Newbie Here, Stuck For Ideas

Fazer4 · February 2015

Hi, need a bit of help.

I've just started playing again after a long hiatus. Picked up the acoustic and quickly remembered most of what I was playing, which is to say, fingerpicking folk, blues and some celtic-style stuff. Need to improve my technique here; I tend to pick with thumb and just two fingers, and think it might be an idea if I brought a third finger into play. Can anyone point me in the direction of some exercises to help me achieve this?

And, after an even longer hiatus, I've just bought myself a Strat. But I used to play mostly blues on the electric, very SRV orientated stuff, which I got ok at (not stunning, but could hold my own at blues jams for example). Funny thing is, since laying the guitars aside, I've been listening to more rock than blues, as I think I overdid the blues stuff and got bored with it a bit. So I want to find my way into playing more rock styles, but basically don't know where to begin. There's just so much stuff I like listening to, but I will probably be playing without a view to getting in a band for some time, so just really for enjoyment at home. So anyway, I'm going to be a bit of a beginner when it comes to rock styles and techniques. Any general tips on how to approach this? Or is it just a case of try to figure out how to play my favourites from what I listen to, as I did when I started with blues? It's just that rock seems a bit more complex, and so this seems to me to be a bit harder to do.

Cheers.