Its just clicked !

T42

I have been practicing guitar since just before xmas, I have an acoustic Fender guitar and due to travelling a lot and having plenty of free time I wanted to do something with that time that would keep me entertained and always felt that learning an instrument would be a great thing.

Anyway, its been frustrating, much harder than I ever thought and I don't mind admitting that I thought it would never "click" and although im far from being able to play a full song, it does seem that over the past couple of days ive been able to swap between chords within a strum pattern.
I know this is the most basic of basic but to me its a great thing. Im actually able to go from G to E to D to A within a strum and its ace

Ill report back when im on top of the pops

Legionreturns

There are loads of songs you can play with those chords, crack on! 

Pick up one of those 3 / 4 chord song books and learn a few strumming patterns and you're away. There's a relatively simple version of Mr Tambourine man that uses C D and G and nothing else.

AEDG is most of the chord progression for Tuesday's Gone so you could play along with that too

LuttiS

Good stuff! It's a great feeling when something clicks! Keep it up

munckee

It took me a couple of months to hit any kind of strum, I remember the exact moment I strummed some chords from a version of I wanna Hold Your Hand and I could actually hear the song, now you've hit that you're hooked for life though mate!

Phil_aka_Pip

@T42 well done, I hope you enjoy the rest of the journey. BTW it never ends!

Chris_J

Brilliant mate!

As has been said, there are loads of songs using those chords and with 1 or 2 more you could pay thousands of songs.

Thanks for your infectious enthusiasm on a dreary Monday

merlin

Great! Keep practising. I love that feeling when something clicks.... And from now on it's a slippery slope! Enjoy. 

SimonC

Learning guitar is a series of those moments when something just clicks. It’s as though the brain suddenly says “now I get it” at various stages.

Legionreturns

I often find that trying something for too long is counter productive, going away and having a sleep let's your brain consolidate and suddenly you try again the next day and it works.

Love how the brain works! 

rossi

Its amazing what a few simple chords will accomplish .I was ploughing through the jazz classic "line for lyons " the Chet Baker version .and the chord charts and Real book chords aint easy ,I wanted to sing and play it at a local jazz club  along with "proper" jazz musicians .It turns out a simple c ,c7 .f ,fm and g will cover it .I will get cracking all the fancy chords but the basic song is sorted  I used to sit in front of the tele mindlessly switching chords up and down the fret board with no purpose other than getting quicker .It worked .So keep cracking on and it soon as you have noticed starts to get a bit easier .

Ravenous

Legionreturns said:

I often find that trying something for too long is counter productive, going away and having a sleep let's your brain consolidate and suddenly you try again the next day and it works.

+1 to this. Also writing down just the "fiddly" part of a few tunes, and learning those separately from the rest of the song, seems to help with memory. You're less likely to forget your place halfway through, etc.

proggy

@T42 That's brilliant, you're on the way, just keep going.

Sassafras

Well done!
Your next step is to buy loads of guitars, amps and pedals.

BRISTOL86

Great stuff. There’s nothing like that feeling when you nail something that’s stopping you getting to the next level.

What you’ll soon learn is that the better you get, the higher the bar gets, so in six months time the things you’d be delighted to be able to do now will seem like basic stuff and there will be always another....’I wish I could do....XYZ’. 

It’s like climbing a mountain where every time you think you get to the top...you get there and realise that there was more of the mountain that you couldn’t see from down below 

But thats all part of the fun. The journey is the reward! 

Flink_Poyd

It is the most basic of basic @T42 but it's also the foundation of everything everyone here has had to go through at some point. It's the first building block in a series of moments that somehow just click. I've had a click moment with modes this weekend and that's been puzzling me for close to a year!
 Keep it up

Musicman20

It's weird when things click! I'm still learning EVERY time I pick a guitar up...and it's great to know that slowly but surely it starts to fall into place.

baldy

T42 said:

I have been practicing guitar since just before xmas, I have an acoustic Fender guitar and due to travelling a lot and having plenty of free time I wanted to do something with that time that would keep me entertained and always felt that learning an instrument would be a great thing.

Anyway, its been frustrating, much harder than I ever thought and I don't mind admitting that I thought it would never "click" and although im far from being able to play a full song, it does seem that over the past couple of days ive been able to swap between chords within a strum pattern.
I know this is the most basic of basic but to me its a great thing. Im actually able to go from G to E to D to A within a strum and its ace

Ill report back when im on top of the pops

Snap 
I started playing xmas time, although I had played Bass for about a year some 35 odd years ago although I had no idea what I was doing then (haven"t picked up any type of guitar in the intervening 35 years). .
I have been following the JustinGuitar free online tutorials & TBH have been finding that pretty hard going & didn"t feel that I was making much progress at all.
A week ago I also started watching Andy Guitar on youtube to break up what I was finding to be a bit of a drudge with Justin as Andy starts with simple power chords so you can start playing something reasonably recognisable almost straight away  so you feel that you are making progress.
I now try to do 30-60 minutes a day following Justin then 20-30 minutes of Andy to break things up.
Congratulations it truly is a great feeling.

Gagaryn

I love when these things just click into place. Like others have said, it often seems to happen when you are away from the guitar, you come back to it and you can do things you couldn't before. Happened to me recently when trying to figure out the picking pattern that Leonard Cohen used on lots of his early songs, I struggled, gave up, came back and had it sussed.

Look forward to much more of the same, learning guitar is a struggle but good fun. :-)

Legionreturns

I don't think anyone here, no matter how accomplished they are, would claim to be a complete guitarist. There's always something else to learn or improve

57Deluxe

@T42 = = that's great now try this... there is a quick way to achieve this - see if you can fathom it!!

 

Swet Jane -- D A G  B  A   repeat

 

This is the Mott The Hoople version as is more coherent and tuneful than Lou Reed's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79m8FXz7GEE

bloodandtears

Legionreturns said:

I don't think anyone here, no matter how accomplished they are, would claim to be a complete guitarist. There's always something else to learn or improve

Nailed it.. have a wis!