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CKONE

Acrobat
Joined
Apr 28, 2006
Messages
318
Location
Birmingham UK
I have 4 months - well 3 months and 26 days or so - to learn to play Fix You by Coldplay. Its the guitar section I am planning on playing whilst singing the song as well.

The main problem is I have never played a guitar in my life (all 35years of it) and I cant read music and i have no sense of timing or rythem and i cant sing.

I only need to play this one song so at least for this i only have to learn one song rather than the full ins and outs about playing the guitar. If anyone has watched the show Faking It - this is my challenge. Can it be done? Any guitarists out there with any tips, recommendations, predictions.

I am planning 2hours of guitar lessons a week and about 10 hours practise a week.

Help!
 
sure. :D

Firstly, we have the miracle of tabs. You learn music via numbers rather than notes. The numbers represent a fret, ie, the metal bars on the guitar, thus making it a hell of a lot easier.

Also, do you have a guitar yet?

Also also, download this.

http://www.power-tab.net/guitar.php

Then download this and open it with the above:

http://www.911tabs.com/link/?2285887

Thats your music sorted. It'll let you play it back as quickly or slowly as you want, thus making learning it 1000% easier. :D
(I dont know how accurate that is, as I dont listen to coldplay)

Good luck. ;)
 
I spose I should explain tabs too....and stuff.

Powertab will give you a means of tuning the guitar, so thats handy too. If you dont know, from the thinnest string to the thickest, the notes are:

E
B
G
D
A
E

I like to remember it with my rhyme (which I stole from a book) "easter bunnys get down at easter." ;D


Anyway, tabs. Imagine holding the guitar looking down at it, thats how tabs are presented. There are 6 lines for each string, and notes are represented as I said, with numbers.

E----------------------- thinnest string
B-----------------------
G-----------------------
D-----------------------
A-----------------------
E----------------------- Thickest string


So, thats the general idea. (if you're still with me.) now frets. This should clarify a few things :

thefretsneck.jpg


There are usually 22 ish frets on a guitar, probably less on an accoustic.

This should also explain more easily than words:

guitar_fretboard.jpg


So you can see how it goes up in numbers, as you get nearer the hole in the guitar.

A tab will usually look something like this

E------------------------------
B------------------------------
G------------------------------
D-------------------------------
A-------7-7----7----7-7-5----
E----0-------0----0-----------

^ that will give you a very rough version of The Fly. Tabs generally have no timings with them, so Powertab tends to help out a lot in that respect, either that or you have to just listen along as you play to get the bits in the right places. I would reccomend learning a few simple songs, just to get your head around it.

http://www.911tabs.com/link/?4326303

Thats a far simpler version, the chords are shown for example, like this

C x32010

The "x" means to not play it, and apart from that its just a sideways tab, and it'd look like this

E------0---
B------1---
G------0---
D------2----
A------3----
E------X----


Anyway, Ill stop there, as your head has no doubt exploded by now, and about 1000 other people will have posted by the time you get to actually performing your song. But good luck with it, and if you need any more help just ask. :)
 
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