Guitar Noobie

popinfresh

Basically I'm after buying a new acoustic guitar in Waltons. I know absolutely nothing about them except you strum it with your right hand . I could go to lessons but i know I'll stop going after 4 weeks or something. So i'v decided to teach myself. Does anybody know any good tutorial web-sites or books in the shops?

bombidol

Buy a tuner, Samick do a decent enough one for around 15E, you cant play it if its not in tune. Theres a great program out there called the super guitar chord finder, its a chord book and tuner all in one. you can download a trial version of it. its defo worth looking into.
build up your finger strength and toughness by pressing and playing every fret on each string a couple of times a day. Learn 2 or 3 chords and practice changing between them backwards and forwards then add a new chord in every couple of days.
Keep strumming away to build up technique in the wrists, dont go too hard on the strings. buy some nice plec's, find the softest one and the hardest one and buy something inbetween.
if you need anymore help let us know here in the forum.

Gar

Pugsley

Or if you want something away from ye 'ol strumming, you could try looking for some guitar tabs, however an acoustic isn't great for playing riff's its good to practice on, because if your bad, you cant hide it with distortion, so if your bad, it will show you your bad.
A good band to start on is Nirvana, their songs are easy to play and should make for good learning. If your feeling realy adventurous (and get pretty good) try playing some Iron Maiden songs, not easy, try playing their solo's, damn near impossable, took me 3days to learn the 2minute 'Powerslave' solo on my bass (i dont play the guitar, bass far cooler ).

Giblet

www.wholenote.com
Lots of resources!

Epitaph

Taught myself to play using the chord/tab book for 'The Bends'!

Chords what are easy (and somewhat necessary!):
G C Am Em D Dm

Chords what are trickier:
B F A-flat E-flat
Bm (actually most of the minors are little sh1tes)

Jaicster

Find your self some music you like, what ever bands musicians your into, then use the internet to get your self some tabs
Read the Sticky on resources its got just about every thing.

It might be a good idea to buy a metranome but nearly all of the tab programs have one, it helps you play in time, and its more useful than u think.

I think the best way is stick to stuff you like try and pick out a Hard and an Easy Song to learn first. This when when u get pissed off with the hard one u can play the easy one.
Always Keep trying

Maybe look at
Eric Clapton - Tears in Heaven
Led Zeppelin - Stairway to Heaven

Greenday stuff altho not my cup of tea is great chordy stuff, good n simple,
Learn your ass the chords: E A D G C F

Metallica have some lovely lil clean guitar parts if ur intrested

Any way you'll know what u like.

More advise:
Guitar Playin in general ain't cheap
You should probably have guitar/tuner/strings/cutters/plecs...

And finaly i taught myself how to play also, and i can play any song i want (with enough time, practice!) but i would recommend getting some lessons maybe not now, but later there might be stuff u want to know, techniques .. how do i do this bla bla bla

Anyway good luck.

Dave

I've been teaching myself for the past 6 months. And believe me it's far from easy. I'd never played any type of instrument before. It's just practice practice practice. I'm still ****e but i'm getting there. The very first song i learned was Wish you were here by Pink Floyd if that helps. I'm currently trying to learn barre chords... ow

popinfresh

I got a tuner. And I'v started to learn the basic chords.I'v decided I'm edventually gonna get an electric guitar I was looking at some in Argos. Is the Yamaha Electic Guitar Outfit ERG121.





here .That's about é280. Is that any good? Or would I be better off buying from a proper music shop?

JoeKelly

U shud stick wit ur acoustic for a while but if ur intent on buyin an electric u shud take a look at a Fender Squire strat good one for beginners cost bout 240e.U shud probably b able to get a package deal aswell in any good music store inc. an amp and case. look around b4 u buy and find the best deal.

cartman

well im gettin a acoustic guitar in a week and i cant play at all (Left Handed) and im not paying for lesson as giblet tried to give me some and it didnt work:) well he thought me a few chords, i want to know how to "plcuk" the strings is that hard or easy??? and whats the best way to get chords playing togheter and i cant understand tabs..
now what do i do??
im determined to learn...

cart

bombidol

Originally posted by Cartman
well im gettin a acoustic guitar in a week and i cant play at all (Left Handed) and im not paying for lesson as giblet tried to give me some and it didnt work:) well he thought me a few chords, i want to know how to "plcuk" the strings is that hard or easy??? and whats the best way to get chords playing togheter and i cant understand tabs..
now what do i do??
im determined to learn...

cart

If you are determined to learn youll pretty much have to learn how to read tab, its really handy.

Don1

Play Guitar did it for me. When I finished that Total Guitar took over. Now I'm deadly!!!!

Benbaz

I recently posted a link to a site where you could download a really good beginner's guide to playing guitar. It had all the basics included, Basic Chords, Tuning, Picking, Praticing, etc. it even touched on Barre Chords.
The post doesn't seem to be there anymore unfortunately. But if you like, I can e-mail it to you if you PM me with your address. It's in Acrobat form and it's 264kb. I found it to be a great help.

B.

JoeKelly

Cart tabs aren't as hard as they seem when i started off i did know wat the hell was goin on dam tabs so complicated but it got easier to read with time.

The basic concept is that the six strings are illustrated from bottom to top. then the numbers on the string show which fret to play it in e.g
e|

---

1

---

Means to play the 'e' string on the first (1) fret.

thats just an outline check out some guitar tab sites for a better explanation. www.olga.net
www.mxtabs.net

Hope that relived some of the complications of guitar tabs.:D

Giblet

I taught him the basics of tablature over IRC. He gets the principals (i think). I showed him a few chords using tabs, but I think it's solos or riffs and half-chords etc. that he doesn't get.

Ok Cartman, i'll try this method. Tap your foot 4 times counting at a slow pace like this 1..2..3..4.. while doing this play a chord, and everytime you tap your foot, do a downstroke on the guitar. So if you play C for example, do four downstrokes while tapping your foot to the same rhythm. Now when you get the basics of that down, change the chord each time you finish counting to four, and count to four again with the new chord, keep changing between C and G say.

Now when you get that down, try this...

Do exactly the same as above, except that you add an upstroke after the downstroke in between each tap of the foot. So count 1.and.2.and.3.and.4.. at the same time play down..up..down..up..down..up..down..up.., with each upstroke being played when you say and.

Complicated, but just take it a step at a time. <@:)

CarpetFool

I teach guitar and did alot of looking on the web for guitar lessons to help get a course together. By far the best site is www.guitarnoise.com - they've got lessons and tab and chords and little mp3 files that go along with the lessons and all kinds of stuff. For blues guitar there's the slowhand blues website (http://www.12bar.de/), which is really nice also.

g'luck -

cartman

riteo
gettin my electric-acoustic on tuesday but wont have till thursday coz it has to be changed to a left handed....

Paul i couldnt make head nor tail of your post but i wasnt really lookin as i havnt got a guitar with me but when i get it ill have a good read..

i cant play most of the chords
anyways ill get back to ye with all my problems encountered when i have it:)

cart

cartman

k,
got my guitar not electric acoustic i got a kick ass better acoustic,
anyways i can play a,b,c,d,e,f,g chords and thats it...
im gonna try giblets method in a min but what would be the best easiest song to start on???

thanks,
cart

Antisocialiser

wat bands do u like?

cartman

damien rice,
mic christopher

and i was told they well hard as i need finger pickin but id love toi learn a bit of nirvana...

i can get a few chords togeter now..im on the major and minors atm

Dun

You've got the F & B already? Boy, I musta been a slow learner

You'll be delighted to hear that there are many easy Nirvana songs. I would recommend Polly as a first one - dead easy. Just take it slow at first. Have a look on some tab site like http://www.bandtabs.com for the tab - it'll probably be tab because it's all powerchords. If you think of a power chord as the long form F (133211) but without the 211 - so play the upper three strings only - 133 - and you have an F powerchord (written F5). Move up to 355 and you have a G5. You can also play them starting on the second string - skip the low E string, just like you would in a B (-24442) chord, and play the next three (-244---) The chords in Polly are:

Verse:
E = 022
G = 355
D = -577
C = -355

Chorus:
D = -577
C = -355
G = 355
Bb (B Flat) = -133

One thing you'll notice with this song and with other Nirvana songs is that Kurt tended to play the open strings between chord changes, which makes it that bit distinct. He also played the muted strings between chords sometimes - just put your hand (you can be moving it to position while doing this) on the strings strong enough to stop them ringing out, but gently enough so that you're not pushing them against the fretboard. It's a lot easier than it sounds By the way, in tab it's usually notated by an 'x' e.g. -xxx---

Never meant to write this much, but hey anyway, good luck!

popinfresh

I got my electric guitar . It's a lot more easy to hold down the strings . I'm currently learning RHCP The Zephyr Song

Epitaph

Noticed that when playing an electric in Waltons a few weeks ago, Popinfresh. Really low action compared to the fire escape-like action on my acoustic!

Dun

If you prefer the acoustic, but find it harder, try buying a set of lighter strings. Works a charm, more often than not.

cartman

riteo dun,
dont have a clue what that post is about sorry:(
i now can put a good few chords togeter at a time
and learned a few major and minors....
i know nothin about power chords and i cant play up the fretboartd yet.... still down at the 1,2,3 frets:(
i taut i need barre chords to use the fretboard
where do i go bout learnin the places for powerchords?

thanks,

cart

Gordon

A power chord is basically a "5th"chord. Which means that you do not play any other notes other than the ... 5th and tonic...

To put it simply a power chord is the note that you want plus the 5th of that note

eg [note] A "powerchord" is
A plus E ie
E-x
B-x
G-x
D-2
A-0
E-x

or
E-x
B-x
G-2
D-2
A-0
E-x

or for a cool A powerchord
E-x
B-x
G-x
D-2
A-0
E-0

Have a look at what notes you are playing on the guitar and what chords really are. The net should hols some good info for learning notes and chords...

Giblet

Basically you can do any major chord with powerchords, and they will all be played the same

A:

e-
B-
G-
D-7
A-7
E-5 <- root note A

The same finger postion can be move up and down the frets for different chords

Theres also this

C:

e-
B-
G-5
D-5
A-3 <-root note C
E-x

The same applys here.
Learn all the notes on the E and A strings to be able to play any chord just by following the above examples.