My name is Jules, 26 years old and I live in the good ol' Netherlands (no, not Holland...) where I spend my time getting my masters in organic chemistry, and practicing and playing guitar of course. I've always loved 70's and 80's guitar, rock / power ballads, some modern heavier stuff, but I first got really excited about guitar like 6-7 years ago when I saw someone with a bucket on his head showing what's possible on a guitar. Needless to say I was hooked and decided to get a guitar. From there I watched a ton of online lessons (Justin guitar anyone?) and slowly got introduced to others, most notably being Paul Gilbert and Pebber, so fortunately I've had quite a bit of top-level influences and none of those 13-in-a-dozen teachers. Also, I'm a pdf/video hoarder, so over the years I've collected a massive database of books, instructional videos etc. through which I dig from time to time to learn something new when I'm not busy with Pebber's work.
I've had no formal training, but I've got an appointment next week with a guitar teacher that lives across the street. He mainly plays flamenco, but I guess that is perfect in order to work on my technique and fingerpicking aswell. If that doesn't work out (or I can afford it) I'll probably sign up with Pebber because he deserves the money more than anyone.
This morning I recorded my first quasi-practice session for everyone to see and criticize. Apparently the sound of my laptop's microphone is horrible, so the next time I'll have better audio!
Spider exercises - all permutations of 4 fingers moving 1 & 2 fingers and all permutations of 3 fingers moving only one of them.
Trills - just a quicky to show the basic mechanics. I'll make a video of one of my practice sessions in case anyone wants to look at several minutes of different trills.
Major scale - a couple of runs through each of the 14 positions. I've only moved from the 7 position system to the 14 position system for a couple of weeks now and they are slowly starting to sink into my memory. This is not a feat of timing or picking but just the fretting hand.
That's all for now - please don't hesitate to comment because I need plenty of feedback.
Good evening everyone. Allow me to try and explain my dillemma.
Even before I picked up a guitar (about 5 years ago), I 'air-guitared' left-handed. It somehow felt (and still feels) more natural to me. I can list numerous things that I do either with my left or right hand, but that leads me to believe I'm more ambidextrous (or should I say random-dextrous?).
Now, I am starting to become more and more dedicated to re-learn every bit of guitar playing that I know. I'm self taught, did the whole free-video-lesson thingy, read a few books - but no formal training or long highly concentrated practice sessions.
The thing is - should I switch to right handed playing? Among other things, the fact that I've been using a computer ever since I was a little kid (i.e I always have my fretting-hand semi-idle on a mouse, and I'm often tapping on the a-s-d-f-keys with my picking hand) leads me believe my mind/body could be fighting itself on guitar. Also, my fretting-hand-pinky appears to be more twisted inwards - which gives me the impression that this is limiting my reach. On the other hand, I have incorporated my pinky at a pretty early stage so I can control it a lot better than on my picking hand.
My hypothesis: starting all-over again but now right-handed would be beneficial (although very time consuming) - I would use the fingers that normally do more moving, i.e. when I'm fiddling around without a guitar - I haven't learned my current picking hand any bad habits when it comes to tension (as opposed to my current fretting hand)
I can go on and on, but I can't seem to use the right words and sentences to convey my 'problem'.
Any thoughts are appreciated. If needed, I can upload a video but I'm not sure what to show...
Wed May 28, 2014 5:03 am
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