[Hokey]

I'm getting an acoustic guitar for christmas and decided to teach myself. Its going to be my new hobby despite all my relatives saying I don't have a musical bone in my body. I'll show 'em!!

Can you recommend any good resources to do this? Books? Tapes? Websites? Have any of you did this in your later years and how long did it take you to become decent at it?

[Irish Jaeger]

I'm still learning but I would reccomend learning and memorizin the chords first!

and here is a site for guitar tabs: http://www.tabpower.com/index.html
http://www.cowboylyrics.com/index.html

[member31]

how long did it take you to become decent at it?

that requires further clarification prior to a response. ;)

[booger]

Keep in mind that I haven't played in forever and have probably forgotten everything. ;)

If I were just starting out, I'd get a basic workbook that teaches you finger placement for both chords and nitty-gritty, good old-fashioned picking. Then, just get some sheet music for songs you like (hopefully, nothing too complicated at first or you'll run screaming for the hills :lol: ), lock yourself in the bathroom, garage, or other private place of choice, and have at it. Experiment, be a complete goon, and let go. It'll come.

That's just me, though. I get uptight around others so lessons, even watching them on a video, would not let me relax enough to get into it. And you really do need to "get into it" to truly learn any instrument. You can't be detached. You have to feel it.

Okay, that sounded really corny :p but that's my advice--for learning any instrument. This is, of course, assuming that you know how to read music already.

Oh, and try to get a second guitar, that way you can keep nylon strings on one and steel on the other. Nylon won't rip your fingers to shreds while learning but nothing sounds quite like steel (and you'll eventually work up the calluses for steel). Another thing--if you want to use a pick, be sure to start out with one. I learned without a pick and never did get the hang of using one after that so just stuck with fingers. No biggie to me. Maybe that's just me, though.

[SmartAZ]

I'm also starting out but not until january. Here is the lesson site I found.
http://www.guitarbasics.com/free_guitar_lessons.htm

[Hokey]

Thanks everyone! Great start. :D

Wish me luck as I drive my wife and kids nuts and make the cats run for the hills.

But yes, I though I would really concentrate on learning the chords an sheet music first. I know others who just learned to play by memory but they don't know how to read music. I'd like to know what I'm doing.

The callused finger thing is a good point. It'll take some time for my fingers to get used to it so I should be patient. Maybe I'll just stick with a pick.

[Chills]

Hokey

This is one of the best sites I have found for guitar.

Olav Torvund's Guitar Pages (http://www.torvund.net/guitar/lessons.asp)

[Irish Jaeger]

The callused finger thing is a good point. It'll take some time for my fingers to get used to it so I should be patient. Maybe I'll just stick with a pick.

Actually your gonna get calluses on your left hand...pushing down and sliding on the strings to play chords and pickin...Acoustics are the hardest on the hands...classical guitars the easiest, I've used Acoustic, Electric, and Classical guitars before and they all have good and bad points....but I always come back to the acoustic! My first guitar love :O

[SmartAZ]

You asked how long. Everyone assures me that I won't feel like I know what I am doing for at least two years. Be patient.

[LizardQueen]

I've been playing on and off for 20 years or so. A few suggestions:

1) As was suggested above, get a good basic chord book to start with that has simple songs in it as well as fingering diagrams. I wish I knew the name of my beginner book, but it's long since lost it's cover!

Get the chords, finger, and strumming down first. This will keep you going, as you'll be able to sing along to yourself relatively quickly.
I've found it's pretty easy to get mediocre at the guitar, but hard to get really good.

2) Nylon string guitars usually have wider necks than the steel string ones, though the steel ones hurt like hell when you first start playing. If you have small hands you may want to go with steel and just suffer through it. Large-handed players, or ones with long fingers, may be ok on nylon.

As I remember you can't put steel strings on a guitar built for nylon because the tension is greater and the internal bracing isn't built for it, but I may be wrong on that. I'm not sure about nylon on a guitar built for steel. I've personally never seen it done.

IMHO steel sounds a lot better.

3) Stay away from 12 string guitars at first until you get 6 of them figured out :lol: .

4) If you can't play for awhile, torment the fingertips on your left hand with sandpaper or a pin to build up and keep the calluses. I used to lightly jab mine with the pin (not deep, just enough to make them a little sore.

5) Don't bother with picks at first. They're very distracting when you're still working on chords etc. At first I kept dropping mine down the sound hole.

6) If you don't already own a guitar borrow a few before you buy to see what you like.

Pretty soon you'll be playing up a storm and then wondering about where all those lost guitar picks went. (Tip: they've gone to that same parallel universe where single socks and the ballpoint pens that were near the phone have vanished to).

LQ/Tweak

[fruit loop]

I bought a guitar and video off the Home Shopping Channel. Eddie Van Halen I ain't, but I can entertain family and friends without making their hair stand on end.

It can be done.

[Chills]

Hokey
you may want to get a guitar tuner. You can actually download free off net a couple good ones..to tune your guitar. Takes all the fuss out of tuning the guitar... they will tell you when your string is tuned properly.. most also have the various tunings etc.
Helps a great deal to have the guitar in tune.

Especially when trying to learn.

[Hokey]

Thanks everyone for the help! I'm starting off with nylon strings so I think I'll ignore using a pick for now.

I'll let you know how my guitar playing adventure goes. Maybe I should keep a diary or blog on this? Hmmm, I'll think about it.

Thanks again everyone.

[SmartAZ]

I've gotten quite an education just by looking around.

If the strings are perpendicular to the sound box it's a harp. If the strings are parallel it's a zither, which in German is pronounced "sitter". In India the same thing is a sitar, in France it's a chitar, in Italy it's a kitar, and in Spain it's a guitar. Unless of course it's played with a bow. Then it's a violin. In the Appalachian Mountains it's called a dulcimer no matter how you play it.

BTW, the Bavarian zither comes in two types, the guitar zither and the concert zither. The concert zither has a fingerboard just like a guitar, and the guitar zither does not. Is that clear? :P

The number of strings might be 4 up to whatever. Most guitars have six, but you can get eight or ten string models anywhere. They are almost always played lap style, with a slide. BTW, there is no problem with sore fingers when you use a slide.

Most people tune their guitars to "standard" or "Spanish", so called because the technical name for the chord is quite a mouthful. Slide players usually tune to G, but also use a few other keys, and even use guitars with 2, 3, or more sets of strings so they can switch keys instantly. Pedal guitars use mechanical gizmos to retune one set of strings. Hawaiians think their music is different, and they demonstrate the difference by using dozens of keys. It reaches the point where they have to retune the guitar for every song, and if two guitars play together they often will be tuned to different keys.

Strings are made in hundreds of sizes and materials. Each string has to vibrate at just one note and it will sound right with just one combination of mass, material properties, and tension. Only the tension is adjustable, and if the string is tuned up or down by more than two notes it sounds wrong. Players also want strings to feel a certain way, depending on what they play, so a wide variety of strings will always be offered to suit the wide variety of players. And yes, you can use nylon strings on a guitar made for steel. Putting steel strings on a guitar made for nylon will break it. Steel strings run 200 - 300 pounds tension. Nylon uses about 1/10 that much.

Don't get any bright ideas about replacing the bridge. Some people do, but they do it with professional advice. The frets divide the string into lengths based on the twelfth root of two, but pressing a string against a fret changes the tension as well as the length so the fret is not exactly at the calculated position. It is moved so that you get the correct note. The thickness and mass of the string also have their effects, and the bridge is crafted in a way to compensate for some of these variations in string properties. Some bridges have screw adjustments for each string. Some bridges cost more than some guitars.

[SmartAZ]

More about Hawaiian music: The musical tradition in Hawaii refers to singing. Musical instruments only played accompaniment, never solo.

Our story begins with a guy from England named Vancouver. He gave a gift of cattle to King Kamehameha the first. He told the king to put a taboo on the herd so the people wouldn't eat the cows and the herd would grow. Well, he died without ever lifting the taboo. This went on until Kamehameha the third took over. By that time the people were grumbling about cows getting into the taro patches, stepping on their kids, and being a general nuisance. So the king asked his counselors what to do. Nobody in Hawaiia knew anything about getting cows into pens. Somebody had seen cowboys in San Diego, so the king went there to see if these "cowboys" knew anything.

Now bear in mind that this was in 1830. If you go to San Diego in 1830, looking for cowboys, you're going to get taken to a rodeo where you will see a bunch of Mexicans doing amazing things to cows. The king was so impressed by this show that he hired them all and took them back to Hawaii.

Now bear in mind that if you hire 150 or so Mexican cowboys, a lot of them are going to be guitar players. They sit around their campfires after work and either play guitars or listen to them. This was not only the first time the islanders had heard guitars, it was the first time they had heard any instrument played solo, or one instrument play accompaniment while another played lead. Even more amazing, one player would play both lead and accompaniment at the same time. The islanders were blown away by this! The woodmongers began monging copies of these guitars and the musicians learned to play them.

Now bear in mind that Hawaiians like things to be relaxed. They liked the Spanish serenades and Portuguese lullabies and Mexican baladas, but the music seemed awfully tense to them. They kept wanting to relax the strings. So they did. They called their style "slack key", and each family had its closely guarded secret tunings. For 150 years, this style was passed down within families, never shared with strangers, never played in public. The Hawaiians felt that they were being robbed of their place, their heritage, their very identity, and they didn't want to be robbed of their music. They kept it secret. About 20 years ago it became apparent to the musicians that they weren't getting any younger. That is to say, there weren't enough young people in the families to assure the preservation of their music. So they decided to go public and teach their styles to others, just to be sure it would survive. And that is how the Hawaiians were able to spring a surprise on the world; a folk tradition 150 years old, fully developed, and pretty darn good besides, dropped on the world with no prior notice. Paste THIS LINK (http://www.live365.com/play/57250?LID=753-usa&lid=753-usa&SaneID=68.227.230.244-1092431689752&AuthType=NORMAL&VisitCount=1&bitrate=256&now=1092432140580&pid=44208) into Winamp to hear slack key music.

[Chills]

Smart AZ

Interesting stuff.

Personally I havent played in 'Standard' tuning since about 1975-6.
Always use open tunings -- predominately open g...e...d...aminor ...dminor ...& dropped d..
Use a slide quite a bit.

[MzJag]

My son just downloaded Guitar Pro 4.0 to my computer to learn his. You may want to give it a scan and see if it will help.

[blue gecko]

I like using songbooks with chord tabs (they use a line/dot system showing the fingering). Find a simple 2 or 3 chord song that you already know and practice your chording and strumming to that. Look for songs with basic chords like this: C,F,G7 or D,G,A for starters then add on from there. I suggest picking up E/Em, B7, Bm and Am next. Mel Bay has an excellent chord book that shows proper finger position and covers method basics. It is much better to learn to chord properly from the get go than to have to relearn later. Take it one or two songs at a time. Something else you may want to do for practice is to learn scales (Mel may cover this in his book) it will help you expound on your chording. Do you have a buddy that you can pick with? That always helps. I started out finger picking and then years later began playing with folks that used picks so I started using a thumb pick (just couldn't get my fingers to calm down enough to hold a regular flat pick LOL). Playing music is a wonderful thing. I wish you luck! BG

[SmartAZ]

HERE (http://www.guitarlessonworld.com/) is another site I just ran across.

[Hokey]

Thanks again everyone! I'm using some of your suggestions already.

Well, I have a beginners 6 steel string acoustic. Nothing special but sounds ok. First I'll get good before I justify the expense of a quality musical instrument.

I know a few chords already but its tough on the fingers and my stiff hand and fingers will have to move faster to change chords well enough. My uncle tuned up my guitar for me with an electronic tuner. I'll have to get one of them.

I figured out the notes for Deep Purples smoke on the water pretty quick though! Well, I gotta go and toughen up the ol' fingers some more. :beer:

[Herbmountain]

My advise is learn the neck of the guitar.

After playing some 20 years I learned that teaching myself made for some pretty bad habits. I never learned the proper chords but Im one heck of a finger plucker. Teaching yourself you never have anyone to bounce off of to teach you and open your mind to other methods.

I would spend the money to get modest lessons first. Also many music stores have teachers. And you get to use their guitars. This way you learn what you like in body, neck size and sound with out having to put down money for a really good guitar. That comes later.

I would also suggest you play with others for a while. You pick up suttle strumming techniques, songs you would not think of and learn the difference between majors and minors. Also to take into account? Playing with others broadens your scope of style and sounds.

Besides learning the chords there is the neck. I never learned this part and play by ear. It's not a problem when Im alone. But when the real guys come over who are accomplished guitar players, Im lost. They say go to C on the neck and I just collapse. Uh let's see.

Teaching yourself if fun but it has it's drawback later when you have not learned good structure, good habits and know all about the guitar first. Just my 2 cents worth.

Strings. If you are starting out go for light or medium. They are the easiest on the fingers. You can also get this spray called "finger ease" that helps a little.

Also important is the storage of your guitar. You need a good case to protect against moisture this causing neck damage later.

Tuners are fine is you are playing with others or a certain song off a CDS. A tuner is a good investment.