Hello, I recently bought an acoustic guitar, and this is my second attempt at learning to play.
I made some progress, teaching myself basic chords and strumming, but I’m having trouble following sheet music/chord patterns and similar resources. Sometimes, when I’m watching a YouTube video on how to play a song, they don’t provide the strumming pattern or other details.
I’ve only been playing for a month, and I really enjoy it, but I feel like I’m starting to slow down again. I did download a book on how to improve my playing, which I plan to read later today.
I was wondering if anyone had a few resources they’d be willing to share.
Thank you!
For me it really helped finding arrangements of rock/metal, punk, and pop stuff. Some video game music too. I’d say try to find simple arrangements of your favorite songs. I’m no expert, but I’ve been playing almost daily for 5 years with no lessons.
One Final Effort is really hard. Got any good video game songs for learning?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QY5SWHMPwI8
This is the easiest version of One Final Effort I’ve found. Not super hard, but not beginner level. Keep it and try to play it slowly at first.
As for other video game songs, look into Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger, older zelda stuff, older pokemon songs. Things like that would be better to start with. Really anything slow that you’re already familiar with.
A few of the VG songs I used to learn were
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOOkfDXw0jM
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lKGxoAlNhc
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kkUryy_DRSI
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2gaAEiq2vgQ
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OJnhg3QNe_M
Try to think of stuff like that to start. You can find tons of these easy sheets for free if you look around too. Although I did pay for musescore until they started charging me extra with no warning.
Drag can’t get drag’s fingers over this part of One Final Effort here
Oh yea that’s a tricky one. You want to keep your right hand in the chord shape as you hit each note. There are different ways to do it and it’s entirely possible to do with one hand however if you use a sustain pedal you can hold the low note using the pedal and use both hands for the rest.
What’s the chord shape? Are you saying to move the hand without moving the fingers?
The E B E section is the most common chord shape you’ll see as you learn. It’s the equivalent of a power chord on a guitar. If you want to get fast with one hand get used to keeping your thumb and pinky about an octave away from each other. In this instance that means the low E and high E.
Your instinct as you hit each note might be to use your thumb pointer and middle and move you hand but it will help you down the road if you get used to looking at the individual notes as a chord keep you hand in place as you hit eat note in the chord. In this section I would think about it like A B E is one chord. Then E B E is one chord going up then back down with the same fingers then move you hand into a B E B shape to hit the last 2 notes. Does that make sense?
Drag thinks drag gets it, thanks!
No problem dude! Have fun and if you need more advice feel free to hit me up.
Alas, drag never got into JRPGs, but drag will try One Final Effort and your other songs when drag can
Maybe you’d like these more:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=49e7gZ13-oA
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpCwRryy0kk
You can find simple arrangements of almost anything.
Otherwise just keep at it man. You’ll get there if you keep practicing.