When I was a teenager, I had, as many teenagers do, a rather myopic view of music, . I loved new wave, and everything else sucked!
Fortunately, I outgrew that phase quickly and discovered and enjoyed blues, jazz, rock, reggae, punk, industrial, etc. And as my 20's turned into my 30's, I came to appreciate the likes of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson (an amazing but overlooked guitar player, in my view), Dwight Yoakam, and Patsy Cline, to name a few.
Maybe you got into the guitar because you loved Jimi Hendrix and wanted to learn to play the Purple Haze, but that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself to just playing Hendrix tunes or rock and roll tunes.
I think there is plenty to be gained from learning to play songs from a variety of musical genres. My guitar teacher suggested that I learn to play Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Learning to play a song in 5/4 time was a big challenge, but in the process of learning Take Five I was forming connections in my brain that made it easier to to deal with other songs in unusual time signatures. Learning to play some blues tunes will develop plenty of skills that you can transfer to rock and roll playing.
Hal Leonard has a book of arrangements of children's songs. The arrangements take the melodies (many of which you'll know well from your own childhood) and then throw in some harmony notes here and there. These are great finger development exercises for your left hand, and if you take some time to study how and where the harmony notes have been added, you'll learn how to do add harmony notes to your own melodies.
Ultimately, learning to play songs from different genres will make you a better guitar player, so don't be afraid to try!
Guitar books from Sheet Music Plus
Next Week's Confession - Look Where You Want to Go!
No comments:
Post a Comment