Self Taught??

Luby · 06-23-2009, 05:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mr dave

no worries dude. at this point we're venturing off into personal philosophies on playing music though.

as far as teaching yourself to play the guitar, tabs are where it's at. period.

everything else at that point in the game is superfluous.

you just happen to be well ahead of the curve in relation to your peers. don't swear it, they'll either have lighting bolt moments later on in life or stick to being bedroom shredders. there's nothing wrong with being in a cover band either, successfully imitating professional level entertainers DOES require a certain kind of skill, especially if you cover a wide range of material and styles. not everyone wants to be the next big thing, some people just like playing along and leave the creativity to other people.

oh yeah, my stack of guitar magazines went taller than my knee (i'm 6'3" at that)

I will have to disagree with you, strongly at that.

Tabs:

1. Spoil you.

2. Usually give you the wrong information unless you've got an official tab book for a given record.

The best way to go, for both amateur/self-taught musicians AND professional musicians is transcribing (by ear that is). It trains you on so many levels. Together with transcribing you'll need some theory to help you figure out stuff quickly. Knowing the major and minor-pentatonic scales, knowing that most songs nowadays are played in the keys of A, E, Eb and D, and knowing the basic major/minor chord shapes is enough for you to be able to transcribe most modern songs and understand how most songs work in general.

PS. Official tabs are a good way to check how close your transcribing is to the original material, so yes, in that way they are very helpful.