Beginner

[MonaVox]

Hey I just got a geetar about a month and a half ago. I can play a few little parts in a few songs, and I started taking lessons, too.

 

The point is~ I was wondering if anyone had any pointers about what I should practice with? Like what are some good songs to start out with? Or any other tips you might have...

 

Thank you muchly

[rclite]

HI

 

I've been playing for a few months now and feel you should start out with basic chords (which you have probably done) E, A, D, C, G, F ect.

 

Also basic scales:

 

MAJOR SCALE

MINOR

BLUES

PENTATONIC MAJOR

PENTATONIC MINOR

 

As for songs, I think you should stick to songs you like (providing they are avergaly simple). That way you may feel more inspired to play. Get your teacher to give you a few riffs from ya fav songs and have some more fun while your learning.

 

HOPE THAT HELPS

[Tedster]

Here's what I give guidance for absolute beginners to do...

 

Practice your open chord changes. This is what gives beginners the most problem. Everyone wants to be Dimebag Darrell right off, but it ain't gonna happen.

 

Open chords are the foundation to build many songs on...and a lot of people's chording skills suck. (This is no kidding): I know of a guy who can play lightning fast shred runs...but would be totally lost when asked to play an open G.

 

So...to build chord changing chops...

 

Start with an open Em.

 

E open

B open

G open

D 2nd fret third finger

A 2nd fret 2nd finger

E open

 

Change to Am and back to Em.

 

Am

 

0

1 first finger

2 third finger

2 2nd finger

0

0

 

When that gets easy, change from Em to Am to C to Am to Em.

 

From the Am...just move your third finger from the 2nd fret of the G string to the third fret of the A string for a C

 

When that gets easy...change from Em to Am to C to FMaj7 to C to Am to Em.

 

Shift your second and third finger simultaneously from where they are in a C chord (D and A strings) to the G and D strings...same respective frets:

 

FMaj7 is:

 

E 0pen

B 1st fret

G 2nd fret

D 3rd fret

A 0pen

E X not played

 

Then...

 

Em-Am-C-FMaj7-D7-FMaj7-C-Am-Em

 

For D7, only your third finger moves, from the D string third fret to the E (1st, or high E) second fret...

 

D7:

2

1

2

0

0

X

 

Then Em-Am-FMaj7-D7-G-D7-FMaj7-C-Am-Em

 

G;

 

3

0

0

0

2

3

 

When you can change between those chords reasonably easily...

 

Start with a G...then go to Em...then Am...then D7

Then next time, G...Em...C...D7

 

What I call a "Doo-Wop" progression. When you play it...you'll be able to play Pearl Jam's version of the Doo-Wop classic "Last Kiss" (Where O Where Can My Baby Be).

 

That'll get you started. There are a bunch of good easy open chord songs for beginners. There are a couple of threads here on this board with 'em. Hunt 'em down.

 

Good luck!! And welcome!

[TurboDog]

Hey Tedster,

 

Just keep a copy of that post handy. Seems like we've been going thru this about once a week. And that's good advice.

 

I would stick to one scale at first. Stick to the major/minor pentatonic at first. Throw in another note later for the blues scale. Throw in 2 different notes for major/minor.

 

(The major and minor scales have the same patterns, they just start at different frets, ie the c major pentatonic is the same thing as an A minor pent. So if you learn the major pent. you've also learned the minor pent.)

[Nollykin]

Teddyster I'm blown away man - you ever actually taught music? you should think about it yanno

 

Like TDog said - keep that post. I'm keeping it hehe

 

Yep - basically, mate. What tedster said was right on track. I've been playing about a month - and I know how to fluently play Am, C, Em - and switch between them, also know D, and G, but I'm still getting there with those - the best thing about learning lots of them is that you will soon be able to make little songs of your own to practice with. I do - basically I strum Em for a bit, then go to C, then when changing from C to Am, I hot Em in between, it acts as a bridge, making the practice song sound really cool

 

things like that are what makes guitaring interesting. Oh, and stick to these boards - I'm the resident newbie here, started right here - these guys a) convinced me to buy my guitar, b) helped me with buying the right one for me, and c) are teaching me how to play it - theyre bloody legends the lot of em.

 

Nolly

[MonaVox]

Wow ~ looks like I've come to the right place!

 

OK this is good bc my teacher tells me I have good guitar fingers, but even though I know a bunch of random chords, I'm still so slow in changing them.

 

O_o some of this is a little confusing.....I need to learn some guitar terminology I guess.

 

Thank you thank you thank you ~ and does anyone know if there's a more reliable tab site than.....well just about everything I've looked at...? Sometimes I have to put 2 or 3 sites together to figure out one song.....like I sat there and re-tabbed the little solo deal from "Silver Spring" (Fleetwood Mac) and the intro to "In a Little While" (U2) bc nothing I could find on the internet seemed right.

[Nollykin]

Ah what terminology confused you? I will attempt to help

 

www.mxtabs.net is good - but remember, tabs are always written by people like you and me - theyre not always right - in fact, rarely.

 

Dont worry about your speed of changing - just practice it - remember, it wont come without practice. Try figuring out fingerins styles that make it easy to change - and heed Tedsters advice - learn the first basic open chords first.

 

Good luck

 

Nolly

[Tedster]

Thanks all...

 

Yep...first, practice those chords in order...and count with quarter note downstrokes while you go through the order. Do two measures of each chord:

 

Em...............Am.............

1 2 3 4/2 2 3 4 /1 2 3 4/2 2 3 4

 

etc..

 

When you get good at doing two measures of quarter note downstrokes...add the eighth note upstroke (indicated by the "&"):

 

Em................Am

1&2&3&4&/2&2&3&4&/1&2&3&4&/2&2&3&4& etc...

 

When you get really good at that...start changing chords every measure:

 

Em.......Am.......C.......

1&2&3&4&/1&2&3&4&/1&2&3&4& etc...

 

The chords won't sound like much...for the most part. Well, when you start changing rapidly between C and FMaj7, you may realize you're playing McCartney's "Band on the Run", or when you go backwards from FMaj7 to C, you'll realize you're playing part of that song "Guess you really might know what it's like to sing the blues"...all you need is a Dm to start:

 

E 1

B 3

G 2

D 0

A 0

E X

 

Dm.......FM7.C..

1&2&3&4&/1&2&3&4&

 

But, learn those other chords first. Do your "Doo Wop". You'll get better little by little.

[Rog]

I learned from a Suzanne Vega tab book - stuff off her first 2 albums.

 

She made me realise that there's more to music than A, D, E chords or whatever and showed me how to find them on the fretboard.

 

Her picking style was a bitch to learn but once I could play a few, playing straight chords and strumming was sooo easy!

[TurboDog]

With many of the tabs, you will just get the simple chord structure. Then when you hear the song, you hear a lot of little guitar parts that are played between chords or in dead spots in the song. You'll have to figure these out yourself, or make your own parts for these.

 

The great guitar players are the best rythym players. These guys, like EVH and Hendrix, etc, fill so much space with rythym work it's incredible. And very difficult to tab.

 

Here's a mistake I made when I first started out. I would only learn the parts of songs that sounded "interesting" to me. The boring rythym parts meant nothing to me and I never learned them. Consenquently, I learned parts of shitloads of songs, but almost no song all the way thru. Then when it came time to start jamming with people, I could never finish a song.

 

Stay disciplined early on and it will pay off later.

[MonaVox]

Originally posted by TurboDog:

Here's a mistake I made when I first started out. I would only learn the parts of songs that sounded "interesting" to me. The boring rythym parts meant nothing to me and I never learned them. Consenquently, I learned parts of shitloads of songs, but almost no song all the way thru. Then when it came time to start jamming with people, I could never finish a song.

Oh this is good advice....bc all I know is a bunch of random parts to a bunch of random songs! OK now I have to go and learn the rest of all my random songs This is good, though...

[Tedster]

Mona said...

 

>>>Oh this is good advice....bc all I know is a bunch of random parts to a bunch of random songs! OK now I have to go and learn the rest of all my random songs This is good, though...

 

Another piece of good advice that will make it easier to learn the whole song...

 

Sing. If you sing, you'll have to know the whole song. And vocals are EXTREMELY important, unless you want to be Pat Metheny or something.

[Diddleydaddy]

Everyone is giving you very good advice. I agree totally with turbodog. I made the same mistake. although it's good to help learn technique, you can do the same by learning full songs and at the same time build your reportoir which later will come in very handy. I don't think I can add anything in the way of what to practice. Just stick to learning and changing the basic chord shapes for now. That will come fairly quickly. Then move on to more advanced technique. Harmony Central has a direct link to the OLGA (On Line Guitar Archive). Just click on Tabliture. You can find about anything you need there. The tabs you find anywhere will commonly have mistakes, usually you can fix them up some yourself and it helps to develope your ear. Well I hope maybe I've helped in some way. Oh yeah, I also wanted to remind you to just stay focused. Don't compare yourself with other musicians in an overly critical way. Learning music is a long, slow, tedious, process, that happens to also be fun and rewarding. Everyone learns at a different pace. Set goals and determine yourself to meet them, but be realistic. By the way, cool tidbit at the end of your post. Zeppelin is one of the most amazing and influential rock bands of all time, and I think pretty highly of U2 also. Well happy playing.

[retroguitarist]

whatever you do, dont read tabs, learn music. tabs aint gonna get u no where

[Virtual Jim]

I highly disagree with not learning tab. Here are reasons why:

 

1) It's how alot of younger guitarists think. They see bars on the neck every other fret, and can count around that. it's more intuitive.

2) Abundance on the internet means you can find a song easy and have fun with it immediately.

3) When you're transcribing and you want to write down for someone exactly what you're doing, tab works here. This is one place where regular notation does not work.

 

But still learn to read music. It helps with harmony and if you want to learn a piece not written for guitar, it's a requiste skill.

 

but the biggest tip is buy a metronome or if you can afford it a drum machine. Playing to rock solid tempos during practice will make your time much much much much better.

 

Later, the drum machine can serve as a virtual drummer in songwriting and recording demos. Plus if you get one with built in loops, the varied music styles can help you get out of creative ruts you will find yourself getting into if you start writing your own stuff down the line.

 

Oh, and get your ass into a band or at least another guitarist or something. You may not understand why, but it'll teach you so many things you'll never learn otherwise (like how to prevent drunken high school/college kids from spilling their dixie cup beer all over your pedalboard...)

[MonaVox]

Heh youse guys are my new set of gurus....

 

yes I need ppl to play with! My brother plays and sometimes he'll tell me the chords to do like in the background....heh and he gets to do all the fancy stuff. It's kind of good though bc then you see that there's a lot beneath just the general melody of the song. I'm going off to college soon. My mom's like "figure out what you want to do with yer life" and I'm just like "...I need a bassist..."

 

Also~ I played clarinet for about 5 or 6 years, and piano for 2....so I can read music and I learned all kinds of musical theory things....which I'm now thinking I want to brush up on.

 

And I'm reading all that you post, trust me Muchas smooches...

[Rog]

Originally posted by retroguitarist:

whatever you do, dont read tabs, learn music. tabs aint gonna get u no where

Also, after a while, put in the effort to work stuff out by yourself - it'll teach you some basic theory and help your ear no end.

[Nollykin]

Originally posted by MonaVox:

Heh youse guys are my new set of gurus....

 

yes I need ppl to play with! My brother plays and sometimes he'll tell me the chords to do like in the background....heh and he gets to do all the fancy stuff. It's kind of good though bc then you see that there's a lot beneath just the general melody of the song. I'm going off to college soon. My mom's like "figure out what you want to do with yer life" and I'm just like "...I need a bassist..."

 

Also~ I played clarinet for about 5 or 6 years, and piano for 2....so I can read music and I learned all kinds of musical theory things....which I'm now thinking I want to brush up on.

 

And I'm reading all that you post, trust me Muchas smooches...

Hahaha - yeah, theyre great, arent they? Hey! you're american arentcha? Just go find someone theryll be guitarists somewhere

 

hehe

[clarity]

Mona! My geetar playin' friend! I must have reply-be-gone sprayed on my post on the bass side here! lol *thinks she should have just asked for pointers rather than looking for other bass chicks* lol

[TurboDog]

Here's another little tip for some of you guys/gals.

 

Every now and then (not too much at first) play standing up. I played sitting down (sofas, beds, barstools) for years, and when it came time to stand and jam with friends, I was all screwed up. You hold the guitar differently and it affects your fretting.

 

This isn't a big deal, just something to keep in the back of your head.