i think the absolutely most important thing for people who start playing guitar is for them to enjoy themselves because playing guitar is hard and tedious work. there's a lot of muscle memory and finger/hand dexterity and a lot of "feel" to it. the time it takes to learn where to put your fingers to play a chord is infinitemisal compared to the time it takes to learn to actually get your fingers there in time.
so if you're starting to play guitar then pick it up whenever you can and just play along with your favorite tune of the moment. don't care so much if you're using the right fingers or if it's sounding perfect because those things will come with practice and they will pretty much come automatically.
also mental training is pretty good, when you're in school and your mind is just doing nothing because some guy is trying to teach you something then try to imagine you have a gutiar in your hands and how you need to put your fingers to play this and that and whatever. that mental training is way more efficient than i think most people realize.
On September 15 2012 20:55 Teoita wrote: Whoooops my bad i fucked up the scale. I corrected it now. I'm not really used to writing tabs.
The G and C chord do sound better, but i think when you first start it's easier to use 3 fingers rather than 4, especially when you have to learn how to switch between chords.
Also, i covered changing chords and strumming exercises in a later part that isn't published yet.
Thanks for the feedback though, it was the first time i wrote a guitar playing guide. If you want, i can email you the other 2 articles and you can tell me where to improve them before they are published.
Regarding songs vs pure exercise, what you are saying is true but i feel like starting to play really basic music is a nice motivation boost. Learning how to play properly is a big commitment and, let's face it, starting is boring as hell. If you do nothing but exercises i think you can be less motivated to put in the time and patience, compared to playing some really basic stuff.
I don't disagree about it being boring but I'm coming at this from a tutors point of view, I completely understand why you would advocate learning simple songs but then people like me have to work with students who have terrible habits and teach them the correct way.... grrrrr.
when teaching I always discourage learning pop songs, If you want to learn songs as a beginner you should be learning classical music or be playing pop songs arpeggiated (strings plucked seperately in a pattern) so that you are both getting the motivation and practicing technique ;p
Personally, and most guitar tutors would agree, the use of a plectrum should also be heavily discouraged during the learning process, at least at the very start and until you can play scales and arpeggios with the correct fingers without thinking about it too much. Learning to play finger style is a massive part of learning guitar, if you play for more than about a year with a pick from the start and then try to learn to play with your fingers it makes it 20 times harder. This comes from experience, unfortunately there is a guitar tutor where I live who teaches from the start with a pick, I've had a few of his students come to me after learning with him for over a year and I have to go right back to the start and help them unlearn the bad habits they've picked up.
I would be happy to look over your guides and suggest edits but please don't feel like I'm trying to be an ass or put you down or that you should in any way feel compelled to use my suggestions. I know how much work goes in to one of these guides ( http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=165836 ) and you've done an excellent job, it's just that I have nightmares about all the guitar players out there in the world who can't even play a simple arpeggio without a pick cause they never learned how ;p
Btw, if you want to see a good example of how a video should look for teaching guitar, I have a couple on youtube. They are very advanced techniques but I've been working on my teaching techniques for years and the formula I use works no matter how easy or hard the song or exercise is. Break it down in to small parts, focus on one at a time. Then begin to combine. This particular one is in 3 parts starting there, really should update that video with HD quality lol
Approaches to learning guitar vary greatly with the different learning types and different goals. I am self-taught--I took a few lessons in about 9th grade, but didn't take anything away from them. I have now been teaching myself guitar (and other instruments) for over 16 years.
I don't think learning with a pick first hurts your ability to learn to play fingerstyle. I started out learning only electric rock for about five years or so. As my tastes changed I shifted to playing more acoustic. Then I started playing fingerstyle. Of course I was garbage at first, but, in my experience, as long as you are trying to learn to play the music that moves you, you never notice the long hours of practice--you just play. Playing with a pick didn't slow me down any in learning fingerstyle--I was just a beginner again, which always means slowing down and sounding bad for a while.
To me the most important skill that beginners overlook is to listen to yourself. I try to get beginners to just strum a chord in rhythm, with their eyes closed and focus on making that sound as good as possible. Too many people get focused on moving their fingers around as fast as they can and never internalize the basics enough to just play unconsciously.
If you focus on making what you play sound good over everything else, your technique will develop naturally. If you focus on technique over everything else (and you don't burn out on guitar and quit) you might find yourself in the position of being able to play anything in the world, but no joy in playing simply and sounding good. You will be able to impress people, but not move them.
That's my two bits anyway.
I agree completely about the most important skill. As an an addenum to it, they should not play with distortion on (if playing electric) as that makes it even worse than just playing fast (since it's even harder to hear your mistakes)
Nice guide. If you're looking for more easy songs people can practice with, I recommend Irish Folk (Fields of Athenry, Bright Blue Rose, Last House in our Street, Whiskey in the Jar...). Not recommended for people with a bad taste in music, though.
I hardly play bass myself, but you can do some of the stuff in the articles, specifically scales. The first four strings on a guitar and bass are (most of the time) in identical tunings.
I'm a guitar player for now 10 years. I started when i was 13 and didn't take any lesson because i felt like it was boring to start by learning any music theory. I had some regrets about that later on but i'm very glad i did what did. That's why i would like to add some of my own tips for those who would like to put on the efforts to make it works without a teacher.
First, it's very important to note that you won't be able to play any music without some basic things so you need at least a book to get you started as was stated in the OP. While i agree with what you and emythrel wrote about how to begin, i think you go way to fast from one point to another or at least you should emphasize on how much time will be needed to get from point A to B. Because as a beginner i always rushed toward the next difficulty, honestly, if i wasn't a quick learner, i'ld certainly have given up.
The guitar is one of the hardest instrument to learn out there because of the simple fact that you don't see what you're doing. So you need to take every step slowly making very very sure you are not rushing. The first thing you'll notice is hard is being accurate from both the right and left hand while they are not doing the same thing, left is having the hardest time finding every notes and right is smashing the strings. That's why i always advice to start with an electric guitar but that's the expensive choice because of the amps you need (even though you can play without, you won't be able to hear a lot). The strings are at midrange between being too soft to develop any strengh in your fingers and so hard that you are bleeding after the first hour of play plus those guitars are thiner so you have a better angle to see what you're doing. Downside is the strings are very close from each other so you might have issues picking up the right string at the beginning. That's mostly a personnal thing though, you'll find many reasons not to start with an electric guitar and vice versa. To begin with, you should start one hand at a time for everything you do while you apprehend some basic stuffs. First do the exercice with the right hand, making sure picking the strings up is natural and you don't feel any problem doing so, then stop your right hand and push the right fret with your left hand until you've nailed everything correctly without mixing it up. When you feel natural doing it with your both hands not at the same time you can start doing it with both. Do one or two round with the right hand and then add your left hand. It's very normal to screw up at the beginning, you're not expected to be successful on the first try. Start again, check right hands and when you feel ready add your left hand. You'll eventually start improving. When you can do at least first two exercices in the OP with both hands at the same time, you'll be able to play 50% of the songs out there by just learning how to place your fingers and block every strings with your index. That'll be your second problem.
What i did was buying a "capo" (see wikipedia) and looking how it was able to block the strings. First i thought i would be able to skip learning how to do a bare chord but a lot of the songs you might wanna play will have you move your bare chord from one fret to another, sometimes very far away from the previous one. So, i looked how it was blocking the strings and tried to do the same. You can also watch videos on youtube because i don't see how you can learn how to do that without having a visual reference. When you'll be able to do a bare chord, you'll be able to play almost 90% of the songs. A lot of them are very basic chords but almost all songs have bare chords in them.
At last, you should not play with a plectrum at first because it's very hard to get it right. You need to learn much more things than if you played with your fingers.
One last thing, imo, the most important point was having fun while learning. I played for 8 hours a day for two years because i was enjoying how i was learning, there is nothing better than just practice to learn how to play an instrument and practice comes with enjoying your improvement so take some minutes off after every hour doing something with your guitar like playing an easy song you like or just screwing around.
Edit: Everything i wrote is from my point of view and what got me started. That's not THE METHOD, it's mine and i wanted to share how i learned things but it's up to the person who play to do whatever feels the best. Otherwise, it's a very good guide and i approve it as a very good starting point i'll read the next part when it comes out!
I have to disagree with the people who are saying not to start out with a pick. If you're into music that uses fingerpicking, yeah, learnit, but if you want to play metal or hard rock or something, there's almost no point and you're just delaying your own progress. I've been playing for ten years and I know like... maybe ten songs that involve fingerpicking out of hundreds, it's a pretty useless skill for me.
It's not about fingerpicking, it's about not having to learn to use a pick.
LATE EDIT: What i meant was when you start playing, you already have enough to care about for you to add another thing. At first, everything you wanna do can be done as easily with your naked hand as with a pick. Also, you'll be more accurate and learn to use a pick better/faster when the time'll come that you need it.
On September 17 2012 18:22 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: I think this is a great guide if you want to learn some casual guitar.
If you can get past this step and you want to move on to jazz or classical guitar, though, you'll wish you had learned correctly. I'm having to re-condition myself to think and play as a musician instead of a guitar player after 15 years now that I'm getting heavy into jazz theory.
Do you mind elaborating on that please?
Sure. Learning guitar from tabs is great but you will NOT learn anything about scales and chord theory from looking at a bunch of numbers. I'm close to 15 years in and I'm still struggling with off the top of my head answers to stuff like "what is the fifth of ii" when my jazz teacher asks stuff like that and that's actually really basic chord theory. Learning guitar is completely different from learning piano or many other instruments in that you don't have to know any music theory at all to be able to play competently at a casual level. When you want to make the jump from casual to professional or even just into jazz/classical it becomes a lot harder when you find out you don't know the difference between a dominant seventh and a major seventh (not saying you can't learn that from tabs) or you can't read a chord chart out of a fake book.
If all you want to do is play some songs you hear on the radio, this is great for starters, but if I could do it all over again I'd definitely study more of the basics in terms of even stuff like technique and basic music theory. I can play any song I hear on the radio by ear but when it comes to jazz it's like I'm starting from zero all over again.
On September 17 2012 18:22 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: I think this is a great guide if you want to learn some casual guitar.
If you can get past this step and you want to move on to jazz or classical guitar, though, you'll wish you had learned correctly. I'm having to re-condition myself to think and play as a musician instead of a guitar player after 15 years now that I'm getting heavy into jazz theory.
Do you mind elaborating on that please?
Sure. Learning guitar from tabs is great but you will NOT learn anything about scales and chord theory from looking at a bunch of numbers. I'm close to 15 years in and I'm still struggling with off the top of my head answers to stuff like "what is the fifth of ii" when my jazz teacher asks stuff like that and that's actually really basic chord theory. Learning guitar is completely different from learning piano or many other instruments in that you don't have to know any music theory at all to be able to play competently at a casual level. When you want to make the jump from casual to professional or even just into jazz/classical it becomes a lot harder when you find out you don't know the difference between a dominant seventh and a major seventh (not saying you can't learn that from tabs) or you can't read a chord chart out of a fake book.
If all you want to do is play some songs you hear on the radio, this is great for starters, but if I could do it all over again I'd definitely study more of the basics in terms of even stuff like technique and basic music theory. I can play any song I hear on the radio by ear but when it comes to jazz it's like I'm starting from zero all over again.
ah lack of theory you mean? I'd not mention any of those to scare beginners away so quickly haha
imo they should be taught the theory but maybe after they have learnt the progression it self from a song they like that features it. Learning that kind of theory right at the beginning seems a little dry to me. Of course it will differ from student to student though.
I myself am terrible at that but I certainly can chord-sight-read a fakebook decently because I've memorised the chord shapes after playing for some time haha. I wish my theory was better of course and it would take me hours to slowly count the steps to decipher and figure out the fingering to play some crazy bossa nova songs. (Desafinado chords).
For the most part it just involves counting steps and moving it one step higher or lower if needed.
To explain to everyone else what I mean
eg for a possibly scary chord I'm inventing like Am6/b9 = Aminor plus a 6th and a flattened 9th i.e
Referring to the A minor scale :
1A 2B 3C (flattended because it's a minor chord) 4D 5E 6F <-- include the 6th 7G 8A 9B <-- include the 9th but flatten it
Meaning it's A C E F Bb. One way to play it is
0 E 1 C 3 Bb 3 F 0 A x
OR
1 F 1 C 3 Bb 2 E 0 A x
f course there less straighforward terms like dim, aug etc I just memorised them after playing for so long. Playing the piano would be hard for me because I'll need to count the notes slowly because I'm too used to memorising shapes
Reading chords is not sight reading, sight reading is reading notes and playing them in time with the music and it takes a lot of practice, also I hate tabs as well such an ungainly way to read music just because people don't want to take the time to learn to actually read music, which unlike sight reading is quite easy to learn. However as the majority of guitar music online is in tab form i suppose teaching how to read tabs is a useful topic so good post. 2 5 1 anyone? Long story short this guide is fine if you want to play guitar and just learn by listening but anyone who really wants to learn music should learn basic music theory before messing your head up with tabs. FACE EGBDF spaces and lines very simple that's sheet music.
eg for a possibly scary chord I'm inventing like Am6/b9
ok you aren't inventing a chord not trying to be a dick but don't take credit for something that already exists and has notation for it... Seriously if you want to learn any instrument you will be so much better off if you take the time to learn beginners music theory.
On October 02 2012 03:42 MrF wrote: However as the majority of guitar music online is in tab form i suppose teaching how to read tabs is a useful topic so good post.
Just wanted to mention that since Guitar Pro is so popular, there's a sheet music version of most reasonably popular songs out there... in my experience, it's actually easier to find Pro files, probably since it's so much easier to make the tabs with it.
Tabs are a great way to get you started. Learning how to read a music sheet is almost as hard as learning a new alphabet. It's full of nuances and technical stuff. After a while, sure, why not...but you have to be either really commited to music or a particular mind because it's always easier to start actually playing and doing things practilly than having to learn how to read things you can't even play afterward.
I don't know how to read anything other than tabs. I'm not a professional musician because it's not what i want but i played in front of 300 peoples (yeah well that's not THAT MUCH but still...) some gypsy jazz of my own several times. I'm not a very good musician but i know what i'm doing and i'm not an exception, i don't have a good ear or mind, i'm just feeling the music and i know for a fact a lot of people can do the same and some never learn music. After all, Django himself didn't know how to read music, in fact, most gypsies don't.
That doesn't mean that it's a bad thing to do, if you want to commit as a musician or learn how to play several instruments, you've got to learn the basic theory at the minimum but that's not as important for a beginner as it would be to learn the piano for example.
On September 17 2012 18:22 ZERG_RUSSIAN wrote: I think this is a great guide if you want to learn some casual guitar.
If you can get past this step and you want to move on to jazz or classical guitar, though, you'll wish you had learned correctly. I'm having to re-condition myself to think and play as a musician instead of a guitar player after 15 years now that I'm getting heavy into jazz theory.
Do you mind elaborating on that please?
Sure. Learning guitar from tabs is great but you will NOT learn anything about scales and chord theory from looking at a bunch of numbers. I'm close to 15 years in and I'm still struggling with off the top of my head answers to stuff like "what is the fifth of ii" when my jazz teacher asks stuff like that and that's actually really basic chord theory. Learning guitar is completely different from learning piano or many other instruments in that you don't have to know any music theory at all to be able to play competently at a casual level. When you want to make the jump from casual to professional or even just into jazz/classical it becomes a lot harder when you find out you don't know the difference between a dominant seventh and a major seventh (not saying you can't learn that from tabs) or you can't read a chord chart out of a fake book.
If all you want to do is play some songs you hear on the radio, this is great for starters, but if I could do it all over again I'd definitely study more of the basics in terms of even stuff like technique and basic music theory. I can play any song I hear on the radio by ear but when it comes to jazz it's like I'm starting from zero all over again.
ah lack of theory you mean? I'd not mention any of those to scare beginners away so quickly haha
imo they should be taught the theory but maybe after they have learnt the progression it self from a song they like that features it. Learning that kind of theory right at the beginning seems a little dry to me. Of course it will differ from student to student though.
I myself am terrible at that but I certainly can chord-sight-read a fakebook decently because I've memorised the chord shapes after playing for some time haha. I wish my theory was better of course and it would take me hours to slowly count the steps to decipher and figure out the fingering to play some crazy bossa nova songs. (Desafinado chords).
For the most part it just involves counting steps and moving it one step higher or lower if needed.
eg for a possibly scary chord I'm inventing like Am6/b9 = Aminor plus a 6th and a flattened 9th i.e
Referring to the A minor scale :
1A 2B 3C (flattended because it's a minor chord) 4D 5E 6F <-- include the 6th 7G 8A 9B <-- include the 9th but flatten it
Meaning it's A C E F Bb. One way to play it is
0 E 1 C 3 Bb 3 F 0 A x
OR
1 F 1 C 3 Bb 2 E 0 A x
f course there less straighforward terms like dim, aug etc I just memorised them after playing for so long. Playing the piano would be hard for me because I'll need to count the notes slowly because I'm too used to memorising shapes
That's basically what I'm saying, to play jazz you need to think like a musician, not a casual guitar player, and if you don't start doing that from the start you're going to have to start all over anyway. Of course, 90% of "guitar players" won't ever get to this level because they're totally content looking at tabs to figure out a Jack Johnson song that's got four chords in it and they'll never want to play a song that has anything to do with a jazz fingering.
As you said, there's learning guitar, and there's learning jazz/music.
If 90% of people aren't into jazz, there's actually no reason to teach it right from the get go. If you get into jazz eventually, then you'll have to learn from scratch, yeah. But I don't see a reason you should be regretful for not learning these things earlier - you probably weren't as passionate about jazz as you are now. I thought modes are useless theory when I was 16.
Actually had all the chord names so I don't think 90% can't read chords. If you're talking about jazz then I don't find it surprising that many can't read hard chords because they aren't interested in the first place.
Anyways in my opinion learning to improvise is the most important thing to do after you've got past the beginner stage, and I did it the hard way without knowing about scales and I really enjoy the benefits of it (pure joy!!!) so I really encourage everyone to learn it and it doesn't need to be jazz. Improvise in a major scale for all I care.
The way I learnt was I played songs on the computer and tried to play along it and keep trying. Eventually my hearing started to improve and I find patterns (scales) all the time.
Something more familiar to everyone that's jazz and really good too
On September 15 2012 20:55 Teoita wrote: Whoooops my bad i fucked up the scale. I corrected it now. I'm not really used to writing tabs.
The G and C chord do sound better, but i think when you first start it's easier to use 3 fingers rather than 4, especially when you have to learn how to switch between chords.
Also, i covered changing chords and strumming exercises in a later part that isn't published yet.
Thanks for the feedback though, it was the first time i wrote a guitar playing guide. If you want, i can email you the other 2 articles and you can tell me where to improve them before they are published.
Regarding songs vs pure exercise, what you are saying is true but i feel like starting to play really basic music is a nice motivation boost. Learning how to play properly is a big commitment and, let's face it, starting is boring as hell. If you do nothing but exercises i think you can be less motivated to put in the time and patience, compared to playing some really basic stuff.
I don't disagree about it being boring but I'm coming at this from a tutors point of view, I completely understand why you would advocate learning simple songs but then people like me have to work with students who have terrible habits and teach them the correct way.... grrrrr.
when teaching I always discourage learning pop songs, If you want to learn songs as a beginner you should be learning classical music or be playing pop songs arpeggiated (strings plucked seperately in a pattern) so that you are both getting the motivation and practicing technique ;p
Personally, and most guitar tutors would agree, the use of a plectrum should also be heavily discouraged during the learning process, at least at the very start and until you can play scales and arpeggios with the correct fingers without thinking about it too much. Learning to play finger style is a massive part of learning guitar, if you play for more than about a year with a pick from the start and then try to learn to play with your fingers it makes it 20 times harder. This comes from experience, unfortunately there is a guitar tutor where I live who teaches from the start with a pick, I've had a few of his students come to me after learning with him for over a year and I have to go right back to the start and help them unlearn the bad habits they've picked up.
I would be happy to look over your guides and suggest edits but please don't feel like I'm trying to be an ass or put you down or that you should in any way feel compelled to use my suggestions. I know how much work goes in to one of these guides ( http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?id=165836 ) and you've done an excellent job, it's just that I have nightmares about all the guitar players out there in the world who can't even play a simple arpeggio without a pick cause they never learned how ;p
Btw, if you want to see a good example of how a video should look for teaching guitar, I have a couple on youtube. They are very advanced techniques but I've been working on my teaching techniques for years and the formula I use works no matter how easy or hard the song or exercise is. Break it down in to small parts, focus on one at a time. Then begin to combine. This particular one is in 3 parts http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3adbMlDubUI starting there, really should update that video with HD quality lol
Approaches to learning guitar vary greatly with the different learning types and different goals. I am self-taught--I took a few lessons in about 9th grade, but didn't take anything away from them. I have now been teaching myself guitar (and other instruments) for over 16 years.
I don't think learning with a pick first hurts your ability to learn to play fingerstyle. I started out learning only electric rock for about five years or so. As my tastes changed I shifted to playing more acoustic. Then I started playing fingerstyle. Of course I was garbage at first, but, in my experience, as long as you are trying to learn to play the music that moves you, you never notice the long hours of practice--you just play. Playing with a pick didn't slow me down any in learning fingerstyle--I was just a beginner again, which always means slowing down and sounding bad for a while.
To me the most important skill that beginners overlook is to listen to yourself. I try to get beginners to just strum a chord in rhythm, with their eyes closed and focus on making that sound as good as possible. Too many people get focused on moving their fingers around as fast as they can and never internalize the basics enough to just play unconsciously.
If you focus on making what you play sound good over everything else, your technique will develop naturally. If you focus on technique over everything else (and you don't burn out on guitar and quit) you might find yourself in the position of being able to play anything in the world, but no joy in playing simply and sounding good. You will be able to impress people, but not move them.
That's my two bits anyway.
I agree completely about the most important skill. As an an addenum to it, they should not play with distortion on (if playing electric) as that makes it even worse than just playing fast (since it's even harder to hear your mistakes)
ya since everyone has a phone now recording yourself and listening to how you actually sound like can be really ... humbling lol
On October 03 2012 02:19 JieXian wrote: Actually had all the chord names so I don't think 90% can't read chords. If you're talking about jazz then I don't find it surprising that many can't read hard chords because they aren't interested in the first place.
There's a HUGE difference between a dominant 7th played like a guitar player and a dominant 7th played like a jazz player. Knowing the chords is one thing but you really have to know why you're playing certain notes in a chord and why you're omitting certain ones. This is especially important when you get to polychords which can be different chords based on what you define as your root, and your root can be higher than your bass note if you're playing an inversion so it really, really matters. I'm pretty sure you're at that stage where you think you're doing a lot more on the guitar than you actually are.
Anyways in my opinion learning to improvise is the most important thing to do after you've got past the beginner stage, and I did it the hard way without knowing about scales
That's actually the easy way =/.
The way I learnt was I played songs on the computer and tried to play along it and keep trying. Eventually my hearing started to improve and I find patterns (scales) all the time.
Ehhhh... I get the feeling you're finding the same "pattern" or "scale". Once you know the fretboard up and down you can always solo in major/minor, but can you do it with a dorian? When? It's not something that's intuitive that you can just do by ear because I 100% guarantee that if you're listening to a rock song you're not ever going to "improvise" a dorian mode, and rock has little to no key changes, which makes it retardedly easy to find a root note and go into a minor pentatonic and color it with some scales from the aeolian. Jazz is different in that the jazz scale is chromatic and anything you can play technically works, but the bebop scale is a rhythmic innovation, not a tonal one.
I guess you can say I'm being an elitist but seriously I've been playing for 15 years and I remember when I thought I was hot shit for the reasons you think you're good, and then I played with some musicians and felt really fucking stupid when I couldn't follow them for two songs. If you think you're good at improvising now, get together with some people who play jazz for a living. One, you'll get better at improvising. Two, you'll realize how bad your understanding of music is.
EPT
i'll read the next part when it comes out! 
