Learning guitar

Meh42

Active member
so yeaaaah, i just got an acoustic guitar as a early christmas list. i got some shitty start yourself book and it's ok, i dunno, my goal is just to eventually be able to play jack johnson like stuff. any tips?
 
yeaaaah, i thought it would be sort of easy, i used to play piano and viola back in the day, but goddamn. my fingers and wrist don't like some of this shit. but yeah, guitar is sick and super fun
 
so then you probably already know a bunch of basic chords. what kind of acoustic did you get?
 
fuck that. To begin, learn basic chords and small, easy to play rhythms such as Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd and Bubbly Toes by Jack Johnson, once you get more familiar with the chords. You don't need to do scales and music theory. You only need to do scales to play faster, and I've never even heard of music theory. Play simple songs, and it will come naturally.
 
dont expect to be playing jack johnson too soon. almost all of his stuff involves bar chords, which takes a while to get down, then become easy. if you have a friend that plays guitar, its alot easier to learn
 
a fender with some nylon strings. hahaha, i'm so new to guitars that i can't tell you much more than that.

and yeah, my whole experience before this has been just like plucking out the openening to stairway to heaven and redemption song on my friend's guitars.

hahahaha, i'm having fun with trying to learn and i guess that's all that matters, it'll start to come someday.
 
Haha, yesss, i attempted to learn a few years ago and I didnt' get far. I still get it out once and a while, but I still can't play anything :(
 
just start playing man... its addicting, i would recommend learning basic chords like G, E, D, etc first b/c alotta songs are based off of those.
 
yesss!

and play scales. it will help your fingers to get more comfortable with guitar. and i suggest you start using a pick at the beginning, so switching into a electric guitar will be easier.
 
if ur jus gonna play jack stuff, forget the book and learn tabs...get the song u wanna play and find the tabs for it (best site my opinion is "www.ultimate-guitar.com" listen and play along-tabs are mad easy to read so u shoulnt have a prob...but a lot of jack's stuff is bar chords and palm mutes which take a good long time to master...try be like that by 3 doors down to get u started-that was my first and it didnt take to long...but the no.1 rule in learning is PERSERVEER! takes mad long to get good...MAD! so jus be patient and it will all come in time.
 
911tabs.com is way better. its a search engine that takes a large number of tab sites and you can find like any tab, and theres ratings so its good.

if i were you i would take lessons, no matter how good you are you still need lessons. having an instructor makes you improve so much, you're more focused and learn more than by yourself. go to about.com, and search guitar, theres like 10 lessons there that i used and are pretty good. they also give you songs to practice that go with the lesson.
 
if you have limewire or a torrent downloader get guitarpro4 or 5. It plays the song along with showing the tab in real time in midi. then you can download guitar pro tabs from ultimate-guitar.com
 
guitar hero 2.

and besides that learn basc chords first. learn root scales. learn to read tabs. thats pretty much a year worth of learning
 
hahaha yes!

anyways, you should do alot of finger exercies to help with your dexterity, fast scales both up and down all over the fretboard will help your fingers stretch and get used to the stretching, a very important factor in playing guitar. Start out easy, i reccommend looking up theme songs on a tab website and learn some of those. If your gonna try to learn a full song, take an easy approah\ch to it and break it down into parts, dont get frustrated and just focus on learning each part and putting them together. Remember, it is frustrating but patience and practice are key.
 
when i first started playing guitar, i started with acoustic and my fingers bled quite ofen ...now i practice on my acoustic and use my elecric wen i actually play for people..it makes it so much easier.
 
ive only been doing it since august and im pretty good now i guess though, your fingers will get used to the strings and stuff and if you play alot you'll get used to it and your fingers will calluse (sp) up and you won't feel anything and when moving your fingers for chords eventually you'll just create muscle memory and it will start coming alot easier, just don't give up when you can't do something because it will become easier to you the more u do it faster than u think
 
its been like 8 and a half years since i started and its gonna be a while before you can play like jack johnson. take some lessons and learn all the notes, chords and patterns.

a little tip...go find a guitar teacher who's into blues. you can trace a shitload of types of music back to the blues genre. its a good base for building a rhythm and learning sweet riffs.
 
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