social.noyu.me

i think i need to like buy a book about learning guitar or something because it's probably the one way to do this that will let me achieve some kind of inner peace

i am more or less convinced that 99% of the learning cannot come from a book or formal instruction or whatever, it must come from within, but i need to get that foundational 1% from somewhere in a way that i can have some degree of confidence in and isn't too… distracting

i had this cute idea i would try using the training exercises in rock band 3, and i probably should get back to those, but i think 1) having to Use The Computer and 2) not being able to hear what i'm doing / play outside the lines, that is going to annoy me too much

actually no if i buy a book then i will have more decision paralysis, i'm going to just recommit

i looked at the books in the local music store and the one for learning electric guitar only teaches inverted power chords, and the one for learning acoustic guitar only teaches comping using chords on the five lowest frets. i am falling into the trap of knowing too much but… no

really the main thing i want to learn from a book is a trustworthy list of “standard” chord shapes so i can tell what people are talking about when they say “F chord”, “E chord” etc and don't further specify. i can build any chord i want from first principles, but it'll be weird

guitar chords are weird because the word “chord” is sort of overloaded. there's no such thing as a piano chord; for a given set of notes with octaves specified, there's exactly one way to play it on piano. but there are many different places you can play those pitches on a guitar

so whereas a “chord” in a piano context is exactly the same thing as a chord written in music notation, a music-theoretical abstract chord, a “chord” in a guitar context is also a hand shape, or may refer to just the hand shape, and hey wait what if i transpose that shape oh no

i got fed up with myself and, after further evaluation, decided to buy that electric-guitar-for-beginners book after all, as well a big thick book on music theory, both in swedish. i don't feel great about it but it's clear there are limits to where willpower can get me otherwise

really i'm just following my own advice. if someone wants to learn a foreign language i would tell them to buy a textbook and a dictionary, because while you can immersion your way to fluency, the superpower of adult learning is you can learn theory as an aid to bootstrapping

if i already had a good grounding in (non-guitar-specific) music fundamentals, i think i could've continued in my refusal to pick up a fucking book, but unfortunately i do not, so let's see if this finally leads to me making meaningful progress