Chapter 9. Singing and Playing

[ LiB ]

Chapter 9. Singing and Playing

Now that you've got your gear, your space, and some songs, what do you do? It may seem like second nature and common sense. In case it's not, we'll break it down here.

• Tuning

• Volume

• Listening

• Learning

• Life

I'm not going to cover much on the basic specifics of playing each instrument: "Here's a G chord on the guitar. Now here's the same on a piano." O.K., I will, but only that much. There's a billion books everywhere (any music or record store) on that. It's even on the Internet; just search "guitar tab," along with bands you like, and you'll get it all instantly.

I'm going to cover the general stuff, as well as some stuff that should be obvious but isn't, that you probably won't find anywhere else. Why give a man some drugs when you can teach him to make his own drugs?

I learned to play guitar from listening. Sure I took some lessons (six, to be exact), and I did a little time in church choir singing the praises of their God, (until I got kicked out for smoking), but I'm pretty much self-taught. You can be, too: Once you can tune your instrument, you just play along with records and start writing your own songs and the instrument teaches you .

After I took those six guitar lessons, I studied on my own incessantly. That's more or less how I do everything.

I ask lots of questions, too. Never be afraid to look stupid. It's more stupid not to ask questions.

Figure 9.1 demonstrates how to hold a guitar pick.

Figure 9.1. How to hold a guitar pick.

Here's a bunch of very basic chords on guitar and piano. This is about all I learned in my first six lessons, and then I let the guitar and piano teach me the rest.

On some of the piano chords I tucked the fingers I'm not using out of the way; this is only so you can see where the other fingers are going. In reality, you would want to just let them hang naturally above the keys, not tuck them under.

These are not nearly all the chords there are, and these are the most basic voicings of them. (Voicings are different fingerings and notes to play different flavors of basically the same chord.) But seriously, tune up, try these, and run with it.

[ LiB ]