of music or of an instrument ever hurt anyone or barred them from finding their voice, but a bad teacher might result in something like that if they don't understand what you are trying to learn.

But I basically agree that the best way to get better is to play what you want to hear. Make it fun for yourself or you won't be able to commit to it enough

I took lessons for about a 18 months when I first learned. I was a kid, though, but I stopped when I got all the basic technique stuff down. It's easier to find your own voice when someone can help you not learn shitty ways to begin with. But unless you want to be like a classical player, or really understand music theory related to your instrument on a deep level (which I honestly always struggled with), long term playing what you like and writing new things are best. But lessons are a great way to start, IMO.

^ 100% this.

also, play with a guitarist who is better than you. I've learned more that way than by doing anything else

Actually this is a good point - I had one guitar lesson and really didn’t like it so didn’t continue. But I guess I’m weird because the thing I didn’t like was that the teacher was asking me what I wanted to play, which modes I liked, what kinds of chords I liked...I’m used to lessons being far more technical, like “place your thumb here like this and then turn your wrist but hold you other finger still” or something like that. I don’t really go to lessons for “find my voice” stuff....just for “how to make a sound out of the instrument” stuff.

But maybe the repertoire for guitar is so huge and varied it doesn’t make sense to start teaching skills without knowing what you want to play. I’m pretty sure I made it clear to this guy that I wanted to play Simon and Garfunkel (true story) but I guess that wasn’t enough

See also: my original method of trying to learn without a proper lesson. Glad it worked for you. Didn't work for me, or anyone else within earshot of my playing.

Anywho, thanks for the words of encouragement/inspiration, rbg, vix et . With enough luck I'll be able to play Wonderwall in a coffee shop someday.

what is this "et ."? does it mean something? are you trying to say something??

Et tu, Took?

I'm still playing the guitar and can play some ramones, misfits, metallica and rage against the machine songs well enough.

Hope everyone here gets tickets when i'm on tour.