Newfound old love?

[SomeIdiotDreamer]

Well I've had an odd little episode in the evolution of me as a very,very beginning guitar player.

 

Having spent the last month or more in exile at my parent's place, an emergency run to a local guitar store yielded a white Oscar Scmidt acoustic that cost $125, plus gig-bag and as many guitar picks as I could steal from the jar.

 

I found myself playing it less and less as the days went on. An aunt had given me a "learn to play guitar" book for christmas (don't ask), but I was having a hard time getting through it. My white acoustic sounded decent (when I could get it in tune) and the action wasn't TOO high as long as you stuck with the first three frets, but I just couldn't get excited about it. It was good and loud and had a great tone but I found myself getting frustrated or bored easily. Eventually, I'm ashamed to say, I even skipped practicing entirely on some days.

 

I'm back home now, with my Epi Ultra II in my lap, and I have a hard time keeping my hands off it. I still haven't figured out what all the knobs on my cheap-o practice amp are supposed to do, but damn this thing feels great in my hands.

 

So I won't be giving up after all. My uncle showed me the cords to "House of the Rising sun on his 30-year-old Yamaha ("never changed the strings once!" And boy did they sound tinny) during a family visit. I'll probably be practicing that after I get done plucking what's still random cords to me. No, I still can't actually make my hand into an F or B power cord, but I can do a C now. and I've ALMOST got the F-sharp so I'm getting better!

 

I just gotta say, I love this epi. Everthing about it is gorgeous. I tentatively call it "SID" in my mind (after my name here on this forum) but for some reason what doesn't seem right.

 

I gotta ask, how do you find a beginner's training regimen that works for you? Everyone seems to think you should start somewhere else. The book has me learning notes one string at a time, which might teach me how to read music but it's not very fun...

[IntelligentAl]

Like a lot of musicians, I have never learnt to read music. I can read a little from my old Cello days, but it isn't that important. I wouldn't say I have a practice regime, I just play for hours on end! The important thing is not to over-practice. If you find yourself getting bored, you should probably put the guitar down for a while. With that in mind, do try to practice at least once a day.

 

As for what to practice, when I started learning I spent a week or two learning the basics (chords, scales, etc.) and then simply began to play the songs that I wanted to play. By now I can improvise and learn songs by ear, simply by learning the basics and going from there.

 

But don't give up! It's definitely worth it...

[generation zero]

I started out playing "for real" back in the mid 90s, when Blind Melon had just come out. I bought a guitar magazine with the tab for "No Rain" in the back, and started learning to read tab and play guitar with that song. From there, I just searched out tabs for songs that I liked that didn't sound too difficult. I think the second song I learned was Guns N Roses - Don't Cry. Keep in mind two things... One, I already had a fundamental music background, as at that time I had been playing cello in middle school orchestra for three years. Also, tabs were not the garbage you find nowadays online, written by some computer geek schmuck in wordpad... Even the guitar mag tabs back then had full notation above them, like you still find only in full album tab books. I wouldn't have had such an easy time learning from today's BS tabs, especially the online crap. I've been playing for close to 15 years now, and I still have a hard time reading that garbage. I suggest finding a song or two that you like, one that doesn't sound too hard to play, and go buy the book for the album it is on. Listen to the song while reading along in the tab book, that will help you visualize what's going on guitarwise in the song. Pick it out part by part, and don't get frustrated when it takes more than a few days to get a song down. The more you stick with it, the faster it will come. Also, subscribe to guitar world or a similar magazine, and read all the lessons in it thoroughly every month, even the stuff aimed way above your playing level. The more of the technical language you absorb now, the less foreign it will seem later when you get to actually learning it. Above all, stick with it and don't get discouraged. Don't ever let "practice" get to where it overshadows "playing". Make sure to take some time to just bash out some chords or whatever you know how to play (or can fake your way through) just for fun. As long as you keep allowing yourself to enjoy playing, you'll learn plenty in no time. It just won't seem like it at first... Don't try to push it. My old band director used to have a saying that still rings true... "learn fast by practicing slow!"

[antwhi2001]

There's lots of short guitar tutorials on YouTube for all levels of players...some are good, some are not, but all are free.

Browse those for a start and see if anything looks interesting. Sometimes you can surprise yourself, if you see a piece and think you'll never be able to play it, after a few weeks practice you often find you can, if you work at it.

 

Once you've got the hang of a lick or a chord sequence, move on to something harder; you have to keep over-reaching yourself to get better.

[IntelligentAl]

Good point, Ant. Just this morning I thought I would never be able to play 'Thunderstruck' like Angus does. An hour later, guess what I was playing?

[animalfarm]

Welcome to the beginning of a wonderful adventure during which you will develop

the desire to own 17 different guitars, 3 different amps, effects pedals, find your favorite

strings and pick thickness, etc. I taught myself to play at 14 using a "MEL BAY" teach yo' self

book. Eventually I discovered barre/bar chords, and lead scales. (I recommend learning the two

"Blues scales" for now when you discover the desire to try leads) MF sells a wall chart of

scales for $6.95? During the strum, strum, plink, plink phase I discovered that I could listen

to a record, then start figuring out the songs just by listening to them. So, like Intelligent AL,

I play by ear only, can't read the music sheets, BUT I can reproduce exactly what I hear.

This takes PRACTICE, some days you'll make progress, other days you'll just try to re-learn

what you've forgotten from the day before. Play for fun, but also dedicate time to REALLY

working on just a song or two to set them FIRMLY in your brain and fingers. Most beginning

guitarists can play PARTS of LOTS of songs. Go ahead and figure out the WHOLE thing one or two

songs at a time, then play those songs OVER and OVER and OVER to set them in your mind...

When and if you reach the electric and Amp phase, remember - more volume doesn't exactly make you

play better, just lets your neighbors know they have someone next door who doesn't play too well.

Headphones until you can crank out the material for real. (I'll admit, I WAS guilty of LOUD can't play

so good practices, too... Hard to resist, I know).

Good Luck, keep with it, and drool over lots of guitars in catalogs. Be sure to ask questions of

every guitarist you can find, gather information!!!

[Whitmore Willy]

Happy Return Sid,

 

There's no place like home.

As usual, you seem to be drawing some very good suggestions. The main thing is to just keep practicing.

Pick easy songs you like and are familiar with. Consentrate on songs that have chords you know with the addition of

one or two new chords in them.

 

As far as learning your notes, make it a part of your practice regement. You don't have to spend all your time doing

it. If only for a part of your practice, it will help your speed and finger agility.

Many fine players never learn to read music. It is not a prerequisite. It can be, if you use it, another tool for

understanding.

 

Be patient, it seems to me as though you are making good progress. (which is never as fast for any of us as

we would like it to be).......I remember back in the stoned age when I started guitar.......(correction: stone age)

[Dave]

Dreamer, start by learning all the open position chords (1st three frets) and find a tab for a simple song that you like. Practice changing chords until you can do it with ease. It gets better with repitition and you will build finger strength that you need for the more advanced chords. F is the hardest if you use the full bar inversion!

 

Learn the TAB form of a simple lead riff and practice it in between chord sessions. Between the two, you will develop dexterity, speed, and strength.

 

Begin to look at the major scale and the blues pentatonic scale. This will be the basis for developing your own riffs.

 

Barnes and Nobles is a good source for guitar books of all types. Pick a couple that cover your musical interests and work some examples from them.

 

Subscribe to a guitar magazine that has a CD or DVD with video lessons. It's a lot easier to learn when you can watch, try, and scan back over and over.

[RobinTheHood]

Great advice in this thread! I came here to say what Dave said. Learn the open chords and Major, Pentatonic and Blues scales first. All three scales are a variation of the Major scale to a degree. So once you learn one, the others come easy. I would start with the Pentatonic or Pent Blues first, but that is a matter of choice. Also, keep practicing those barre chords. I know they hurt the fingers, but they are key.

Also, look up some basic finger exercises. This will help improve your dexterity so that your fingers will respond the way you indend them to. Sometimes the brain cathes on before the fingers.

If you do this every day, you will see drastic improvement within a month or so.

 

Good luck and keep us posted on your progress.

[Lord Summerisle]

I started out playing "for real" back in the mid 90s' date=' when Blind Melon had just come out. I bought a guitar magazine with the tab for "No Rain" in the back, and started learning to read tab and play guitar with that song. From there, I just searched out tabs for songs that I liked that didn't sound too difficult. I think the second song I learned was Guns N Roses - Don't Cry. Keep in mind two things... One, I already had a fundamental music background, as at that time I had been playing cello in middle school orchestra for three years. Also, tabs were not the garbage you find nowadays online, written by some computer geek schmuck in wordpad... Even the guitar mag tabs back then had full notation above them, like you still find only in full album tab books. I wouldn't have had such an easy time learning from today's BS tabs, especially the online crap. I've been playing for close to 15 years now, and I still have a hard time reading that garbage. I suggest finding a song or two that you like, one that doesn't sound too hard to play, and go buy the book for the album it is on. Listen to the song while reading along in the tab book, that will help you visualize what's going on guitarwise in the song. Pick it out part by part, and don't get frustrated when it takes more than a few days to get a song down. The more you stick with it, the faster it will come. Also, subscribe to guitar world or a similar magazine, and read all the lessons in it thoroughly every month, even the stuff aimed way above your playing level. The more of the technical language you absorb now, the less foreign it will seem later when you get to actually learning it. Above all, stick with it and don't get discouraged. Don't ever let "practice" get to where it overshadows "playing". Make sure to take some time to just bash out some chords or whatever you know how to play (or can fake your way through) just for fun. As long as you keep allowing yourself to enjoy playing, you'll learn plenty in no time. It just won't seem like it at first... Don't try to push it. My old band director used to have a saying that still rings true... "learn fast by practicing slow!"[/quote']

 

I agree with virtually everything you have said. Definitely some good advice there.

 

But, to be honest, I find tab (for the most part) a complete waste of time anyway.

 

As a beginner, the big problem is that tab doesn't teach you anything. It's just figures on a fretboard. You may pick out the song, but you don't gain any insight into what's going on. When you are more advanced, you'll also start to discover that the vast majority of tab is just plain wrong (especially the crap you find online).

 

Like a lot of guitarists I don't sight-read music, but I started off learning enough bits and bobs of musical theory to 'get by,' and then found I was quite interested in the topic. I think you do advance much more quickly when you are able to grasp some of the mechanics of how and why music actually works. Besides which, it can actually be interesting! Alan Pollack is a reknowned musicologist. His evaluation of Beatles songs is fascinating, even if you'll never need a fraction of this to play and enjoy "Ticket to Ride" :

http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/AWP/awp-alphabet.shtml

 

I think the most important steps you will make as new guitarist will involve your first successful encounter with key signatures and thereafter a basic understanding of the Circle of 5ths. Determining the key a song is written in, and why some chord progressions work and others don't is invaluable. Also, as others have said, look at the major scale and pentatonic minor. Soon, you will start to "work out" songs yourself. By doing this you are developing as a musician. Tab can't do this for you. Tab is painting by numbers.

 

I think the day I really knew that I was developing as a guitarist was the day (about 20 years ago), when I worked out Peter Green's Man of the World. I had a tab book, and just couldn't get it to sound right. So I threw the tab book away and tried to play along to the record. After a while I had it. That beautiful haunting melody, written (a little unusually for such a determined bluesman as Peter Green) in the major scale. I still love playing that song to this day.

 

I guess the most important thing to say really is that you shouldn't be alarmed at the thought of learning some theory. It is necessary, but need not be too intimidating.

 

For an easy, fun but non-patronizing introduction to playing guitar, you may find this guy's books to be a really useful resource (starting with "Guitar from Scratch.") I believe that they can be purchased through Amazon, if you can't find them locally:

 

http://www.skepticalguitarist.com/

[charlie brown]

SID, your experience is very familiar. If you start on an electric, with it's low action, slinky strings, and easy tone variations,

(through the amp)...it's a bit daunting, doing "Acoustic," in the beginning. Acoustic is a different mind set, even technique,

in some instances. But, don't give up, on it! I'm "old school," in that if you learn the basics on an acoustic, and electric will

seem effortless, and all the more fun. Plus, acoustic takes no "electricity" to enjoy...so, you can take and play it, anywhere.

Have your acoustic "set up" properly, and...as mentioned, learn the open chords and their alternatives,

up the neck, and listen to some good players...maybe the simpler ones, at first...to get a feel for phrasing, and their picking

(flat or finger) technigues. "Simon & Garfunkel," for one, is a good start for nice acoustic songs/techniques. Get a good chord

book, to go along with it, or whatever artist you choose. But...don't give up, on acoustic! Be determined...the rewards willl be

many!

[charlie brown]

Boy, this forum....posting is so erratic, in structure...you write something, preview it...it looks good,

you post it, it's fragmented! (See above) I'm getting really TIRED and frustrated by this "s...!"

 

So, you may have to just put up with it, from now on?! Depending on my mood! LOL!!

 

CB

[generation zero]

One other thing I forgot to mention, that I actually discussed one time with Michael Angelo Batio... I am left handed, but learned guitar right handed. My reason at the time was because of having existing cello experience, which can only be learned right handed. I found that I was able to pick up chords and lead licks much faster and more fluently than my friends who were also learning at the same time. Mr. Batio, as anyone familiar with him already knows, plays ambidexterously, often at the same time. However, in his early days, he chose to learn right handed even though he is a lefty. He found the same thing I did... Having your "strong" hand on the fretboard gives you much better control right from the start. Think about it, why would you use the hand you have better control over just to hold a pick? Most rightys can't even write legibly with their left hand, but they're supposed to be able to finger tough chords and fly through scales? Makes far more sense to learn "backwards" from your natural hand. When the guitar was originally invented, it was more about holding chords in one place and doing fancy fingerpicking work with your strong hand... As guitar playing evolved to what it is today, nobody thought to flip it over to put your strong hand where it is more useful.

 

So, my point is, if you are still at the VERY beginning stages, you might want to consider learning opposite handed from what you actually are. Any guitar tech at a shop should be able to easily convert your guitar to a lefty model, or you could pick up a cheap lefty strat for about a hundred bucks. If it doesn't work out lefty, flip the lefty over and play it righty like a mirror image of Hendrix, LOL!

[zombywoof]

After more than 40 years of gigging every time I try and learn a new piece after a couple of hours I am convinced I will never get it down. But ya just plug away at it and a few weeks later you sit there trying to figure out what ya thought was so darn hard about that song.

 

Not sure there is a proper way to learn.

I never learned to read those fly specks and hen scratches and tab confuses me. I was lucky - an old friend of the family taught me some basic chords to get me started - tunes like "Freight Train," "Amazing Grace" and "Midnight Special." Other than that I spent alot of time sitting in my room with a little record player with my guitar in my lap picking up the needle and dropping it in the same place again and again on some record trying to imitate what I heard.

 

One of the best things I ever did was to find like-minded people and form a band. Yeah, we sucked at first. At our first gig we had maybe 8 or so three chord tunes down and ended up playing them with vocals and then as instrumentals. But we got better.

 

Also, never be afraid to ask other guitar players questions. I still do. Most are perfectly willing to show ya what ever it is that they are doing. That is how I got into open tuning. As a young 'un, I could not for the life fo me figure out what these guys were doing on those old blues records. One day, I screwed up my courage, grabbed my old archtop acoustic and wandered into a local folk music club get together. Sure enough before the day was over I had learned about open tunings and left determined to find a Coriciden bottle to try my hand at some slide.

 

The most imprtant thing, however, is to have fun.

 

Good Luck

[Nic]

I think one of the hardest thing for a beginner to understand is that there is no standard base of knowledge shared by every guitarist.

 

There happens to be forums focused on specific styles of guitar. FInd one that suites you and you'll find a lot of useful information. While I encourage you to keep learning to read music, let that be only 25% of your daily guitar activities. Find some fun stuff.

[SomeIdiotDreamer]

more volume doesn't exactly make you

play better' date=' just lets your neighbors know they have someone next door who doesn't play too well.

Headphones until you can crank out the material for real. (I'll admit, I WAS guilty of LOUD can't play

so good practices, too... Hard to resist, I know).

Good Luck, keep with it, and drool over lots of guitars in catalogs. Be sure to ask questions of

every guitarist you can find, gather information!!![/quote']

 

So I have done! A family friend (a chemistry professor) turned out to be a life-long devotee of the instrument with calouses on his hands as thick as tarmac. He tried teaching me a blues scale, but I didn't get it... My uncle busted out his 30-year-old Yamaha (hasn't EVER changed the strings: they sound like tin cans rattling) and taught me some cords for "House of the Rising sun." And the teacher Providence sent my way will meet me under the tree on thursday. So I congratulate myself that I've managed to have at least three guitar players teach me something.

 

I'm uh...I have a practice amp, but I..uh, practice without my guitar plugged in. I feel too self-conscious still. But I promise, once I DO feel I can plug in, I'll play long and loud and the neighbors will line up to applaud me!

 

As for bands, I have a friend who is in an 8-man folk rock band. She's said I can jam with them sometime: technically I already did, but I was playing a tamborine.

[mrjones200x]

I started learning how to tune the guitar then learnt the basic open chords (A C D E G) B and F are not actual open chords as there are no open strings played. (Alot of people class F as open tho even tho its not)

 

When you can strum between these you can make music. I liked AC-DC stuff because some of there riffs are open chords and once you can play a bit of a riff you'll enjoy everything a whole lot more. (Back in Black E-D,D,D-A)