My First Week Learning Touch Guitar

(UPDATE 2024) All of my lessons with Markus are now available for purchase here:

My first Touch Guitar lesson with Markus Reuter, a week's worth of progress, and some of the differences between Touch Guitar, standard electric guitar, and the Chapman Stick. Watch until the end to see me play!

0:00 Intro
0:09 What is Touch Guitar?
1:18 Lesson Beginning
2:19 'Son' Exercise
3:26 'Touch' vs. Tapping
6:19 'Daughter' Exercise
9:22 'Mother' Exercise
10:33 Technique vs. Music
11:38 My Thoughts on Week 1
13:48 Jamming/Playing from Week 1

Merch:

Listen to my band Sungazer:

Instagram:

[StanislovasRiska]

The new Sungazer will be downright wicked

[austindolan]

I'm 2 minutes into the video and it seems like a handshaking tutorial

[prrgu]

I give it two years before this instrument is all over the math rock and progressive metal scene.

[TapThePlanet]

Already digging the progress and the sounds you're making. That U8's neck was cut from the same wood as mine was, they are sister instruments. What a significant chunk of Plumwood.

[luizarthurbrito]

It is so cool to see such an accomplished musician being a beginner again

[JortsWubs]

15:38 Looks like Adam will have some competition for those Sungazer bass note streams eh?

[casperrrrrr]

this is when sungazer turns into king crimson

[famitory]

attempt to make music, then, when you have an idea you can't execute, work on technique until you can execute that idea. this ensures you're always motivated by passion, and not a sense of obligation. people have limited motivation for obligation, but essentially limitless motivation for passion.

[davidlicea]

This is so helpful for any instrumentalist, is really hard to not get into bad habits but it is worse to correct them, and those advices of finding the balance between musicality and technique is what everybody should think of
Thank you Shawn and my best wishes for you to continue growing in this new world

[TheSquareOnes]

Me: "Oh neat, Shawn is inhumanly good at the drums so it'll be nice to see him learn a new instrument and see how we all start out as trash at first."

Shawn: Proceeds to play The Girl From Ipanema while accompanying himself in week one.

This... is going to escalate quickly, isn't it?

[christiananggoro]

Next exercise will be opening the chakras. Great job in surviving the first week of learning new instrument! It's very easy to get sidetracked in the "experimental" jamming amidst the mundane exercises.

[BordelAmbiant]

15:00 perfect note for a staccato-ed Meshuggah's Bleed!

More seriously: congrats dude! Especially regarding the few Ipanema notes!

[onesyphorus]

My jaw dropped at the Girl from Ipanema! that's insane progress for like one week!!

[FeralWorker]

5:00 Ha, this was reminding me of practising acoustic the other day and working out how to get rid of the finger-pad release sounds, they often slide a little and make little scraping sounds. Great to focus on, makes a huge difference overall to manage those sort of byproduct sounds.

[joaovitoraccetta]

pretty cool how you confronted Techniques vs music. Whatever instrument you are practicing that's certainly a topic which will be always be present.

[pacoside]

Amazing. Will follow the rest of the journey closely.

[spanzotab]

I'm already getting math rock/emo inspiration from some of the playing at 14:25

[namelesswalaby]

I know you said its more nuanced than tapping, but my dude it looks and smells and sounds like tapping.

[kdonsky]

Just got a 12 string warr guitar, so I'm pretty glad that you just uploaded this great lesson!

[breitbartsimpson]

Thank you for being so open showing your/jamming practicing! its a good reminder to see that even an accomplished musician and composer like yourself had to start somewhere

I also really enjoy hearing what you're hearing and how you're trying to figure out the resolutions without knowing the shapes! (I do it on bass a lot haha)