Tom said:
I had a concern about my (lack of) dexterity, but figured I'd give it a try. It's going to take quite a bit of practice
I have heard many people say they don't have the talent or coordination or dexterity to play a stringed instrument. But learning to play a stringed instrument does not take talent, coordination or dexterity to learn how to play. When you learn how to play is when you develop your coordination and dexterity. Most people think you have to have musical talent to be a musician, and nothing could be further from the truth. The very greatest players of all times are the ones with the talent. The other 99.9% of us have nothing but hard work to get us where we are.
It is called Muscle Memory, that is what makes a person a musician. Watch any great guitar player in concert and notice that most of the time he is paying very little attention to what he (or she) is playing. Even when playing extremely difficult parts. This is because he has played the song so many times that his muscles know exactly what to do. The way to develop your muscle memory is to play anything until you can play it automatically without thinking. Otherwise you will not be able to comfortably sing along with your playing.
Let me give you an example. I was in a group about ten years ago (sierraexpressband.com) and one of the songs we did was Johnny B Goode. I learned to play the song but I didn't learn it exactly, just a rough interpretation. I don't want to or need to play it exactly like the record on stage. But recently I have been getting back into playing guitar and I bought a bunch of instruction books (8 so far) and some books on Beatles and Chuck Berry tabs (sheet music). As John Lennon said "If you had to give rock and roll a different name it should be Chuck Berry. So I am going to go through and learn all the classic Chuck Berry riffs. But the first project I have undertaken is to learn the intro to Johnny B Goode note for note perfectly.
Now Chuck is nowhere near the greatest or most technical guitar player in the world, but he is amongst the sloppiest. That is not a negative comment, in fact it is positive. Nothing sounds worse than some of these mindless shredders that should like a computer in hyper speed. But that sloppyness makes him very difficult to do a note perfect copy. The first four measures are real easy, takes about 5 minutes to perfect. But measure number 5 (out of 13) is really causing me problems. Only 7 notes, but no one can agree on what those seven notes are.
Youtube has at least a dozen Johnny B Goode instruction videos. The first 4 measures in all the videos I watched are perfect. But the fifth measure is done differently by every one of them. So I had to use Audition to slow the intro down to half speed while keeping the pitch correct. I have finally figured out exactly what notes he is playing but I am still not too positive about which position he plays it in. Watching videos of Chuck playing the opening he doesn't seem to change position at the fifth measure, but all the instruction videos do change position.
So for the past week I spend 15 minutes a day of my practice trying to get this one measure down. It took the first six days to figure out what I was suppose to be playing. Now that I know what to play it will take me a few more days until I can play it at 50%. Then I will work on it at 75% until I get that down then 100% until I get that down. But by the time I get it to 100% I will be able to play it in my sleep. I would like to spend more than 15 minutes a day on the measure but I just got a new acoustic electric guitar and it has a 12 gauge set of strings on it. I have been playing on 9s most of my life. The 12s are much bigger and harder to bend and they are killing my fingers. So after 15 minutes I have to go on to something easier.
I am only an average guitarist so I can only imagine the dedication and the endless hours of practice they must endure to succeed.
But the bottom line is that playing guitar is sooooooo much fun that the hours of sounding lousy are worth it.