Beginners Guitar Problems
Discussion
I've just started learning too, despite having had guitars for nearly 30 years I've never actually been able to play them !
I bought a cheap classical and have been having lessons. As a pianist I can already read music and have good hand dexterity, although it's a bit different for the guitar as finger positions are different.
Most confusing though is that the finger numbering, particularly regarding the left hand, is different than a piano.
I bought a cheap classical and have been having lessons. As a pianist I can already read music and have good hand dexterity, although it's a bit different for the guitar as finger positions are different.
Most confusing though is that the finger numbering, particularly regarding the left hand, is different than a piano.
Emanresu said:
FredClogs said:
Try whisky or weed if it's your thing, it will help. If you've got bigger than average fingers then a bigger than average fret board will help.
I can attest to this. I don't smoke anymore, kiddo in the house, but many of my former years were spent smoking weed and playing guitar. It helped me to ignore all the other s
t that was going on in my head and just focus solely on guitar and I feel it really did improve my playing. I was able to play 4-5 hours in the evening with full concentration. I got really into types of music I never would have previously considered before too. Whiskey not so much. It's fun for the first 45 minutes to an hour, playing motley crue and twisted sister riffs pretending you're a rockstar but then things become sloppy. Another downside is that if you get too drunk, you can't remember what you learned the night before anyway. I've tried playing on a few other drugs as well. Speed is fun, you just keep downpicking faster and faster until your left hand can't keep up with your right hand. Ecstasy is weird. Your hand is strumming up and down really fast and there's music but you're wondering where it is coming from. Coke, you play half a song then start playing another song, get half way through and start playing another song. The extra sweat on your hands make the strings rusty faster. Mushrooms, you play for 30 minutes then spend the rest of the night trying to pick pictures of horses off the front of your guitar. HTH
t about fking up and just plough on which in terms of just developing finger strength and learning your way around the fret board helps. I learned most of what I can play now 20 years ago smoking weed, I've learnt frustrating little since stopping, luckily no one has actually written a tune worth learning since about 1998 anyway (probably that Ocean Colour scene one), but if I want to emulate Robert Johnston I have to be at least 1/4 into a decent bottle of scotch, I think it's the warmth and the rocking motion takes me back to a past life on the dusty roads of the Mississippi delta.I've heard heroin provides a certain blanket to the outside world which can help one get to the root of ones self, but I was never that bothered.
Emanresu said:
I can attest to this. I don't smoke anymore, kiddo in the house, but many of my former years were spent smoking weed and playing guitar. It helped me to ignore all the other st that was going on in my head and just focus solely on guitar and I feel it really did improve my playing. I was able to play 4-5 hours in the evening with full concentration. I got really into types of music I never would have previously considered before too. Whiskey not so much. It's fun for the first 45 minutes to an hour, playing motley crue and twisted sister riffs pretending you're a rockstar but then things become sloppy. Another downside is that if you get too drunk, you can't remember what you learned the night before anyway. I've tried playing on a few other drugs as well. Speed is fun, you just keep downpicking faster and faster until your left hand can't keep up with your right hand. Ecstasy is weird. Your hand is strumming up and down really fast and there's music but you're wondering where it is coming from. Coke, you play half a song then start playing another song, get half way through and start playing another song. The extra sweat on your hands make the strings rusty faster. Mushrooms, you play for 30 minutes then spend the rest of the night trying to pick pictures of horses off the front of your guitar.
HTH
Great post - the bit in bold - t that was going on in my head and just focus solely on guitar and I feel it really did improve my playing. I was able to play 4-5 hours in the evening with full concentration. I got really into types of music I never would have previously considered before too. Whiskey not so much. It's fun for the first 45 minutes to an hour, playing motley crue and twisted sister riffs pretending you're a rockstar but then things become sloppy. Another downside is that if you get too drunk, you can't remember what you learned the night before anyway. I've tried playing on a few other drugs as well. Speed is fun, you just keep downpicking faster and faster until your left hand can't keep up with your right hand. Ecstasy is weird. Your hand is strumming up and down really fast and there's music but you're wondering where it is coming from. Coke, you play half a song then start playing another song, get half way through and start playing another song. The extra sweat on your hands make the strings rusty faster. Mushrooms, you play for 30 minutes then spend the rest of the night trying to pick pictures of horses off the front of your guitar. HTH
That wasn't your guitar mate, but I suspect it did gently weep.
vournikas said:
I can't remember specifically how I got to grips (literally) with F barre, but good advice is to bar your index finger across fret 1 without using any other fingers. Keep at it until you can strum all the strings cleanly, then add fingers e.g. once you can cleanly play all the strings when barring across fret 1, add your ring finger to fret 3 on the A string and you've got Fminor7. From there, if you add your middle finger to the second fret of the G string you'll end up with F (dominant) 7. Add your pinky to the third fret of the D string, and there's your Fmaj.
It's worth persevering with, as the above example can then be applied to Gm7 / G7 / Gmaj at fret 3 or Am7 / A7 / Amaj at fret 5 when your "root" note is on the low E. After that, the world is your oyster...........
I'm just getting to F now, I know it's a chord beginners generally struggle with but I've found it fine to play, my main issue is swapping to it quickly.It's worth persevering with, as the above example can then be applied to Gm7 / G7 / Gmaj at fret 3 or Am7 / A7 / Amaj at fret 5 when your "root" note is on the low E. After that, the world is your oyster...........
I'm having another beginner guitar problem at the moment though, I really want to buy a sunburst Telecaster!.
TheExcession said:
Emanresu said:
I can attest to this. I don't smoke anymore, kiddo in the house, but many of my former years were spent smoking weed and playing guitar. It helped me to ignore all the other st that was going on in my head and just focus solely on guitar and I feel it really did improve my playing. I was able to play 4-5 hours in the evening with full concentration. I got really into types of music I never would have previously considered before too. Whiskey not so much. It's fun for the first 45 minutes to an hour, playing motley crue and twisted sister riffs pretending you're a rockstar but then things become sloppy. Another downside is that if you get too drunk, you can't remember what you learned the night before anyway. I've tried playing on a few other drugs as well. Speed is fun, you just keep downpicking faster and faster until your left hand can't keep up with your right hand. Ecstasy is weird. Your hand is strumming up and down really fast and there's music but you're wondering where it is coming from. Coke, you play half a song then start playing another song, get half way through and start playing another song. The extra sweat on your hands make the strings rusty faster. Mushrooms, you play for 30 minutes then spend the rest of the night trying to pick pictures of horses off the front of your guitar.
HTH
Great post - the bit in bold - t that was going on in my head and just focus solely on guitar and I feel it really did improve my playing. I was able to play 4-5 hours in the evening with full concentration. I got really into types of music I never would have previously considered before too. Whiskey not so much. It's fun for the first 45 minutes to an hour, playing motley crue and twisted sister riffs pretending you're a rockstar but then things become sloppy. Another downside is that if you get too drunk, you can't remember what you learned the night before anyway. I've tried playing on a few other drugs as well. Speed is fun, you just keep downpicking faster and faster until your left hand can't keep up with your right hand. Ecstasy is weird. Your hand is strumming up and down really fast and there's music but you're wondering where it is coming from. Coke, you play half a song then start playing another song, get half way through and start playing another song. The extra sweat on your hands make the strings rusty faster. Mushrooms, you play for 30 minutes then spend the rest of the night trying to pick pictures of horses off the front of your guitar. HTH
That wasn't your guitar mate, but I suspect it did gently weep.
vsonix said:
When I was a (late) teenager my mates and I weren't really into clubbing and electronic music etc but we did really enjoy jazz, staying in, doing an E each and jamming. It was actually that which made us get reasonably good. Obviously we were only capitalising on what we'd learned when we were sober but we used to tape what we did and we can still go back and listen to some of it now without cringing.
There was a guy who used to hang around with us, big into electro type music. He had some sort of sampler and scratch mixers and that sort of thing. We would jam on guitar and bass and he would sample bits and do stuff and some of it actually came out ok. Kinda like a cross between prodigy and rammstein. Gassing Station | Music | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff