So what method did you guys start with learning?

[oachs83]

Just curious as I am pretty new to guitar but very very super slowly am seeing progress. I am mainly self taught unless you call youtube a teacher? That's basically is all I do is look for songs I enjoy. I find the how to's on youtube and plug away. It got me thinking am I going at it all wrong? For example should I look up scales and try and master them? I have never seen one scale in my life. Did some of you go through classes? What methods are out there that made a difference and really helped out with your playing?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Look at taking lessons. Having another guitarist not only tell you where the notes are, but how and why they work together, is a great resource. I saved the notes from lessons and used them years later.

 

[thexmadxtopxhatter]

first learn where all the notes are and the intervals between them on the fretboard. Specifically on the low E and A strings (the two closest to you) this will help you determining the root of a chord and scales. Then start learning the ionian (major) scale first. Learn the basic 8 note scale on the E, A, and D strings first. Then learn the next octave. Then learn where the scale is all across the fingerboard. You can play the basic E,A,D major shape over any root note (the first note of the scale) on the low E and it will work over that major. Then learn minor pentatonic, blues, minor, and go from there good luck.

PS. Guitar is very hard to understand at first. just don't give up and keep learning

 

[oachs83]

With my work schedue lessons are usually not an option. Are learning scales pretty important?

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Yes.

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

You're going to get a ton of answers, from 'learn by ear' to 'go to Berklee', lol.

Since your thread title is asking a specific question addressing "You/Me." I'll answer with how I learned.

I picked up the guitar, liked it, and didn't really put it down for the first 2 years. I spent hours everyday sitting on the floor in front of the tape player hitting pause>rewind>play over and over.

I figured out Metallica songs are always riffing on that low E string, so I started using those songs to tune my low E string to. Most especially "the four horsemen" was used a lot. I learned the relative tuning trick (5th fret on E is A, 5th fret on A is D, and so on.) And I just kept at it. I was determined to be able to play the metal and rock songs I liked, and I was determined to be able to do it yesterday. So I had this mad fire burning in my ass to get better faster, as fast as I possibly could. Like there was something breathing down my neck going, "no, play faster! push harder! keep going! you're running out of time!"

after about 6 months I picked up Guitar For The Practicing Musician. A truly great magazine that sadly is no longer published.

In this magazine a brilliant gentleman named Andy Aledort had come up with this system (seemingly) called Tablature. And also within that magazine was a "key" to reading tablature, that showed all the symbols used, BUT not only that, it's basically also a page of tricks and techniques that you've got to learn. So I had this awesome page full of info (remember this pre-internet) and it was like finding gold. I memorized that page that night, and then spent the entire night going through the songs in the magazine, actually "reading" the music! I was so psyched. I watched the sun come up that morning and had successfully finished playing every lick of music in that magazine. I was stunned. Suddenly the knowledge of the page was the most important thing to me.

I did everything after that moment to get my hands on as much tablature as possible. Including stealing music books and magazines from stores. (hey, I was like 10 or 11 and broke, not that it's an excuse, but....)

I even raided my Fathers ammo bunker for "stuff" to sell at school.

I got arrested for that when I was 12. Turned out 2 Iron Maiden tablature books were not worth the wrath of my Father as well as the Montgomery County Police Department as well as the Fire Marshall.

By this point I had a small stack of books and magazines, probably a couple feet high. And I would sit there and play through the entire stack every day from first to last.

Then I wanted to read 'actual' music and not just tablature.

Again, I broke into the high school and stole the three Berklee Teaching Method books 1,2,3 from the music room, went home and started memorizing.

I learned to read music that night using those books. And they came in handy later as well, but that first night was the big one.

When I was 13-14 I joined my first Thrash Metal band with a bunch of guys who were 10 years older then me. They wanted me because I was a fast little f**ker on leads, and I had limitless energy at the time. I wanted to hang with them because they were 'A Band' and they were older guys.

Through them I learned about drugs, alcohol, and college girls. I also learned about ensemble playing and rhythm. My rhythm was terrible when I joined. The drummer rectified this issue by throwing drum stricks at me if I f**ked up. It only takes getting hit a couple times before you learn not to f**k up. After that I learned about grooves. How they can be pushed, or how you can lay back deep in them and make them push you!

Did that for a couple years, then discovered all new music. Tool, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, etc. And I just quit playing for about a year. I didn't feel inspired to play so I didn't. After about a year of partying and having fun I decided I wanted to learn to play and sing all the Alice in Chains songs I liked. So I did that.

I started a few new bands. Some did pretty well, some not so well, some were fun, others not so fun, but I learned all along the way. And was still discovering new music that I liked, (like blues and classic rock.)

Fast forward a few years and I'd been homeless for awhile and found myself in Chicago. In Chicago I heard a style of music I'd never heard before called Flamenco. It was violent and passionate. Full of love and fury. I was hooked. More then hooked, I was obsessed with it.

Bought a nylon string acoustic and put my pick down, grew my nails out and didn't touch the electric for 2 years.

Then when I came back to electric I realized all that improv and fury, flourishes and passion that I'd learned through Flamenco, could be applied right back to the electric.

The only draw back was that when you play Flamenco on electric, people automatically label it as metal and shred music. (Which still makes me laugh.)

So now I play and gig around Chicago and am always looking to jam with people, pretty much in any musical style because I really like them all.

I realized lately I never thought about being famous with music, it's just a love and passion for the guitar itself that keeps driving me to play it and keep learning. I still feel like I barely know anything about the instrument and that just around the corner is the next big leap in my playing. Guitar can be addicting. I do wish I'd applied more effort to promotions and stuff when I was younger instead of always having my head down playing guitar, but such is life. Hindsight is always 20/20 right?

So in a nutshell, I just wanted it so badly, more then anything else in the world, to be able to make the guitar replicate the sounds I hear in my head. So I put my nose to the grindstone and never gave up, never let anything stop me, and just kept playing and playing all day every day.

It was almost like a rebellion. Rebellion is not giving up when people want you to give up, or when your hands hurt, or when your girlfriend makes your life miserable and b*tches at you that you have to quit the band and be "normal."

Just keep playing and learning, playing and learning, playing and learning.

Do your own thing, enjoy yourself, and don't listen to the haters.

Because there WILL be haters. (take it as a compliment, ... I do.)

Basically? You just have to want it. No one can practice or learn for you, you have to do it for yourself. I see this all the time in my students. The ones that get "good", are the ones that have that fire burning in them. They push themselves, they don't need to be told to practice or do their homework.

_____________

Now, all that being said?

If I were young today (early teens) I'd rather have a music teacher and the internet, lol. But it was different times when I was a kid. And even then there was no way I could afford a music teacher.

But a teacher could help you not form bad habits and can kind of guide you in the direction you want to go.

Best of luck mate, hang in there and just keep doing it. Some days are good days, some days are bad days. That's never going to change, so you just keep pushing forward.

I know this is a long assed post. But you asked a specific question and I figured I'd give you a specific answer. You asked, "what method did you learn with?" I call my method Shaolin Guitar. I look at the guitar like Kung Fu. But that's another long topic.

Cheers!

-M-

 

[Rhust]

lessons are great, friends are better, at least for me... we had friendly competition almost we'd learn different songs, scales, lessons and teach them to each other...

then we all took intermediate lessons and we'd all learn different things, and share them with the group, and spend hours, jamming, talking music and working it out...

yes ultimately formal lessons and great practice is what teaches the best practices... but it can also be the boring tedious stuff that keeps you from practicing as much... if you are pounding out songs from tab and youtube and that's building your dexterity, you can learn the theories as you go... then you can pick those things up when the mechanics of playing are not the issue... am I a good guitarist? not by anyone's standards... but I can play a lot of songs, which is fun, especially when hanging out with others who play....

don't just play songs you know you can play though... build up to doing different things and new songs that can teach you different techniques... one night you might be jamming on some fast palm-mute power chord stuff, the next night might be a southern rock shuffle, then something slow and bluesy, and then something open and acoustic...

try different things and find what works for you... the biggest hurdle when you start out is not giving up... staying engaged in your practice!

 

[stratdragon92]

This is all just my personal views. Also a very simplified version of what I did.

Start on acoustic. Learn open chords, then move onto barre chords. Get a Beatles song book and learn some songs. When your comfortable with that learn the blues scale/pentatonic. Learn Red House by Henrdix. Figure out how to put the scales with the chords.

 

[stratdragon92]

I really feel learning on an acoustic first, and starting off with playing rythm first is a great way to build up a foundation for your future playing.

 

[oachs83]

Malikon that was a great story and what I was mainly getting at with my topic. I would like to hear others "starting out stories" as well with the do's and dont's they learned along the way.

 

[Kamen_Kaiju]

Malikon that was a great story and what I was mainly getting at with my topic. I would like to hear others "starting out stories" as well with the do's and dont's they learned along the way.

I had a hunch you wanted detail. A little voice told me you're just starting your journey and want as much information and as many stories as possible.

Best of luck man. Keep those strings ringing.

 

[GERRYGTR62]

Well-said, Malikon! It boils down to pure desire, drive and passion to play guitar....as for myself, I've immersed myself in as many styles as possible to broaden my musical horizons, there's just so much to like and enjoy (I've done everything from hard rock/ metal to punk/ alternative to jazz/fusion/R&B to pop country to acoustic pop to classic/modern cover bands....even a couple of 'Def Leppard' tribute bands along the way, hence my avatar, LOL)

 

[AnthemBassMan]

-What can I say? I had lessons for about 5-6 moths when I was 12. Got real tired real fast of playing Camptown Races and She'll Be Comin' 'Round The Mountain. Quit my lessons and sat on the floor with my guitar, my portable record player, and my KISS records. Just started figuring things out by ear.

L8R,
Matt

 

[River]

Listen to Malk.

Take lessons.

Don't listen to the macho guys who don't need no steenking lessons. Unless they give you their agent's phone number, of course.

 

[MCAN]

I just thought of songs I liked and wanted to learn, then learned them with the help of online tabs. Some songs were easy, some took a while to learn but I eventually did, and there are probably some I still haven't learned.
BTW, I was 16 when I started playing.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I started out enrolling in a guitar class offered by my school, at 13. I took that for two years, learning folk standards and fingerpicking patterns in the class, and picking out songs, either by ear or studying songbooks ... and always writing my own stuff.

I didn't start playing leads for a couple of years, and it was a long time after that that I was not very good at it, but I kept on. I picked out solos by ear from Boston, Rush, Sabbath, AC/DC. Playing hours per day. I had my first garage band when I was seventeen. The drummer and I met and became friends on the basis of loving Rush ... so he got me a Rush songbook with about everything they'd done up 'til then. That was a big eye-opener. No solos were notated, but I learned the chords to about 50 of their songs.

I got my first, and only, Les Paul in 1987. Shortly after that, under the spell of Larry Carlton and Steely Dan, I took jazz lessons from a student of Lenny Breau's. Without a doubt it was the best $20/hr I ever spent anywhere. Out of 8 weeks of lessons ... maybe ten sessions total ... I got literally years of work and ideas. Around the same time I took classical lessons at my local junior college. I formed a couple of bands, neither went anywhere, and in 1989 I joined the service.

I got to go to Spain, which got me into Mediterranean music, and Saudi Arabia, which put me back in touch with Middle Eastern music, this time being old enough to appreciate it.

On leaving the Air Force in 1993 I came back out to California. I joined a classic rock band, started my own hard rock/heavy metal thing, landed a couple of other gigs that lasted half a year or so, recorded and shopped my own songs ... but fatherhood intervened, and I've learned that playing on my own porch for my own pleasure is great, too.

Sold my gear off in 2001, keeping only my Alvarez-Yairi acoustic. That was my only guitar for seven years, when I got back into electric. I still have a helluva lot to learn, but I'm happy with my playing, because it expresses what I feel inside pretty well. I often miss not being in a band, but I have enough friends I jam with to where that isn't all that bad.

 

[Davet]

I've been taking lessons for a while. I'm taking a break from lessons at the moment because I wanted to shift away from playing the same scales as fast as I could. I have been doing the Gibson Learn and Master Guitar course, it's really good and covers a whole lotta stuff, once I've completed that its back to lessons.

 

[cgm]

I just had my first lesson tonight! I have been playing rocksmith almost every night (2-3+ hours) for the past month on my ps3. For the past week or so I have been focusing on the pentatonic and blues scales as well as learning the chords. The lesion went really well... I have pretty much no musical background, but rocksmith has taught me a bunch. Has anyone else tried rocksmith?

 

[GERRYGTR62]

You never stop learning, that's the fun part in this wacky, fun-filled world of playing--the best part...the total culmination...is ultimately playing live, it is the ultimate adrenaline rush!

 

[rcole_sooner]

I'll add my controversial answer.

All the things posted here are great. Do as many as you can.

I also highly recommend Rocksmith, a console game, that use a real guitar. It is not perfect, but it is an option. I would describe it as dyamic leveling backing tracks with a metronome and correct note detector that keeps score. Very frustrating at times, it is helping me, even after my many years, which were filled with not much practicing.

Rocksmith has no theory or technique training, at the current time. It is still more of a game, than a learning tool. It is still the best $80 I've spent, for learning the guitar.