Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room
If Only Once, If Only For A Little While - Comic about loss
40hz:
What's the difficulty level on a guitar?
-TaoPhoenix (January 06, 2015, 10:48 AM)
--- End quote ---
No harder or easier than any other key really. On a piano, the notes are in fixed positions. So the fingering changes with the key being played. On a guitar or other stringed instrument the same note can be found in multiple locations. So the fingering doesn't need to change to play in a different key or scale. Just move up or down the neck to the appropriate position (or fret) and Bob's yer uncle.
There are practical limits to that however since sustain and harmonic complexity start to be attenuated the higher up the neck you go. So there are also multiple ways to finger any given key, the two most common being what's usually referred to as "starting on the 6th string" and "starting on the fifth string" patterns. That gives the guitarist the option to select the scale pattern and fingering most comfortable for any given song. The better guitarists also try to select the neck position that sounds the best even if it makes it more difficult to play for them. Or change the pattern(s) and the neck position(s) for the same key at different points in a song to get a desired effect or sound.
IMO Guitar is paradoxically easier and more difficult to play than a piano or keyboard. Which is probably why some people gravitate to one or the other depending upon how their brain works.
superboyac:
IMO Guitar is paradoxically easier and more difficult to play than a piano or keyboard. Which is probably why some people gravitate to one or the other depending upon how their brain works.
-40hz (January 06, 2015, 12:32 PM)
--- End quote ---
This seems very true. I've tried guitar a little, played piano a lot. From what I've seen, the guitar brain seems to lean towards the artistic/abstract like geometry, while the piano brain seems to be much more algebraic. At least to me.
On the piano, everything is linear. The higher note is always more to the right, the spaces between them are equal everywhere. Unfortunately, that means I have to learn 12 different "things" to master all the keys.
On guitar, it's almost the opposite. Notes are layered on top of each other and you have several options as far as paths to take for the melody. On piano, one melody = one option...guitar is one melody = several options. Same goes for chords.
If you don't know anything about music, i feel piano is easier to get into. because it's all linear, so that's easy. And if you press a key, you hear the sounds, no practice needed. On guitar, just to get a decent sound might take a while, as you have to develop calluses, learn how to get a clean pick. And (IMO) it's more difficult to get into the theory because you're immediately dealing with complex layers and patterns vs. straight linear thinking. Also, a lot of guitar players tend to get stuck in the chord strumming phase and never are able to pick a melody because of this. I think the good guitar players think in patterns and shapes because one or two patterns will cover all keys, unlike a piano. So piano players think more linearly or use their memorization skills to really get good. Although a girl recently told me she thinks in shapes, which i thought was interesting. I'm all numbers when I play.
superboyac:
;D oh just remembered my favorite pianist vs. guitarist argument.
Regarding the chords for a song, a piano player wants to know the exact chord...don't just say F or F7...iit might by F9 or Fb9 or F7 or F13, they are not the same!!! Then your realize the guitar player just cares about the F bit, and the rest he just makes up whatever he feels is "right". So the pianist is playing the exact chord, the guitarist is playing something similar, but it sounds off.
the worst example of this was the song 'I'm Beginning to see the light". because it's seemingly a simple 1-6-2-5 song. But it's unorthodox in that it starts on the 6 instead of the 1. man, I got into this whole thing with a guitar player for like a week on that. because the fake books print it incorrectly, and the songs we listen to play it correctly. So it just sounds off, but the difference is very subtle. Am7 and C6 are the same exact chords. Anyway, I spent an evening listening to the classic recordings to confirm and recreated a song chart for it, sent it to the guitarist, who I think was a bit offended at how big a deal I made of it.
damn i love music.
ok back on topic.
TaoPhoenix:
There's some interesting things here.
I think I agree at a very broad level that piano theory is "easier conceptually" - a note is a note, and it doesn't show up anywhere else or morph into something else either.
Leaving aside reading music which I never really learned, just from playing my own arrangements of the few pieces I learned, the difficulty of piano is all in the manual version of "finger twisters" - you don't have any doubt (once past artistic elements) that you need to get to X key at X time, you just have to somehow not "trip over yourself" to get there and only there, and on time and only on time.
One of the fun/funny/exasperating low level tidbits of piano playing is the fingering and the muscle memory. When you play pieces with expansive ascending and descending sequences, or with just intricate local-key elements, it's fun/funny/exasperating to feel like you almost got there, up until like a game of twister you're missing a finger to hit G Flat!
:o >:( :-[
And unlike C or even the keys with just one black key, things like G Flat minor feel bewildering because it feels like a big jumble at first!
wraith808:
IMO Guitar is paradoxically easier and more difficult to play than a piano or keyboard. Which is probably why some people gravitate to one or the other depending upon how their brain works.
-40hz (January 06, 2015, 12:32 PM)
--- End quote ---
As someone who plays both, I'd agree with that assessment.
I think I agree at a very broad level that piano theory is "easier conceptually" - a note is a note, and it doesn't show up anywhere else or morph into something else either.
-TaoPhoenix (January 06, 2015, 01:50 PM)
--- End quote ---
Wrong on both counts... (1) the easier conceptually, which is my opinion. (2) doesn't morph into anything else... well b/c♭ and f/e# want to have a talk with you. ;D
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version