Learning the guitar

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best little spaniard

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Ok, i've just picked up my old guitar after several years. I never bothered to learn it properly the first time, but I was wondering whether GOT had any tips as to how I could go about learning to play it??

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks
 

Definitely invest in a few lessons at least at first. Nowadays, I'm sure they have loads on DVD or the internet. But for me there's no substitute for actually going to a lesson and interacting with an instructor. Buy a chord book, and start learning and practicing your chords, and then just start playing and developing your muscle memory and develop your "ear" for notes and chords. To this day, I can listen to a lot of songs and hear the chord changes and see them in mind. That just comes from playing.
 
I've had my guitar for a few years and I play nearly everyday. But all I can play are the same few things. I cant move my 4th finger from the 5th string EVER

Only so much I can do with that. I've never really improved.
 
johnnydawg68 said:
Definitely invest in a few lessons at least at first. Nowadays, I'm sure they have loads on DVD or the internet. But for me there's no substitute for actually going to a lesson and interacting with an instructor. Buy a chord book, and start learning and practicing your chords, and then just start playing and developing your muscle memory and develop your "ear" for notes and chords. To this day, I can listen to a lot of songs and hear the chord changes and see them in mind. That just comes from playing.
Click to expand...

Weirdly, I can still remember all the chord positions from before. I roughly know what chord will make what sort of sound, and i'm not too bad at moving my fingers around.
 
Good luck mate. I'm trying to learn how to play piano myself. Haven't started yet, but I will.
 

best little spaniard said:
Ok, i've just picked up my old guitar after several years. I never bothered to learn it properly the first time, but I was wondering whether GOT had any tips as to how I could go about learning to play it??

Any advice would be hugely appreciated. Thanks
Click to expand...

Pick a song you like. Then find the 'tab' or 'tablature' which explains what to hold on the guitar, what strings to hit, what frets to hold etc.

Tab for most or all guitar-based songs are usually somewhere online. Learn how to read tab, it won't take long. It is usually just a case of putting your fingers on the numbers it says, and 0 means an open string for that string (no fret numbered note) or X means cover the string but don't hit it.

Then practice moving your fingers without strumming. This is the key. Practice moving your fingers from chord to chord or whatever the tab asks, without worrying about strumming. When you have done this for an hour or so, then you will be ready to begin strumming with your right or left hand. And it will be easy, as the hard part you will already have put in the effort to do.

If you like Nirvana, About A Girl is a good and pretty easy song to utilitse this technique til you get it. If you like Oasis, try a song of theirs you like. Etc.

http://www.grandoldteam.com/forum/threads/36407-My-drunken-Everton-song-which-I-just-made

as you can see I'm pretty talented. Lol
 
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See if you can google "hand stretching" exercises too. For me, the hardest part was my hands. I have normal length fingers but they are thick, so getting my hand to stretch and be able to cover 3 or more frets was very difficult (playing bar chords - which is the basis of much of rock - has always been problematic). Without being able to play bar chords or chords that require 3 frets eliminates a lot of possibilities.
 
Thanks guys. I'll give that a go. I can sort of read Tab, so it's not all bad.


Same here Spike. I'm sort of getting there.
 
I bought various tab adobe pdf documents online a while back. if anyone wants any of the following emailed to them, just send me a private message with ur email or reply to this thread. i have a few of the following.

A perfect circle, aerosmith, alice in chains, bob marley, bon jovi, bryan adams, faith no more, foo fighters, green day, guns n roses, incubus, jimi hendrix, lenny kravitz, metallica, michael jackson, nirvana, oasis, offspring, paul weller, pearl jam, the police, radiohead, red hot chilli peppers, silverchair, smashing pumpkins, soundgarden, stone temple pilots, weezer.

some bands/artists i have several albums of, others just best ofs, or one album.
 

if you can understand tab, then here is something to get you motivated, I'm sure you'll recognise it

e --------------------
B --------------------
G ------0-0-2-2-2-0--
D ----2--------------2
A --3-----------------
E ---------------------
 
just bought myself a ukelele :) i used to have a beautiful epiphone les paul, but sadly never learnt to play it!

from what ive seen the easiest way of learning without lessons is pick some easy, enjoyable songs to play and just keep practising them until you have a recognisable tune... loads of good stuff on youtube.
 
Im picking it up agian like yourself to mate after a few years of, im just practiceing with some handy tunes to get an ear and base chords.

Big difference this time is youtube is about its a great resource and thier a lesson of nearly every song your likely to want to play, tbh i took lessons before but youtube is better because you can repeat, repat, repeat untill the learning sticks - tbh its amazing how quickly your skills build up and the easier it gets.
 
andrewkgsmith said:
if you can understand tab, then here is something to get you motivated, I'm sure you'll recognise it

e --------------------
B --------------------
G ------0-0-2-2-2-0--
D ----2--------------2
A --3-----------------
E ---------------------
Click to expand...

You know i tried playing that but didn't recognise it at first, thought i didnt have the rhythm right or something.

Then a bit later i had Z cars in my head.

Then a bit later on after that i finally twigged why!
 

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