Playing an instrument > Reviews (7)

As a guitarist, singer, song-writer with a home-studio who sometimes still gets up at open mike evenings to entertain, I'm obviously someone keen on playing an instrument. Would I recommend people to take it up?

That depends on the person. I've found over the years that some people of my acquaintance let the whole process of playing and singing into their lives so that if sits naturally with who they are and becomes part of them. This is the sort of person who will rest a guitar on their lap in a conversation and appear to ignore it. They might not even play it particularly but it's as comfortable for them to hold a guitar as to not hold one. This kind of person may be very interested in music and listen to a lot of it. They might have songs they love that they've learned so that they can experience them from the inside and not just on their Ipod. They might even write poetry and their own songs.

Is that you? Could you become that interesting person?

There's another kind of guitarist, unfortunately, who - perhaps because someone insisted they take lessons or because they watched someone win 'The X Factor', mistakenly believes that fame and fortune might be achieved with little effort in a matter of a few short weeks if they play. They'll only pick up the guitar at gun-point and then it will sit badly. You'll see it slipping off their leg. Their strum will be clumsy and huge and when they practice a song - if they ever do - they'll omit the vocal. Perhaps they'll find one small aspect of playing that they can succeed at and stick with it. Other interests will fill them with great enthusiasm and the guitar, unable to teach itself to play, will become increasingly neglected and dusty until one day it finds its way to a charity shop.

Playing the guitar and singing songs can be rewarding and very interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, buying a guitar is a fantastic process. Going to fiddle about with various ones in different music shops is a hobby in itself. Then there's the Internet. Google 'Digital Village' and select the guitars. There are pages of different ones. To someone with guitar in their heart this is like a sweetshop to a small child. Try finding 'Sound Control' as well. Even more guitars to drool over! How about Dolphin Music? (Not - you understand - that I've ever looked personally...)

What kind of guitar do you think you'd like? Nylon string guitars - sometimes referred to as 'classical' - have nice thick necks ideal for accommodating huge fat fingers. Their strings have a lower tension than steel and are easier to hold down when playing. Their tone is mellower too. Then again, steel stringed guitars are louder and brighter in sound. Small wiry hands with more muscle should find them easy enough to work with and they sound better when strummed than nylon strung ones. In either case, do you think you might ever want to play live? Either of these kinds of guitars can be bought with neatly fitted internal pickups with a socket for a lead so it can be amplified and even a volume control on the guitar as well.

Is that the wrong image? Do you see yourself playing with your teeth and setting the stage alight? Then you might want to select one of the huge ranger of electric guitars on offer. This is a more expensive option if you factor in an amplifier and speakers and an effects pedal to make your kerrrannnngs sound truly convincing.

What do you have to do when you have your guitar?
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I'd say the first thing to do is to have a good mess about with it. Don't hit the strings so hard you break them and if you don't know how to tune a guitar don't touch the tuning pegs or let a small child do so. Other than that - experiment until you run out of ideas. Try playing single notes and see if you can find a well known tune.

When you're ready to move on you need to get advice. This can come from a number of sources and they're all very good.

1. Your mate who plays in a band. Ask him for something really easy to do and get him to explain it.
2. Get lessons from a local guitar tutor. They'll start you off on some basic chords, simple tunes and - if they're me - get you singing along as well!
3. The Internet: this is a fantastic thing. If you need the lyrics to almost anything, just type in the title and the word lyrics into Google. Sometimes you can even strike lucky by typing the title and the word 'chords' in. The results may not always be clear and simple to understand but whenever they are the help is free. Free is good.

To be playing and singing a song, a guitarist/ singer is like a juggler doing a number of things at once.

a) With their right hand they'll be strumming or picking at a pattern which very often plonks along to a count of four. Sometimes it might be three - mostly four.

b) With their left hand they'll be making a Ninja pattern with their fingers designed to hold down around three of the strings in very particular places. This makes the guitar produce a pleasant sounding chord. This will change to another shape when the count of four or a few counts of four is complete.

c) They'll be remembering the words to a song. Without a sheet of paper this seems to be beyond a lot of people. I'm getting older but even I can do it if I try and try over and over, singing as the bath runs, or as I walk the dog.

d) They'll be singing those words to a tune and fitting the syllables to the count of four even as the chords change. This sounds hard and it may be as you learn but by singing a line as you play along, nothing could be more obvious than the next required chord change. Just before it everything is going well and if you don't change the singing note will clash comically with the guitar. This can only be fixed by changing that chord to the one written over the word on your piece of paper. Oh, all right. You're learning. Have a piece of paper. :)

How many chords are there to learn? Loads.

How many can I get away with?
Three for rock and roll. Two for 'What shall we do with the drunken sailor?'

So it's easy then?
Try Paul McCartney's 'Blackbird'.

It can get harder!

Notional Performance:
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This is what makes you practice as if your life depended on it. The would-be player never truly engages with this. Unless you do the following you'll never get better and you'll never be any good at all:

IMAGINE YOUR AUDIENCE!

There they are sitting in your imaginary guitar club. Some might be standing around the bar. The odd one is coming in through the door and greeting a friend. Your pint of vodka is on the table near the front where there are mike stands shining under the spotlights. An old man is singing about ways to make toast or a fish - who knows?

Then they're calling your name. It's time to go and stand facing the audience which turns to consider you if you're lucky and which just carries on chatting and frowning at mobile 'phone text messages they've started if not.

Now is your moment. This is your fifteen minutes of fame. It's notional. it's only imaginary. Don't worry too much!

Then again: one day, if you learn your songs right... If you get those chord changes to flow across the count of four instead of stopping to think... if you get the tune right at last and remember all those words.... If you conquer the dry mouth and the surreal feeling that you're in a school play and your trousers have vanished... then you'll have completed the job of becoming a guitarist/singer.

In a shorter form let me put it like this: if you can see this imaginary audience then one day it may be real. If you bear this in mind and practice like a boxer training for a fight - and that training might take a long time - one day you'll have a chance of being ready.

If I manage it will it be worth it?
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Better to go down in flames than to live your life in the audience, I think. Even though a lot of people sit in these clubs and gaze coldly at performers and mumble to each other that their granny could do it better, that's the nature of performance. It's risk. It's preparing as much as you can to deliver an entertaining piece of art to an audience and to hope against hope that they all pat you on the head rather than throwing mud.

If an audience is indifferent or standoffish you'll feel quite put off.
If, on the other hand, an audience smiles and claps, you'll feel elated and, after all your hard work and preparation, so you should.

I've never understood fishing. I've never even understood the attraction of football, but give me an audience, some bright lights, a few friends, and a guitar, and I'll give you someone in his element, enjoying a lifelong hobby, trying to establish a link with people a third of his age who have lots of scary piercings and a look of cynical disinterest stamped over their faces. Make them smile or shout, 'Whoooo!' when the song calls for it and the rest of the evening will be so much sweeter.

For you, if you've never played, it's always nice to do a puzzle and learning chords and how to read tablature in order to note down tunes is very much like doing that.

Also, nobody could learn how to play in a day. It couldn't happen. Think of it like learning to drive. Each part of learning may be conscious and involve a lot of looking and aiming. Verbal instructions may accompany each aspect of the job. When that learner driver passes his test and is routinely driving about, does he think about how to change gear or give much consideration to the use of the clutch? Of course not. As you learn guitar it may seem that your hands gradually develop a memory of their own and the chords that were impossibly hard to remember on week one are now flipping about even as you're chatting to someone about some entirely unrelated topic. The subconscious becomes quite an expert and may even learn to play without you if you don't go out of your way to stop it.

How can you stop your subconscious learning to play for you? What are you on about!? Well, as soon as you start slagging yourself off it will stop. If you say, 'I'd like to play but I'll never be any good,' or 'Some people are just born to play guitar,' you'll hear the door slam as your subconscious leaves. Someone determined to prove that they can't play and could never play really won't be able to.

For anyone I've not put off unduly with my old hippy psycho-babble, just think how nice a guitar would look hanging on a hook on your wall right now. What a cool ornament! Maybe you could buy a book with some chords and words in? I wonder what kind of straps they do? What's a plectrum for and would you ever use one?

Ah! There you are! That's how it begins! So much to learn! You'll be asking me what a Shubb is next

http://www.guitarampkeyboard.com/en/capo​-deluxe/8517

but unfortunately we're out of time for now. See you next week.

Keep strumming kid!