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Favorite Songs For Learning Guitar?


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Story time: When I was first learning to play the piano as a kid, one of my favorite pieces to practice was In the Hall of the Mountain King. I loved it because it was simple enough for even a beginner to play, but got gradually more complex as you went--and most importantly because it sounded amazing even when being picked out slowly by someone who didn't really know what they were doing. The sense of confidence I got from being able to play something that actually sounded good gave me the motivation to keep working at getting the rest of the song down and improving my technique, where a lot of other beginner exercises bored me to tears and made me feel like a useless amateur.

 

(Which I was, but feeling that way isn't very good for morale. :P )

 

That simplicity also left a lot of room for experimentation, allowing me to mess around with different variations and really get a feel for the different styles of playing and how they affected the sound of a piece.

 

Now that I've started learning to play the guitar, I decided to look up guitar tabs for In the Hall of the Mountain King to see if it would be as helpful for practicing this instrument as it was with piano--and wow is it ever. I've picked up more about fingering technique teaching myself to play this piece than all the other practice exercises I've come across combined, and since I started practicing it my playing has improved alot in a very short time.

 

This got me to wondering, does anyone else have a favorite song like this? Something that is relatively simple to pick up but sounds cool and is really good for practicing and developing your technique?

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If you play a simple song well then that's all that matters. Till you get bored out of your mind.

What's funny is many of the songs I found in early "easy guitar" songbooks were completely wrong. My ears kept on arguing with the written material and I just assumed that the guy who wrote the stuff new better then me. It was a hars reality.

Here's an easy one...

http://play.riffstation.com/?v=7uJL8er_tV0

Though I take umbrage with certain chords.

-The first chord not recognized is a C Major spelled open G C on the first fret and open E then it moves up to an open D chord

-The G major is always open in the song and.. It should be a G Major 7th.

-Where it represents a Bm chord it'a actually the same GM7 open and the Am is actually an Am9 bar at the 5th fret C and E notes and B on the 7th fret.

I kind of take umbrage with a lot of riffstation stuff. This one is "mostly" accurate

http://play.riffstation.com/?v=Sc4l5EpCMEc

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That's an interesting site you linked to. Should be a handy resource, though I'll remember to take what it says with a grain of salt. There's definitely a lot of trouble with finding mistakes in tabs and sheet music, especially the stuff you find online. The tabs for In the Hall of the Mountain King that I found have about 2-3 mistakes in the first two riffs, and the second part is completely off from what I can tell. Even worse, someone wrote in with corrections and they got some of it wrong too. I had to mess around to pick the actual notes out by ear, and I'm still working on figuring out the second half--but at least it gave me a starting point.

 

Unfortunately I'm not at a point where I can identify a note or chord by ear, at least not to name it. I can compare two notes and tell if they're the same or not, but I couldn't tell you if it's an A or a G flat or whatever, so while I can hear if a note is incorrect, I couldn't tell you what note it's supposed to be without hunting around for it on the keyboard/fretboard.

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The thing I hate most about play.riffstation and Chordie.com is the lack of measure formatting.

We recirculate to your original questions and your original needs and add one one more question to the pile....Format.
.MID is pretty much a dead format. Publishing house have sued the pants off of anyone who hosted them.

Guitar Pro http://www.guitar-pro.com/en/index.php is the most accurate way to tab things out for guitar. GP files are generally written more accurately then other files. There are other places to pickup gp format songs then "mysongbook" Which to it's credit is fully legal.

On the looser side of things Band in a Box - http://pgmusic.com
It's an accompaniment program but nothing like those auto accompaniment keyboards. While you can play any style of music jazz players gravitate to it most and it's really how jazz players perceive / interpret then note for note. There are still plenty of pop/rock/country standards in biab format.
This> https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Band-in-a-Box-Files2/files
is a huge archive of biab songs without melodies making them perfectly legal for downloading/use for free. (requires membership in the yahoo group)


And finally....



wait....


Wait....
 

 

 

The Beatles

 

 

The beatles have influenced everyone in the pop rock field since they first came on the scene.  Sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly. Most (90%) of beatles songs are relatively easy to learn and they offer something to grow on/with. When I was a kid back in the 70's every would be guitarist had at least one if not several beatles fake books.

 

Love Me Do

Hard Days Night

Eight Days a Week

Can't Buy Me Love

Twist and Shout

Do you want to know a secret (okay that might be a challenge for a newbie player)

I wanna hold your hand.

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I find songs when practicing or improvising. Having found them I try to work out what they are. This week, I have been practicing scales using a 5 note repeating phrase as follows.

 

Rising: It starts-  

ROOT, 2ND, 3RD, 2ND, ROOT

then climbs by starting at the 2nd.

2ND, 3RD, 4TH, 3RD, 2ND

continues by starting at the 3rd

3RD, 4TH, 5TH, 4TH, 3RD 

and then the 4th

4TH, 5TH, 6TH, 5TH, 4TH

 

and continues to rise until reaching the octave before reversing on the way down again. 

 

Early on I realised the first 3 or 4 phrases were the beginning of a song, but didnt know the name of it. I figured it out today. The bold blue text of the lyrics are the phrases I recognised.

 

They begin on the 2nd (When I'm awfully low)

through 3rd (When the world is cold)

and 4th (I will feel a glow*)

 

 

* 'glow' : last note deviates from my phrase I think.

 

 

"The Way You Look Tonight"



Some day, when I'm awfully low,
When the world is cold,
I will feel a glow
just thinking of you
And the way you look tonight.
 
The song below begins at 1.03
Edited by Rudi
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