Thread: I'm learning guitar...

Any guitarists have tips for someone starting out on guitar? I have musical background already (I'ved played viola since I was nine and I have 2 yrs piano knowledge). Guitar is a lot different than the other two instruments I know. Viola and piano complement each other, but guitar is a whole different ball game it seems.

My son took classical guitar for a couple of years and he started with Aaron Shearer's Volume 1 Classic Guitar Technique. Another idea would be Suzuki, I believe they have a series you can work through too.

I have a viola player! She played violin for three years and then we switched her over to viola.

I can pull out some other books too and see what we have around here.

You might want to start out with tablature very simple music reading for guitar. You also don't kneed to know how to read sheet music to play guitar, many guitar greats NEVER knew how to read music.

ULTIMATE GUITAR TABS ARCHIVE | 300,000+ Guitar Tabs, Bass Tabs, Chords and Guitar Pro Tabs!

WholeNote - The On-Line Guitar Community - with guitar lessons OLGA guitar tab music chords scales and other goodies... is also a very cool website you may want to index. It has a huge collection of guitar tabs that are organized by difficulty and style, but the guitar tabs are not just regular tabs, you can actually hear the guitar tabs being played on this website, so you can learn songs you never heard.

I learned on a steel string .....go classical.

I am impressed by your musical endeavor. May God grant you success and a smooth learning curve. pompoms:

Mel Bay!

Actually, since you are already a musician who obviously can read music, I'd spend some time memorizing where each note is on the neck. You'd be surprised how one difficult chord fingering can be replaced by an easier one. And you can figure out pretty quickly how to play polyphony in two or three parts from music.

I'm self-taught, but I played keyboard instruments, stringed instruments, and brass (plus a little recorder too). The most difficult thing I had with the guitar was learning to relax my left hand, but you being a violist probably already know how important that is.

Of course, the most important thing is finding some sort of systematic approach (be it classical, folk, whatever) and practicing consistently, even if it is only half an hour at a time.

Actually you have quite an advantage...having already played an instrument.

If I could do it all over (I played all of my life but don't now) I'd have:

1.) Learned to read music right off of the bat.
2.) Learned to play as a pianist does...having moving voices, playing chords and lines interspersed to actually make complete music...like a classical guitarist does.

It's also valuable to take a lesson or two to jump start your guitar career; then you can self teach after that....

Just my 02 cents

What is your goal?
Is it to sing some songs and lead others in some songs, in which chording rythym is okay.
A mid-priced electric acoustic is in order. Learn with metal strings.....toughen up the finger tips.
Or are you wanting to launch into a grungy lead line culminating with your guitar flying into the air and exploding over the stage?

I started learning the cello a few years ago after having played the guitar since I was 8 or 9 years old. And I've done some piano, and I do think in some ways the guitar is a lot harder - there doesn't seem to be much symmetry or logic in where your left hand ends up playing. But I do think learning plucking and strumming with your right hand will be easier than mastering bow techniques .

I agree with the advice above - use tablature to learn the chords. And it's worth learning all the notes/basic classical techniques - though it'll kind of be like learning to read music again. I think a few lessons to get basic techniques down and a comprehensive beginner's book on classical guitar (sorry, don't know a lot about what's out there now, I've got one by Christopher Parkening that I like) are also worth starting out with.

Originally Posted by busdriver72

What is your goal?
Is it to sing some songs and lead others in some songs, in which chording rythym is okay.
A mid-priced electric acoustic is in order. Learn with metal strings.....toughen up the finger tips.
Or are you wanting to launch into a grungy lead line culminating with your guitar flying into the air and exploding over the stage?

I just want to be able to lead my family, when we start having kids, in family worship. So just learning strumming and basic technique is my goal right now.

-----Added 9/4/2009 at 02:19:27 EST-----

Originally Posted by rpavich

Actually you have quite an advantage...having already played an instrument.

If I could do it all over (I played all of my life but don't now) I'd have:

1.) Learned to read music right off of the bat.
2.) Learned to play as a pianist does...having moving voices, playing chords and lines interspersed to actually make complete music...like a classical guitarist does.

It's also valuable to take a lesson or two to jump start your guitar career; then you can self teach after that....

Just my 02 cents

Yes I am taking a lesson every two weeks. I've only had 2 so far.

Megan,

I performed on and taught classical guitar throughout college and a few years after that before heading on to seminary studies. Knowing that you already have the discipline of a classical background I would recommend that you find a good teacher (there are a ton of guitar instructors out there, but not a surplus of really good ones) who knows pedagogy, technique, and who will get you started on sight reading and some basic repertoire.

The guitar is a funny instrument, and to play it well requires a skilled and studied approach. If you sit down ten random guitarists of any stripe to evaluate their physical movements, muscle tension, etc, even if some of these are moderately skilled players, I can guarantee you that 8-10 of them will display bad habits that will be holding back their enjoyment and proficiency on the instrument. If, however, you begin with a good teacher, practice your technique, learn to read music and to understand the fretboard, learn a little bit about the repertoire, and become a baseline classical student then everything else will become accessible to you. I can lead family worship, throw in better chord voicings, and not develop major hand cramps in the process exactly because of my classical background.


If you like this instructor, but would still like to learn some good classical basics, I would recommend the following works:

Fredrick Noad's Solo Guitar Playing, books 1 & 2. This will take you through the basics as well as if you had worked through the works by Aaron Schearer, but Noad's works include a lot of good guitar history, better repertoire selections, and a more interesting discussion on technique and the "tricks" of learning to play the fretboard positions. Schearer's works are competent, and have been used by a lot of guitarists, but he was a better instructor in person than he was a writer, and I found his method books to be too dry for my liking.

Charles Duncan's Guitar at Sight. This is a fun and innovative way of learning the to read music on the guitar. It consists of learning the individual strings, individual positions, and then various combinations of these until the whole fretboard is covered. What is interesting about it is that much of the work is done not on the fretboard itself, but in your head! He gets you thinking about the layout of the notes on the fretboard, and you do many of the exercises by visualizing the fretboard in your head, where you hands would be placed, where your fingers would move, etc, all while looking at the notes in the exercise. It is a tremendously well thought out work, and one that I would recommend to every guitarist interested in learning the oddities of sightreading on our instrument.

Scott Tennant's Pumping Nylon (yes, it does indeed have a big, flexed bicep on the cover...). Scott is an amazing guy, and a member of the LA Guitar Quartet, regarding which I would recommend as listening to anyone who loves great music. The repertoire in this work is quite a bit more advanced that what you will find in Noad, but the value for beginners is found in this book's technical exercises. He goes over slurring, shifting, scales, and such in a much more comprehensive manner than even Noad or Schearer, and he does it in a humorous and conversational way, so even though he is a technique monster, he doesn't make the exercises seem very intimidating. He also takes his years of experience as a student and as a performer, and incorporates them into the work with some great discussions on thinking about practice, breathing, and other helpful pointers.


That's probably way more than you were asking to be given, but I wanted to throw it out there for you in the event that you wanted to head a bit more in that direction, but did not have the resources to get there.

Originally Posted by OPC'n

I learned on a steel string .....go classical.

I ditto this completely! IF you go steel be prepared to makecalouses on your fingers.

Heh. If you go nylon prepare to get callouses on your fingers also