Topic: Playing Guitar

[jrlibrarian]

Hey guys,
 
I've just recently decided to finally pick up my guitar that I've had for a few years and teach myself how to play. I'm working on learning Pink Floyd and Beatles music, among other things. Anyone else here play guitar, and if so, what do you like to play?

[Morari]

I mostly play psychedelic rock and older hard rock/metal. If it had been released after the end of the 70s, it's usually not of interest to me.

[BranDonk Kong]

I've been playing guitar for about 15 years (wow, I can't believe I just typed that, **** I'm old). I try to play a little bit of everything (or at least what I consider "everything" and try to come up with my own material, but for some reason I always end up playing Metallica songs or sometimes Weezer. I guess it's because that's what I listened to when I started playing, and the first song I ever learned (of my choosing) was Enter Sandman.

[Nemo]

I started playing a few years ago. I play most weeks at church. Besides worship music, I enjoy playing They Might Be Giants, Beatles, and whatever other rock songs I like.

Many Beatles songs have simple chords. Start with what's simple and gradually work your way into the harder stuff. It's fun.

[jrlibrarian]

I started playing a few years ago. I play most weeks at church. Besides worship music, I enjoy playing They Might Be Giants, Beatles, and whatever other rock songs I like.

Many Beatles songs have simple chords. Start with what's simple and gradually work your way into the harder stuff. It's fun.

That's what I'm planning to do. I did a library tab book run yesterday, so I'm teaching myself Here Comes the Sun and In the Flesh? right now. Only problem for the latter one is that it would sound way better on an electric. Due to my lack of funds at the moment and my not having a real job as I'm only 16  , I can't really go out and justify that big of a purchase right now. I might be able to borrow my friend's once he gets the Rock Band 3 Squier. *shrugs* Or I could just wait for that to crash in price and get it myself.

[Ian Sane]

I play guitar in the band mentioned in my signature.  I like to use a lot of guitar effects - chorus, flange, phaser, etc.  I just got a Line 6 Pod X3 a few weeks ago and it just comes with a gazillion different sounds.  It's really cool and totally fits what I like to do.

I played other people's songs back when I was learning but these days I'm more interested in songwriting so I spend more time just fiddling around with chord progessions and riffs.

For someone starting out one song I recommend you learn is Sultans of Swing.  It's a huge bar chord workout which will kill your hands at first.  But that's the idea.  I find that bar chords are something that beginners usually find difficult.  This song is a good way to get them down cold.  It was a weakness of mine as a player but now its one of my strengths.

[jrlibrarian]

For someone starting out one song I recommend you learn is Sultans of Swing.  It's a huge bar chord workout which will kill your hands at first.  But that's the idea.  I find that bar chords are something that beginners usually find difficult.  This song is a good way to get them down cold. 

Thanks for the recommendation. I'll look up the sheet music/tabs for that soon.

[Morari]

For someone starting out one song I recommend you learn is Sultans of Swing.

What ever happened toStairway to Heaven?

[ThePerm]

thats one of those things I wish i took in college. I've had a guitar, but teaching myself isn't working out. I've been trying to teach myself some radiohead on the piano, but again...teaching myself isn't working out.

[Morari]

Taking a college course would just ensure that you sound like everyone else. Art is as much a journey as it is an experience. If you're really serious about it and stick with it, you'll see results.

[EasyCure]

You know, I'm glad this topic came up..

I started teaching myself to play guitar 10 years ago (hehe.. not as old as brandogg sucker..) and a few years ago I gave up, sadly.

Scratch that, I don't want to say I gave up; I ran out of people to jam with and basically had a mental block. I swear, it got to the point that any time I touched my guitar I'd start playing some familiar chords to familiar songs, get pissed I couldn't come up with anything on my own and wanna smash the fucking thing. It was pretty bad actually.

In high school, I used to chill in my bed, only the light from my fender amp lighting the room and literally play myself to sleep. I'd record myself playing around with different notes and chords until I actually fell asleep, either waking up the next day or in the middle of the night when the sound of my guitar crashing to the floor would startle me. The next day I'd listen to whatever it was I had recorded, pick out what I liked and build on it from there. I surprised myself at some of the stuff I came up with, even more surprised was my friend Joe who got his guitar at the same time as I did (I tried talking him into getting a bass, but nooooo). He always was the faster learner, and while he could copy copy Metallica solo's before I ever could, he never could come up with his own material while I had something new every time we played.

I think what ended up happening was I got burnt out on playing with other people and pressured myself to do it all on my own. First I played with people that wanted to just practice covers "until we're good enough to come up with something ourselves" which while fun, I felt stifled my creativity. Soon after, I played with people that wanted to go for one specific sound, which I would have been okay with if it wasn't linkin fucking park they wanted to emulate; sorry, not my style. That ended well, with me leaving "the band" and being replaced by the guy I just spent teaching guitar to for three months. He was good enough to play drop-D power chords


The last guy I jammed with was cool because we only ever played original material that we worked out, but he too had a specific direction I wasn't willing to follow. The most fun I had was when we'd just sit and jam in his living room without an idea in mind, just feeding off each others playing. I had one pretty decent recording of an incomplete song we wrote but unfortunately that file was only ever saved to an old mp3 player and vanished, i'd love to share it with you guys. I actually linked to that guys myspace once, in the "original song composition" thread, but the version he put up was re-recorded by himself after I split on him, and he made it sound like an emo song. Originally it was a really mellow tune; he played these three simple chords, clean, in a slow rhythm while I had a slightly distorted melody. It started off with two notes, played drawn out one after the other, and i slowly built on it until I got this really soothing melody. It always reminded me of a really chill song you could listen to on the beach..

That was like in 2006 though :/ I don't even have an amp right now, which sucks because I'm trying to get back into the guitar playing and the sound of a dead electric isn't the most inspiring. Before my mental block I was experimenting with different effects and making these cool layered sounds, but right now I'd be happy with a tiny practice amp with some decent gain.

After this post, I realize I should really got on that.. Thanks thread! (Anyone recommend a good amp?)

[Ian Sane]

For those trying to teach yourself my friend and bandmate did it.  He was originally a piano player and when we formed the band the idea was that I would play guitar and he would play keyboards.  But he was interested in my guitar and had me show him the basic chords and such.  A mutual friend of ours then showed us stuff he had written on the keyboard and we felt it was so good we had to add him to the band.  That left us with two keyboardists, which is a little unnecessary, but that just encouraged my friend to concentrate more on guitar to play rhythm to my lead.  He taught himself pretty good.

But here's the thing.  He was always a pretty rough player.  There was just a certain sloppiness to it all.  Later he took some lessons, only for a little while, and his playing improved dramatically.  It's smooth and solid now.  You can teach yourself but having someone with more experience mentor you can help a lot.  The thing is to get the right teacher.  My guitar teacher encouraged me to experiment and be creative and always taught me rock songs instead of bullshit like Yankee Doodle and Frere Jacques.  He taught me how to have fun which is the most important thing.  My bandmates all took piano lessons at the Royal Conservatory and, while great piano players, didn't even think of writing songs or rocking out until they met me.  The one exception is my brother the bass player who, surprise, had the same guitar teacher as me.

[Guitar Smasher]

My only advice is to practice as frequently as possible.  In my opinion, it's much more important than getting a proper teacher.

[ThePerm]

yeah, that would be the only reason to take a college course. Someone with more skills to teach me. You can teach yourself psychology, physics, math, possibly languages if your really smart, but most arts I think you have a better chance learning from some master. I took Art Art course all throughout college and most of the philosophy was teach yourself, but in all honesty that fucking blows. I can't believe I stayed in school for so long, acquired so little skills, and payed that amount of money just for a worthless piece of paper. I tell my friends don't bother with today's cookie cutter college. Its very easy to get caught up in all the drama of trying to get good grades and getting credits. Very easy to get myopic. Very easy to become a zombie. On the other hand I had a pretty good experience with community college where it seems teachers are more focused on giving you skills then bullshitting with your time.

[Morari]

You can teach yourself psychology, physics, math, possibly languages if your really smart, but most arts I think you have a better chance learning from some master.

I disagree entirely. Art is the one thing you absolute cannot be taught. You either have it or you don't. You can be instructed in the skills to create art (playing specific cords, using certain brush strokes, etc), but the art itself comes down to your natural talent. Of course, I would argue against college in general, and much for the same reasons you describe. College isn't set up to really teach you anything, it's there for social conditioning. You don't come away with knowledge, you come away with a piece of paper. That piece of paper says nothing for your skills, it merely implies that you've been stuffed into society's mold... you've wasted time and money doing what you were "supposed" to do.

[TJ Spyke]

Morari, why do you have an anti-establishment view all the time? Typically the only people who think about college the way you do are those who never went to college or flunked out.

[Morari]

TJ, why do you have a pro-establishment view all the time? Typically the only people who think about college the way you do are those who are in debt for the rest of their lives, with nothing more to show for it than a meaningless piece of paper.

[TJ Spyke]

Stop being antagonistic just for the hell of it, you don't know how that makes you look.

How about the fact that the average person with a college degree makes more money than those who don't.

[Morari]

I've never been much for average people...

[BranDonk Kong]

I agree 100% that you can't teach "art." You can teach someone to interpret things and how to draw or play a guitar, but you can't teach talent or creativity.

[ThePerm]

im not so concerned about learning "art" as learning technique. I had 2 painting classes where the instructors didn't teach us ****. They acted more like baby sitters just there to give you grades and make sure to take attendance. I learned a lot of things on my own, but watch a Bob Ross video. He gets a lot of **** for his really generic art, but thats technique. I learned the most from watching other students. Before that I had a really good drawing class at a community college, and the teacher taught us something new all the time. For music though learning chords and stuff can be mind boggling for some. Sometimes you got to be taught how to crawl before you figure out how to run.

[Morari]

I always loved Bob Ross. Sure, his paintings were typically generic landscapes, but his technique worked. He caught a lot of flak for even that... his customized brushes and shortcuts were often cited as cheating by your classically trained "artists". Besides, how could you dislike a guy as pleasant as that, with a fro like that?

[BranDonk Kong]

Bob Ross was the fucking man. I don't mean to hate on anyone who wants to take an art class or anything like that - it shows an appreciation and other good things that I'm too tired to think of. Sometimes you need some instruction in order to be able to visualize what it is you're thinking of, but I think once you learn the basics of any art form, the rest has to come from within you.

Led Zeppelin ripped off every riff they ever used, btw. You can find some comparisons all over the internet that show how they (and other bands like the Rolling Stones) blatantly stole their music from other lesser-known musicians who didn't have their songs copyrighted.

[ThePerm]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I

[BranDonk Kong]

Seen it before, but it's 100% true.