I started late at the age of 46 and have been at it for 2 years with a half hour lesson every week. I know most of the basic chords including barre chords and can shift between them comfortably in the open position. Still struggling with theory and reading music but I know a little. Can play rhythm for a couple of songs and little pieces of lead for a bunch of songs.

At this point, I wanted to ask some of you folks who have been through the whole process and are real players where I should dedicate most of my time. I work scales (Pentatonic and Major) and practice songs when I get bored of scales but do not feel like I have been making progress.

Any insight from the knowledgeable folks on this board is appreciated.

Thx,

Dave

I don't know if this can be of any help as I'm completely self taught,the closest I ever had to a lesson was asking my uncle what the dots in chord diagrams meant.I just listened to the music that inspired me especially the leads and sat down to pick them out consequently I couldn't tell anyone what scale I was playing in to save my life but I know I'm using different scales.So that's my best advice such as it is,play what inspires you that way you have a much longer attention span.

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+1
If I were you I'd spend some time learning to improvise. There are some good backing tracks on youtube that you could use.

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Playing rhythm is often way overlooked. Continue learning the chords of songs and keeping a good rhythm.
Learn to play them (chords) as arpeggios, as well. As you gain a better knowledge of various chords,
playing leads will get easier and make more sense to your brain and fingers.

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Hi Dave, Late starter here myself, Im 49 started 2 years ago too! Preety much in the same place as you. What has helped me the most in past several months is playing with others... I met up with another player , about my age, and its been nothing but fun, and you know what,? My playing has improved about a million percent!
If you are stuck playing scales and chord progressions alone, it can be a real stagnate process... Find a friend and have some fun

Bill

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Hey, Boy Blue is back!

I was going to suggest taking the guitar out of the case but it seems like you've already done that.

So next step is to find a song you like. Then research the artist and find out what scale and chord progressions he or she uses. After learning a couple of songs then find out what artist they followed and continue your research.

Who know where it may lead you but you will definately have a lot of fun getting there.

Here are some tips I think have helped me get better as a player:

1) Pick a few songs you like and try to learn them from beginnig to end. Select some songs you think would be challenging but not overly difficult and work on them from start to finish. All the chords, all the riffs, the whole solo. Make sure to focus on the transitions between one section and the next. Get to the point where you can play along with the entire recording.

2) Record yourself. It's amazing the little flaws we don't hear in our own playing until we record ourselves and listen to the playback. Hearing a recording will give you a more objective assesment of your performance.

3) Jam with others. If possible, try to find some fellow musicians and work on some songs together. I've found that an hour spent playing with others can be worth days of practicing on your own. Not exactly sure why this is, but I think playing with others forces you to really listen to your own performance within the context of the overall song.

Good luck!

Well I'm 34 and I've just about 2 years in now and what I stumbled upon is something that makes a lot of sense to me with the background that I have. People above have mentioned already to stop with the scales and all of that and I agree because your style reminds me of myself and I'm going to use an analogy that I hope helps you out. I was a golf pro for 6 years and what I found that many people would hit balls all day long at the range and read numerous books about the golf swing and all of the techniques that go with it. I was like that too. People always wonder why they hit the ball so well on the range and yet they don't play well on the course. The answer is because you are practicing different swings and not practicing the game of golf. Playing and practicing are two entirely different things. While scales and chords are something that a guitar player needs practicing them alone is not playing the guitar so how can one expect to get better at playing if you're only practicing? Learn some songs and even then make sure to play them instead of just practicing certain parts of it. Luckily my teacher used songs to help me learn lessons instead of just drills. He would ask me what I liked to listen to and then find a song by an requested artist or at the very least a genre that had the lessons that he wanted to teach me in a song. Obviously you still have to practice songs but he also would tell me to make sure to have fun and "play it like you wrote it" even if my rendition wasn't that good yet. It's hard when you're at our level to let loose when you know that you will miss notes and chord changes and all of that but by combining the work that you are doing already with some real guitar playing you should start to feel some good progress happening. Best of luck!

The only way you are going to get better is by playing the stuff that is not easy for you to play. I disagree with the getting rid os scales method and I will explain why.

You need to learn scales so you know what works over certain progressions and they are your road map. Now I would take it you are practicing the minor pentatonic scale. So lets assume you are learning it in all 5 positions. On its own the scale sounds very boring and generic so if you are just running the scales over a backing track it is not going to sound very musical. What you have to do is learn how to make licks and runs out of the scale. Just about 90% of the time when soloing you are only using fragments and 2 or 3 strings at a time during a passage hardly ever is the pentatonic scale played from low E to high E in one passage unless it is being sequenced.

Learn licks and how to break up the scale using slides and bends with hammer ons and pull offs and you will start to hear music. If there is part of a solo you know and have the tab see what techniques that player used to make it flow. In other words study and analyze it.

Also stick with things that are giving you trouble as you are not going to get better playing things that are easy for you.

I reccomend these two DVDs all the time and I will guarantee if you get them you will bring your playing to another level. You can get them at www.licklibrary.com they are ROCK ESSENTIALS and ROCK CONCEPTS both by Danny Gill a former pupil of Satriani. Maybe you could check Amazon or another place on line or an ebay store. But they follow eachother so you use Rock Essentials first and though there are really 3 in the series you dont need the third one now.I can assure you you will thank me as I wish they had stuff like this when I started. Good Luck

Thanks for all the tips. Hope you don't get the picture of me blindly practicing scales all this time but I have dedicated a bit of time to the pentatonic and know it pretty well in its 5 forms with major and minor roots. I also take the time to solo over a lot of the stuff on youtube but my solos are still pretty mindless and boring except for those few times that I seem to be in the groove. Jam with folks now and again but get sort of intimidated because I feel pretty much inferior.

The thought of just fooling around and learning songs seems so foreign to me. I would at least think you would need to know an e shape barre chord to move it around and figure it out. I don't know how you guys get the fingering correct unless you have someone show it to you. There are many times I try to play something on my own using tab and when my teacher suggests a different fingering it gets a lot easier.

I suppose I will dedicate myself to learning one whole song and trying to jam more often. Now I just have to pick it. Any suggestions? I like a lot of older rock songs. I have some tab for The Eagles, Chili Peppers, Sublime, Mayer, AC DC and a few others floating around.

Thanks again,
Dave

The first song I learned was Nirvana's About a Girl, followed by Paranoid and Dirty Deeds. Ultimate Guitar tabs is a good site for some free tabs as well to suit what you like.

I learned from legacy learning, they have a great dvd set

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If you're into Nirvana, they have some of the easiest riffs around. The first song I learned was alt-country: Reckless Kelly's "Crazy Eddie's Last Hurrah." It has a really distinct strum pattern and the vocals follow the strums very well, if you're inclined to sing along.

The best way to play is one chord at time

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I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk...

Take one of the Eagles songs that you know and like, open a beer and have a go at it (them?)
Good luck,
John.E