Absolute Beginner (Guitar)

[mr__myles]

I don't know if this is the right section, nor if I should be asking guitar questions. I just picked up my guitar from my ex-girlfriend's house. I had leant it to her even before I got to play it myself and now I'd like to start learning how to play it. Any ideas on where I can start? Maybe a method book or two? Or some simple songs in tabs that I can learn?
Thanks!

 

[nicsax]

Hi I learnt the guitar circa 1978 - and had a great colleague who wrote out lots of tips and chords and it was so artistic and neat that it worked a treat to get my enthusiasm going - mostly went on to strum chords - he'd written out some tune chords for me so I could play and sing.
Never did it seriously just loved playing
circa 1980 went on to classical guitar - loved that
never pick it up now the guitar sits in the corner of the room
problem I had was keeping it tuned
The Alto has taken me to great places - bit like meditation maybe but noisier!

Hope you enjoy the guitar

I had a year or two of flute playing too!

liked the tune a day books for the basic tuition 0- guitar and flute

The tin whhistle was good too!

Maybe a euphonium in 2008!

happpy strumming or picking

nic

 

[Bobby G]

Hey Mr Myles! Is it an electric or acoustic guitar, and what style do you want to play? There must be any number of books, many with tutorial CD's available covering a wide range of styles.

When I started on acoustic (in 1970) I had a book with basic chord shapes and about 10 Dylan tunes, a friend who I jammed with who was about 3 months ahead of me, a love of playing, and a good enough ear to pick up tunes off the radio or records quite easily.

Whatever you do, I hope you enjoy it. Good luck 🙂

Cheers, Bob

 

[mr__myles]

Hey Bob. I'd really like to just learn to play some chord progressions and sing to them. I'd like to learn how to play some songs people might know. If you could could recommend some books to devolp technique that would be appeciated. And as far as style, I really like experimenting with all types, but to learn some jazz rifts and raggea type rifts would be neat.

 

[mfox]

where are you in actual playing? do you know any chords?
f not you need to learn 3 basic chords to stat with. tonic, sub dominant and dominant. somthing like E A and B
next learn the 7Ths then the 9ths
then learn them in minor and you can busk a hell of a lot of tunes.

if you are more advanced than this then disregard my post.. 🙂

 

[Bobby G]

So many reggae styles to play! And I am only really a casual reggae fan.

It has been said that the typical reggae guitar style is derived from the r'n'b or rock'n'roll chugga-chugga-chugga style, but often with the beat halved i.e. slowed, and the 'chug' part has disappeared while the 'ga' part is heavily emphasised. In it's simplest form, that is. There are other basic reggae rhythm licks, the main thing is keep that wrist nice and loose.

Mostly for reggae you can get away with simple major and minor chords - I don't know how far along you are with your playing, but here are a few ideas for chords etc; you'll find the theory elsewhere, but put in it's simplest form, i.e. the old 3-chord trick plus relative minor, the most common groups of chords that relate to each other are C F G and A minor; D G A and B minor; E A B and C# minor; G C D and E minor; A D E and F# minor; a vast amount of songs is in one of those keys on guitar, and contains only chords in one of the five groups above, sometimes only 3 or even 2 of the chords in one of the 5 groups.

I hope this is both making sense and not falling under the heading 'teaching your granny to suck eggs'!

Good luck!

Cheers, Bob