any help would be very much so appreciated.

note:i just got my guitar last night.

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someone here is thinking about sex........... Okay, it's me.

I don't mean to be discouraging, but I discourage you from even starting.

PS: Don't try to learn to play popular music first. It will be hard. But, when you do get into that stuff, start by learning chords and theory. Once you know about 8 chords, it's pretty easy to fake like you know what you're doing.

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Become a Human not a religion

i can play three blind mice on the guitar. and i can play the base rythem to Smells like Teen Spirit on the bass

btw, wtf is chord theory!?

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I may be paranoid, but not an Andriod.

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Only you can prevent forum fires.

good luck

PS: learn to play these songs, they are easy (the main riff at least): Guerilla Radio, Ashes in the Fall, Sabotage

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SLATE
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Head Coder; Project Leader
Vietnam - A Halflife Mod
slate@detonate.net
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Positions open (3d Modellers and more). Please contact

This message has been edited by SLATE on May 23, 2001 at 01:37 AM

quote:

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Originally posted by SLATE:
hard as fuck to do, like powerchords.. I can't seem to get my fingers to those postions.. they hurt!

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for power chords, there are only two positions, with two fingers, and all you do is move your hand to different frets...
it's really not hard...and it shouldn't hurt either...maybe you mean bar chords...'cause that requires covering all six strings, using four fingers...but still those don't even hurt...

tbone

i've been playing bass for 2 years now and i'm completely self taught. unfortunately i'm not all that good lately i've just been playing easy funk songs and fast songs to help strengthen my fingers so i can pick with 4 fingers. parallel univerise is fast as crap and tires out my hand really fast! anyway, private lessons do help a lot. don't give up right away, and good luck!

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"Once you have pulled the pin from Mr. Grenade, he is no longer your friend."
-Unknown (cited in nene, 2001)

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"I expected just a little bit too much from the wounded" -Maynard James Keenen

A Perfect Circle

Shortly after, I bought some accoustic strings for it, but the thing had a cracked neck, and the little pegs holding the strings in kept coming out and flinging my face with a taut metal guitar string. Plus, the tuning knobbies were breaking. I took this guitar to 3 lessons (classic). That was enough to teach me how to hold the guitar correctly, how to strum and finger pick, and how to use the frets right. That was invaluable.

Finally, that guitar just sort of died. Massive conjunctive failure of all subsystems. So, I didn't play for about 2 years. Then, during college, I started playing my friend's guitar, and eventually ended up commendearing the thing for a couple years. I played tab on the computer pretty much, but I learned popular chords from there. I always played accousticly on an electric.

Finally, I graduated, and moved to AZ. I bought myself that Fender Strat (for a great deal) and just fiddle around now. I'm not good, but I can make up songs with 6 chords that sound ok. I can figure out any basic chord pretty easily, and I can fake like I know what I'm doing.

Alright... enough of that boring stuff. The point is that lessons would help out greatly. I got amazing benefit out of 3 lessons, and it would have been a whole lot better if I could have stuck with it. The reason I have any glimmer of hope without them is because I played French Horn for 9 years or so, so I have a pretty decent handle on how music works, why chords sound good, whatever.

The toughest stumbling block is being able to know what sound your instrument is going to make before it makes it, and being able to choose what sounds you want to come out of it.

This message has been edited by DeadAnztac on May 23, 2001 at 05:10 PM

If you wanna play just for fun, teaching yourself is more or less sufficient, in case you can't figure stuff out by yourself, you can always ask a friend. That system worked for me quite well some years ago, my playing sounds about like I know what I'm doing and I can accompany most "normal" songs, i.e. with not too many chords or complicated pickings. This system is supposed to work for tab and solos too, there's lots of help on the net, for example on < www.harmony-central.com > (formerly known as olga.com) - though I think here lessons might be really helpful at least in the beginning.

If you're planning anything like really big self-written solos, classical or flamenco stuff (listen to Paco de Lucia!), take lessons at once! Once you're started in that self-teaching routine, lessons won't help you much because you're already too used to your mistakes. Anyway I think in the beginning some lessons as to holding the guitar, basic notation/tab reading, picking etc. should be fine, especially if you never played an instrument before.

And one last thing: No matter what you do, you have to know your chord theory and stuff. For many people I know this is the hardest thing about music, but it is REALLY helpful (thanks to my piano teacher for forcing me to learn it) because you can figure stuff much quicker. Start with the simplest basics and keep away from jazz until you feel really secure with the basics because jazz will only seem freaky and scary to you if you're not used to it.

Good luck!

PS: Oh and I know this is going to get me flames... but 1960's stuff like Bob Dylan and Donovan songs are easy to begin with (they usually consist of just 3 or 4 chords). Same for country songs... okay, I stop before you totally flame me.