Teaching yourself to play guitar

I blame this on Silo Pete and his guitar thread.

I want to learn to play electric guitar. I have a cheapo I bought.

Can you guitar heroes suggest any books/DVD's/computer software for someone who is starting from scratch but wants to learn?

 

"the heavy guitar bible"
thats what i used when i was 13.....pretty easy to use

 

I don't play, but a friend of mine who is very good gave me the advice to never buy a super cheap guitar as your first. It can be very hard to correctly use the frets (sp?) and are nearly impossible to tune. He told me that if I ever wanted to start playing find a used nice guitar.

 

Learning to read music is going to be a first step if you dont already know how. I have aspirations to learn guitar better than I did in the past. I am already a well accomplished musician so it shouldnt be too hard.

 

I bought what the BBS told me to buy.

 

I played guitar quite a bit in highschool, but not so much anymore. I could never learn to read music, and with the easy access to guitar tabs, I felt there was no need. I used to frequent ultimate-guitar.com, just think of a song you wanna play and search for it. they should have tips and what not on reading tabs.

 

So, you're all saying that Guitar Hero is not going to give me the foundation for learning how to play guitar? Damn!!!!!!!

 

Lears these chords first: G, C, D. You should vbe able to play 3/4 of the songs you'd ever what to.

Make up flash cards for the notes on a scale. Have your kids grill you on them. It's fun and will stick in your head.

Buy an acoustic. Lots of fun and cheaper to play since you will be learning rythym's mostly.


Have fun :up:

 

Good advice. You don't need to read music to learn how to play guitar. Guitar "tabs" will help you in the beginner phase. Cheaps guitars are ok until you know for sure that you are going to stick with it. If you do, you will want to upgrade pretty quickly. A nice guitar will be much easier on your fingers to play. Have fun!

 

Darren, try some Mel Bay books

 

Not the foundation; just the desire.

 

Get the Esteban book.

 

plus a lot of the stuff I learned to play was punk rock haha........ good ole garage band days.

 

Try Guitar Hero

 

Been there, done that.

Thought about Power Gig: Rise of the Sixstring

 

Acoustic guitars require more pressure on the strings and thus build a better foundation for playing. they also save you the expense of buying an amplifier.

any local music shop should have a decent beginner's guitar book. "tabs" are an option, but then you're just learning to follow instructions rather than learning to really play guitar.

knowing how to 'speak' music is more important than knowing how to read it though. I just mean that it's helpful to know that the strings are E A D G B E, and be able to play an A-flat chord when someone say's "blues in A-flat." identifying an A-flat on a music staff is probably less necessary.

some basis music theory helps a lot too. Guitars are tuned in fifths. not all stringed instruments are. Knowing root, 3rd, 5th, octave is also helpful as you start learning the fingerings of various chords. (root, 3rd, 5th, octave is a major chord. lowering the 3rd by half a step makes it a minor chord. Then there are first and second inversions, etc. etc.)

It's all part of the vocabulary.

 

i just picked up an acoustic to learn on three weeks ago at age 44.
youtube has great beginner lessons for free -look up justin sandercoe -i can already play most of the chords and working on a few easy songs.

 

There's some okay info here and some not so okay.

rk97 gave a good effort in some context. 'Learn to play guitar' denotes so many many dimensions, example is a quite good rock/metal player could struggle for a long time learning jazz. There is a massive difference in what some people call blues and what others do.

I've played the vast majority of my life. Was playing clubs on weekends at 15 with rock bands one night and jazz combos the next. Practiced around 4-6 hours a day for many years. I taught many players over the years but gave up teaching beginners and 'I wanna learn how to play back in black' players after a few. If you couldn't at least solo in dorian mode over a ii V I in C, I wasn't your guy...so to speak.

In all that blabbling I guess what I'm trying to say is I know what I'm talking about.

The VERY first thing you must understand, is the single greatest reason people who begin learning how to play guitar end up quiting is it's work, hell it even hurts. You're teaching your hands to do things they are not prepared for, so getting through that is a huge milestone.

I run a few guitar related webs/forums but in most cases are not really beginner guitar related but one of them is the support for http://www.guitarmadesimple.com which is a fairly decent CDROM based tutor. Take a look at that as well as anything at http://www.visionmusic.com and http://www.playjazzguitar.com . I run all of the aboves internet and can likely get you going in a direction if you see anything at any of you're interested in. :up:

 

Line 6 Guitar Port for your computer and subscribe to the lessons. Gives you accurate tones and the way the lessons are set up is really cool.

 

"If you're not playing Gibson and Marshall....YOU must be a WANKER"!!!