Trevor Greenfield asked:

tarted to learn guitar is no different to learning anything else. The sooner we can start to sound half-way decent the better. All we want to do is go from that point of knowing little or nothing to becoming very familiar with the subject in the shortest time possible.

People get into playing guitar in lots of different ways and sometimes the way that you are introduced to guitar playing can have a big influence on the style you choose and how successful you become.

So let’s look at some of those processes and maybe give you some useful pointers to assist your guitar playing.

I guess quite a few of us get introduced to playing an instrument at school these days and have a reasonably open choice as to what style of guitar we choose.

Many adults, however, having decided to play end up buying a second hand instrument from a local classified ad without any real understanding of the different types of instrument and whether the one they have chosen is best suited to the style they want to play.

Choosing a guitar

There are many different types of guitar but they basically break down into acoustic or electric.

The Spanish or classical guitar is the oldest type of guitar and is an acoustic instrument. This means that it creates its sound by the vibrations of the string which are amplified inside the hollow body. It has nylon strings and has a smaller body than the other types that we will look at. It also has a much wider neck than the other types of guitar. This has some advantages when you are just starting out in that it makes it easier to play chords without the annoying buzzing or touching the wrong strings that are a real pain at first. The wider neck does also mean that you have to stretch your fingers wider to form the chords which can be difficult for children.

I personally think it is a good idea for everyone to start out on a classical guitar and learn the basics of chords, how to form them, some music theory and how to play melodies with both the fingers and a pick.

However, for those of you that want to play rock guitar with all kinds of electronic effects, starting out with a classical guitar will probably not be very appealing. All I will say here is that if you study the great rock guitar players as I have you will find that almost without exception they started out learning the basics on a classical guitar.

The steel strung guitar is also an acoustic guitar which is generally bigger in the body and has a longer neck. This is the style of guitar that folk singers and country singers tend to use. The strings are closer together making it harder to form clean chords and push down on the neck. When you are starting out you will get very sore fingers playing with these steel strings while the ends of your fingers harden off.

Finally we have the many types of electric guitar which generally have sold bodies and rely almost entirely on the electrification to create the sound which is pushed out through an electric amplifier.

I said that often the type of guitar we choose has an effect on our playing experience and this is true. As a guitar teacher, I often found that a child would come to me for lessons with a classical guitar that his or her parents had bought them and would get discouraged when it didn’t sound like Eric Clapton.

I had to explain that you can only play a certain style on a classical guitar but that learning the basics would set them up for life. Some of them accepted this and worked hard to improve but the majority who were impatient like most of us or didn’t really have a passion for it would quit.

The choice of guitar for you is really down to the style you want to play and the budget you have to spend. I would recommend that when you are starting out, you visit a large guitar store with lots of choice and knowledgeable staff to help you.

In the specialist music stores you will always find that the staff are not only very helpful but that most of them are good players too and will be able to demonstrate what the instrument is capable of in the hands of someone that really can play.

Go along, take your time to try some out and don’t worry that you sound like a beginner. We were all beginners once and the guys in the store won’t laugh at you.

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Ricky Sharples asked:

So you have finally decided to learn to play guitar. Have you decided to learn online or are you going for face to face lessons? Your average guitar teacher will wind up costing you about eighty to one hundred dollars every month. That is just for one lesson per week. On the other hand a nifty set of videos cannot give you personal advice based on the observation of your playing by a seasoned professional guitar player.

A live guitar teacher might offer you the chance to take a free lesson to help you decide whether to commit yourself to a course of lessons. You could sit down with your teacher during your free lesson and tell him how you want to progress with the guitar. He can tell you if your goals are realistic or if you need to rethink your dreams of the future. This will let you get an idea of how committed your teacher is to turning students into guitar players. A good guitar teacher will be listen to your plans for your guitar playing and his teaching methods and advice will be tailored to your specific needs. He can watch you play and see where you are going wrong and what you need to do to fix it.

If you lead a busy life it might not be practical for you to get to a guitar teacher once a week and devote half an hour, an hour or more per day to practicing the guitar as well as performing your professional and family duties. If you are one of these busy people the prospect of saving money on guitar tuition fees and transport fares or fuel costs you might want to think seriously about learning guitar online. If you decide to go for an online course then how do you know which one to choose?
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The internet has archives of guitar tabs, sites containing free lessons, thousands of free videos and countless opportunities for us to watch videos of the best guitarists in the world, past or present, dead or alive. There are many forums with guys who have been playing the guitar for many years waiting for a chance to pass on their expertise and love of guitar playing to beginners. If you save a few of these guitar forums to your bookmarks in your browser you can visit a few every day and copy and paste any advice or tabs that you find useful.

There are guitar lesson websites that have the lessons set out in the correct sequence for a beginner guitar player’s progress. The formulators of these guitar courses are experienced guitar players who have extensive experience teaching the guitar and playing in bands. These online lessons are great for people who need a basic understanding of the guitar, how to hold it and play chords for easy songs. Free online guitar lessons get these people playing the guitar fast.

Here is a great way to make use of free guitar tools and tabs you find on the internet. You could organize your basic tools into groups like tabs, chord charts, songs, scales, articles and tools such as online guitar tuners. You create some folders on your computer for each of these groups so that you can get to your learning material easily during your guitar practice time.

Online guitar lessons also go a long way towards saving your dignity as well as your money. You can work quietly in your own room at any difficulties or misunderstanding about guitar playing without exposing your shortcomings to another person. You can do this at your own pace, seeking more advice from forums to help you with your problems. If you have only a little time to spend on guitar practice online lessons will accommodate you, and if you find that you have some extra time you will always find something new and interesting to learn.

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Peter Edvinsson asked:

A fake book can really help you a lot in developing your improvisational skills. If you choose just one of the songs you will find a source to many exercises that will help you become a much better guitarist.

Do you know what a fake book is?

A fake book is made in a very compact format containing a lot of songs. This is possible because you will usually only find the melody of a song and the chords of a song.

The melody is written out with sheet music notation and maybe guitar tablature and if it is a song you can find the lyrics beneath the melody. The chords to play you will find above the notes.
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Because this is a compact way of writing down songs a fake book can contain more than 500 songs.

This very rudimentary way to write down the songs gives you as a guitarist an opportunity to use your own musical taste when you interpret the songs.

The songs will usually only contain very basic chord progressions. When you hear these songs played the songs are often spiced up with more interesting chords. Often there are also more chords used which will make the chord progressions more interesting and exciting musically.

The act of trying to find more chords to use in a song and to spice up existing chords is an excellent exercise in chord theory. As you are working with a song you are interested in and also will use the exercise in you actual guitar playing you will be more motivated to do a good job.

You can now practice the new chords in the song. Concentrate on one chord at a time. There are many ways to practice a chord by for example playing the chord in various positions and with different voicings.

You can now take the chord practice a step further by using your new chord progressions in the song and practice changing chords. Take a few bars of the song and practice to play the progressions on your guitar as you vary the chord voicings.

When you have decided which chords you will use in a song you can use these chords to find suitable scales to use in your guitar improvisation. You can find many scale books on the net with suggestions on which scale to use for various chord progressions.

We will use the first chord of the song you are working on to show how you can find out which scale to use. If your first chord is a C-major chord you can choose between for example a C-major scale or a C-major pentatonic scale. The principle is to find a scale that contains the notes in the chord.

Now it is time to actually practice playing the scales on your guitar. Start with the first chord in the song and continue the same way with the other chords. First, strum the chord on your guitar and practice playing the suitable scale up and down in various positions and patterns.

Actually it is very common that you can use the same scale to many chords in a song. For example, the C-major scale will work together with the chords C-major, G7, Dm, Am and so on.

Now when you have mastered playing the suitable scales to the chords you can start to work on improving your improvisational skills by taking the previous method a little bit further. Strum a chord and use the scale you have chosen to create your own patterns, melodies and licks.

You are now prepared to improvise over the chord progressions you have written down using the scales you have chosen. The exciting part is when you come to a bar with a new scale to use. If you find it hard to change scale during your improvisation it might be a good idea to concentrate working on this skill for a while.

That means, use two scales and try to alternate between them as you continue to improvise maybe a couple of bars over each scale.

You can use a song in many other ways developing your skills in guitar improvisation. This should of course be a positive exercise leading you towards the goal to be able to play the song from start to end with melody and improvisation as you would like to play it in public.

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timespiral asked:


I’ve been playing guitar for a couple of decades and I’ve developed a pain on the fingertip of my index finger (fretboard hand). It is not the calous stuff. It’s deeper. Seems to be bone or nerve. Any suggestions on how to heal?

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m t asked:


so i have learned the basics of the circle of fifths: the major and minor relative keys, the # of sharps in each key, what those sharps are etc…how can i apply this knowledge to my guitar playing?

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Paul Hxyz asked:


I think I know SOME of what to do, but I am entering a blues guitar playing contest and one of the judging criteria is “stage presence”, which is a very abstract quality if you think about it. I’m interested in how others define it, or what they think it is, or how to improve it, etc. This could include many different aspects of performance, so I’m interested in hearing ANY suggestions, no matter how odd they might seem to somebody else. Thanks to all who answer! BTW: I am an experienced performer, but I really want to see this put into words because the concept really is VERY abstract and I want to do my absolute best EVERY time – thanks again!!!

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Ricky Sharples asked:


Many guitarists are adamant that the only way to learn guitar is by learning to read sheet music. Some even go so far as to say that if all guitar tab was removed from the world the level of guitar playing would be much higher. The main objection to that idea is that many famous guitar players never learnt to read sheet music. Some even have trouble with tab. Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Tommy Emmanuel and Jeff Beck are shining examples. Of course, all these guitarists were following their own idiosyncratic ways of expressing themselves through the guitar rather than learning a broad range of music but there are still those who are thinking of a whole world of music that is closed to people who have not learnt to read notation. What would possibly be raised if tab were eliminated would be the level of communication between guitarists because we would all be speaking the same langusage.

But it is highly unlikely that guitar players who have more of an instinctive approach to the guitar will ever take the trouble to learn theory and standard music notation. At the same time the people who have made the effort to learn to read music will continue to feel that they have a greater understanding  of the guitar and the ability to learn new music faster than guitarists who do not have a background of theory at their fingertips.

You could say that the bottom line is what works for the individual. If you can play guitar but can’t read music, does that make you an inferior guitarist? A weakness with learning from tabs is that timing and rhythm can’t be learnt from tabs but some people write tabs incorporating the elements of sheet music notation that show note values and timing, and this kind of notation is very easy to learn.

There are those guitar players who see sheet music notation as a language that was invented by keyboard players and is not very well suited to the guitar. It should be noted that without learning musical theory as well, learning to read music is just a part of the language of music and is not a great deal more useful than tabs. Also the amount of music theory a guitarist learns is in proportion to his interest in music in general but will not necessarily make him a better guitar player than a guy who doesn’t read music.

It has often been pointed out by guitar players who play in an open or alternate tuning that if you are used to reading and playing music in standard tuning you might find it very difficult to sight read a piece written in an alternate tuning using standard musical notation. If this is true it would suggest that reading standard music is not the key to universal understanding of the guitar.



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sickest DB alivee 29 asked:


I play guitar and I know that smaller picks and bigger picks sound different but thats not what i am asking about. I’m wondering if picks from different companies really make a difference. Some picks cost much more than others but do they really differ from each other that much? For instance if i got a pack of Fender brand picks, and a pack of First Act picks (same thickness and size) would it make a difference in my playing?

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Jimmy asked:


Anyone can play scales, improvise solos, play riffs etc.
But what I want to learn is how to add my own original sound that’s personal to me to my guitar playing. Anyone have any ideas?

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