Learning Guitar

[Drobbins]

Hey All,

Just recently i have bought myself a guitar i have wanted to learn for some time to give me something other than computer work to do all the time.

Anyways does any of you know any good books, or music that i could buy to learn off, i think learning through learning a song rather than learning chord by chord would be much more fun and keep you interested.

Cheers
Drobbins.

[Dav0s]

best way is to get some extremely basic lessons from someone who knows how to play and then buy a book of oasis tabs

[fuddam]

www.musicademy.com

loads of effective DVDs using songs for tuition. mostly rock guitar (ie not classical)

[d032sh]

Skip the basic lessons, just grab yourself an online list of chords and go hunting for tabs for your favourite songs. So you might not be able to play all of them completely correctly for a while but there's bound to be something you like that you can play.

And to the Dav0s...... Oasis tabs are indeed a great place to start! That was my starting point and it doesn't get much more basic than that, but tbh who needs complicated music when the songs are (ok, were) so good :-)

[Drobbins]

Thanks, i am going to have a look for a Oasis chord book and get started.

[skuzgib]

Don't skip the basic lessons! It's important you start properly or you'll be kicking yourself later when you have to break bad habits and start afresh

[kidzer]

Very true, dont start learning songs straight away, just practice chords on their own, and the chord changes - for this, use of a metronome is very useful, helps build up your timing abilities.

Once you have some of the open chords down, you can use them, in conjunction with the Oasis book to get some actual playing in

If you want to start playing lead parts, do some Chromatic Scale Exercises to build up your finger dexterity, and to make sure your pinkey finger doesnt get abandonded, something very easy to do!

A chromatic scale is just a scale that uses all the notes on the fretboard, so the exercise im trying to describe would be just playing 4 notes per string, and then moving down a sting, when you get to the bottom string (being the highest one), most your fingers up one note, and go backwards towards the top sting (lowest note).

Hopefully that was understood...

[unrealrocks]

The last few posts are pretty much exactly what I was going to say - furthermore if you don't learn the correct techniques not only will it put a limit on your playing potential it will also possibly even damage your wrists!

[Gerschwin]

EDIT:
Learn the fingerboard notes - learn how to construct the scales otherwise you'll end up playing in boxes! Learn to know what not you want to play next and where those notes are.....

All the above + practice, practice practice.....

Use a metronome...record yourself with backing tracks etc....train your ear...

Here's some links (all free stuff):

http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/
http://www.cockos.com/reaper/
http://www.audacity.sourceforge.net/

http://www.phatdrumloops.com/old_site/
http://www.gersic.com/plugins/index.php?daCat=-3
http://www.nonags.com/nonags/index.html
http://www.leafdigital.com/software/leafdrums/
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/hotstepper.shtml
http://www.threechords.com/hammerhead/
http://www.naturalstudio.co.uk/ns_kit7free.html
http://www.sweetwater.com/feature/studiotools/
http://www.kjaerhusaudio.com/classic-series.php
http://www.voxengo.com/group/freevst/

http://www.miles.be/
http://www.musictheory.net/
http://www.earmaster.com/
http://www.iwasdoingallright.com/tools/ear_training/

http://www.thecipher.com/guitar_free_pdfs.html
http://www.theorylessons.com
http://www.guitarnoise.com/

No particular order there but some good stuff in there

ENJOY!!

[klarrix]

google "barre chords". You can then play 90% of britpop songs ever written with ease. If that's what you really want

[Spud1]

^^ or power chords are even easier, and its what 99.99% of todays music is made up of (excluding lead parts ofc).

I taught myself to play, and the most invaluable resource for me was about.coms lessons:

http://guitar.about.com/library/blgu...sonarchive.htm

free, and they walk you through learning all the basic chords, teach you the actual notes that you are playing (rather than just "string 1, fret 2" they actually teach you the note names

Each lesson introduces a chord or two, and a basic song that uses them to get you learning how to switch chords, and to keep you interested.

Just don't try jumping in and playing songs at first -
A) you will find it very difficult to get it sounding anywhere close
B) you are potentially picking up bad habits that are a real pain to change later (I know that from experience hah)
C) Without any theory at all you will find learning much harder..especially when you get on to more complex things. Scales etc may seem boring and totally pointless, but aside from building dexterity a surprising number of solo/lead parts are actually just scales with a few 'twiddly bits' (technical term lol) added in..so if you know the scale well the solo becomes much easier

[pr0p4g4nd4]

Like Spud said, to play the large majority of today's music all you need to learn is power chords.

You can learn tablature (a.k.a. tab) easily, then you can get transcriptions for a large amount of music somewhere like Utimate Guitar (my fave tab site).

One of the most useful, advanced techniques is alternate picking. It it used to play a lot of the faster guitar riffs. There are other things like sweep picking and tapping which are impressive and usually used for speed, but alternate is probably the one to nail first.

Hope that's some help!

[kidzer]

Yeah, dont bother with sweeping/tapping etc yet, i've been playing about 2 (or 3, I cant remember!) years, and I have just started being able to do 3 string sweeps about 2 months ago - alternate picking is very useful though, makes fast licks far easier to play.

Gerschwin, thats a hell of a lot of links, I think i'll check a few out myself, see if theres anything new I can pick up

[pr0p4g4nd4]

Yeah, dont bother with sweeping/tapping etc yet

Yeah, I definitely should have put that!

[Dav0s]

off topic:

propaganda, u see bloc party live on this tour? wow they rocked

[pr0p4g4nd4]

off topic:

propaganda, u see bloc party live on this tour? wow they rocked

I'm still trying to get tickets for the Edinburgh gig as it's on my b-day