Play in a day by Bert Weedon

[essexbasscat]

I've started this seperate thread to leave the other one for notes of respect to Bert, although there's bound to be some cross over of some kind


Remembering the Play In A Day book, it was just about the only book available about how to play the guitar many years ago. I've had some long conversations today with a few friends about this book and we all remember learning the chords for A, D, E, C,

Then comes the F !

But after that, it was a case of sitting down and listening to the radio, the newly purchased tape deck and endlessly rewinding to suss out the chords.
It was a case of listening, going through the chord charts and trying to work out what went where.

Studying Top Of The Pops was frustrating, as everyone was moving their fingers too fast to be able to work out what was going on. So it was back to wrestling with the guitar and working it out for yourself.

Thing is, after a while, you learnt that you could play Norwegian Wood with the D chord, the beginning of Whole Lotta Love with the E, House of The Rising Sun with the A minor and so on. In this way, you trained your ear and learned about music in the process.
There were very few TAB charts to speak of that I came across, so it came down to DIY guitar lessons.

With the advent of the web and all the guitar info, TAB, You Tube videos etc, the days of learning from a book such as Play In A Day are long gone now.
But I certainly learned a lot by beavering away at the guitar with nothing but that book, a pair of ears and a desire to study every player I came across to find out what the hell was going on.

It was a different way of learning to what's going on now. The end of an era.

The reader of an article on the BBC news today said that George Harrison, Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and many others started off with Play In A Day. What a legacy.

Thanks Bert

[merlin]

yes I had this book did not get on with it...to difficult ...turned to bass....Haha Thanks Bert

[Dad3353]

I'm from the same generation, and well remember Bert's method. I had the (mis..?) fortune to stumble a[size=4]cross [font=arial, sans-serif]Mickey Baker's Complete Course in Jazz Guitar, [/font]Volu[/size]me I. Compare and contrast..? Needless to say, all these years later, I still don't play like Clapton or May. Where did I go wrong (or am I just slow..?)..?
Respect, Mr. Weedon; RIP.

Edited April 20, 2012 by Dad3353

[spinynorman]

I remember a lot of pain and effort, at the end of which I could strum along to "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes".

You tell kids today that, they won't believe you.

[paul_5]

Corridor? We used to dream of living in a corridor!

I had one of Bert's books way back when I were a lad. Learned quite a lot from it as I seem to remember.

Thanks Bert.

[karlfer]

essexbasscat, you could have written your experiences for mine.
God bless what you did for so many Bert.

[Geek99]

[quote name='spinynorman' timestamp='1334965801' post='1624303']
I remember a lot of pain and effort, at the end of which I could strum along to "She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes".

You tell kids today that, they won't believe you.
[/quote]
Luxury!

[essexbasscat]

[quote name='karlfer' timestamp='1334989066' post='1624351']
essexbasscat, you could have written your experiences for mine.
God bless what you did for so many Bert.
[/quote]

And so many others Karlfer !

Thing is, even after all this time, I still want to play House Of The RIsing Sun authentically with a band, with all the original keyboard part played as the original.

You learned so much about playing a guitar (and bass) by working it out for yourself once Bert showed you the utter basics.