I am self taught, I actually moved to guitar b/c I couldn’t bring my electric bass to residence when I came to University. So I went out and bought a crappy guitar half price, I think it was like 500 dollars, I got it for 250, anyways I digress.
B/c I had been taught to play base and was leaning keys, theory, how to read music, i could pick up the guitar and learn pretty fast. I seemed to have some talent in me and my ears are pretty good, tone wise.
My first song was actually Alone again by Dokken, if anyone knows Dokken, I give mad props, George Lynch is an AMAZING guitar player, mostly self taught. I then needed to learn nothing else matters by metallica. After learning a couple of pretty complex songs for a beginner, I could play 3 chord strums in my sleep. in fact, it didn’t really interest me to play unless it was retardly hard. I’m on some John Martin as we speak, and that’s proving to be a challenge for me! I also have much respect for Paco de lucia, well his transcriptions from violin, since he was a violinist, as well as Al Di Meola, I love and can do…sloppily might I add and with a steel string guitar so it’s different.
My advice is you need passion and it really needs to be fun right off the get go. Throw the scale advice down the tube right now, and just start out by learning to read tabs and learning a basic song. Try some Nirvana, or some Greenday or something chord based. Once you get addicted, you’ll want to progress. Just like the gym, come have fun first and get addicted to seeing some changes, then feed that desire. once you can strum 3 chords while taking a shit, start going onto web sites that show you scales, explain some theory to you and take er from there. All it took my brother when he was 12 was for me to teach him how to play one or 2 riffs, a little friendly competition and a shitty Epiphone on sale for like 150 bucks with an amp I left behind. Boom, next thing I know I come home for Christmas and next thing I know he’s got a Yngwie instructional video, and he’s teaching himself how to sweep pick arpeggios. He’s 16 now and he’s unreal good. Unfortunately, he was jus tin a motorcylce accident and broke his fingers and screwed his hand for the next year.
If you want to know the kind of passion you need for this I’ll tell you, don’t get discouraged if you’re not as obsessed. He got the pins taken out of his fingers and he can barely move his hands, what does he do, picks up the guitar and plays till he can’t stand it. Which was about 10 minutes, but still. His biggest fear was that he wouldn’t be able to play his axe. I can fully understand that.
His next step is to take classic training at the Royal Academy of Music and then try try try to get into a guitar school or take music.
I know I’m being long winded but it’s friday and I’m obsessed with my guitar and love to talk about it. Here’s a synopsis:
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Make it fun in order to get addicted to it and have that feeling when you pick it up.
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Learn to read tab from a website. use google and type in Guitar Tabs, you’ll see many sights.
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Learn a song you love that sounds pretty easy.
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Get a chord chart, so you can see where to play different chords and understand what that means i.e Am7.
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Start learning theory, scales, modes, keys, progressions, tonalities, voicings, etc (the last two aren’t really theory, but I group them in there)
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Practice, Practice, Practice and don’t bitch about the calluses and not being able to seduce a women b/c you can light the tips of your fingers without feeling pain. My hands are a callus mess, between the deads I hammered last night and the guitar I played afterwards, I’m a ladies dream!
Also, ask questions whenever you’d like. There are some knowledgeable people on here. I’m in envy of Swivel b/c he’s classically trained and I find that style amazing and beautiful, but we’d love to help.
PM me and I’ll whip up a list of sites with weekly guitar lessons, and all that jazz.
Start picking,
T
YAY!