help on guitar....

[SailorJi_2]

hulo. I'm an aspiring musician who is learning how to play the guitar. It's been several weeks now and i'm just wondering if i'm taking the right path. I'm teaching myself so if any of you would like to give me pointers, that would be great. I'm learning chords right now, slowly trying to get my fingers used to the strings and the fret board. hmmm....what else should i be doing??



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"The world is often a wicked place, when you look around, but it's also full of beauty...and beauty is the consolation prize really...and we just have to find more of it and we have to look for it in unexpected places...its not just in those fashion spreads,
that's not real beauty...There is beauty to be found in everyday things."
?Bono
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[Johnny Swallow]

I don't actually play guitar but I know plenty who do,so here's some general musical tips.

1)Get a good book with the basics clearly explained. Make sure it has lessons that you can work through and it helps if it has a CD/CD-Rom with examples.

2)Work through it slowly and surely, make sure you understand each concept before you move on to others. It's important to master the basics since everything else builds on it.

3)Don't become dependant on tabs.

4)Keep practicing, natural ability helps but everyone makes their own decision of how good they want to be. I hope you want to be great.

Good luck.

[This message has been edited by Johnny Swallow (edited 02-06-2002).]

 

[Se7en]

Johnny gave you some good advice. There's not much more I could add...except that I don't practice much!

Hoping to catch up on that over the summer, and hopefully get a new acoustic/electric.

The only thing I'd like to mention is that there will come a point, most likely, in your first year where you will think you suck and just can't progress. Once you make it over that hump...it's all down hill.

So stick with it! Good luck.

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Rock 'N Roll is the sound of revenge.

[This message has been edited by Se7en (edited 02-23-2002).]

 

[RufusYoungblood]

How I learnt:

My mom had an old accoustic with only two strings. (G and B - 4th and 5th).

I would strum along with U2 songs, just playing those two strings. As is turned out, I was playing various chords, but just the 4th, 5th strings of them.

Then I got a 6 string, a book with basic chord tabs, and just started playing along.

I found it was easier to listen closely to the base, which *usually* gives you the correct chord to play. After that... I just kept on playing along.

Good luck.



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I don't know you, and you don't know the half of it.

 

[tackleberry]

Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice...and the you should practice some more.

I taught myself with chord charts. The first song I played was "In God's Country" Then I started writing my own material and it just took off from there. BUt all I can say is master the chords by a tremendous amount of practice and repetition.

I try to teach people how to play once in a while and the biggest problem is that they don't practice enough. I will teach them something, come back in a couple of weeks, and they still haven't got it. They say, "I don't understand. I guess I'm not natural" Bullshit is what I say. I asked them how many times they actually did it, and they always say once or twice, maybe three times until they give up. It must be done every day. Every single day. I learned whilst attending College and I always found at least an hour a day to practice. Not because I had to, but because I desired to. Its not like excercising on the step-machine, its actually a crap load of fun. Thats how you become great.

Good luck

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"You gotta put the women and children first, but you've got an unquenchable thirst for New York..."