I just want to bang out some standards at parties and for the family at Christmas.

I do make one every few months whenever I'm furious with the process. One of the biggest issues I've always had with music is that I always feel like I should be ahead of where I am, and its discouraging when I can't sit and play a song.

If I could find a way to not see myself in the scheme of things, and just as a guy with an instrument, I'd be much much better off. With piano and guitar I go crazy, but oddly enough i spent an hour yesterday ****ing around with scales and songs on the button accordion I have and in hindsight I feel like its because I've never seen someone, not on stage, play a button accordion and I don't know many songs I think are easy.

I think I need to get high and just play.

There ya go! :yeah:

NOW we're getting somewhere hahaha

seriously though, there's no substitute for practice, i know it sucks to hear and sucks to consider but it's the truth.

you say you want to play party favourites - i'm assuming 'simple' classics that everyone can sing along with. have you looked into campfire books, like 1001 great guitar songs and stuff like that. they're usually simplified versions of songs with just chord charts but if you can get the groove in your head and strum them mostly right, the majority of people will be far too busy singing along to notice you flubbed a noodle-y bit.

Oh yeah, the last time I went to a student cabin, I found like 4 chord charts of Eagles' Hotel California. I wonder how long it'll take until Lady Gaga songs become campfire classics? Anyways, I learned a lot from chord charts and just playing along while listening to songs so I think that's a good way to do it. Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd, one of the very first songs I learned, is another campfire classic, at least here!

I'm going to make a flo-chart for this and post it here.

This should work - http://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B4Al...NDE3YTcx&hl=en

Edit:

Its not practice that kills me. Playing a song and not nailing it the first time never bothered me. its the laborious nature of trying some things I used to play 5 years ago when I took lessons and now can't.

Having to remember that, in this key, certain notes are sharped. This is a huge one for me. This and ****ing bar chords. What I've been doing is trying to learn Dylans "All along the watch tower" which unfortunatly for me has an F. On piano I've just been playing the A scale hoping it will sink in that I've got to sharp the appropriate notes.

Accordion I've just beein playing whats in the book. The frustrating thing here is the amazing lack of information on the damn thing but I want to play drunken porch music and I'll be god damned if I won't. I ought to just shell out for lessons and quit being a whiney bitch, but right now being a whiney bitch is easier.

Some people can pick up an instrument and learn it in a week and some in a decade and it's not really always down to how much effort you put into it, it can be quite dependent on weather you lose interest quickly and your general aptitude for learning something musical and how you go about learning but picking up something regularly, say an hour a day would undoubtedly be enough to get you playing to a high standard quite quickly weather it take you a year or a month or a week, in two months I'd say at the worst you could play something comfortably if you'd never picked it up before.

I've found that I can't learn without lessons. Jussayin'. If you want to teach yourself an instrument, do it properly and everything, then I'd advise you get books of exercises (e.g. if it's guitar you want to learn, get a book full of exercises to tighten up your picking, fast playing, triplet playing etc.) and dedicate the first part of your hour to practicing a few of those. Then dedicate the next bit to solo'ing, or scales, or something similar. Dedicate the last bit (make it the biggest chunk) to learning a new song.

Make your practice times structured like that and you'll find yourself emulating the lessons you would've otherwise shelled out a fortune for, so I think it really is worth thinking about.

I would disagree with this - I taught myself campfire guitar just by playing songs with simple chords.

I think by just playing simpler songs and then progressing onto harder things will make it easier - it did for me. 5 years is a long time to not be playing, and it will take time for you to get back to the standard you were.

But on a happier note, if you did play before, I think you would be able to get to a good standard if you practice often ^___^

Eh, I dunno. He wants to learn barres, as he's said above, so he probably wants to take it to a level slightly above the general campfire banter. In which case he needs to pick up on a few techniques alongside open chords. If he wants to get back to the standard he was at when he was having lessons, that will involve work outside of simply jamming out a few A-D-E-A progressions. Even if he just wants to bang out a few tunes here and there.

So i posted this on Facebook too. One of my friends suggested that for piano, rather than struggle with knowing the scales by memory I should traspose it if I just wanted to learn the songs.

Anyone want to suggest pitfalls if I physically write in sharps and flats?