Mods, if this is too mundane and pointless for Cafe Society, please feel free to move it.
I finally decided to take the plunge this weekend and buy a guitar. It wasn’t spur of the moment as I’ve been kicking around the idea for months now. I’d pretty much decided to go with a Squier but the salesman and my brother (who plays guitar) talked me into an Ibanez Gio. My brother mainly plays an Ibanez, though his is much nicer and was signed by all the members of Velvet Revolver to boot.
Anyway, we got it home and started playing around with it last night. This is the slow frustrating part and I knew it coming in. It did help a bit that my brother would go off into riffs of songs while I try to make my fingers bend the right way to make an F chord. It keeps it fresh in my mind what I’m working towards. This morning I picked it up and remembered a C chord without looking at the chart.
My biggest problem so far is muting strings because my finger placement isn’t precise enough. I’m told this is common and just takes practice. Another problem is finding a comfortable position for my left hand. Any tips?
I’m planning to go back to the store some time next week and set up my free lesson and I have a new favorite word: humbucker!
Humbucker’s are sweet. I’ve got one of these from the early 1990s that someone dropped humbuckers in and it’s got an amazing tone.
For you? The best advice I can give is keep practicing. Do it slowly and build up proper hand position. You’ll find one that is comfortable and practical over time.
It’s definitely takes a while to get the muscle memory thing going. Be patient, and don’t get discouraged. (sounds trite, but it’s the truth) You’ll feel like you’re struggling for the longest time, then seemingly all of a sudden, you’ll break through and you’ll be able to do a lot more. It’s good that you have a brother who can give you pointers.
I’m not sure what kind of music you want to play (I’m assuming rock), but C and F are harder to get down than A and E, and I’d venture that you can learn a lot more songs knowing A and E than C and F. Also try to get up to speed on Barre chords, which are the meat and potatoes of rock.
It’s odd, when you’re just starting it is such hard work to get your fingers in the right place and hold down the strings. With practice you’ll find that it is really a case of leverage, that you can find a comfortable position where you don’t feel like you are making any effort at all.
Any Tips? Practice changing chords, rather than battling on with a single shape.
For a really quick start look into ‘dropped D’ tuning. Tune the bottom E down a tone to D and you can play power chords with one finger. You want to play System of a Down stuff right?
My guitar teacher started me on fooling around with A, D and E because they are all easy to form and are used in lots of songs. Mind you my teacher thinks that after a few weeks of lessons you should be writing your own songs rather than learning other peoples.
Pretty funny - when I was 15, I made friends with the guy who ended up being a life-long friend (so far!) and primary musical influence when I walked into a guitar store he was in and asked a question about “humdinger” pickups…
I stand at the ready to geek out about 'buckers if you ever want to go there, as I am sure countless other Doper guitarists can do, too…
As for learning to play, I will say what I always say: play whatever keeps you playing. For me, that meant 15 minutes of yucky practice following by 15 minutes of Smoke on the Water on 1 string, imagining the roar of the crowd. After a while the chords came easier and I could play them without thinking - that’s when things got interesting.
Point #2: Especially if you are playing an electric guitar with a crunchy tone (distorted, overdriven - you choose the word): it turns out that you spend 50% of your time trying to get the right notes to sound - and 50% of your time trying to get the other strings to NOT sound. Hendrix was legendary for having a guitar that no one could get anything but noise from - but he could mute what he needed and pull out the sounds he wanted…
Oh, I was just going through the book that came with the guitar trying out the different chords in order. I’ll direct my efforts towards A and E though on your advice. Thanks!
My own advice for you would be to do whatever it takes to keep you interested in practicing the instrument. Nothing else matters at this moment. Two things that kept me going early on was learning to play AC/DC songs (because they are insanely easy to learn and are smash-the-dashboard, knock-your-teeth-in kinda tunes).
The other was to take breaks and just play along to music that I liked with the guitar unplugged like I really was playing what was being played through the speakers (even if I was nowhere close to the position on the fretboard–just jamming along like a complete newbie would do with a tennis racket). This may sound silly, but it is another outlet to the frustration you’ll feel in learning the guitar and it is actually fun. But the real important part of it is that you will find your hand to eye coordination and rhythm get much better quicker and you will find that it helps you adapt to chord changes much faster down the road.
I’ll second what the other folks said, about finding ways to stay interested. I’ll also add that , if at all possible, practice every day, at least for 30 minutes, an hour is better. This might not be possible at first, because your left hand and wrist will be pretty sore, and you may get a blister on your finger tips. Persevere, the rewards come that much quicker.
Also, when I was a 15-year-old guitar noob, I took weekly lessons. This obviously depends on the teacher and you, but lessons helped me a great deal, and it also motivated me to practice, because I would have to play my lesson for the instructor every week. YMMV, but I think it worked better for me than being self-taught using a book or video, and it gave me a leg up on technique.
Single coils > humbuckers for all given values of rawk.
Congrats on your new purchase. Soon, you’ll be switching pickups, talking about vintage pancake caps, and boring your friends with talk of “midrange bloom.” And then you’ll be as lost as the rest of us guitar freaks.
Once you learn the basic chords and some song arrangements, I’d highly reccommend that you actually play along with the music. Pop in a CD of a song you like that you have mastered at least a part of, and play along with it with your amp volume moderated in a way that allows you to hear yourself and the CD in an even mix. This helped me out a LOT, as I suffered from boredom learning the opening riffs of songs but didn’t bother to learn the entire song as I was playing by myself. You can be in your own band this way.
Also, once you develop calluses on your fingertips, you need to keep them healthy by practicing often, and never play immediately after your fingers have been exposed to water for a long period as you’ll rip them off. You’ll find after you toughen up your fingertips that you can play longer and longer stretches without your fingertips feeling like they are bleeding (although playing guitar UNTIL they bleed is SO rock and roll…at least according to Bryan Adams…)
As far as muting goes, you can mute with the palm of your picking hand to silence strings from ringing while you play individual notes or 2/3 string chords, or you can also mute with your fingering hand by learning how to use your thumb in a “wraparound” fingering. I’m sure there are other ways but I mostly use my picking hand for that, using the side of your palm immediately beneath your pinkie finger, considering that you hold the pick traditionally, with your thumb and index finger ( I also sometimes hold the pick with my ring finger too, in addittion to the others).
Good luck, and to echo the others…keep playing. Your initial frustration will turn into smiles as you accomplish more and more, but it can only be done with constant practice.
Practice. Even when you feel you’re not learning. You are.
Tape yourself. NOW. Then listen in 6 months. You will hear progress.
Frustration is a natural part of the process. It will pass.
Get a teacher you can talk to and relate to. And listen to them.
Memorize the fretboard. Know where every note is.
Play with CD’s. At that moment, you are in the band.
Play with other people at every opportunity, even if it’s not your style. You will learn from them.
Have fun !!!
My tip is to learn proper left and right hand technique from the start. It is going to be hard at first anyway, so you might as well develop the best technique possible. Later on when you get better, that proper technique will pay for itself many times over.
Perseverance. Don’t give up. The guitar is a frustrating, heartless bitch to start out with. Keep after it and you will have that wonderful first experience when it all comes together and your guitar sings to you instead of snarls at you.
As far as left hand positioning, try this. Anchor your thumb in the center of the back, which will force you to arch your left hand around. As you gain experience, you will alter/adjust your hand position to best suit your physical stature and the nature of your music.
Most beginners hold their wrist too far below the neck - this can be one cause of muting or fret buzz because it flattens the finger position. The classical position is with the wrist raised very high, so the absolute tips of the fingers can be placed vertically down on the strings. However, if you’re a for-fun guitarist like me, there’s a compromise position that allows reasonably vertical placement, without too much discomfort.
I would say persist with the F. You don’t need to do the full barré F at first - try the version that uses five strings (excluding the lower E, unless you have a thumb like Jimi Hendrix that can wrap around the neck and hold down the first fret!) with the first finger pushing down the top two strings.
When I was first learning, I found that moving from the F to a C and then to a G (your second and third fingers should be in the same orientation for all three chords - make yourself do the G shape that uses your little finger on the top E string) was a very useful exercise. I strummed various combinations of F, C, G (and Am fits into this as well) over and over and over again, until jumping between them became very natural. And then you’ll be able to play about 90% of all songs written!
I went to a concert last night and for the first time ever paid attention to the guitarists’ hands in particular. I noticed the power chord position a lot.
I’m really taking all this advice in this topic to heart too. Thanks very much.
Well, I’ve been playing for 10 years longer than you, but I am not sure what that proves. My point is that you make a blanket statement about pickups that I think is, well, a blanket statement. It has nothing to do with **PM ** and his thread - which is the main point here.
Depending on what you like, who you want to sound like (someone else, yourself, etc.) and how you play, different pickups can do just fine. All that matters is that our Padowan Guitarist here learns the ways of the Force, that’s all…and if he (she?) gets caught up the way we have, then they can choose which side of the Force to choose…
