Hi. My name is Dean Hallam from Calgary, Alberta, Canada

[Rover528]

I play acoustic guitar mainly because it’s easier to grab off the stand and play plus I figure if I learn to play a tune on acoustic well without sound effects then when I colour it a little with Reverb, Echo and some Delay it will be good. I never took the opportunity to play with other guitar players and now I wish I had especially for my timing. By myself I can play with expression by changing the tempo a bit and expression with my fingers. When I try playing with someone else I find myself listening to them and getting my tempo and getting mixed up where to jump in. I love learning fingerpicking and my daughters don’t understand because they’ve never heard the songs I’ve learned. I love Chet, Jerry Reed, Thomas Emanuel and of course Emil. The passion and expressive feeling these Master Guitarist squeeze through the fretboard and strings are their own fingerprint to us all to hear. I just want to have a pocket full of songs to play at any time without rehearsals to fulfill my own personal dreams.
I can read music but prefer tab especially if I know how the tune sounds. I memorize it then throw it away and play the song with my own mistakes embedded into the tune. It usually is not hard on the ears but never exactly as written in tab.

[emilernebro]

@rover528

Hi Dean!
Thanks so much for sharing here on the forum!

You mentioned that you're getting mixed up where to jump in when you're playing with other guitar players. The good thing is that you're listening, and that is step one. Always listen carefully to what the other player is doing. To have a bit of trouble playing with others when you haven't played a lot in those situations before is super common, and it's just something that most people go through at first. I would recommend you to play together with recordings, and try some of your songs with a metronome and stick to it for a few weeks and you'll notice a difference. Try to play the melody only with a backing track or a metronome, and be as expressive as you can. You'll think its a bit tricky in the beginning but that's only natural and we need to keep trying. Record yourself playing with the metronome and you'll notice even more what you need to work on. You need the listeners perspective, because sometimes it's difficult to really hear how you sound when you're in the middle of playing a song. Therefore, recording yourself is essential to get better. The more yo play with other people the faster you'll learn how to do that. And for solo guitar, it's great to record and listen back a lot too!

Thanks so much for being part of the forum!
All the best/ Emil