Please Help - Piano/Guitar Lesson

[jsmarshall]

I've met this great guy who's been playing piano for 14 years now. He's always wanted to play guitar, but do to certain factors, he's never picked it up. Well I told him I would guide him on the guitar if he would help me with piano. I figured first I would show him the simple chords, which he should pick up pretty proficiently. He's very intelligent in music theory, but he does not know scales. He learned to play piano out of hymnals. He can't play classical style. He's big into sheet music. Knowing this about the guy, what would you say would be the best way to start out?

I think he wants to find a correlation between the piano and the guitar and then learn that way. He's very mathematical but he cannot play by ear. I'm going to sit with him at the piano tomorrow and we're going to trade ideas. I would love yours, because you all have always answered my questions with great knowledge. Thank you. Sorry for the long post.

[ljguitar]

Originally Posted by jsmarshall

...I think he wants to find a correlation between the piano and the guitar and then learn that way. He's very mathematical but he cannot play by ear. I'm going to sit with him at the piano tomorrow and we're going to trade ideas. I would love yours, because you all have always answered my questions with great knowledge. Thank you. Sorry for the long post.

Hi JS...
First of all, it sounds like fun.

Tune to him first...
It is a challenge to get people who play piano well - and who play sheet music all the time - to not attempt to relate their past knowledge to guitar. There comes a time as they develop where they eventually must stop comparing everything to keyboard and ''translating'' it to guitar.

There will be many general music principles which coorelate, but the techniques are radically different (I play both). So the music theory stays and everything else is learned from scratch.

If he plays out of hymnals, he plays too many chords per measure to interpret it literally (transcribing) to guitar. And he's used to playing melodies as part of the accompaniment - not just strumming or chording through an entire measure in one position.

Depending on what kind of guitar he wants to learn - classical, accompaniment, solo fingerstyle - will determine how he approaches it. Usually I plan on taking students through learning to strum and play chords, then to fingerpick them as well as we build skill sets.

First Outings...go with the intent to have fun..
I figure I have about 1/2 hour before their fingers hurt so bad we may have to rest.

When I get together with students for the first time, we learn simple chords like C switching to Am (one finger moves), back and forth. Then we walk Am to E (just moving the chord shape over one set of strings).

Then I show them how to play the E chord on 1st-2nd frets then move it up to 6th-7th frets (A-ish chord) then to 8th-9th frets (B of some sort), and we mess around with E to A to B to A progression for a while. It gets them playing a full progression - musically. I never tell them they are playing by ear - though they are.

And of course Em chord - after all it goes well with the Am chord.

Then it's time for either coffee or I won't be able to pry the guitar out of their hands...kind of depends on the student. The ones who ''get it'' and like it won't stop for much.

You will be surprised how much you learn just showing ''stuff'' to others. And I'm not sorry for the long post...

[MikeGates]

hey Js-
I uses to fiddle around on my piano before I got into guitar. I don't know music at all, and I just played single notes. When I got the guitar I imagined the Guitar as a keyboard. Each fret is like a key on the piano. If sat on you lap like a dobro, like a piano the notes get higher as you move right. When you fret muliple frets you get a chord, like pressing multiple keys on a piano. This is how I started. USE CHORD DIAGRAMS. They are soooooo helpful. I'd suggest you prepare diagrams of several (10) chords like: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H(just kidding :P) Am F#m..etc

Now... The guitar and Piano like LJ said are different too. But I found that with that idea I said earlier, It made me understand the guitar basics better than if i never made those connections before.

Hope I helped.

Edit:

I also remembered how I lernt all the notes of the fretboard....this could help... First you need to know the open strings E A D G B E. As you go up the fret board its like alphabetical order, and since he knows sheet music and all that...he'll know B and E dont sharp and theres no notes past G#. Example 1st string: E F F# G G# A A# B C C# D D# E F# etc... IDK if thats the same as keyboard or not, but it helps me. the Eddie Ate Dynamite Good Bye Eddie (E A D G B E) type of memory things help also.

[jsmarshall]

Thanks for the great replies. I went to his house this afternoon...

LJ since we didn't have a right handed guitar for him to play (I'm a lefty), we just kind of showed each other the basic principles of our instruments... For instance, he wanted to know how the guitar incorporated sharps and flats, how it was tuned... that sort of thing. After about an hour of going back and forth, he's more knowledgable on the basics of guitar than I was to begin with. I'm assuming its because he plays piano and used to play Sax. I have a right handed guitar at my parents house that I'm having shipped to me so I can give him. I think it's going to be a blast learning and swapping information. I'm excited. Thanks for all of the help, and keep it coming if anyone has anymore ideas.

[buddiesorg]

Before I started teaching myself guitar, I took ten years of piano lessons ... mostly classical ... lots of musical theory ... mostly playing from sheet music. I'm not sure how you learn theory without learning scales, though.

At first I did do quite a bit of translating notes on the fretboard to notes on the keyboard, but what I found more useful was using general theory, i.e. relative chords and notes, rather than focusing on specific notes, like you would while reading sheet music. That way it's very easy to transpose (very important when singing with a guitar).