How did you learn guitar?

blobb

I just bought a guitar, 30yrs ago, and started playing it. Still playing it now.

menamestom

Philly_Q said:

menamestom said:

I started twenty odd years ago by learning the minor pentatonic scale.  Which concludes the story and brings us up to the present date.

Beautifully put.

Thanks.  I can play modes too.  Pentatonic rock mode, pentatonic blues mode or just plain old pentatonic bit sad mode.  I'm pretty good with modes but I don't like to show off, because a lot of players just don't get modes

57Deluxe

@AllthegearNoidea  - assuming you are able to tune your guitar properly (seriously), then first thing is to not worry about playing songs or grappling with loads of chords that make no sense - just twang a few notes and listen to the sound that emerges. Listen to where you put your fingers that sounds good and maybe where it sounds good again and note the interval between. Strike a couple of strings and see where any harmonics occur and just riff around those.

A pattern of simple loops of riffs will start to emerge. Enjoy both the sound and feel of creating these.

Any guitarist is valid; how you want to express yourself is what ultimately determines what your are able to play.

Just look at how Depeche Mode's Martin Gore has consistently flirted with his Gretsch's over the years and he still plays like he has just learned the instrument! He's worth $60millions...!

Blueingreen

I was about 17 and sharing a bedroom with my slightly younger brother.  He bought Led Zepp 1, didn't like it, and a guy at school offered to swap him a crappy old acoustic guitar for it.

He never really showed much interest in the guitar.  It was lying around our bedroom and I started picking it up and mucking around with it and ended up buying a couple of "how to play folk blues guitar" type books and learned some chords.  But I was really an electric blues fan at the time, and the real take off point was when I figured out that using a minor pentatonic I could play along with so many of my records.  From there it went slightly better acoustic, first electric and so on.

antifash

I went down to the crossroads. Fell down on my knees. 

underdog

antifash said:

I went down to the crossroads. Fell down on my knees. 

You blew the devil? I'd have gone for selling my soul option personally but each to their own man.

Sassafras

Bert Weedon taught me everything I know through his book 'Play in a Day'.
I can play 'She'll be Coming Round the Mountain' in any style you care to mention.

longi

Back in '83 I had a friend who wanted to learn to play, his mum knew a guitarist who played the music of Shadows. He taught us over the summer holidays to play some basic chords etc. It wasn't until I started working and could afford to pay for professional lessons for 2 years that I really got it together. I then had a complete break from the guitar for 12 years before I started playing again.(2006). I had to reteach myself. I could remember some of the chords and 1 position of the Ionian mode. (I was never a user of the Pentatonic, dunno why.)

I now have a reasonable grasp of theory again and no time to play! Oh well....

TTBZ

I bought a song/chord book along with my first guitar and learned all the basic chords and played along to the songs in there. Then just learnt songs off tabs for a bit then took lessons for a good few years. Tbh I wish I'd went with a better teacher as he didn't really push me to learn any theory or anything like that - though we did spend most of our lessons figuring out songs I wanted to play and learning to play them together. So I guess that would have helped my ear quite a bit, but my technical knowledge and skills are kinda limited. 

There are so many youtube lessons available now, I'd just start there and see how it goes. Sean Daniel does some nice easy to follow lessons. Some people offer Skype lessons as well. Oh and www.justinguitar.com is worth a look

proggy

I started out as a bass player back in the 80's and had lessons with a professional bassist, Joe Hubbard of Gary Numan and Elkie Brooks fame, he pretty much taught me all I know (bass wise). After the last band I was in broke up, around the early 90's, I decided I'd had enough of being in bands and found myself not picking up my bass anymore, I'd totally given up playing. About 6 years on I was walking down Denmark Street one day and saw this sunburst Tele in the window of Rockers and I just had to have it, so I went in and bought it. When I got home, plugged it into a bass combo, realised I didn't have a clue what the fifth and sixth string were all about so I went back up to Denmark Street, bought a couple of tuition books and have never looked back since. I've never had a guitar lesson but I didn't learn from scratch, I had a lot of knowledge of the fretboard and scale theory from my bass playing days.

Flanging_Fred

I got my first electric guitar as a Christmas present. My brother bought me a Solo classical guitar book by Ron Noad and the complete tab of Satriaini's Surfing with the Alien to go with it.

Not entirely helpful for beginning the electric guitar and might well explain a few things...

Grumpyrocker

In 1989 I got a book that was just strumming easy chords  to famous songs. It was frustrating because they weren't necessarily in the right key and so I couldn't play along with the records. But I persevered. Went don't a few dead ends - such as spending months fingering the open E chord the wrong way.

I had an Epiphone superstrat. But no amp for the first couple of years. I plugged the guitar into my boombox and if I wanted distortion just turned it up.  I knew nothing and that probably slowed down my learning.

But things got better when I bought a Led Zeppelin tab book. It was mostly inaccurate, but it got me started on lead and riffs.  But the big change was when I realised that I could play the notes from Black Dog in any order I wanted and they worked over the same notes. I'd discovered the pentatonic scale. So improv began.

I  started buying American guitar mags that had tabs to songs in. And I bought tab books I had no chance of being able to play. But I'd enjoy muddling through playing along to Satriani's Extremist album despite not being able to play the widdly bits. Though funnily enough it was often the riffs I loved more than the widdling anyway. By the time I started uni in 93 I would spend weeks pouring over tab books and could (back then, no chance now) play most of Maiden's Fear of the Dark album.

The main thing for me though was right from the start I was more interesting in writing my own songs rather than play someone elses. Even now my repertoire of other artists' material is very low.  I would have been a better guitarist if I'd had lessons, but less fun for me I think. I enjoyed the journey, I wasn't looking for some destination. I would do stuff like use two boomboxes to record my own songs with sound on sound - dubbing my live playing into it - adding drums from a cheap keyboard.  I enjoyed the muddling through, the experimenting. 

57Deluxe

I collected the year long weekly Guitar Lessons printed in New Musical Express in early 70s. You got a free outer folder too and brown shoe lace tie to bind the newsprint... Of all that I can actually attribute to my playing today is 3 alternative chord shapes for open G D and F which I use so adeptly I insist my students employ them too!

http://kevincoynepage.free.fr/Press images/crisis.jpg

rossi

Bert Weedons "pPay in a day ' book and my ears .As I have a good ear for picking up music it both helped me and also stopped me learning more as I could just pick out tunes and chords ,usually three .now days its great and I am still learning every day at 70 .I assumed everyone had a good ear but I was surprised at my niece who plays the clarinet perfectly in orchestras but cant play it unless its written down .She doesnt get how I can whistle Mozart .