Hello,
my name is Wolfi. It´s nice to see you here.
I was born in Vienna, Austria in 1982 and I am still living there.
By now my videos were watched over 64.000 times, thank you very much for that (20.10.2019).
For me this left a bad touch on playing the recorder. Soon it was smashed against the wardrobe door and broke. That was OK for me. For this reason my recorder career came to an early end.
At the age of 8 I started playing piano, because everyone from my family does.
Till 17 I was taught by Mrs. Schwarz who was coming to our place once a week. She told me how important it was to practice at least 30-60 minutes per day. Due to a lack of motivation (playing soccer or exercising?) I was only practicing every second day in the beginning. Soon it got even less, once or twice a week.
Today I know that this is by far not often enough to master an instrument.
Back these days I didn´t.
That´s the reason why it took me several years to have fun while playing. I guess the fun started when I was 15 years old. Then my playing and motivation had grown well enough to learn "modern" songs (from the Beatles, Queen,...) and pieces from Mozart.
From the classical pieces I wanted to be able to play Mozart and The Blue Danube, both heartwarming and easygoing pieces.
I didn´t want to play Beethoven´s melancholic music.
It´s funny that today when I´m listening to classical music, Beethoven´s pieces are my favourites followed by Mozart´s. Such is life!
I talked about playing piano.
From the age of 8 to 15 I hardly had any fun while playing piano. In musical context these were hard times that could have been much shorter, if I had been practicing a litte bit more.
Apart from that I will always be grateful to my parents and especially to my teacher Mrs. Schwarz for never giving up to motivate and excite me for playing piano. Moreover I could play the songs that I liked.
Dear Else, thank you very much (although I fear that you might never read these lines)!
I have learned that over a long period of time it´s necessary to put a lot of effort into practicing to master any instrument. Not less important is the ability to stick to it whatever happens. Then playing your instrument is a great PLEASURE. That´s all that counts at the end of the day.
Today I´m playing piano quite seldom, but always with pleasure.
Moreover I wanted to be able to accompany songs that everybody knows and sing along. Playing guitar and singing belongs together. For me playing guitar without singing is like Christmas without a Christmas tree - something is missing.
Sitting around the campfire or having a picnic outside are good opportunities for playing guitar and singing with friends. These opportunities should take place more frequently for my taste. It´s always fun to entertain my friends with making music. Every time at least one person is singing along with me. That makes things even more exciting.
At the beginning of playing guitar I was teached by Caroline who studied guitar at the unversity.
She taught me the basics very accurately.
I guess at the beginning it is very important to have guitar lessons for learning a solid and ACCURATE technique.
The ability of playing piano definitely helped me learning to play guitar, because I still had the strength, precision/coordination and fluency in my fingers. That´s why I could play (barred) chords easier and faster.
Like so many guitarists for a quite long time I was just playing the chords to my favourite songs. With the years I added intros, riffs, short solos, whispering parts etc. to make things more interesting and varied.
But always trying to sing along (playing and singing at the same time can be really challenging, but is getting better and more intuitive).
Many famous songs were showing me my limitations. I either greatly simplified them (just played the chords) or didn´t play them at all, because I considered them to be too difficult.
I got stuck for more than 10 years at the level that I reached after approximately 3 to 5 years of playing.
When I look back now it´s quite astonishing for me that this specific situation didn´t bother me in these days. I played more and more irregular, from nearly daily as a student over once a week till once in a couple of weeks.
In autumn 2015 I wanted to play Mark Knopfler´s brilliant song "Postcards from Paraguay". It was not my first attempt to do so, I have tried 2 times without success a couple of years before. Being an enthusiastic Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler fan as I am, I watched a few covers of this song on YouTube to get an idea. What shall I say? One of these covers sounded as perfect as Mark would play it by himself accompanied by his band.
Listening to this cover gave me shivers down the spine. From that moment on I knew that I really wanted to be able to play like this.
The guy who put this cover on YouTube did not post the TABS, even not when being asked to do so by several users. Unfortunately this is quite usual nowadays. He made excuses like "I just play by ear", "I never write down TABS" and so on. Wanna know my point of view? Just "bullshit". No guitar player who just plays for fun (no professional) can play 30, 40 or 50 complex fingerstyle arrangements just by heart over a longer period of time. As a consequence you are nearly forced to write down the TABS or the notes.
Keeping this in mind, not posting the TABS really sucks. You take the other YouTubers´ chance to play the song just the way you are playing it in the video. Who points with the finger now and says something like "that´s why you have got the video, to see what´s going on" has never tried to reproduce an arrangement, just by watching a video. It can be really frustrating and discouraging, when you fail playing the song the way it is played in the video again and again. You don´t know which notes to play and maybe also which rhythm etc. is needed. I tell you: this kind of guys do not want you to play their TABS.
They found out the TABS of their own and do not want to share them - you don´t get it? Bad luck! Just childish if you are asking me.
To put it in a nutshell: you find the TABS for my covers and my own songs here Tabs/Chords/Lyrics. Have fun with them!
Back to the story I wanted to tell you. As already mentioned, in autumn 2015 I wanted to be able to play Mark Knopfler´s "Postcards from Paraguay". It was really frustrating for me to see that it didn´t work at all with my quite limited playing techniques. It was not the first time that I have tried to play this song. When you fail a couple of times, it´s even more frustrating.
One day when I was zapping YouTube videos I came across this Mark Knopfler VIDEO. In this video he shows and explains some of his playing techniques. One of these techniques is fingerpicking. He gives you an idea what fingerpicking actually is and what it is good for.
I knew this video from way back, but had forgotten about it. When I saw it before I simply didn´t get the message. Moreover this playing technique called fingerpicking seemed so far away from my playing possibilities.
However, Mark Knopfler shows in this video that fingerpicking is a big step forward compared to plucking single notes. Fingerpicking means that the thumb is playing the rhythm - 1, 2, 3, 4 - while the fingers are playing a melody. Thumb and fingers are completely independent from each other. With fingerpicking you can create the illusion of 2 guitars or 1 guitar and 1 bass playing together.
All of a sudden I understood that fingerpicking was my personal missing link for being able to play really challenging songs!
From this moment on I have tried hard to acquire this technique and get into it. I am proud to say that within just 1 year of fingerpicking I have acquired much more playing skills than in so many years before.
What is really fascinating about fingerpicking is the fact that it is not just a single technique that you acquire. What is more, it opens the door to a new world of countless unexpected possibilities for any guitar player. Unbelieveable! There are so many possibilities, interpretations and ways of fingerpicking. You live and learn.
Fingerpicking is a further development of plucking single notes.
Plucking single notes is relatively easy and quick to learn.
Fingerpicking needs a lot of time and effort (practicing) just to master the basics, but it pays well! With fingerpicking you have got the skills to accompany a song / play the lead guitar in a versatile, more interesting, richer in sound and most important: RHYTHMIC way.
The rhythmic element ("pushing" the music forward) is missing when plucking single notes.
I want to give you an example:
When playing piano you typically use both hands. While the left hand is playing the bass, the right hand is playing the melody.
Plucking single notes is just playing the melody (right hand alone).
Fingerpicking means that you are playing with both hands.
In context of playing guitar fingerpicking with the right hand is equivalent to playing piano with both hands. That´s the real challenge of fingerpicking: the right hand has to play the bass with the thumb AND the melody with the fingers simultaneously. That can be quite confusing.
Had I known 10 years before that fingerpicking even exists, I would have started to learn fingerpicking immediately.
For me fingerpicking is a very special "art" of playing guitar and is still exciting and new.
In 2017 i started taking guitar lessons from Markus Schlesinger, a master of percussive fingerpicking. Thank you Markus, you taught me so much in one and a half years! And you showed me that percussive fingerpicking is a pretty hard-to-learn skill, but definitely worth it.
Till 2006 I have been writing 2 or 3 songs or ideas for songs that I have never released. The lyrics of these songs are partly not up-to-date anymore. For this reason these songs need to be revised in the near future.
For more than 10 years I have not been writing any songs. In 2016 I started writing songs again. On the occasion of my darling Sonja´s birthday I wrote a song called "Du bist mein Schatz" (in english: "You are my darling"). One day she casually mentioned if I could write a song for her. And so one thing led to another.
The year 2016 was a very tough one for me. I have learned much about life in itself, my social life and also much about myself.
In my opinion the most beautiful and touching songs result from difficult, negative or formative experiences. Talking for myself, at the end of 2016 my inspiration and creativity (both essential for writing songs) reached their peak.
I hope that they are staying at the peak for a long time. At least 2017 and 2018 were very creative years for me!
It´s quite difficult to answer the question: "How am I writing my songs?"
In general fingerpicking has strongly broadened my manual skills for writing own songs.
In terms of music theory, my teacher Markus taught me some basics, such as the Circle of Fifth, that I often use.
But apart from that I am writing my songs the way I do, intuitively.
May sound a little bit weird, but that´s how it works for me. Some chord progressions are fascinating for me. I am taking these progressions and try to build up something around. This could be a melody or an intro for instance.
After that, I am searching for verses, a chorus and maybe a bridge, that go along with my idea. That´s all about it! In a last step I am writing the lyrics for the song. A sad song needs serious lyrics. It´s as simple as that!
For the lyrics I normally take a special topic, like having a walk outside (see my song "Spazierengehen", in english: "Having a Walk Outside").
My lyrics are taken from real life and I hope, that some of you can identify with them.
See you,
Wolfi
my name is Wolfi. It´s nice to see you here.
I was born in Vienna, Austria in 1982 and I am still living there.
By now my videos were watched over 64.000 times, thank you very much for that (20.10.2019).
- My musical background BEFORE playing guitar?
For me this left a bad touch on playing the recorder. Soon it was smashed against the wardrobe door and broke. That was OK for me. For this reason my recorder career came to an early end.
At the age of 8 I started playing piano, because everyone from my family does.
Till 17 I was taught by Mrs. Schwarz who was coming to our place once a week. She told me how important it was to practice at least 30-60 minutes per day. Due to a lack of motivation (playing soccer or exercising?) I was only practicing every second day in the beginning. Soon it got even less, once or twice a week.
Today I know that this is by far not often enough to master an instrument.
Back these days I didn´t.
That´s the reason why it took me several years to have fun while playing. I guess the fun started when I was 15 years old. Then my playing and motivation had grown well enough to learn "modern" songs (from the Beatles, Queen,...) and pieces from Mozart.
From the classical pieces I wanted to be able to play Mozart and The Blue Danube, both heartwarming and easygoing pieces.
I didn´t want to play Beethoven´s melancholic music.
It´s funny that today when I´m listening to classical music, Beethoven´s pieces are my favourites followed by Mozart´s. Such is life!
I talked about playing piano.
From the age of 8 to 15 I hardly had any fun while playing piano. In musical context these were hard times that could have been much shorter, if I had been practicing a litte bit more.
Apart from that I will always be grateful to my parents and especially to my teacher Mrs. Schwarz for never giving up to motivate and excite me for playing piano. Moreover I could play the songs that I liked.
Dear Else, thank you very much (although I fear that you might never read these lines)!
I have learned that over a long period of time it´s necessary to put a lot of effort into practicing to master any instrument. Not less important is the ability to stick to it whatever happens. Then playing your instrument is a great PLEASURE. That´s all that counts at the end of the day.
Today I´m playing piano quite seldom, but always with pleasure.
- My guitar background?
Moreover I wanted to be able to accompany songs that everybody knows and sing along. Playing guitar and singing belongs together. For me playing guitar without singing is like Christmas without a Christmas tree - something is missing.
Sitting around the campfire or having a picnic outside are good opportunities for playing guitar and singing with friends. These opportunities should take place more frequently for my taste. It´s always fun to entertain my friends with making music. Every time at least one person is singing along with me. That makes things even more exciting.
At the beginning of playing guitar I was teached by Caroline who studied guitar at the unversity.
She taught me the basics very accurately.
I guess at the beginning it is very important to have guitar lessons for learning a solid and ACCURATE technique.
The ability of playing piano definitely helped me learning to play guitar, because I still had the strength, precision/coordination and fluency in my fingers. That´s why I could play (barred) chords easier and faster.
Like so many guitarists for a quite long time I was just playing the chords to my favourite songs. With the years I added intros, riffs, short solos, whispering parts etc. to make things more interesting and varied.
But always trying to sing along (playing and singing at the same time can be really challenging, but is getting better and more intuitive).
Many famous songs were showing me my limitations. I either greatly simplified them (just played the chords) or didn´t play them at all, because I considered them to be too difficult.
I got stuck for more than 10 years at the level that I reached after approximately 3 to 5 years of playing.
When I look back now it´s quite astonishing for me that this specific situation didn´t bother me in these days. I played more and more irregular, from nearly daily as a student over once a week till once in a couple of weeks.
In autumn 2015 I wanted to play Mark Knopfler´s brilliant song "Postcards from Paraguay". It was not my first attempt to do so, I have tried 2 times without success a couple of years before. Being an enthusiastic Dire Straits and Mark Knopfler fan as I am, I watched a few covers of this song on YouTube to get an idea. What shall I say? One of these covers sounded as perfect as Mark would play it by himself accompanied by his band.
Listening to this cover gave me shivers down the spine. From that moment on I knew that I really wanted to be able to play like this.
The guy who put this cover on YouTube did not post the TABS, even not when being asked to do so by several users. Unfortunately this is quite usual nowadays. He made excuses like "I just play by ear", "I never write down TABS" and so on. Wanna know my point of view? Just "bullshit". No guitar player who just plays for fun (no professional) can play 30, 40 or 50 complex fingerstyle arrangements just by heart over a longer period of time. As a consequence you are nearly forced to write down the TABS or the notes.
Keeping this in mind, not posting the TABS really sucks. You take the other YouTubers´ chance to play the song just the way you are playing it in the video. Who points with the finger now and says something like "that´s why you have got the video, to see what´s going on" has never tried to reproduce an arrangement, just by watching a video. It can be really frustrating and discouraging, when you fail playing the song the way it is played in the video again and again. You don´t know which notes to play and maybe also which rhythm etc. is needed. I tell you: this kind of guys do not want you to play their TABS.
They found out the TABS of their own and do not want to share them - you don´t get it? Bad luck! Just childish if you are asking me.
To put it in a nutshell: you find the TABS for my covers and my own songs here Tabs/Chords/Lyrics. Have fun with them!
Back to the story I wanted to tell you. As already mentioned, in autumn 2015 I wanted to be able to play Mark Knopfler´s "Postcards from Paraguay". It was really frustrating for me to see that it didn´t work at all with my quite limited playing techniques. It was not the first time that I have tried to play this song. When you fail a couple of times, it´s even more frustrating.
One day when I was zapping YouTube videos I came across this Mark Knopfler VIDEO. In this video he shows and explains some of his playing techniques. One of these techniques is fingerpicking. He gives you an idea what fingerpicking actually is and what it is good for.
I knew this video from way back, but had forgotten about it. When I saw it before I simply didn´t get the message. Moreover this playing technique called fingerpicking seemed so far away from my playing possibilities.
However, Mark Knopfler shows in this video that fingerpicking is a big step forward compared to plucking single notes. Fingerpicking means that the thumb is playing the rhythm - 1, 2, 3, 4 - while the fingers are playing a melody. Thumb and fingers are completely independent from each other. With fingerpicking you can create the illusion of 2 guitars or 1 guitar and 1 bass playing together.
All of a sudden I understood that fingerpicking was my personal missing link for being able to play really challenging songs!
From this moment on I have tried hard to acquire this technique and get into it. I am proud to say that within just 1 year of fingerpicking I have acquired much more playing skills than in so many years before.
What is really fascinating about fingerpicking is the fact that it is not just a single technique that you acquire. What is more, it opens the door to a new world of countless unexpected possibilities for any guitar player. Unbelieveable! There are so many possibilities, interpretations and ways of fingerpicking. You live and learn.
- Differences between fingerpicking and plucking single notes?
Fingerpicking is a further development of plucking single notes.
Plucking single notes is relatively easy and quick to learn.
Fingerpicking needs a lot of time and effort (practicing) just to master the basics, but it pays well! With fingerpicking you have got the skills to accompany a song / play the lead guitar in a versatile, more interesting, richer in sound and most important: RHYTHMIC way.
The rhythmic element ("pushing" the music forward) is missing when plucking single notes.
I want to give you an example:
When playing piano you typically use both hands. While the left hand is playing the bass, the right hand is playing the melody.
Plucking single notes is just playing the melody (right hand alone).
Fingerpicking means that you are playing with both hands.
In context of playing guitar fingerpicking with the right hand is equivalent to playing piano with both hands. That´s the real challenge of fingerpicking: the right hand has to play the bass with the thumb AND the melody with the fingers simultaneously. That can be quite confusing.
- How am I playing guitar today?
Had I known 10 years before that fingerpicking even exists, I would have started to learn fingerpicking immediately.
For me fingerpicking is a very special "art" of playing guitar and is still exciting and new.
In 2017 i started taking guitar lessons from Markus Schlesinger, a master of percussive fingerpicking. Thank you Markus, you taught me so much in one and a half years! And you showed me that percussive fingerpicking is a pretty hard-to-learn skill, but definitely worth it.
- How and how long have I been writing my own songs?
Till 2006 I have been writing 2 or 3 songs or ideas for songs that I have never released. The lyrics of these songs are partly not up-to-date anymore. For this reason these songs need to be revised in the near future.
For more than 10 years I have not been writing any songs. In 2016 I started writing songs again. On the occasion of my darling Sonja´s birthday I wrote a song called "Du bist mein Schatz" (in english: "You are my darling"). One day she casually mentioned if I could write a song for her. And so one thing led to another.
The year 2016 was a very tough one for me. I have learned much about life in itself, my social life and also much about myself.
In my opinion the most beautiful and touching songs result from difficult, negative or formative experiences. Talking for myself, at the end of 2016 my inspiration and creativity (both essential for writing songs) reached their peak.
I hope that they are staying at the peak for a long time. At least 2017 and 2018 were very creative years for me!
It´s quite difficult to answer the question: "How am I writing my songs?"
In general fingerpicking has strongly broadened my manual skills for writing own songs.
In terms of music theory, my teacher Markus taught me some basics, such as the Circle of Fifth, that I often use.
But apart from that I am writing my songs the way I do, intuitively.
May sound a little bit weird, but that´s how it works for me. Some chord progressions are fascinating for me. I am taking these progressions and try to build up something around. This could be a melody or an intro for instance.
After that, I am searching for verses, a chorus and maybe a bridge, that go along with my idea. That´s all about it! In a last step I am writing the lyrics for the song. A sad song needs serious lyrics. It´s as simple as that!
For the lyrics I normally take a special topic, like having a walk outside (see my song "Spazierengehen", in english: "Having a Walk Outside").
My lyrics are taken from real life and I hope, that some of you can identify with them.
See you,
Wolfi