Neil Dare

Hi. I've been playing properly, I.e. hour plus a day, for about 18 months after always having a guitar for years but only playing open chords and the same few songs. I've got much better since taking it seriously. My finger strength and dexterity have improved immeasurably. My question is this. How seriously do I need to take learning theory ? I know my chromatic scale and my am pent and major scales. I know how maj, min, sus and 7th chords are formed. But I have no intention of performing or writing or teaching....I just love learning songs. I can see how some theory along with interval and ear training can help with transcribing songs. That's probably all I'd use it for. My technique I tend to practice by learning songs with those techniques in...I.e. finger picking, hybrid picking, palm muting etc, as I feel it focuses my mind more than exercises do. I do enjoy learning some theory once I give in and pick up a book or look online. I just feel like I should learn it rather than wanting to.

Ahh thanks for sending that. Really informative and helpful. Cheers

Thanks Crueso. Yes, I've watched loads of Justin's stuff, along with a lot of others. I think that's half the problem though. There's so much online and I'm not sure of the order of practicing things. Not really sure if there is an order as such.

Thanks for the reply Douglas. Musical interests are vast. Brought up on a lot of classic rock from Sabbath, Deep Purple, Zeppelin, E.LO ect. But love anything from Ralph Mctell, Warren Zevon, Flaming Groovies, the Decemberists. through blues, punk and indie. Anything with guitars basically and quite a bit without. I just feel like basic things like finger placement being poor and slow chord changes. Technical stuff. I do practice a lot. 2 hours a day most days. A lot of that is playing songs but I make sure I practice the parts I'm weak at rather than the bits I find relatively easy. I practice my pentatonic and major scales, plus a few finger exercises. I'm learning a bit of basic theory aswell. Things like how chords are formed from scales and I'm enjoying learning that at my own pace. I just think that after a good year and a half, I'm still making more errors than I should be. Especially with finger placement and chord changes between open chords and barre chords further up the neck. I can play bar chords fine but the changes are a bit slow. I don't really practice with a metronome or play along with songs. Would that help at all ? Just for reference, I'm 47 years old. Thanks

Hi there. New to the forum, but about a year and a half into playing, so not a complete newbie. Had lessons for a couple of months during lockdown but stopped due to family illness. And thanks to some serious belt-tightening can't really afford any atm. I expect this is a bit of a perennial problem but I'm really struggling with WHAT to practice. My guitar time is very unstructured and I don't feel like I've improved much over the last 6 months or so. Was thinking of trying one of the online guitar lesson apps. Has anybody out there given any of them a go ?, and if so, we're they any good ? Thanks in advance, Neil