Guitar, Learning

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

Hi i've had a guitar for ages and not bothered to use it.

I can play most of californication but not very well.

I really want to learn how to play, so anyone got any tips to help?

[Richie]

Learn some scales then have a go at making your own solo's up thats pretty much how i learnt, and obuisly know your power chords etc.

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

learn the basics

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

learn the basics

Helpful as ever, why the name change while we're on crap we dont need to know.

[cookie456_the2nd]

Tab

[Dan Clark]

I've been playing a few years, if you ever want me to show you anything Callum I'd be more than happy to, I like teaching people.

Learn songs you want to learn, makes you more enthusiastic

Learn the Pentonic scale, its super easy to remember and easy to make riffs out of.

Make sure you have things like strumming well and picking each strign before trying things out of your league.

Try string skipping exercises to help out your right hand co-ordination.

http://www.cyberfret.com

You've got my msn as well.

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

Helpful as ever, why the name change while we're on crap we dont need to know.

toaster

if you dont learn the basics and just rush into things it will end up being more difficult

[Has anyone seen my shoe?]

if you dont learn the basics and just rush into things it will end up being more difficult

Yes but saying 'learn the basics' is really general and not helpful at all

[Dr. Nick Riviera]

but from your first post it sounded like you didnt know anything, so therefore my post WOULD have been helpfull however some elaboration on both counts has showed that my statement was not usefull and is therefore stricken from the record

[TomR]

www.taborama.com

www.cyberfret.com

Learn the 7 basic acoustic chords, then onto powerchords and scales.

could always try some exercises to strengthen your fingers, like this playes on the high E string -

1-2-3-4-2-3-4-5-3-4-5-6-4-5-6-7-5-6-7-8-6-7-8-9

Basically going 1-2-3-4 but moving up a fret each time.

[the666ers]

Download Guitar Pro or a similar program and download the midi files for the songs. You can launch them on Guitar pro and then play along with a metronome and diagrams which show the finger positions as that note is played....

[benno]

Most of the guys in here have got the right idea I'd say, you just want to learn some basic open chords:

E, Em, A, Am, D, Dm, C etc. all based around the first few frets. Make up simple chord progressions or learn some Oasis songs or something to get your hand used to moving to the positions, and practice strumming and picking. Picking is often overlooked by people starting out, if you learn to alternate pick (i.e. upstroke, downstroke, upstroke etc.) instead of just playing all downstrokes as a priority you'll be able to progress much faster as this holds a lot of people back!

Most importantly, play stuff you actually enjoy listening to or you won't learn, but don't content yourself to bashing out the same Green Day song over and over again!

Oh, and actually making sure your guitar is in nice playable shape helps immeasurably.

Good luck!

[Dan Clark]

I have Guitar Pro 5, with the Realistic Sound Enhancement.

It's godly, sounds just like real guitars and drums.

[Mark W]

Try and play clean as much as possible. One of the things that seems to draw people to learning guitar is that you can bosh a shitload of distortion on and it's pretty hard to make it sound shit. However, it just basically covers up a lot of mistakes, so learn with a pretty clean tone. Guthrie Govan, for example, does super good lines and improvs, but he usually done them totally clean and it sounds amazing, way better than someone just doing some shitty run up and down a scale with loads of distortion.

Don't just get sucked into the trap that sooooo many guitarists get into of "I can play a power chord, therefore all my songs will be written in powerchords." It gets well old, well quickly. Try adding different elements of the scale to it - just anything other than just playing root+fifth constantly. But, yeah, you'll be wanting to learn theory to do this.

Theory's awesome too. Not in a geeky way, but it helped me a load when I was playing when I got some theory in my head. It makes writing songs a lot easier, soloing a lot easier, and you just get so many more ideas when you know where you can go instead of doing trial and error 'til you find the next note, and then going from that...

[Dan Clark]

I've always found it harder to play single notes in distortion, it tends to amplify your mistakes like touching other strings etc.

[Mark W]

I've always found it harder to play single notes in distortion, it tends to amplify your mistakes like touching other strings etc.

It sorta depends. I was thinking more for "faster" sorta runs 'n' stuff, where people are blatantly f**king up. Just sort of using the distorted sound to cover it up. It does depend on your pups 'n' amp setup too though, I was making it more as a general statement. For example, go from playing a chord progression on an electric with distortion to an acoustic, and you'll certainly hear where you're f**king up on the acoustic which you could get away with on the leccy?

Shit shit shit! Nearly forgot! When you're learning a song, make sure you actually play it right. That doesn't just mean "go through the notes on the tab", I mean actually listen to the song, work out note lengths, and play it accurately. Better still, work it out from the song itself, or learn to read standard notation (not hard ) and do it that way. But yeah, don't just say "I can remember the order of notes, job done".

[benno]

Yeah, it really annoys me when people play something they must be able to hear is wrong, but play it wrong anyway because that's what the tab said.

Theory is cool stuff, seriously. It helps you understand what people are doing when they write songs (much easier to work stuff out!) and also which notes to play when you solo etc.

I'm trying to get my head round basic jazz at the moment, I've been playing rock and metal for too long.

That said a good quote is "Learn all the theory you can, then forget it." So said because it can become a little restrictive on the way you play if you're only playing what's "right" all the time, sometimes "wrong" sounds so much better! (Although you'll probably learn afterwards that "wrong" was just another, more complex form of "right", you always learn new stuff, you can never know it all)

MUSIC RULES!!!

Man, I should stop now...

[Haz]

If you keep it in a case or something, don't. The main reason I play my bass more than ride my bike is because my bass is hanging on the wall next to my desk, my bike is in a shed. Which is going to be easier?

Guitar Pro 5 is brilliant, love it, get a copy if you can.

Learn to play all of a song, no point in just playing the intro, or just the verse, if you can play 1 entire song well, your better than someone who can play 3 riffs well. I used to learn riffs, but then I realised, theres no point.

Don't spend hours on theory. It's dull, it truely is. Look at scales, play the scale in different positions on the neck and find out where the notes on the neck are. Look at song tabs and see if you can work out which scale it's based upon. Then go and make some fun noise.

Have fun, don't just play because you feel you have too.

Always use a metronome. Bad timing sucks, anyone will tell you, practise now and avoid bad habits.

[Dan Clark]

I have all my guitars lent up by my computer. Which means when a page is loading I play around on them, it really helps.

[benno]

Yeah my guitar's on a wall hanger, you play so much more when it's just there to be picked up.

Theory isn't dull! Theory IS music. Anything's dull if you try and learn it for it's own sake, just try to pick some up as you go along and you'll end up as a far better musician.

[Haz]

Don't get me wrong, theory is undeniably important, but it's hardly what I want to be doing.

[Tomm]

My theory is crap, but I don't really care. I just look up tabs of songs I like, and then learn to play, no matter how hard. I think that's the best way to learn, plus you can impress people by learning difficult stuff early on...

[Dan Clark]

Theory is important, but I think its something to pickup along the way.

Knowing 10 scales and their various modes etc is pretty pointless when you can't play anything, you don't need it until later on.

[Mark W]

Thing is though is that if you said to me "Play me Bb minor" and I could bang it out wherever you wanted on the neck. However, if you said "Tell me the notes in Bb minor", I'd take a while. Could write it out OK, but it's not just instant recall. Anyway, my point is is that all you need to do at first is just learn the notes on the neck (which is a piece of piss, to be fair), and then just learn the major and minor scale shapes, e.g.:

So that there's B Maj/Min, but those shapes are applicable anywhere on the neck, it'll just change the scale itself. But yeah, there's a difference between theory and like...erm...'playing' theory, I guess. Stuff like that you can just learn and it'll be at your fingertips so you can just do it, but Dan's examples of knowing all the modes 'n' stuff doesn't really apply as a noob (although saying that, it just means starting off at a different point of the scale, basically, so it's not too hard either I guess).

Was just trying to get across the point that basic theory like that up there is useful, and really helps you write more diverse stuff and so on...

[tricalum]

Practise, practise and practise