Difficult Things Which Came Easily To You

Playing Technique
#1

I’m interested in hearing from different people about their experiences with learning techniques which are things most people would consider “difficult” or at “not easy” but yet for some reason, cam easily to you or they’re things that once you learned, required very little or no practice to maintain.

Sweeping arpeggios at the time I learned it, 1989, was something that for the most part only quite advanced guitarists did and even among them there were plenty that either didn’t or couldn’t learn to sweep arpeggios. One guy I knew growing up was quite talented and was playing Van Halen and Randy Rhoads solos note for note in less than 2 years of starting to play guitar. One day I saw him for the first time in several years and asked him if he’d learned sweep picking. He said “No way, I can’t do that.”

It actually took me a while to learn - maybe 3 months, but once I did learn to sweep arpeggios, I found I could go months without practicing them and then within a few minutes, do it as well as I ever did. Usually I have to practice a lot to maintain technique but for sweeping, somehow that doesn’t apply and I don’t know why.

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#2

well on a related note im quite interesting in how quickly I (us, we as a group, whatever) can learn a brand new thing

the only thing i can say I learned really quickly was music theory like chord structure and modes etc. Makes sense since i learned mainly from books etc.

I guess I was sort of the type that if i tried something a few times and didnt get it then id go to something else. So stuff like sweep picking im only JUST getting into in the last month or so

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#3

Bending in tune. For some reason I’ve met a lot of people that have trouble with this. Bend with the wrist not the fingers!

Music theory, it really isn’t that hard I don’t know why people are so afraid of theory.

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#4

Using sweeps in upstrokes has never really been an issue for me.

Writing riffs. I can come up with riffs and song ideas with practically zero effort. Turning them into fully-fledged songs is more laborious though.

Reading sheet music. I’ve been a good notation reader since I was like eight years old.

#5

Can I ask you how did you start and what kind of material you read before it felt like you can use it in a pro situation?

#6

I took piano lessons starting at age 7 or something like that and the notation system just made sense to me. It probably took 3-5 years of gradual practice, learning stupid songs from the lesson books my teachers gave me before I had the whole staff + ledger lines, rhythms, Italian terms etc etc working fluently. That being said, I wasn’t practicing a ton and I wasn’t even really that serious about being a musician. It was just something that my parents enrolled me in so that I something else to do besides play Mega Man all day.

As far as material goes, I was playing children’s songs, entry-to-intermediate classical stuff, arrangements of rock/pop/film scores and also jazz. In my late teens (when I realized that I’d spend ten years doing music stuff and that it was the only thing I was reasonably good at) I started taking it more seriously and got into reading jazz charts, understanding harmony better, improvising and working with bands.

Transferring this onto guitar is still an ongoing process but I can read a jazz lead sheet or work on a classic piece. This probably took two years of gradual practice, including learning the notes on the fretboard fluently. I can be a slow learner because my band keeps pretty busy so a good chunk of my music time gets invested into that and I only have so much time for new concepts and techniques.

(btw where in Poland are you located? My band will be playing Warsaw and Poznan in March 2019)

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#7

I’m in Wroclaw, but I have family in Poznan and it’s not that far away.

#8

I’m more of an “easy things which came difficultly to you” kind of a guy.

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#9

Cool man, if you happen to be free on March 07th 2019 then it’d be great to meet you. We’re playing at a place called U Bazyla (I think). Send me a PM if you like and I’ll get you a download for our album :slight_smile:

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#10

Vibrato and dynamic control. While my sense of rhythm is, un, well my friend once said to me “I think your metronome needs a metronome”

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#11

I get that. I’m wired differently than most people. When I was 18 years old my guitar teacher told me one day “The things I have to show my other students once, I have to show you 3 times. But the things I have to show them three times, I only have to show you once”!

#12

I guess I lack the discipline to do the “meat and potatoes” sort of work.

The number of times I’ve come across something and thought “that looks/is pretty easy” and as such never bothered to actually work on it at all is extremely high.

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#13

Unfortunately the things that came easy to me are relatively easy in general. My bends and vibrato were in a good level from the start, but I also thing that anyone with a bit of ear training in specific guitarists (Gary Moore, Yngwie, David Gilmour, etc) can have amazing improvement in no time. It’s not alternate picking, or rocket science! :grin:

In non technical stuff, I got my fretboard knowledge going pretty fast and my listening skills. I could tell which scale was being played once I got it under my fingers as a beginner. That happened because I see and recognize patterns fairly easily in general, not just guitar playing.

Those things haven’t been a huge help though, I would prefer to be a picking or legato genius. Those are things are really have to work on to see improvement. That’s life I guess!

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#14

Calculus, trigonometry, physics, …

Nothing about guitar came easily to me until CTC, but I loved it anyway. I would have done better if I had known to look for the easy feeling, instead of trying to muscle through something that feels difficult.

#15

Nothing comes easy to me.
But like the old saying goes.

The more you do the more you can do!

So now If something comes easy I attribute it to some work I’ve done in the past that carried over

#16

I think for me…my left hand just seem to come really quickly. I played with all my fingers right off and I could get a nice even legato with it. When I started to learn Randy and Eddie solos they came pretty fast. The right hand took a bit longer and I remember totally changing my picking technique when I heard Yngwie in Alcatrazz. I realized I couldn’t tremelo at a fast speed to play the licks so I had to change how I held the pick as well as my motion mechanics. Through trial and error I learned a way that felt comfortable to play faster picked lines, but it took a lot more time in finding it that my left hand did.

#17

Single string tremolo obviously )
All-hammer-ons technique.
Sweep arpeggio with rollng index finger.

When I started to play guitar I had no access to internet and I had not money to buy books. So many techniques were ‘reinvented’ )

Since I didn’t know about pull-ofs I used hammer-ons all the way. Then I accidentaly came to rolling finger sweep arpeggio. I couldn’t imagine that someone can use different fingers for different arpeggios, so I’d been stuck with ‘E-shape’ arpeggios for a long period of time.
Tremolo… still a mystery. My first attempt to play fast was for this forum, and I managed to get 220 bpm in a couple of minutes. Don’t ask ‘how’, I don’t know.

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#18

Theory!

Lame I know :sweat_smile:

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#19

yeah me2. i started on modes the first week or two I played lol. I couldnt tune it but I knew theory right away

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#20

I’ve always had the easiest time with things that are systematic or easily measurable- picking speed or other techniques, theory etc. (not that I’m a master of those things haha). Things like vibrato and time feel were always harder for me because they are less reducible to exercises.

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