Playing guitar

[Synth]

So i've been playing guitar for about 2 years now, and I have a $2500 set up. But over the past few days i've realized how much I really really suck. Kinda of depressing.

I've never had any lessons what so ever, and never really knew what i'm doing.

I know there are a lot of players here. So my questions are How did you start? Exercises? Scales? Theory? Your thoughts on covers? Lessons? Styles? Pretty much I want your life story on how you learned.

[LeoDioxide]

I started on the Led Zepplin Stairway to Heaven solo, as any self-respecting guitar player should. I'm a self taught guitarist, who branches into classical. Going the guitar course without a teacher is tough, no doubt about it, but don't let that stop you.

The first thing I did was find some tabs of the songs I liked, and worked them out, pretty painfully, on a fender squire. It sounds like you have a nice set up, I'm working on a 20 year old classical yamaha (worth about $100 on ebay).

The hardest part about guitar is getting your early finger muscles developed, as long as some callouses on your fingertips. You really have to have a passion for the instrument to stick with it. I found my learning curve to plateau pretty much all the time. You'll feel like you're going nowhere, but one day you'll wake up and be 4x better than you were yesterday, strange.

As for exercises, get those boring and lame scales down, because they make improvising so much easier. You can impress your friends by making stuff up on scales spur-of-the-moment. My entire scale practice goes (in numerics): 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1, 1 3 5 8 5 3 1,(triplets) 123 234 345 456 567 678 7898, 876 765 654 543 432 321 2101. That just helps warm you up. Get a couple simple songs down with arpeggios as well.

Music theory is a pain if you ask me, nobody really explains all the simple terminology a complete noob wouldn't know, so I floundered about for a couple months until I picked it up. This forum is a pretty good resource though.

Get a teacher if you can.

As for styles, rock is fun and easy if you want to jam with friends. Power chords (they have a basic shape and sound good on an electric) are quick, dirty, and awesome. I never got into jazz or blues except for a few basslines. Classical is where I ended up falling after a few months, and it's awesome. With classical you get to play both bass and melody, the guitar is the entire orchestra. I've been playing for about 7 months now.

Basically, if you can read music, GREAT! If not, go learn and get some tabs to hold you over. Pick out stuff you like, and work on it. There's a lot of nit-picky stuff about technique you probably know, but I never really let that bother me.

So, thats my music story, and yeah I'm as bad as I sound (bad pun).

[Souliarc]

http://www.zentao.com/guitar/

I have a couple FastTrack instruction books as well.

The first thing I did was look up tabs, and thats it for the longest time, until I figured "Hey, I should UNDERSTAND what I'm playing". Drr.

The first song I learned was Hotel California (pretty common from what I hear). Earlier than that though, me and my bro made a song making fun of my friend playing Final Fantasy all the time (it was basically us arpeggiating D Major). The song was dubbed "CJ is a Loser".

The only real bad habit i've developed is not arching my fingers and pushing my whole palm against the back of the fret board, but other than that, i've done well without a teacher. A teacher would have been GREAT, but meh.

[Synth]

I've been doing the same as on the line of tabs. What has really been discouraging me is I have 4 friends who started roughly around the same time as I did, and they are writing some of the most amazing shit, and playing crazy fast solos. I know speed is the last thing I should be worried about, but after 2 years, i'm thinking why can't I do that?

[Souliarc]

My step-brother started around the same time as me, but now he's way ahead of me. But, he's also practiced 4 or 5 times as much as me (he's also got crazy long filipino fingers...). I'm guessing the same can be attributed to your friends' progress, minus the fingers.

Now that i've got this new guitar though, and the action is REAL friendly, i'm gonna tackle all of the monotonous finger exercises.

[suzumebachi]

I started playing guitar in my freshman year of high school. Basically, a good friend of mine got a guitar for christmas, and started bringing it to school. He would let me play around on it during the lunch break. Over time I got to where I really liked it, so in order to learn more, during my sophomore year in high school I got a guitar of my own (a Rogue ST-3... thing was a piece of shit, but I still learned to use it). The first song I learned was Metallica's Nothing Else Matters. I continued teaching myself for a bit, then in my junior year, I enrolled in a guitar class. Unfortunately, it was a classical guitar class. But the teacher was cool, and let me use my electric guitar. So I learned classical style on an electric guitar. Having already been playing for a little while, I was easily the most advanced guitarist in the class, which really kinda sucked because the teacher had to teach to the other kids which hampered me quite a bit. So while I enjoyed the class (an excuse to show off in front of the girls) I didn't really get much out of it besides some minor stage experience, which has come in handy. Since then, everything else I've learned has either been self taught, or taught by one of my guitarist friends. I joined a band in the middle of my senior year, and I've been playing with them ever since. Playing in a band has done wonders for my chops. I highly recommend getting in a band for those of you serious about guitar. Plus, if you're good and you hustle, you can actually make a living off of it (we get about $300-450 an hour for our gigs).

Also, practice. A lot.

So in summary:

- Get in a band

- Practice

- Practice

- Practice

- Talk to IRL people you know who play guitar. Most people are cool with helping you out. Also jam with them and shit.

- Take classes if you want, but be sure to take one that's at your level and not for people who've never touched a guitar before in their lives.

[SnappleMan]

Or you can be like me and practice Megadeth's Holy Wars till you can play it all at full speed.

[Synth]

Allrighty, thanks guys, I'm taking it all into consideration.

I think another one of my reasons why I'm failing is because I'm not learning full songs, I'll start off with the begining and get bored with it.

Also, I been only learning metal(Vai, Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold etc.). I want to be able to at least be able to pull a bit off in blues, rock, metal, jazz, and classical. But, I'm not sure where to start.

So can you guys name off some blues players, jazz players, and your favorite rock players? And no fast Yngwie Malmsteen shit yet

[SnappleMan]

Try learning stuff from Alex Skolnick, Chris Poland, Alan Holdsworth, Glenn Tipton, Marty Friedman, Tony MacAlpine, Gary Holt, geez, this list will go on forever.

Once you get to a certain level, you'll realise that physics actually work against you. The most advanced lessons I've tried to learn have almost all been about limitation of movement, the less time you waste moving your hands the faster and more accurately you can play. I suggest you check out John Petrucci and Michael Romeo, they're masters at that.

[Kanthos]

For jazz: Check out Pat Metheny, John Scofield, Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian (played mainly with Benny Goodman's orchestra) and Freddy Green (played mainly with Count Basie's orchestra). That'll give you a broad picture of jazz guitar. As for transcriptions and so on, I'm not a guitarist, so you're on your own there. Pat Metheny has released a book containing a lot of his original compositions, but it's more of a piano score; there's no guitar notation in it. If you're a good enough guitarist and want to play Pat's stuff, it's a good place to look, but expect to figure a lot out on your own.

[Synth]

Thanks mucho guys

Now when you guys say practice, what excatly do you mean by that. What should I be practing?

[SnappleMan]

Scales.