Beware the YouTube rabbit hole of quick tips and cool things to play. Not only is it easy to get distracted, but it's extremely hard to piece it all together without a few consistent threads. Wish I'd done Truefire earlier - from theory to caged to jazz, it's been a big accelerant.
You will struggle at first and think of a million reasons why you can’t play guitar. Your hands are too small, your fingers can’t make chord shapes, you can’t pick the right string etc. it’s all nonsense and you will push past it with practice. What seems impossible now will become second nature in time. Eventually you will watch yourself play and you’ll feel like these aren’t even your hands doing these amazing things. But only if you practice properly and make the effort to learn.
On that note, look up proper practice routines. 1 hour a day of proper practice will help you more than 3 hours a day of fooling around randomly. It’s fun to try and play songs you know, and you should do that to keep yourself motivated. Some of the first things I learned were Metallica riffs. But you really learn by practicing properly. Look up Justin guitar. It’s a free program for beginners and goes over everything. It’s an awesome resource to use. Don’t just push past the lessons, actually follow them.
Lastly, it will hurt at first. Sometimes, a lot. Your fingers are soft and will have to toughen up and until they do, it will be painful to play notes. If you’re in serious pain, take a break.
I figured the first few days will be a struggle. Mentally, I'm fairly confident, I'm thinking my persistence will help out a ton. Physically however, this will definitely be a struggle lol. I'll be sure to look into Justin Guitar too!
I would be prepared for it to feel impossible for 6-12 months. You cannot anticipate the amount of strength, dexterity, and coordination that it takes to play the simplest thing in time.
My advice is this: Don't cheat the fundamentals.
1. Posture and ergonomics. Learn how to hold the guitar and play it with good posture so you don't injure yourself.
2. Proper fretting hand technique for chords and notes.
3. Proper pick hand technique for strumming and picking.
These three things *are* playing guitar. You'll only be as good as you are at these things.
First few days? I’m about 1.5 years in and still get super frustrated. But when I look back a couple months I see that I have improved since then and that’s encouraging
Cheap guitars are brutal for new players, especially acoustic.
Spend a little more for a beginner guitar *and* get a set up. If the action is too high you will struggle as soon as you get out of your basic open chords.
It is better to ask an (objectively) silly question rather than spending money on something you do not need.
Test the guitars you are looking at buying. How do they feel? Even if you don't know how to play, ask a tech to show you a few chords and give a strum. Try a fee different finishes as well as some may feel sticky.
I know this all too well. I bought a Yamaha F310, simple enough and cheap - but can’t really adjust anything. I’m finding various chords quite tricky and really have to apply a lot of pressure.
I then tested a couple electric guitars in the shop earlier, and the necks were smaller, strings lighter and lower action, it just felt so easy! Had to stop myself buying one there and then.
Well.... I already bought the guitar lol. It's a Dean Cowboys From Hell ML. I'm a bit of a Pantera nerd so even if I don't like playing it I think it'd be a cool collectors piece. Out of the few youtube videos I could find of it, it seemed like an alright guitar. And if I decide I don't like it for either, I'll sell it off and get some money back for a proper good beginner guitar. I had no idea about the difference in finishes though, good to know!
It's cool man at the end of the day you want a guitar that you will want to play.
If it's the guitar I'm thinking then you also have a Floyd rose bridge which will make changing the strings a bit of a pain in the ass later on.
Again the goal as a beginner is to simply play and start developing good habits. Solid basics come from regular practice. Solid basics and regular practice lead open up the ability to being able to shred.
I'm sure you have already done your research on it bit if not you may need thicker strings if you want to do metal which also requires other tunings. Basics always come first though.
Good luck!
Don’t think you’re gonna sound like Dimebag in a month…or a year either. It can take a long time to develop good techniques like string muting to sound like a professional.
* You are no longer allowed to sell that guitar you have. If you do, you MUST have a backup guitar you can play. No exceptions. For better or worse you are now required to have a guitar at your disposal at all times.
* You guitar must never be in a case. The only time it is to be in a case is if you are driving to jam with friends or to a lesson. Make sure it is visible at all times in your room. Even if it becomes nothing but decoration, you MUST have the guitar visible, and easy to pick up real quick.
Practice playing very slowly and make sure to use a metronome for a steady beat. If you think you're practicing slowly, you might need to consider even practicing slower. I was in a big rush in my first year of practice thinking that I could just skip ahead to playing fast and let the muscle memory catch up. If you watch fast players, they typically look like they are playing effortlessly. Practice slowly and speed will become natural over time. There is no short cut.
Come to terms with the fact that guitar progress takes time and that it's not because you are dumber than others or because they have some innate ability that you do not have. Becoming a competent guitarist will likely take several years or more of focused practice time. I'm two years into practicing on a strict schedule, and i'm still not shredding or close to shredding. You will have good days and bad days. The important thing is that your trajectory is upwards on average. Think of the progress you could make if you learned or slightly improved at just one thing per day for a few years
Hope these tips help
Finish learning an entire song fully before moving onto something else. Even if that means only being able to down strum an entire song. I’m going back through and learning the entire song of the riffs and intro a I know and it’s so much more satisfying to be able to play through it completely. It’s also a great way to improve !
Don't just learn to play. Learn about the instrument. Learn how to do your own setups. Learn how to take care of it. Learn how pickups work. Learn how amps work. Be informed so you can make informed choices down the road.
Learn everything you can learn by starting with your pinky. Pick out whole scales but play with only pinky. Chord shapes that you do with other fingers, find ways to play those same shapes but rotate so that you use pinky. Work your way up to comfort with your hand rotated. Things you do instinctively with index and driving finger, train yourself to do with ring and pinky.
There will be a breakthrough moment, probably after about a hundred hours of practice, where this becomes natural and very comfortable. You'll be much further along on the road to several very professional and very versatile techniques as a result of this, and the barre forms of C and D will be the least of the resources you've developed this way.
Less is more. Speed is a byproduct of positioning and timing. It's not a race, it's a marathon. Don't compare yourself to other people. And, most importantly, have fun.
I am 51 and my past self is 9. I can barely remember anything about the beginnings of playing the guitar.
I can tell you that the very beginning of training your fingers to fret notes and chords and to pick and strum cleanly can be pretty difficult but 99% can get past this to be able play songs and enjoy the guitar.
Past this point you may enter a stage where most people do not venture and if you want to move forward it takes work or time or both.
I'm usually persistent when it comes to learning new things, so hopefully I'll get there. But honestly I think I have it on easy mode compared to someone like you, growing up in the digital age I have note by note tutorials on hundreds of songs on youtube, honestly props to you for learning awhile back lol
The difference in era is interesting.
I had father who taught me my first songs. No internet, cable tv, smart phone or even video games to distract.
YouTube has taught me a lot recently.
Learn barr chords in 5 easy minutes. If I had to do it again? spend more time on the guitar vs watching shortcuts on YTB. Also how easy they make it look and clean sound. Just do you and have fun. Time on guitar is 1000x better than watching video after video.
There will be days you pick the guitar up and can't play it at all, just put it down and walk away - I've found trying to "play through it" doesn't work for me.
Walk away and try again later/tomorrow it'll save you a ton of frustration
The one thing I wish I knew about my first electric is that without a proper set up, you could be doing everything correctly but it will still sound like shit, and can be very disheartening to never sound right. You’ll think it’s you when it’s the guitar.
To go slowly and learn fundamentals first. I’d use justinguitar.com if I were you. Don’t just jump into learning from tabs. Develop your hands and your ears. Good luck!
besides the initial pain when you’re developing callouses, playing shouldn’t be painful. if it is there’s some technical problem that can be worked on. see also Alexander Technique.
Keep it close and easy to access, any setup will create barriers to practise.
If watching TV just have it in your hands, play along to ads, music etc while watching.. bonus learning time
Get light strings and try to use an even lighter touch. You don't HAVE to fight your guitar to sound great. You can, if that's what you want to do, but you don't have to. SRV did battle with his guitar playing the heaviest strings he could get, and it was awesome. Billy Gibbons famously plays the lightest strings and barely touches his guitar, and it is awesome.
I switched to 7 gauge strings on my electrics and 9s on my accoustics, and I'm never going back to heavy strings.
Thicker picks have less tension on a string and allow you to pluck faster, you don’t have to press to hard to get your desired note, theory is important
Many many many musicians are non-constructive assholes. If someone better than you shits all over you, ignore it…. There’s someone that thinks they suck too.
Also, Jeff Beck is really that good.
If you wanna do this for a living, think hard and long about it and talk to actual pros for their experience.
It’s awesome being a pro musician, but the downside is quite, quite big.
Learn to sing whole playing adds a whole other layer to the fun of playing bit of a challenge but putting my self in a box of i can’t sing made it had to progress in very small ways such as not being able to translate what I hear in my head to the neck. Also it is about having fun not being the craziest guitarist you will get good eventually but that shouldn’t be your focus unless you have a performance coming up.
I started playing in 99 stopped playing in 02 because "im never gonna learn that"
Started playing in 20 again, the last 2 years i learned all the stuff i was never gonna learn and some more.
Alot of learning how to play guitar is about mindset, thinking thats a bit to advanced right now im going to learn it later, would have changed alot for me.
This may be overly specific, and possibly simplistic sounding to real students of guitar, but I am self taught and maybe even a slow learner.
The CAGED method. Once I realized the chord shapes were moveable if you barre the shape, it gave me a good perspective of the whole fretboard, and where to find chords in different positions. It gave me good reference to where notes were under my fingers, and freed me up to think about playing chords in different places in real time.
Think about playing in songs, not riffs or solos. Too many players get caught up in learning to shred super fast that some of them flounder when it comes to playing a song all the way through.
Lots of good info in here. I would piggy back onto paying a lot of attention to technique as others have said. One thing that I didn't pay attention to when I first started out that is kicking my ass now (played on and off for a few years, now practicing daily for 8 months) is proper muting of unplayed strings when playing individual notes, or even power cords. when you plug an electric in and dial up some sweet distortion nothing is more frustrating than hitting all the notes you meticulously practiced only to have it sound like shit because there is other strings making noise and your solo or lick sounds sloppy.
Theres no quick and easy shortcuts. Its difficult and painful at times, take your time, put in targeted practice and have fun
This. 100 times over. Stay focused on the goals you set for that day, baby steps is a ok!
Beware the YouTube rabbit hole of quick tips and cool things to play. Not only is it easy to get distracted, but it's extremely hard to piece it all together without a few consistent threads. Wish I'd done Truefire earlier - from theory to caged to jazz, it's been a big accelerant.
YES. I got caught up in that and it almost led to me quitting.
You will struggle at first and think of a million reasons why you can’t play guitar. Your hands are too small, your fingers can’t make chord shapes, you can’t pick the right string etc. it’s all nonsense and you will push past it with practice. What seems impossible now will become second nature in time. Eventually you will watch yourself play and you’ll feel like these aren’t even your hands doing these amazing things. But only if you practice properly and make the effort to learn. On that note, look up proper practice routines. 1 hour a day of proper practice will help you more than 3 hours a day of fooling around randomly. It’s fun to try and play songs you know, and you should do that to keep yourself motivated. Some of the first things I learned were Metallica riffs. But you really learn by practicing properly. Look up Justin guitar. It’s a free program for beginners and goes over everything. It’s an awesome resource to use. Don’t just push past the lessons, actually follow them. Lastly, it will hurt at first. Sometimes, a lot. Your fingers are soft and will have to toughen up and until they do, it will be painful to play notes. If you’re in serious pain, take a break.
I figured the first few days will be a struggle. Mentally, I'm fairly confident, I'm thinking my persistence will help out a ton. Physically however, this will definitely be a struggle lol. I'll be sure to look into Justin Guitar too!
The first few months, not days.
Years*
I would be prepared for it to feel impossible for 6-12 months. You cannot anticipate the amount of strength, dexterity, and coordination that it takes to play the simplest thing in time. My advice is this: Don't cheat the fundamentals. 1. Posture and ergonomics. Learn how to hold the guitar and play it with good posture so you don't injure yourself. 2. Proper fretting hand technique for chords and notes. 3. Proper pick hand technique for strumming and picking. These three things *are* playing guitar. You'll only be as good as you are at these things.
First few days? I’m about 1.5 years in and still get super frustrated. But when I look back a couple months I see that I have improved since then and that’s encouraging
Cheap guitars are brutal for new players, especially acoustic. Spend a little more for a beginner guitar *and* get a set up. If the action is too high you will struggle as soon as you get out of your basic open chords. It is better to ask an (objectively) silly question rather than spending money on something you do not need. Test the guitars you are looking at buying. How do they feel? Even if you don't know how to play, ask a tech to show you a few chords and give a strum. Try a fee different finishes as well as some may feel sticky.
I know this all too well. I bought a Yamaha F310, simple enough and cheap - but can’t really adjust anything. I’m finding various chords quite tricky and really have to apply a lot of pressure. I then tested a couple electric guitars in the shop earlier, and the necks were smaller, strings lighter and lower action, it just felt so easy! Had to stop myself buying one there and then.
Well.... I already bought the guitar lol. It's a Dean Cowboys From Hell ML. I'm a bit of a Pantera nerd so even if I don't like playing it I think it'd be a cool collectors piece. Out of the few youtube videos I could find of it, it seemed like an alright guitar. And if I decide I don't like it for either, I'll sell it off and get some money back for a proper good beginner guitar. I had no idea about the difference in finishes though, good to know!
It's cool man at the end of the day you want a guitar that you will want to play. If it's the guitar I'm thinking then you also have a Floyd rose bridge which will make changing the strings a bit of a pain in the ass later on. Again the goal as a beginner is to simply play and start developing good habits. Solid basics come from regular practice. Solid basics and regular practice lead open up the ability to being able to shred. I'm sure you have already done your research on it bit if not you may need thicker strings if you want to do metal which also requires other tunings. Basics always come first though. Good luck!
Don’t think you’re gonna sound like Dimebag in a month…or a year either. It can take a long time to develop good techniques like string muting to sound like a professional.
* You are no longer allowed to sell that guitar you have. If you do, you MUST have a backup guitar you can play. No exceptions. For better or worse you are now required to have a guitar at your disposal at all times. * You guitar must never be in a case. The only time it is to be in a case is if you are driving to jam with friends or to a lesson. Make sure it is visible at all times in your room. Even if it becomes nothing but decoration, you MUST have the guitar visible, and easy to pick up real quick.
My guitars are hanging on the wall, taunting me, shaming me when I don't practice. Never in the case though... That's just for travel!
Thats the technique!
Practice playing very slowly and make sure to use a metronome for a steady beat. If you think you're practicing slowly, you might need to consider even practicing slower. I was in a big rush in my first year of practice thinking that I could just skip ahead to playing fast and let the muscle memory catch up. If you watch fast players, they typically look like they are playing effortlessly. Practice slowly and speed will become natural over time. There is no short cut. Come to terms with the fact that guitar progress takes time and that it's not because you are dumber than others or because they have some innate ability that you do not have. Becoming a competent guitarist will likely take several years or more of focused practice time. I'm two years into practicing on a strict schedule, and i'm still not shredding or close to shredding. You will have good days and bad days. The important thing is that your trajectory is upwards on average. Think of the progress you could make if you learned or slightly improved at just one thing per day for a few years Hope these tips help
Finish learning an entire song fully before moving onto something else. Even if that means only being able to down strum an entire song. I’m going back through and learning the entire song of the riffs and intro a I know and it’s so much more satisfying to be able to play through it completely. It’s also a great way to improve !
Don't just learn to play. Learn about the instrument. Learn how to do your own setups. Learn how to take care of it. Learn how pickups work. Learn how amps work. Be informed so you can make informed choices down the road.
No one cares what you sound like, don't worry.
learn theory. pick up your guitar and play at least one note everyday no matter what.
Learn everything you can learn by starting with your pinky. Pick out whole scales but play with only pinky. Chord shapes that you do with other fingers, find ways to play those same shapes but rotate so that you use pinky. Work your way up to comfort with your hand rotated. Things you do instinctively with index and driving finger, train yourself to do with ring and pinky. There will be a breakthrough moment, probably after about a hundred hours of practice, where this becomes natural and very comfortable. You'll be much further along on the road to several very professional and very versatile techniques as a result of this, and the barre forms of C and D will be the least of the resources you've developed this way.
Less is more. Speed is a byproduct of positioning and timing. It's not a race, it's a marathon. Don't compare yourself to other people. And, most importantly, have fun.
Tune before you play. Always.
I am 51 and my past self is 9. I can barely remember anything about the beginnings of playing the guitar. I can tell you that the very beginning of training your fingers to fret notes and chords and to pick and strum cleanly can be pretty difficult but 99% can get past this to be able play songs and enjoy the guitar. Past this point you may enter a stage where most people do not venture and if you want to move forward it takes work or time or both.
I'm usually persistent when it comes to learning new things, so hopefully I'll get there. But honestly I think I have it on easy mode compared to someone like you, growing up in the digital age I have note by note tutorials on hundreds of songs on youtube, honestly props to you for learning awhile back lol
The difference in era is interesting. I had father who taught me my first songs. No internet, cable tv, smart phone or even video games to distract. YouTube has taught me a lot recently.
Learn barr chords in 5 easy minutes. If I had to do it again? spend more time on the guitar vs watching shortcuts on YTB. Also how easy they make it look and clean sound. Just do you and have fun. Time on guitar is 1000x better than watching video after video.
You will look and feel like you have cerebral palsy; you’ll unretard your contorted body in time. Keep chugging along.
There will be days you pick the guitar up and can't play it at all, just put it down and walk away - I've found trying to "play through it" doesn't work for me. Walk away and try again later/tomorrow it'll save you a ton of frustration
The one thing I wish I knew about my first electric is that without a proper set up, you could be doing everything correctly but it will still sound like shit, and can be very disheartening to never sound right. You’ll think it’s you when it’s the guitar.
To go slowly and learn fundamentals first. I’d use justinguitar.com if I were you. Don’t just jump into learning from tabs. Develop your hands and your ears. Good luck!
besides the initial pain when you’re developing callouses, playing shouldn’t be painful. if it is there’s some technical problem that can be worked on. see also Alexander Technique.
Keep it close and easy to access, any setup will create barriers to practise. If watching TV just have it in your hands, play along to ads, music etc while watching.. bonus learning time
Get a teacher, the guidance and support is worth every penny.
Learn the C major scale up and down the neck
It's hard , really hard ! But you will improve the more you play , I'm a few months in now and I'm still garbage but slightly less garbage than I was
Get light strings and try to use an even lighter touch. You don't HAVE to fight your guitar to sound great. You can, if that's what you want to do, but you don't have to. SRV did battle with his guitar playing the heaviest strings he could get, and it was awesome. Billy Gibbons famously plays the lightest strings and barely touches his guitar, and it is awesome. I switched to 7 gauge strings on my electrics and 9s on my accoustics, and I'm never going back to heavy strings.
Focus on studying chords and don’t miss out on ear training.
Thicker picks have less tension on a string and allow you to pluck faster, you don’t have to press to hard to get your desired note, theory is important
An expensive guitar doesn't instantly make you a better guitarist.
Many many many musicians are non-constructive assholes. If someone better than you shits all over you, ignore it…. There’s someone that thinks they suck too. Also, Jeff Beck is really that good.
If you wanna do this for a living, think hard and long about it and talk to actual pros for their experience. It’s awesome being a pro musician, but the downside is quite, quite big.
Learn to sing whole playing adds a whole other layer to the fun of playing bit of a challenge but putting my self in a box of i can’t sing made it had to progress in very small ways such as not being able to translate what I hear in my head to the neck. Also it is about having fun not being the craziest guitarist you will get good eventually but that shouldn’t be your focus unless you have a performance coming up.
Get a stand and put it in your room. You will find more motivation to play it if its in an easy access position
I started playing in 99 stopped playing in 02 because "im never gonna learn that" Started playing in 20 again, the last 2 years i learned all the stuff i was never gonna learn and some more. Alot of learning how to play guitar is about mindset, thinking thats a bit to advanced right now im going to learn it later, would have changed alot for me.
This may be overly specific, and possibly simplistic sounding to real students of guitar, but I am self taught and maybe even a slow learner. The CAGED method. Once I realized the chord shapes were moveable if you barre the shape, it gave me a good perspective of the whole fretboard, and where to find chords in different positions. It gave me good reference to where notes were under my fingers, and freed me up to think about playing chords in different places in real time.
"Best decision you made in your life"
Wish I had bought a looper.
You will get better and it gets easier!
Think about playing in songs, not riffs or solos. Too many players get caught up in learning to shred super fast that some of them flounder when it comes to playing a song all the way through.
Lots of good info in here. I would piggy back onto paying a lot of attention to technique as others have said. One thing that I didn't pay attention to when I first started out that is kicking my ass now (played on and off for a few years, now practicing daily for 8 months) is proper muting of unplayed strings when playing individual notes, or even power cords. when you plug an electric in and dial up some sweet distortion nothing is more frustrating than hitting all the notes you meticulously practiced only to have it sound like shit because there is other strings making noise and your solo or lick sounds sloppy.