Who has taught themselves to play guitar?

[SFDreamer]

Well, I finally decided that I needed to learn how to play an instrument. It was either piano or guitar. I think I'll eventually do both, but want to start with guitar. I just picked up this: http://www.chordbuddy.com/ and I know its a "cheat" but I am hoping that it will make the learning process less frustrating :biggrin:...

So I was just wondering who here has taught themselves to play a guitar? Did you learn on electric or acoustic? Was it fairly "easy" and were there any resources that you used to help you out? Any advice on picking a first guitar? Thanks for the help!

 

[liftnot]

Steve,
I learned to play acoustic in college and stuck with it cuz you can take it anywhere w/o the need to plug it in. IMO, there is nothing like a pure acoustic sound compare to an electric that you have to mix it dirty which can be tricky to do at first and you may end up with noise instead of music.
You need to learn the basic chords first: D, A, G, E, C, F really well and then move on to bar chords. With these chords, you can play thousands of songs especially if you can carry a tune.

Start your right hand with 4/4, 3/4 strumming to discipline your brain and getting use to the motion.
All these takes practice and that is the key. It may come easy to you or it may take some time. Everyone is different but you need to do this everyday so the "muscle memory" builds up.
A good guitar is also a key as I love Taylor guitars and they have a whole range of low end to high end but their neck has a wonderful feel and the string action is easy to helps the chord changes and the sound is rich and clean so its hard to put it down.
You may want to consider using a nylon/classical guitar first cuz the steel strings will kill your finger tips and you need time to build calluses.
There is a lot more to this but if you want to get good, you need to put in min. 30min. a day and just stick with it. In the beginning, your fingers and your right hand, left hand are not used to all the motion required but if I can do it, so can you.
Plenty stuff on google and perhaps pick a simple song you like and start from there. Its quite fun and its not a must to know how to read notes but practice is a must.
Rock on bro

 

[VampNSXX]

I taught my self how to play guitar. It's the best way to learn.

 

[tbnsxt]

I taught myself how to play guitar. I have been playing for 5 years.

I play finger style acoustic.

I think it is very important to really enjoy playing your instrument. I think that scheduled lessons can sometimes take the fun out of playing because sometimes you are forced to play certain things that may bore or frustrate you.

However, if you can get a good teacher that really fits you you can learn much faster. :smile:

 

[jaybird]

I started playing while in college (yea, I know, I shoulda been studying....) - I had a friend who played and he was VERY helpful in getting me started. Your fingers will hurt like heck for awhile, until you get used to playing - just takes time.

Don't think that "ChordBuddy" thing will help you much (or at all) in terms of really learning how to play. Over the years I finally took some lessons from a pro, and they definitely helped. Since then, I play with some friends (always learn someting), and the internet is filled with sights that offer free and "for pay" lessons - many are excellent.

Does require lots of practice. Have seen many start to learn but only to give up - just keep after it. I still love learning new stuff - and sometime just pick it up and play for sheer relaxation. Good Luck! Jay

 

[SFDreamer]

Thanks for the advice guys. Yeah, I've heard a lot about be ready to have some sore fingers. That's fine with me, I understand everything takes getting use to. I too have had plenty of friends start it and then give up. My plan is to practice each and everyday for a minimum of 30-60min. Once I get comfortable enough with where I am then I'll probably take a few lessons with an actual teacher -- just to see if there are any extra tricks to making things easier. I am pretty motivated to do this, so I am hoping I stick with it :redface:.

From the advice, I feel like I should learn on an acoustic.

 

[omega2]

I have been playing guitar since high school. I took lessons for the first year of high school and pretty much was self taught from there. I took lessons from a much better instructor in college and that really paid off. If you are serious about learning the instrument, then I would suggest starting off by taking lessons. It's OK to practice 30-60 min a day, but if you don't know what your doing or your technique is wrong, then your wasting your time. Worst case scenario is what happened to me, when I took lessons during college and my instructor realized my alternate picking was completely off. I actually modeled my picking like Eddie Van Halen, but I found that turned out to not be as efficient. Basically, with the wrong technique I wasted about four years. With the correct technique, my speed and accuracy improved dramatically.

As far as what type of guitar to play, it really depends on what type of music you want to play. If your interested in blues/rock/metal/jazz, then an electric guitar is the weapon of choice. If your into folk or classical, an acoustic would be better. The general misconception is people should start on acoustic and move to electric. In my opinion, it really doesn't matter since your are still using a guitar with the same scales and chords. The techniques used in playing classical guitar can be used on electric just as the picking techniques used on electric can be used on acoustic. Personally, I prefer electric, since they are typically more comfortable to play, offer volume better volume control, effects, and is more versatile instrument than acoustic.

 

[SOURCE 1]

Been wanting to do this for years... Keep us updated on your progress and maybe I'll actually get to it this year also!

 

[funkynsx]

I've been playing for 25 years and originally taught myself listening to Hendrix and stevie ray vaughan records.
Teaching yourself is a great way to develope your ear.
I studied jazz at music school for 2 years and found that helped alot and put theory to what i was doing.
The most important thing is to play alot.
The average person takes 10,000 hours to master an instrument so keep that in mind.
Cheers

 

[NSX_PrecisionTeam]

I've been playing guitar for the past 15 years and I'm mostly self-taught. I started with my mom's acoustic in high school and quickly wanted an electric of my own. I bought an inexpensive Ibanez starter pack with a 10" amp from http://www.musiciansfriend.com/. I now have a 6-sting acoustic, 12-sting acoustic, my first Ibanez, an Ibanez RG370jb, and 2 Epiphone Les Pauls (one white with EMG 81/85 humbuckers, one "goth" black with stock pick-ups). I tune my white Les Paul to a low C for metal and standard tuning on my black Les Paul for mostly classic rock and next to everything else.

While some techniques may need to be taught in person (harmonics/squealies, bends, hammers/releases), most techniques can be picked up just by messing around. Learn a couple chords and play around with any rhythm that comes to mind. Soon your hands will get used to changing from one chord to another and the rhythm with just flow.

Also, using tabliture found on the internet helped me learn to play songs I wanted to learn. Use http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/. This website has almost any song you can think of in tabliture form. Even songs made for other non-guitar instuments. They also have an iPhone app that I use when I can't remember a chord or part of a song when I'm not at my computer.

While using tabliture exclusively may teach you to play that song all your friends want to hear, a formal lesson may be better when it comes to the learning the fundamentals, especially in the vulnerable stages of first learning the guitar. I wish I took a leason or class when I first started playing. Now I have alot of bad habits that mildly hinder my development and progression as a player.

If you're serious about playing, take a class to lay down a good basis of understanding of notes, chords, technique and all around fundamentals.

Good luck!

 

[bfrank1972]

I started back in college. My motivation...girls. You'll likely start out sounding like crap until your fingers get stronger, you grow calices, and your strum smoothes out a bit. Never had a lesson but in retrospect I wish I did. Some people will go further than others based on musical talent - I consider myself reasonably musically inclined, but I feel like I could be much further than I am today by having lessons. After a while I tended to take long 'breaks' from playing. Periodic lessons will keep you in it, teach you new stuff that you'd never figure out on your own, and cure bad habits that can wreck you. Lastly do a little research get a good used instrument, there is a lot of crap out there. It will sound better, play much easier, less potential problems down the road, and you won't need to 'upgrade' so soon. Sacrifice flashy looks and pretty finishes for the dull/basic looking guitar that is built well and sounds good.

 

[Vega$ NSX]

I taught myself in high school. I learned by basically taking a song I liked and learning how to read the tablature for that song. Tablature is basically like the sheet music for a piano but for a guitar. It basically shows the 5 strings of the guitar and then it marks the number fret you need press when you strum. Sort of looks like this:

So all you need to do is just play that particular note on that particular string as you read it from left to right. At first it will be a bit tricky because you won't know what finger to use, but eventually you'll figure out the what makes sense. For example, in the tabs above, you'll play the "5" with your index, "6" with middle, "7" with ring and "8" with pinky.

The first thing you discover is that when you try to play a note by pushing down on a fret and hitting that string is that most beginners can't get a clear sounding note. It will sound muddled and not clear. Most beginners make the mistake by trying to push down on a fret with their fingers; the flat part where the fingerprints are. Instead, practice pushing with the very tips of your fingers; very close to your fingernails. You'll want to curl your fingers in very tight and play with the very tips of your fingers to get a clean sounding note.

No matter what, it will take time. Your fingertips will be too soft and you will need to build up the strength in your fingers before it will start to sound decent. Unfortunately the strength and callouses you'll need will just take time to build and there is no shortcut to this; it may even hurt a bit too.

But stick with it, because it is well worth it. Learning to play the guitar is very rewarding on many levels because it's an instrument you can easily own (unlike a piano). It's something you can just pick up and put down, and once you get very good at it, you'll be able to easily play a lot of modern songs because most songs use very common chord progressions. Oh and chicks dig it. :smile:

 

[queenlives]

in the summer of 2007, when i was 53, my friend and i each bought a blemished fretlight and began teaching ourselves to play. what we liked most about the fretlight was it gave us the music we wanted to play and the ability to manipulate the music / guitar to learn @ our own speed. we were able to connect both guitars to the fretlight software on my laptop and play synched.

a month or so later, we began downloading tab sheet music from chordie.com and playing along with music on my ipod. not long after we ditched using the fretlight software / setup and used our other guitars. 5 years later and we continue to play 1x weekly from a couple of big binders of music that match the ~8k songs on my ios devices. over the weekend i learned my friend gave his fretlight to the son of one of his friends and since i don't play mine, may do the same in the near future.

the most difficult thing for me to learn in playing guitar was manipulating my left / fret fingers into position in a timely basis.

best success with whatever path you take to learning to play!

 

[myguitar]

I did.

There is plenty of really good advice here already. I'd say that tablature is the easiest way to learn. I use a free software called TuxGuitar and ultimate-guitar to download songs I wanna learn, in guitar pro format. Once you get the basic rhythms down, start bickering with scales and easy appregios and solos. Well, depending on what style you want to learn to play.

I started 10 years ago when I was 20. I took some lessons for about a month but learned the rest and most of it myself. I like metal and hard rock so I started by learning simple riffs from Metallica, Aerosmith, and AC/DC. Then I moved onto some 80s rock bands like Bon Jovi, Skid Row, GnR, then onto just random stuff here and there. I play very bluesy solos, which I'm now working on avoiding so that I can expand a little, and I'm doing classical guitar and some acoustic soloing, like flamingo, to help me get there.

As far as guitars, don't go out and spend too much on your first one. Mine was an LTD, $250, and I used a distortion pedal with clean/crunch modes to play through an old cassette/CD Aiwa stereo. If you pick up the skill quickly, you will outgrow that guitar and at that point you will know if you should buy something else that is nicer (and probably pricier). I still have that LTD, plus a custom ESP, and bunch more... and currently looking for a good ESP Xplorer or a Rhoads Jackson. They become like toys, I swear my gf will murder me... :biggrin:

Good luck, enjoy it! Trust me when I tell you that there are few things in life that are as fulfilling as learning to play an instrument. Calloused fingers aren't all that bad and they go away quickly.

 

[myguitar]

I still do this every day as a warm up before I play. Good advice!

 

[slamstrom]

Does teaching myself to play the bass-guitar count? My bass-guitar is like a guitar but missing 2 strings.:wink: I wanted to learn another instrument beside the piano, so I bought a bass-guitar this past Christmas. First time playing a string instrument, and I already broke one of the original string when tuning. So I replaced the strings to something easier to spot while learning. Here is my Dean Custom Zone in Nuclear Green with DR Neon Orange strings. Yeah, I know it's bright.:biggrin: