guitar NEWB thread

Guitar is fun! My advice, if you're teaching yourself, is to familiarise yourself with the main open chord shapes and then start learning tunes from Ultimate Guitar chord tabs - you'll get used to switching between them pretty quickly.

Any sites that teach you country picking?

There are a few good lessons on http://www.premierguitar.com/Magazine/Category/Premier_Clinic.aspx

filter by issue: All Issues
filter by category: Premier Clinic
filter by section: Country

There are some lessons on chicken picking and double stops and stuff.

Awesome. Pedal-Steel Effect that's what I want!

milo current epiphones are uh how best to put this - inconsistent. like wildly so. i would play the one that you buy. also the pickups are mediocre at best - im assuming you are looking at the fact that its a somewhat shrunken down 335 shape? if so, id look at the ibanez am73, which i think is a better guitar. feel free to hit me up with for a price quote if you are thinking of buying online anyway and i'll email you one. but go play one first!

yousendit me an artcore, jjj.

If I may offer a general newb tip for budding guitarists:

Guitar is probably the easiest instrument on which to take shortcuts, like you don't have trumpet players trying to do trills two octaves above middle C when they don't even know how to play middle C, but that's exactly what the guitar allows you to do. This is not to say you should avoid shortcuts. But devote a little time to learning, e.g., the 12 major scales in first position, the difference between a halfstep and a whole step, how scales are constructed, the intervals in a basic major chord, etc. In the long run this does so much for your ability to play inventively and to play with other people, like when you can actually build a maj7 chord and not just say "Oh Cmaj7 means my fingers go like this"

sorry should say "exactly the KIND OF THING guitar allows you to do."

^^^ exactly the kind of thing I should know by now after 17 years of playing on and off.

Yeah, I've been playing guitar longer than that and I don't think I know any of that!

the 12 major scales in first position, the difference between a halfstep and a whole step, how scales are constructed, the intervals in a basic major chord, etc

I... know all of this already? (except for precisely how first position chords for the major scales translate to guitar fingering)

Well you're a guy with a formal music background so that doesn't surprise me. But so many people just go straight to tabs and then it's like "I want to learn some blues licks" or w/e, and then dudes play these fast bendy lines that don't even go over the chords they're soloing over.

http://www.ibanez.com/HollowBodyGuitars/model-AM73B

if you dont dig the look, they do make a cosmetically tweaked version with the same specs

http://www.ibanez.com/HollowBodyGuitars/model-AM93

million xposts because i got interrupted by work

Also that was just a jumping off point and there's obviously a lot more to learn along those lines

I have a book of sheet music that is tab-free (it was written for fiddle, although I've previously gone with other C Instruments). Whenever I practice that stuff, I feel like it really improves the rest of my playing. I've done stuff like blacking out the tab on guitar sheet music too, although that isn't always helpful because there can be notation in the tab that's not in the regular transcription.

well dan you "know" those things already but are you comfortable doing them in rhythm at the drop of the hat all the time? ie can you play x scale without thinking about the fingering, while keeping your right hand picking pattern consistent, etc?

thats re: knowing the 12 major scales in first position, i know you know the other stuff - i just say this because as a dude who did violin before guitar, i knew that stuff too but the difficulty is in the translation to the fingerboard and the physicality of playing.

I mean it's important to learn fingerings too. I don't consider tab "cheating" per se, I just think it can't be the sole basis of your learning. I mean there are certain things on guitar you just can't learn from sheet music alone.

Books like Sal Salvador's Single String Studies are useful because they give you fingerings underneath staff notation, iirc.

well dan you "know" those things already but are you comfortable doing them in rhythm at the drop of the hat all the time? ie can you play x scale without thinking about the fingering, while keeping your right hand picking pattern consistent, etc?

lol of course not, I'm not a guitar savant

My point was more that the stuff Hurting was talking about is in many ways a step removed from the mechanics of playing a guitar; for example, I know instantly when I've hit a wrong note when I am running up and down through a C scale because I know how a C scale is constructed and what it is supposed to sound like.

Also I kind of explicitly said "I know what first position chords look like on paper but not how they all translate to a guitar neck"

my goal this week is to contact a teacher before my life becomes insanely busy

Ok this is going to be a sort of unhelpful post, but there's a good Ted Dunbar book that pretty much breaks down the whole fretboard in musical terms and gives you a way of learning it. I wouldn't recommend it to someone with no musical background but it's probably good for you. The problem is (1) I can't remember the name of it and (2) it's probably out of print. I will check the name when I get home though. I might even be able to scan it for you at some point.

I have a Hal Leonard book that does something very similar; it starts you out with a C scale counting down from the first string and layers in accidentals and other key signatures as it goes. Basically I used it to learn the fingerings for a C scale and have been riffing on other scales/etc since while procrastinating in getting a teacher.

Oh right, it's called "The Interrelationship of Chords, Scales and Fingerboard of Each one of the Twelve Tonalities of The Guitar"

which explains why I couldn't remember it, lol

haha no lie, that sounds like it would be exactly my type of shit

Yeah and I should say I really do mean learning the relationship between this theory stuff and the fretboard, it's just that if you don't know the theory at all you have to learn that first.

E.g. understanding that one fret up on same string = halfstep, two = wholestep, three = minor third, etc., or that the interval between any two strings at the same fret is a perfect fourth, except between the second and third strings, which is a major third, and that this applies up and down the fretboard. Internalizing this kind of stuff really helps with lead playing, forming your own chords, etc.

What about something online for music theory noobs who only really know chord shapes and anything more in depth is down to luck/trial and error? I'd love to know more about scales and theory but I'm scared???

try this, maybe? http://www.8notes.com/theory/

I haven't read it at all so I have no idea if it's terrible but it looks like it covers most of the basics you'd care to know

Guitar is probably the easiest instrument on which to take shortcuts, like you don't have trumpet players trying to do trills two octaves above middle C when they don't even know how to play middle C, but that's exactly what the guitar allows you to do. This is not to say you should avoid shortcuts. But devote a little time to learning, e.g., the 12 major scales in first position, the difference between a halfstep and a whole step, how scales are constructed, the intervals in a basic major chord, etc. In the long run this does so much for your ability to play inventively and to play with other people, like when you can actually build a maj7 chord and not just say "Oh Cmaj7 means my fingers go like this"

Trying for 2 years to make 12-year-olds understand this was no fun at all.

well dan you "know" those things already but are you comfortable doing them in rhythm at the drop of the hat all the time? ie can you play x scale without thinking about the fingering, while keeping your right hand picking pattern consistent, etc?

― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:44 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thats re: knowing the 12 major scales in first position, i know you know the other stuff - i just say this because as a dude who did violin before guitar, i knew that stuff too but the difficulty is in the translation to the fingerboard and the physicality of playing.

― Thu'um gang (jjjusten), Wednesday, February 15, 2012 11:46 AM (9 hours ago)

Thanks, jjusten, definitely hitting you up when I save up more guitar money. Leaning toward a Reverend, I think or one of those Ibanezes.

so I failed to contact a teacher last week

on the plus side, I have taught myself to play an A chord and have been doing A - E progressions like a happy loon

I still have a week left before my life starts sucking tho

One month later...

... I am terrible at finding a teacher

To paraphrase Ian Faith, Boston's not a big guitar town.

haha I know, I know

basically by the time I get home, I'm tired and don't want to look for one

then, on the weekends, I often find myself wrapped up in projects or in concerts/rehearsals/etc

I need to send out some emails tonight. Also I need to rescue my poor guitar from its banishment to the back bedroom

That's why you need a teacher, so he can yell at you for not practicing!

Of course, to paraphrase Nigel Tufnel: I don't really literally mean "yell."

lol I still don't have a teacher

HOWEVER! I do have the game Rocksmith, which at first glance is FUCKING AMAZING

it's not even the songs (although they have shit in there by QOTSA, The XX and The Cure), it's the minigames that help you get used to the guitar, like the Duck Hunt-meets-Pole Position fretting game

I wanted to buy that for myself and my kid, but we haven't had much scratch since I bought his PS3 for christmas. Maybe I can eke it out next payday.

@hurting2

I am very interested in acquiring a copy of "The Interrelationship of Chords, Scales and Fingerboard of Each one of the Twelve Tonalities of The Guitar." I have "A System of Tonal Convergence for Improvisors, Composers and Arrangers." Maybe we can set up a trade?

Rocksmith seems pretty awesome. I read that you should have a separate receiver/speakers for audio so that there's no lag?

They recommend that but I haven't noticed any problems

i feel like i should buy rocksmith just to make myself not play the same 100 riffs and cheats all the time when i play guitar. the shame of the bass player that fakes guitar fairly well.

i bought one of these. damn does it sound nice. kinda stoked for the madness

http://phantomguitars.com/store/product_images/p/ph12_w_pvt12__95037.jpg

If I have ever seen a 12 string with a whammy before, I had never stopped to think about the implications.

warrrrarrarararng. out of tune, somewhere.

I know! holy shit!

*spends two hours tuning 12 string, gust of wind blows whammy bar, has to start tuning guitar all over again*

good ear training

This may be me soon.

So I have pretty much no experience. I want to get a guitar for my birthday and start learning to play. I can't read music, know nothing about music theory, just want to rock out on my own for fun. I'm hoping to find a teacher too.

So - what kind of guitar should I be looking for? What is a good way to get into playing and not be discouraged (had a few lessons when I was a teenager but got frustrated)? And...how to find a teacher that "gets" me?

Get a made-in-China guitar. Just about any will do because they're all made there, anyway, at this level. You might consider taking someone with you who can play guitar to the store. If you're not buying a cardboxed guitar, you can try them and there will be duds with various defects, either from lack of quality control or because they've been beat up by other shoppers who did not buy, on the floor. Having someone who can play will steer you away from those.

Been decades since I had lessons. However, I'd think you would want to find a teacher, if you must, who shares, or at least pretends to share, an interest in the style of music you'd like to learn to play.