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if you ever buy any music books, dont buy books that say "learn how to play guitar."
go to a music store and buy a couple music theory books and sheet music.
dont try to go to barnes and noble because they lack any decent music books.
if you just want to play for yourself, learn how to play the blues, but that's my preference, i can't really play anything by myself unless it's the blues.
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Hyrule18923 Posts
Blues are a really good place to start, as rock and metal are both descendants (and I guess so are jazz and grunge, but who cares about grunge?).
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It depends on what type of music you want to play.. If you just wanna play something and sing along, I'd suggest piano.. Its much more versatile..
Of course, if the stuff you like to sing/play to is folk music, stuff written for guitar like those old classic songs, American Pie, etc.. then thats where guitar would be beneficial..
I played guitar for 6+ years but recently learning saxophone now, its more into what I want to do. But guitar and Piano are the two instruments that are easiest to learn, but hardest to master. You can play basic stuff in afew weeks, but to be really good, it takes like 5+ years of heavy training. Its rough =[
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guitars good for SC players because of the high apm required...
Coming from a piano player though
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Guitar and piano play pretty different music for the most part. It was actually this difference that made me want to stop playing piano and pick up guitar.
As for getting a teacher or not, I blogged about it a long time ago and the response I got was mostly "yes", so I say go for it.
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having a teacher and learning the musical theory will be the things that will get you the furtherst. playing guitar isnt just about strumming a few chords and stuff but alot more technicality and rhythmic playing.
but of course you can just start out with a decent amp. i'd suggest that you go to a store and get a guitar instead of getting it online. usually in stores you have deals like maybe an acoustic electric guitar with an amp for a better price and you can ask the shop guys what is decent and what's not.
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On November 04 2010 05:27 King K. Rool wrote: Guitar is one of the easiest instruments to get started on and not sound like an idiot. As long as you have some semblance of finger control you can learn to play some chords.
Don't know about that guitar though. I only have classical + electric guitars.
I kind of disagree with it being the easiest to play, i have to give that to the keyboard.. and i don't mean your typing keyboard. Still, it is not that hard, just learn some chords and learn to play them in different ways and you can make some good sound.
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I would say guitar has varying degress of difficulty - for example, in graphical form, if you have time on the x axis and difficulty on the y-axis, then guitar difficulty (for awhile) resembles a sin graph with a y intercept of 1. It starts out difficult getting the callous on your fingers built up, getting coordination of your fingers down, and getting used to strumming and picking. However, after this initial hump - you'll find yourself with tons of options of songs and stuff to learn, and it becomes super super fun.
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classical guitar sounds very nice
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The majority of people who get a guitar never learn how to play it, they just give up after a week or so. I'm very self motivated so teaching myself was the best way to learn guitar, and with the internet you really don't need a teacher unless that's something you really want.
It's really important to note that guitar is one of the more difficult instruments to learn, I don't know why people are saying the opposite. You have to coordinate both your hands to do different things while trying to build up stamina and finger strength, something you don't really have to worry about with a concert instrument or piano(piano being the easiest instrument to get started with). There are dozens and dozens of different techniques to learn(muting, rhythm patterns, pinch harmonics, natural harmonics etc.). Your easily going to spend your first couple of months fumbling with chords and learning how to pick correctly, but slowly it will all fall into place if you can keep up with it for about a year.
I personally would ignore anyone who tries shoving theory in your face from the get go, that stuff will all fall into place eventually.
This of course is all just my experience, I've been playing for.....god like 5 years now, I can't even remember when playing guitar didn't just seem like a natural extension of myself.
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On November 04 2010 08:09 Skyze wrote: I played guitar for 6+ years but recently learning saxophone now, its more into what I want to do. But guitar and Piano are the two instruments that are easiest to learn, but hardest to master. You can play basic stuff in afew weeks, but to be really good, it takes like 5+ years of heavy training. Its rough =[ Piano imo is quite literally the easiest instrument to pick up however it is also the hardest instrument i have ever tried to become skilled with...Guitar and Bass are rather easy in comparison, My main instrument is the Alto Sax and that was harder to pick up and like guitar the ways to improve are subtle after a point so its not really 5+ years of training its more the ability to figure out what you need to do to improve for Guitar and Sax. Trumpet is another good instrument that i play and that goes into the scale as hardest to pick up and a challenge to improve but ive never been confused by how to improve when dealing with it (might be the fact that it is my 5th simultaneous instrument making it so that ive already figured out a lot of it but its been pretty straightforward)
I say go for it and heres how to learn... 1.get a teacher (not necessary but helps) 2.practice multiple scale patterns daily and add more on as you go 3.practice these scales by just messing around and having fun with them...this step is most fun imo 4.practice multiple chords (mainly jazz chords...those can be a pain if your out of practice learning them) 5.pick your favorite songs and learn them 6.write music (#3 is helpful here) 7. HAVE FUN Enjoy playing GL HF GG ^.^
Im a bit biased here but Music is perhaps the greatest thing that has ever happened to humanity...im not talking about modern "lets copy some1 who copied some1 else" BS im talking about legitimate music, where its the composer or performer leading you on a journey with his/her music of almost any style...2nd greatest being SC:BW lol
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On November 04 2010 09:32 Coolzx wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2010 05:27 King K. Rool wrote: Guitar is one of the easiest instruments to get started on and not sound like an idiot. As long as you have some semblance of finger control you can learn to play some chords.
Don't know about that guitar though. I only have classical + electric guitars. I kind of disagree with it being the easiest to play, i have to give that to the keyboard.. and i don't mean your typing keyboard. Still, it is not that hard, just learn some chords and learn to play them in different ways and you can make some good sound. play classical music on piano parts xD sooo hard
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On November 04 2010 10:00 howerpower wrote: The majority of people who get a guitar never learn how to play it, they just give up after a week or so. I'm very self motivated so teaching myself was the best way to learn guitar, and with the internet you really don't need a teacher unless that's something you really want.
It's really important to note that guitar is one of the more difficult instruments to learn, I don't know why people are saying the opposite. You have to coordinate both your hands to do different things while trying to build up stamina and finger strength, something you don't really have to worry about with a concert instrument or piano(piano being the easiest instrument to get started with). There are dozens and dozens of different techniques to learn(muting, rhythm patterns, pinch harmonics, natural harmonics etc.). Your easily going to spend your first couple of months fumbling with chords and learning how to pick correctly, but slowly it will all fall into place if you can keep up with it for about a year.
I personally would ignore anyone who tries shoving theory in your face from the get go, that stuff will all fall into place eventually.
This of course is all just my experience, I've been playing for.....god like 5 years now, I can't even remember when playing guitar didn't just seem like a natural extension of myself.
Guitar is much easier than other instruments that require an embrochure (brass/woodwind), but of course its later on with all those techniques you mentioned, where guitar gets hard. Coordinating both hands and developing finger strength/etc is required with any instrument (maybe less so on piano, but still required)
I say Guitar and piano are the easiest to start on, because within afew days you can be playing chords and stuff.. But to get to the masterful levels of either (lets say, Shred or jazz improvising guitar, or classical piano like Chopin) takes insane amounts of dedication/years of hard practicing. An instrument like the Saxophone (which ive been learning this past year) is hard to get it to feel "natural" and smooth (ie not sound like a total beginner) but once that happens, the rest is pretty easy to fall into place, especially being a melody instrument... Guitar and Piano are the two main "harmony" instruments, which is what makes it much harder to digest, understanding all the millions of chord inversions.
As a professional musician/teacher myself, I believe Theory is very important, especially if you just want to learn chords and play afew songs, because with basic theory like understanding your harmonized scale, you understand how to write a simple chord progression in any key (or dissect any song and see how/why they made it sound that way), which is something I can teach a student in less than 2 weeks. Of course, the hard part is getting the important aspects of theory understood, because most teachers just say "Ok learn this stuff" and dont explain why its important.
I'd say get a teacher, but make sure its a good one. If you dont feel you are learning anything of use within 2-3 weeks, maybe look for a new one.. I always make sure I teach my students towards what THEY want to do, not teaching them all the other random junk (and theres millions of things to learn in music) unless its necessary/beneficial to their progress.
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I believe getting a teacher is mostly unnecessary, might be helpful at first, but i strongly recommend teaching yourself using tabs and playing by ear, you will get much more motivation to keep playing that way (at least it did for me). Also the Yamaha pacifica (something like that, dont remember exact name) is a pretty decent entry level guitar,once u learn basic cords and strumming patterns, u can start learning some beginner songs, mostly just 3-4 cord songs, just to get the basics down.
Once you can do those decently, u can use basic tabs to play some more complex songs random YouTube videos/guides have helped me out a lot personally and are great for starting out imo. but It will still take time and effort, dont expect to go in and be able to be super amazing at it in 2 weeks.
Also some good intermediate level guitars are schecters (diamond series) and the LTD deluxe models (both are really great value). I would recommend staying away from anything fender or gibson, both of them are horrible value and the lower end of their guitars (read: anything below 2k) dont really perform anywhere near reasonable for their price point. Also any basic amp will do when u start out, wouldnt worry about that too much.
oh, and good website for tabs: ultimate-guitar.com
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Mucking around with tabs instead of learning theory is the reason so many people look down on guitar players as people who don't know anything about music, to be honest. It's tempting to just go on the internet and screw around with your favourite songs but it doesn't really lead anywhere. You'll get to the point where you realize that you're learning and forgetting a song every week because you don't really understand the content of what you're learning.
It's funny that someone was saying that guitar is hard because you need to use two hands. Piano requires you to use your feet! It might take a while for you to build up a tolerance to hand cramps and such but that comes with the territory. Learning to play harmonica is exhausting too.
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the acoustic guitar is the best guitar to start learning from. GL and if you need help TL will be there for you !
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True that. Theory is so important. Unless you want to just play those pop songs (which you very well could), you most likely won't get too far without some good theory [with a good teacher] unless you're Tommy Emmanuel. You may be able to learn by yourself, but you'll learn many times faster with a teacher.
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On November 04 2010 11:26 McDonalds wrote: Mucking around with tabs instead of learning theory is the reason so many people look down on guitar players as people who don't know anything about music, to be honest. It's tempting to just go on the internet and screw around with your favourite songs but it doesn't really lead anywhere. You'll get to the point where you realize that you're learning and forgetting a song every week because you don't really understand the content of what you're learning.
It's funny that someone was saying that guitar is hard because you need to use two hands. Piano requires you to use your feet! It might take a while for you to build up a tolerance to hand cramps and such but that comes with the territory. Learning to play harmonica is exhausting too.
I use my feet constantly when im playing guitar "wah peddle" "pitch shifter"
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On November 04 2010 11:14 One wrote:
Also some good intermediate level guitars are schecters (diamond series) and the LTD deluxe models (both are really great value). I would recommend staying away from anything schetcter or gibson, both of them are horrible value and the lower end of their guitars (read: anything below 2k) dont really perform anywhere near reasonable for their price point. Also any basic amp will do when u start out, wouldnt worry about that too much.
oh, and good website for tabs: ultimate-guitar.com
Umm.. LTD and Schecter are the same company (made in the same factory).. so how is one of them great value and one of them horrible value, if they are essentially the same guitar with a differnet name on it lol.. The custom made Schecters (ie $2000+) are some of the best guitars you can get for the money.
I'll disagree with all of that. If you want a solid guitar for a great price, the best is finding a used Carvin. They are made in the USA, they are comparible to the $2000+ guitars easily, and you can find them used for around $500 on craigslist/etc.
For brand new at a great price, theres a company called Rondo music, who makes very good value guitars in the $150-500 range.. Their guitar brands are Douglas (the lower end) and Agile (upper end).. and they are very solid. If you can afford $350 or so, an Agile AL is very very good quality, as good as the $1000 epiphone/gibsons (just not paying for the brand name)
www.rondomusic.net
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On November 04 2010 11:59 Skyze wrote:Show nested quote +On November 04 2010 11:14 One wrote:
Also some good intermediate level guitars are schecters (diamond series) and the LTD deluxe models (both are really great value). I would recommend staying away from anything schetcter or gibson, both of them are horrible value and the lower end of their guitars (read: anything below 2k) dont really perform anywhere near reasonable for their price point. Also any basic amp will do when u start out, wouldnt worry about that too much.
oh, and good website for tabs: ultimate-guitar.com Umm.. LTD and Schecter are the same company (made in the same factory).. so how is one of them great value and one of them horrible value, if they are essentially the same guitar with a differnet name on it lol.. The custom made Schecters (ie $2000+) are some of the best guitars you can get for the money. I'll disagree with all of that. If you want a solid guitar for a great price, the best is finding a used Carvin. They are made in the USA, they are comparible to the $2000+ guitars easily, and you can find them used for around $500 on craigslist/etc. For brand new at a great price, theres a company called Rondo music, who makes very good value guitars in the $150-500 range.. Their guitar brands are Douglas (the lower end) and Agile (upper end).. and they are very solid. If you can afford $350 or so, an Agile AL is very very good quality, as good as the $1000 epiphone/gibsons (just not paying for the brand name) www.rondomusic.net
i accidently wrote schecter instead of fender >.<, my bad, will edit my post. and to the person a couple posts above me, yeah i think learning more music theory would have been very helpful for me, he might lose motivation if he starts getting into too much music theory early on though, especially if he is just playing for fun.
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