Off Topic Flying Lessons (mid life crisis)

Nice memories reading replies from Kempton

 

i decided aged 61 to learn to play the guitar. sadly ifor me it isnt working, it must be wrong age to learn. takes ages to learn stuff like finger picking and stuff like solsbury hill dust in the wind and scarborough fair and the bring on the night bit that AS plays in the background during the verses is almost impossible for me to play at anywhere near speed. no matter if i sit there for an hour a night for a month.
maybe im just not cut out to be a guitarist? i can play loads of chords and am probably the best singer in the world for my age but i cant remember anything. if i use ultimate guitar website with lyrics and chords and transpose to suit my range thats fine. but look away and the chords arent in my memory. gone. after only seconds?

my mate used to fly a glider. some scary stories of trying to descend as fast as he could without the wings ripping off but due to the thermals in a big cloud he was gaining altitude and realised at some point oxygen might become scarce. he now flies a microlight (i went in the back once jeez!!) and he is just training for a fixed wing or normal plane. hes had the offer of 3 or 4 of them co owning a couple of planes which makes it cheaper. i used to see him all the time on motirbike but since taking up flying its taken over his life.

 

I attempted to learn to play the guitar too in my 60's. Private lessons with a young fella down the Avenues. Like you I couldn't play a note even after several hour long lessons. Too old to be starting, wrong size fingers etc and I soon lost interest in it. The fella trying to teach me was excellent, honestly, he could play anything and was playing in pubs with a local band at the time and also working part time in one of the bars in town. He lived a very frugal life from a bedsit in someone else's house. I told him that he didn't realise how good he was and he should try going it alone, maybe even trying playing abroad to get the break he obviously needed, and left it like that. Some years later he tracked me down at my place of work. He looked very well, affluent, fit and full of confidence and said he'd taken my advice and moved abroad. He now owned his own music school in Madrid teaching kids how to play the guitar. Said it was the best move and bit of advice he'd ever had. Made my day, from small acorns......

 

I started playing guitar in the 70s and we used to say to new players "how many years you been playing?" It takes a while. You also need to focus on one area to learn, not many. Like, I'm rubbish at fingerpicking. As long as you're enjoying it, it's fine.
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Me too,self taught and I never bothered learning fingerpicking.

I don't play anywhere near enough and never have done but I can still pick the guitar up and find the 'RHYTHM' almost immediately...That's what it's all about for me anyway.

 

I’m 67 , took it up a year or so ago - can play the chords - me and a pal who’d started a few years before me managed to play the rhythm for the The Long Run ‘ in sync!! It was our first big achievement . Rhythm for me fluctuates from practice session to session . Think I have an ear for it but I probably don’t do quite enough practice . As my school said ‘ must try harder’

 

Be careful transposing stuff. A lot of songs are written around a particular chord with licks around that chord and transposing it can make the song very difficult to play or just sound wrong. Using a capo is probably better. I used to play in a covers band with a singer with a weird range and some songs never sounded right. Also you can just play the basic major or minor chords without the clever extensions (especially if singing as well). Most songs are built 3,4 or 5 chords. Simplify stuff down until it makes sense to you, with a better chance of remembering it. Put the flashy stuff in later.

 

i am focussing on the areas that i cant do very well. i cant see the point in practicing chords and strumming along to wonderwall once youve mastered that. apart from playing for enjoyment. but i do get more satisfaction once ive mastered something like managing to sing along to elton johns love song while finger picking and not going out of time. took me months to learn the picking so i can play it near enough faultlessly but to sing in time without the picking messing up is hard. to accomplished players that probably comes second nature. so many aspects of playing are hard. i havemnt learnt any theory and i only just know the names of the strings. and if i look at my pal playing a chord its as if im dyslexic and cant work out what chord he is playing? it is bloody frustrating.

 

that ultimate guitar website is amazing. i just transpose a song till the chords suit what i can play, im accoustic only. then use a capo to get it to suit my vocal range.
most songs i cant sing with any force as per original. unless i sing like a choir boy on the la's there she goes.
the only one i can sing with any force is reef place your hands. im better at it than when he was in the 90's. its sad how he sings it nowadays. id be too embarrassed if thats all i could do and not sing it but i suppose its their only hit. the only thing is i darent sing it unless im in the middle of a field cos people 2 streets away can hear it and im too embarrassed.

also what i find is the vocal range of for example james arthur and lewis capaldi and cian ducrot is such that if i try and sing the low bits then the high bits are impossible. they have such range. so if i aim to sing the feature high bits within my range then i cant go low enough to hit the low notes. i cant play barred chords very well. im just practicing bm f#m cm atm and cheating without playing the top one or two strings. got short hands so struggle to span 4 frets near the neck.
i play with a guy who was in a covers band once a week and im now better than him. but that isnt saying much. he's 70 and im sure his technique and knowledge is deteriorating through age. i am practicing the lead riff on a horse with no name on an accoustic so hammer ons and offs? dont help me. ive always used fingers and am only nor starting to use a plectrum. but it seems alien and seems to catch on a string? i do reckon in about 30 years i will have it sussed and have the confidence to join a band.

 

the last bit remembering it is something i dont think ill ever be able to do. it will have to be written down on paper in front of me or on a screen,. my memory is insane. i bet theres only 4 songs i can play from memory but me and a pal play and sing 20 once a week. been playing same songs for months.try and play them without it written down?
maybe holding back the years chords i can remember
(theres only 2 chords all the way through....)

 

Try practising barre chords around the 10th fret (D), you will probably find it easier, then, when you've got them, move back nearer the nut. F is the hardest.

 

I've played Barre chords from day one but I still like the ring of a well struck open chord.

One of my Granddaughter's,aged 15, has been playing since she was 7(I bought her a Yamaha APX 3/4 traveller guitar for her x.mas and it's progressed from there) and she gets a lesson once a week.It was set up and subsidised by our local council and only costs a fiver a week.It's so poorly attended that most weeks she's receiving one to one tutoring...
She's a cracking player,picking and chords but still very shy about picking it up at family functions etc,that's left to muggins...She's not great at Barre chords though as she's really petite and has small hands.