I acquired a very valuable insight this morning through my little experiment here. In my previous, brief attemps at learning guitar I had never reached this point, but I was struggling with connecting the patterns that is used to depict note in the song sheet with the notes actual location on the guitar. They didn’t seem to follow any pattern I could recognize. Well, I finely got it to where I broke through and want to share this.

Okay, we have the letters “F-A-C-E” represented in the spaces between the lines of the staff and “E-G-B-D-F”. While studying their actual location on the guitar I noticed that each string seemed to be taking a disproportionate share of the staff. I’m following the course set out in the book Guitar method 1 as I mentioned and, so far, I’ve only had to deal with the first four strings but already the entire staff is used up. It finally dawned on me (this is a “duhhh” moment) that there are 6 strings and we are learning approximately three notes per string right now so that is a total of 18 notes. That problem of having to insert 18 notes into a staff with only 9 spots had previously escaped me. Now I see as we add a few notes above the staff (G, A etc) and the fifth and sixth string notes below the staff I finally got it.

During this last lesson I also got familiar with the # notes, eight notes. I’m a little confused over what seems like a minor issue and that is I there seems to be a difference in the way TuxGuitar makes a key signature compared to the way the book explains it. I’ll ask around though and get that clarified easily.

Interestingly, the book has us going on to learning some chords before learning the notes on the remaining two strings. As I mentioned, I have already jumped ahead and have studied them. So before I venture into chords I’m going to spend a little more time memorizing the locations of the notes on the guitar until they become natural and set in my mind.

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What have I learned so far by typing the lessons from Guitar Method1 into TuxGuitar? Well, for one, I have drastically improved my ability to read sheet music. So far, in two sessions (I haven’t been tracking the time) I have typed 16 songs from the book. That sounds like a lot, but quite a few are only two or three lines long.

I have learned the notes of the first three strings of the guitar (the E, B, and G strings). I have learned AND experienced (because I can play them songs back remember) the whole, half, quarter notes, the doted half not and the tied note.

A few of those songs were in 3/4 time. Keeping the count on those seems to mess me up for some reason. I’m going to ask them at Suzuki Music if that time is a tough one for students or is it just me. The TuxGuitar program though is a great tool for learning that. I can slow the tempo. I can see which note is being played wnd the time and progress through the song.

Tux also plays each note as you write it so I imagine I’m developing an ear for the various notes but that is just a hunch. I imagine hearning those notes over and over again together with seeing its name has some learning reinforcing effect.

Tux displays the fret positions of each note as they are played too, but I need to pay more attention to that I think. I’m wondering if I can memorize a song well enough with this technique to just pick up a guitar and start playing it?

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I am testing my own idea of a study method. This is just the beginning and I may look back in six months and say “that was a dumb idea” but I’m going to keep a log and journal anyway.

During my brief lessons as a young teenager I was flabbergasted and confused by all the terminolgy that was so foreign to me. Dotted half notes, G cleff, 3/4 time etc. What was all that stuff? And throw a guitar in someone’s hands among the confusion, add some hurting finger tips, and you end up with less than an ideal learning environment (IMHO).

So what I am going to attempt here is to separate out various aspects of the learning experience using the computer and to master as many as possible WITHOUT using a guitar at all. Once I have learned such things as reading sheet music, the notes available on each string, the use of those notes in chords and whatever else that I can glean from using the TuxGuitar program then, and only then, will I pick up the guitar.

I am using a beginner guitar lesson book “Guitar Method 1″ written by Aaron Stang (published and available at Alfred.com/as the foundation and to go through all the lessons of the book using only TuxGuitar to “play” the lessons. TuxGuitar lets you write the music into it and you can then play whatever you wrote back.

So for all the lesson songs provided by the book in order to teach such things as notes, reading sheet music, beats, timing, counting, nomenclature, etc I will be entering them onto sheet music in the TuxGuitar software. Once entered clicking a play button then plays the music and displays the fret board of the guitar handle and the notes being played.

So that is the overview. What I’ll do from here on is try to describe what I am learning using this method. Hopefully, at the end of the 30 page book, I will have learned most of the “head” part of playing a guitar. Then, and only then (that’s the plan anyway) I’ll go to my friends at The Suzuki Music Institute and ask them to give me some lessons on actually playing one.

They have been teaching music for over 30 years but have not crossed over into the computer technologies. I realise that using just myself as the test for the experiment could not be considered “scientific” I am hoping the teachers find the progress of the “musically challenged” yours truly to be so extraordinary to warrant further study of the method I am using.

Basically I am approaching learning guitar strictly from the computer user perspective. I am approaching learning guitar using the computer as the primary learning tool. The idea to rethink a learning method because of new computer technolgy is not new and I got mine (as basic as it is) from those who built the Moodle online teaching software. Now onto my report of my firast two sessions….

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I come from a musically challenged background so understanding that will help you keep these musings in perspective. Yes, my parents did not play any musical instruments but they did sing once in a while. The fact that they sounded a lot like Archie and Edith Bunker (from All In The Family) didn’t seem to bother them any though it did everyone else within earshot.

I tried taking some guitar lessons as a child from a local teenager experimenting with giving music lessons. That did not go very well. I think I did at least pick up the catchy phrase “Every Good Boy Deserves Fun” and the acronym “FACE” to remember the note positions in a song sheet.

Many years later I did take professional drum lessons for about a year so I learned something there but not really too related to guitar.

So I am approaching the music part of this pretty much as an almost complete novice.

On the computer side of this, I am fairly proficient at using computers, software, the Internet etc. I am a Linux user so I will be using the open source software called “TuxGuitar” as my learning tool. A compatible proprietary system available for purchase for the Windows program is GuitarPro.

I will be writing about my progress as I study and use the TuxGuitar program. Time will tell whether this was a real learning experience for me or just a temporary diversion that doesn’t lead to any practical music skills. As I said, I have a musically challenged background and so any failure is not my fault .

But I am in a unique situation where I have resources available I never had before so I will be getting help along the way. One is from a firend who told me about the TuxGuitar program. He is a Linux guru and a guitar player/student himself but we can only get together online. The other resource I have available is a close relationship with many of the staff at Suzuki Music Institute in Maitland Florida. They have made themselves available for my questions but I am not going to be taking lessons from them during this computer learning trial. I will be doing it solely by the “computer” (instead of “by the book”).

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