Learning to play the guitar

someguy76008

I was wondering if any of the musicians of the board could help or point me in the right direction when it comes to learning how to play the guitar. I got a guitar and a booklet for beginners with it. The book is fine, really; it just teaches the notes and how to read music, but I basically know most of that.

What I am really worried about is bad habits I might be developing.

Tube

Difficult to say without watching you play. Make sure you're keeping your wrist straight, that you're not hunching over and that there's no tension in your body.

Earthenrock

When I was taking lessons the first thing I learned was how to play a few chords. Then chord ornamentation, and then a few scales.

All of this helps stretch the fingers so you will be able to play any combination of notes. one thing my teacher was strict about was alternate picking, or alternating between downward and upward picking for single notes. Try to learn how to tune your guitar to standard by ear. It certainly wouldn't hurt to train your ear a bit.

Tablature and learning other songs is great for learning rhythm, and time signatures.

Electric or acoustic?

thats really all I can think of. I've had professionals criticize my finger placement of fingers that were not even touching the fretboard before. example a regular power chord the argument was "middle finger must be straight not curled against the index."

Everyone plays differently, the only bad habit I think guitarists have is criticizing other guitarists.

Demerdar

Make sure you are focusing on your alternate picking. That is, strumming both up and down on strings. Another thing is to make sure that you are fingering the frets just behind them, and with the TIP of your finger (there are exceptions, but make sure you are doing it right). There's really not much too it. Just make sure you practice accuracy over speed, because precision = speed.

limester816

Besides getting a teacher, videos are the best way to visualize exactly how technique is supposed to look. A lot of it is experimenting what feels and sounds right to you.

Munacra

Don't neglect your pinky finger.

Super Mike

Alternate picking is slow and awkward. Pick in whatever direction makes sense for the situation and get your fingers involved too. AP is probably the most redundant and limiting thing you can do to yourself, and wasting time on it that you could be spending on useful exercises will slow your progress, increase your tension, and stifle your personal style. This is assuming you even use a pick. Don't feel like you always have to. Grow some nails and use them whether there's a pick in your hand or not. You'll open up worlds of things that you just wouldn't be able to do with a pick alone. If I'm not playing rhythm, you won't even see me holding one.

Listen to Munacra.

And if CT means what I think he does by "keeping your wrist straight," it definitely won't hurt you not to, and you'll probably be making things hard on yourself if you do. Only do it if you'd be doing it anyway. It's not something you should focus on.

Most of Demerdar's advice is good too.

A Bear

Find an experienced instructor (professional or a friend) and have them go over what you are doing on a semi-frequent basis, weekly lessons can be as cheap as free and are invaluable to good progression as a guitarist. Most musicians are not exactly wealthy and the good ones like passing on their passion- I've taught for free simply because I like teaching people something I enjoy so much. Secondary to that, go out and watch talented guitarists play in local venues, or watch videos and try to notice common habits (as detailing them here would take paragraphs, even pages, and still nothing would be for sure unless we could see you). Most of the techinical advice given here is pretty sound- I'll repeat the using of all five fingers just for good measure because I see it not being done a lot. Practice scales and chord progressions very slowly, and then repeat it more and more quickly to devlop both good finger strength and dexterity. Make sure your guitar sits correctly (while sitting it should be farily perpendicular from the ground, with a slight lean towards you, but nowhere near 45 degrees that commonly occurs when beginning players try to watch each and every action). Make sure you tune the guitar every time before you play, to devlop your hearing (a VERY important skill neglected by many people who consider themselves decent guitarists). In the same vein, begin to listen to music seeking out chord progressions and root notes- listen to songs you like and attempt to play along by ear (being able to pause and return to sections helps this a lot).

Most of all, have fun! If making music fails to be fun, something is wrong.

Tube

Super Mike wrote: »

Alternate picking is slow and awkward. Pick in whatever direction makes sense for the situation and get your fingers involved too. AP is probably the most redundant and limiting thing you can do to yourself, and wasting time on it that you could be spending on useful exercises will slow your progress, increase your tension, and stifle your personal style. This is assuming you even use a pick. Don't feel like you always have to. Grow some nails and use them whether there's a pick in your hand or not. You'll open up worlds of things that you just wouldn't be able to do with a pick alone. If I'm not playing rhythm, you won't even see me holding one.

Listen to Munacra.

And if CT means what I think he does by "keeping your wrist straight," it definitely won't hurt you not to, and you'll probably be making things hard on yourself if you do. Only do it if you'd be doing it anyway. It's not something you should focus on.

Most of Demerdar's advice is good too.

You're an idiot and I gave you an infraction for this post in case someone accidentally thought you knew what you were talking about.

Tube

To clarify, if you keep your wrist at an angle while playing guitar, it isn't a matter of whether you get tendonitis, it's a matter of when.

Quoth

I found it very useful to practice the chromatic scale forwards and backwards every day, slowly, while actually looking at the notes I was playing. Also practicing scales the same way. I had learned to play the piano when I was younger, but I just memorized stuff instead of actually learning to read the music, so forcing myself to sight read the guitar music helped me to sight read more complex stuff down the road. I actually, you know, read the music instead of just memorizing. Much better.

Try to keep your thumb in the middle of the neck instead of choking up on the neck, especially if you're playing an acoustic guitar (which usually has a thicker neck). And curl your fingers as much as you can; they get less stiff than if they're straight, and you'll be able to press down on the fretboard harder but with less effort. Like someone else said, don't neglect your pinkies, but if you're practicing the chromatic scale then it should take care of that for you.

Don't rush, whatever you do. You're probably really eager to start playing all the cool stuff you listen to, but the more you rush, the more likely you are to cut corners and do stuff wrong. Then eventually you won't be able to do advanced stuff because you didn't do the basics properly. Take it easy, do the scales to train your fingers and your ear, then move on to chords, then start getting into the good stuff.

Organichu

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

To clarify, if you keep your wrist at an angle while playing guitar, it isn't a matter of whether you get tendonitis, it's a matter of when.

While this is indubitably true, I'm not sure that I agree with you calling "don't alternate pick" advice stupid. Well, it's not a simple issue.

On the one hand, my personal view is that as you progress further and your prowess expands, you shouldn't restrict yourself to alternate picking. In my opinion the insistence of clinging to a mechanically inefficient picking method is archaic. It's one of those traditions that nobody wants to relinquish.

On the other hand, alternate picking is an extremely useful school of thought for beginners because its rigidity breeds a framework for practice. As I said, I don't think picking alternately is 'the way', but since it's so well defined and a lot of guitar methods are centered around it I don't think it's a bad suggestion for a beginner. I just don't think it's necessary to make it sound like the 'right' way.

Then again, I've been playing for over 10 years and I know people who pick only with alternate strokes who are far, far better than me. Just my thoughts on the matter. My advice: alternate pick in the beginning because it helps to breed discipline and will give you rhythmic and percussive picking habits, but as you grow more skilled and less dependent upon lessons, don't be afraid to pick directionally.

Tube

Alternate picking methods like sweep and economy picking are something you should learn after you can alternate pick really, really well. As far as it being "slow", the fastest guitarists in the world economy pick. It's also easier to keep in time, sounds more consistent and will make your quadriceps shapelier and more seductive.

Once you can alternate pick, go nuts and learn whatever the fuck you want. A stunning amount of guitarists can't alternate pick properly and exacerbate the problem by sweeping.

Organichu

Cardboard Tube wrote: »

Alternate picking methods like sweep and economy picking are something you should learn after you can alternate pick really, really well. As far as it being "slow", the fastest guitarists in the world economy pick. It's also easier to keep in time, sounds more consistent and will make your quadriceps shapelier and more seductive.

Once you can alternate pick, go nuts and learn whatever the fuck you want. A stunning amount of guitarists can't alternate pick properly and exacerbate the problem by sweeping.

Pretty much, I think this is fine advice. While it is possible to pick directionally with precision and rhythm, it is far, far easier to do so when you've already mastered alternate picking.

OP: have you ever played an instrument before?

thorpe

There's also a pretty good thread about this archived in "Accumulated Forum Knowledge" as I recall.

Pheezer

If you can't alternate pick, I sure hope you like playing chords, and playing them slowly at that. Alternate picking is a core ability that you're going to need to master if you're ever going to hope to be "good". Or even "not shit".

Think about it: Is it going to be faster to pick down, and then bring the pick back up around the string and pick down a second time or is it going to be faster to pick down, and on the way up strike the string a second time? You can hit 3 notes in the time that you could hit 2 notes if you were just down picking.

This is less true at first when you're awkward and inexperienced but most toddlers move faster by crawling than walking when they first manage to get upright. You just go ahead and try to crawl a mile, then time yourself running it and see which works better now. It's the same fucking thing as learning to alternate pick. It's walking if you want to play guitar properly.

BomanTheBear

Learn to play fast by learning to play slow. If you can do something perfectly and deliberately at half speed, you have less risk of fucking it up when you go full speed. Admittedly, slow sucks, and you probably want to shred, but it doesn't work to just up and try to tear one out. You'll just learn bad habits and mistakes, and it's much harder to unlearn and relearn than it is to take longer and learn it right the first time.

Also, keep your right hand (pick hand, I'm assuming you've got a right-handed guitar) loose. Helps develop good form tendencies.

Jives

If you ever intend to perform, you should do some of your practice standing up as it can be more difficult than sitting down unless you have your guitar strap realy tight, which looks frankly ridiculous.

Nima

something you might want to think about is finger-picking.
This is the technique I've always used, and it lets you achieve such a wonderfully complex, beautiful sound that I wonder why more people don't do it. Actually, scratch that - I remember I've taked to a few other guitar players who mostly say, 'Gee, I wish I could pick like you but I'm too used to holding a plectrum now'.

So just a heads up - if you like complex, picky/ folky sounds or you think you might want to go in that direction in the future, start using all your fingers now. Simon and Garfunkel songs are great to learn basic picking patterns, and they are widely available tabbed online. Also, this style opens up a world of music that, frankly, sounds dead impressive like Nick Drake et al, which with effort (and maybe 6 months hard practice at the beginning) is surprisingly achievable.

Apart from that, concentrate on arranging your left hand fingers on the fretboard so you're not buzzing the surrounding strings. That's the main thing beginners have difficulty with, so the sooner you fix that the better.

Lastly, remember it all comes with practice. the guitar is a wonderfully user friendly instrument, and it can be incredibly rewarding when you put the time in. if you work at it, you will get better, and sooner than you think.

Jerm

Learning basic music theory will deepen your understanding of the guitar. It opened up a lot of mental avenues for me.

Jerm

Learning basic music theory will deepen your understanding of the guitar. It opened up a lot of mental avenues for me. However that may be a step you should to take a little later.

Gotr

As long as your wrist is straight (Or even bent OUTWARDS, which some will argue is best) and your fingers are right above the frets, there's not much you can be doing wrong. As for playing, the way I've been learning the bass is by finding better players or players that have a different style than me and jamming with them. You notice a lot of things that you can try.

Also watching live concert videos can be great, as long as you're willing to see that even Hendrix/Halen/Insert your favorite guitarist here (None of the above for me, FYI) can have some nasty habits too.

Super Mike

CT: You seem to be under the impression that EP is a "method" of AP. It's not. Alternate is called alternate because you alternate between up and down strokes. EP doesn't alternate. It uses whichever stroke makes sense for the situation. Economy picking is just a fancy name for the normal picking everyone would use naturally if no one told them there was a certain way to do things. Alternate picking is slow, awkward, and inefficient compared to EP. The only way to play slower than you would with AP would be to use only down strokes, and I'm assuming the people here aren't stupid enough to force themselves to do that. Anyway, if you were really hardcore about speed you wouldn't even use a pick to begin with.

Keeping your wrist straight will limit what you can play and the speed you can play it at and you WILL unintentionally mute strings if you don't change the angle of your fretting hand once in a while. It's just bad technique all around. If you get tendonitis from playing guitar, you're doing more things wrong than bending your wrist once in a while. I'm not saying it's a good idea to keep your wrist at a 90 degree angle or anything, but keeping it straight 100% of the time is just as bad. For your hand AND for your technique. Just relax it and let it move where it needs to move. The angle of your wrist isn't what causes tendonitis. Tension and over-practicing are. You're just as likely to get it with a straight wrist. Infracting me wont infract the truth.

Pheezer

I dropped that infraction because it is simple fact that the amount of tendon strain you experience is directly related to the way you're angling your wrists, whether typing on a keyboard or playing a guitar, and that tendonitis, or RSIs, or carpal tunnel all stem from consistently over straining your tendons over time. By not adopting postures that place unnecessary strain on your tendons you will be at far lower risk for tendonitis.

Tube

Seriously, if you have no idea what the fuck you're talking about, just don't post, no matter how badass at guitar your friends tell you that you are.