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it's something about finger and hand co-ordination i think, having my left hand walk around in two dimensions to get the intervals right, and having my right hand play things, that feels right. with keyboard that's all on one hand and i struggle a lot with key changes

the two-dimensional nature of the fretboard makes intervals easier to remember and key changes less disorienting

what i can say for sure is it's more satisfying. this might just be because strings are fun, it might be because the guitar is more expressive, it might be because even the simplest thing engages both hands, i don't know, but i it'll be hard to be motivated to learn keys again

not to mention that, in many cases, once you've learned how to play a particular melody in one position on a guitar, you now can also play it in like four other ones without changing your muscle memory, and so you get instant tonal variety. tone is in your fingers!!

note to self learn guitar chords at some point,

@hikari You've probably already figured out D through experimentation.

It's a great starter chord and if you only focus on the 3 fretted strings, you can move it up & down the neck, try variations by changing the fret position of only one of the 3 strings, etc.

Really powerful stuff imho.

@hikari Yeah, and not only melodies, any patterns in general!! Which is super useful when improvising and playing by ear.

Plus to me on the keys it's harder to intuit how to translate a relative pitch change I'm imagining into the correct movement, since black and white keys exist. I end up having to remember the scale and its keys I'm in, where as on guitar I don't think about the scale and just play and often naturally land outside the scale, but in a way that sounds good.

@hikari Although part of it probably is because I've got more experience on guitar these days. I've been trying to relearn the keys though...

@hikari key changes are 100% easier to do on a guitar than a keyboard