The Ledge

Go Back   The Ledge > Main Forums > Lindsey Buckingham
User Name
Password
Register FAQ Members List Calendar Mark Forums Read


Make the Ads Go Away! Click here.
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 09-02-2002, 07:36 PM
BlueGrass's Avatar
BlueGrass BlueGrass is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: CT
Posts: 829
Smile Just Bought a Guitar

Yeah, I got an acoutic guitar and I'm trying to learn how to play! The thing is not tuned, I don't have a pick and my fingers burn just from changing chords.

Seteca, or whoever can help me. What do you guys suggest for a beginner like me? How did you guys start out? Are their any sites where I can d/l things how to heko me play?

Please, explain. I am hear to absorb EVERYTHING.

Thank you, - Justin.
__________________
Ed Murrow Had A Child and the dam thing went wild
Reply With Quote
.
  #2  
Old 09-02-2002, 08:41 PM
wondergirl9847's Avatar
wondergirl9847 wondergirl9847 is offline
Addicted Ledgie
Supporting Ledgie
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: The Ledge
Posts: 9,282
Arrow Bluegrass..

First of all, congrats on the new geetar!! BTW, what kind is it? Fender? I have a Fender acoustic named Liddy Buck! There are a few guitar players round these parts...seteca, chilid, madformac to name a few, so you will get LOTS of help, I'm sure!! I just got my guitar last Christmas, so I am NO expert like those listed above, but I can suggest getting a CD-ROM called Teach Me Guitar (my dad got it from the internet, ebay I think), and it's made by Voyetra. I have a book titled Hal Leonard Guitar Method by Will Schmid that comes with a CD to help you tune your guitar and it is VERY easy to follow. You can learn what the notes are and some easy as pie songs. Are you learning by ear or taking lessons? I don't use a pick because, frankly, it's too hard to use! LOL I'm such a klutz with it. Also, I don't take lessons, but I try to practice when I'm not too tired, but that's like...all the dang time!! I need more discipline. Well, anyways, I've rambled enough, I'll leave the podium for some EXPERTS to help you out..GOOD LUCK with the guitar playing!!
__________________
**Christy**

Last edited by wondergirl9847; 09-02-2002 at 08:44 PM..
Reply With Quote
  #3  
Old 09-03-2002, 08:12 AM
CarneVaca CarneVaca is offline
Moderator
 
Join Date: Dec 2001
Posts: 3,228
Default

BlueGrass, congratulations. What kind of guitar did you get? That is important because different manufacturers set up their guitars differently. These days Epiphone is making guitars that are very easy to play, but if you buy a Martin, you generally have to have it set up for your own style of playing. If the strings are too high on whatever you bought, don't be discouraged, take it to a guitar repair shop or a luthier and have them lower the action for you.

Second, what style of playing are you interested in? Are you going to mostly strum or do you want to learn fingerstyle? You should look for a teacher who will help you with the style in which you are interested. Definitely learn all the basic open chords on your own: A, B, C, D, E, F G. Also learn the relative minors, which are chords such as A minor, F# minor and E minor. Get yourself a chord dictionary. Hint: the easist chords to play are C, D G, Am and Em. Learn these first. You'll also find that a disproportionate number of songs is built around these chords

An alternative to getting a teacher is to use videos. Happy Traum videos tend to be pretty instructive. Say, if you wanted to learn acoustic blues, buy an acoustic blues video. Books are also very good, but if you can't read music, there are some limitations.

Lastly, go out and buy a Korg electronic tuner. It should cost you about $20. Until you get this, you'll be getting very frustrated because you won't know how to tune your guitar. That will come later. Or you may never be able to tune it by ear, but with the electronic gizmo you won't need to. Your ear, however, should eventually get discerning enough to know when you are out of tune.

Good luck.
Reply With Quote
  #4  
Old 09-03-2002, 12:28 PM
BellaDonnaGypsy BellaDonnaGypsy is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Aug 2001
Location: London, England
Posts: 441
Default

Just to add my two cents... if you want to learn how to play specific songs, get a book that has them notated in tablature. It's extremely easy to figure out... and more helpful if you're playing along, IMO.

Laura.
Reply With Quote
  #5  
Old 09-03-2002, 01:51 PM
BlueGrass's Avatar
BlueGrass BlueGrass is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: CT
Posts: 829
Default

WELL. I'm sure the guitar I got is nothing compared to the acoustic ones you guys have. This is a "Phantom" guitar, and it is a bit smaller than your average sized guitar. I picked it up at a flea market for 25.00. I was like "Eh, this will do good for now."

I want to learn finger picking style cause it seems easier, and more fun. My friend told me about the electronic tuner, which I will probably get soon. I really don't plan on getting lessons, but just teaching myself by listening to lots of music (Lindsey, Clapton), talking to fiends who play guitar, and getting help from you guys and d/l programs off the net.

Hopefully it will come.

Any of you guys have this problem...I play with my right hand and hold the chords with my left, and my fingers KILL from moving them up and down from chord to chord. Will I eventually overcome this, and like develope a calious so I won't feel anything? LoL

Thanks BellaDonna, CarneVaca and Wondergirl
__________________
Ed Murrow Had A Child and the dam thing went wild
Reply With Quote
  #6  
Old 09-03-2002, 02:47 PM
seteca's Avatar
seteca seteca is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: London, UK
Posts: 1,484
Default

hey there Justin,

I have no idea what you know, so sorry if any of the following is a waste of time / obvious to you...

first off...get your guitar into tune:

Your strings are e, B, G, D, A, E. (with high "e" furthest away from your eyes when in the playing position, and low "E" closest to your eyes.)

Follow the path of the strings back to the head to locate the tuner for each string.

Play a string and while its ringing turn its respective tuner. Traditionally turning the tuner towards you (clockwise) should lower the pitch, and turning it away from you (anticlockwise) should increase the pitch.

This is how you will tune your guitar....by turning these untill each string has the correct pitch.

Once you have one string in tune, you can tune the other five using that one as a starting reference.

The one most people go for is the "high-e" string.

There are a number of ways you can get this into tune.
If you have a piano or a keyboard, play middle/high E on that and adjust the tuner on your guitar until the high e on your guitar rings at the same pitch. Don't worry if it takes a long time to get the pitch right, it may take you up to 5 minutes...maybe even longer. Eventually u'll be able to do it in a matter of seconds.

If you don't have a piano/keyboard, there are sites on the internet which have wav. files of "perfectly tuned" open strings, find one of high e and use it.

A very crude way of doing it (I don't recommend this at all...and any other alternative would be better!) would be tuning it using a song....e.g. Lindsey's solo after John's famous bass part on the original version of "The Chain" is initially just him playing high e over and over again....from about 3:23 to 3:28.......use this a reference ONLY if you have no other way of hearing a good high e.

Once you have high e tuned, do this:
tune the B string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open high e string.
Once you've done that, tune the G string so that when you hold down on the 4th fret, it sounds the same as the open B string.
Then tune the D string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open G string.
Then tune the A string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open D string.
Finally, tune the (low) E string so that when you hold down on the 5th fret, it sounds the same as the open A string.

(NB..."open" means playing the string without holding down on any fret)

If you've done this correctly, you should at least have the guitar in tune with itself, even if your starting high e wasn't standardly perfect.

As a total alternative...buy an electronic tuner. This will come with a complete instructions manual and it will tell you exactly how to tune your guitar...you can use it either to get one string into "perfect tune" and then use the same method above to tune the other strings...or you can use it to tune each string individually.

Ok, now you have your guitar in tune.

As CarneVaca said, you must decide what kind of a player you want to become...a chord strummer or a "lead" player.

I would personally advise you to go for the latter. People who can play lead, can ALWAYS play rhythm and strum along with any song using chords, if they want to. But people who've only learnt chords obviously can't play any solos or lead guitar.

Becoming a good strummer might take you anything between 1 and 3 years IMO....becoming a good lead guitarist might take 10 years+.

If you want to be a chord player (only), buy a good book which has an extensive list of chords and how to form them (i.e. tabs or diagrams to show you). After a few months you should be able to start "catching onto" the patterns...e.g. how to go from any major into its respective minor...etc.
The book itself will take you through a logical pattern of learning (i.e. it will start with the most common, easy chords and go on from there).
Also, make sure the book has some "chord progressions", to give you a feel of how you can put different chords together to form some nice strumming patterns.
I recommend "Chords and Progressions" by Jared Walker. (Although I'm not sure if its still in print!)

If you want to learn to play "lead"...i.e. playing songs using individial notes, playing fills, playing solos, AND playing chords...etc etc....there's no straightforward way of doing it. You could get yourself a teacher to start with some really easy tunes, and get better and better. Once he/she's started you off you could carry on by self-teaching yourself.

Or you could teach yourself from day 1. And I would recommend this. You go at your own pace, and your ability will increase exponentially with time if you're practising on a daily basis. Plus, you get to learn the songs that you enjoy, not what the teacher wants you to learn. As a starting point, try picking out some simple melodies. Don't even attempt to try and make your gutiar sound like what you hear on the CDs etc (regardless of whether the song is played with an acoustic or electric)...just "play the tune"....note for note. Yes, to be blunt, it will sound crap compared with the actual song, but this is the only way to learn.
(Incidentally, don't choose any Travis fingerpicking songs to learn with...i.e. The Chain (pre bass solo), Landslide, Big Love (live) are all out of the question. They will confuse you. These are several years down the line, if you're good.)
There really is no way I can (over the internet!) teach you how to do this...press down one fret on one string, you'll get a note. Move one fret higher (towards) you, and you'll increase the pitch of the previous note you played by a half a step/tone. Move it lower (away from you), and you'll decrease the pitch by half a step/tone.
This will become immediately obvious to you within minutes of playing, you've probably already realised this.
Just play around and get some simple tunes going.

There are far fewer notes available to you than you think...most notes can be played at various locations on the board.
Here are the main notes/locations you should start with:

Open E string = (low) E,
E1 = F, E2 = F#, E3 = G, E4 = G#, E5 = A
Open A string = A,
A1 = A#, A2 = B, A3 = C, A4 = C#, A5 = D
Open D string = D,
D1 = D#, D2 = (middle) E, D3 = F, D4 = F#, D5 = G
Open G string = G,
G1 = G#, G2 = A, G3 = A#, G4 = B,
Open B string = B,
B1 = C, B2 = C#, B3 = D, B4 = D#, B5 = E
Open e string = (high) E
e1= F, e2= F#, e3= G, e4= G#, e5 = A.....etc..........e12 = highest E.

Try playing from open E to highest E using that scale above, to give you a feel of the half-step increases per fret.

Once you're on the road of playing some simple melodies, learn some chords aswell. The ones CarneVaca named above are a good choice, learn these and learn some nice progressions with them to boost your confidence (a beginner playing simple chords will always sound more pleasing to the ear of him/herself and others when playing chords rather than trying to pick out simple melodies.) Use books or the internet to learn chords.
www.chordfind.com has every chord you will ever need, and more.

Also, definitely check out this site, it's one of the best guitar teaching sites on the net:
www.zartmo.com/guitarlibrary.html

Finally, don't expect to wake up possesed with the spirit of Jimi Hendrix after 1 month of playing....it takes YEARS to get even reasonably good, it WILL take you MANY years to become a "good guitarist". As long as you're enjoying yourself every step of the way, it should be a very pleasant and totally worthwhile trip.

In answer to your question, "how did you start out?"....my parents bought me an acoustic when I was 5 years old and being strangely obsessed with the group "The Shadows" I taught myself to play along with songs like "F.B.I"..."Apache"...."Wonderful Land"...etc....etc....a very unusual, but extremely effective way of starting out!

If your fingers are "burning", haha....welcome to the fingerprintless-lefthanders club !!!



(PS....feel free to email / PM me if u need help with anything.)

Last edited by seteca; 09-03-2002 at 02:55 PM..
Reply With Quote
  #7  
Old 09-03-2002, 02:55 PM
Wayne2 Wayne2 is offline
Senior Ledgie
 
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Toronto
Posts: 139
Default

I'm planning on buying a guitar in the near future as well.

I was curious...what are the benefits of the "finger picking" method?
Reply With Quote
  #8  
Old 09-03-2002, 03:09 PM
BlueGrass's Avatar
BlueGrass BlueGrass is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: CT
Posts: 829
Default

Thank you Seteca!

Wow, I feel enriched or something. I will definitley get this thing tuned and start "playing" some simple music. Thanks a lot. I will probably end up e-mailing you. I'm @ XxIncognito2K@aol.com.

Also, my friend and I were sitting listening to songs like "Big Love" while trying to figure out how in the Hell does he do that by himself!?!?!? I mean, even with 5 fingers, I can't do that many things with my fingers let a lone playing something like that. He seems to have INCREDIBLE control over each of his fingers seeing each one does something else on that song.
__________________
Ed Murrow Had A Child and the dam thing went wild
Reply With Quote
  #9  
Old 09-03-2002, 07:27 PM
Skylark's Avatar
Skylark Skylark is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: USA
Posts: 380
Talking Just Got an Old Guitar!!!!

THANKS A MILLION Seteca!!!!
We were given an old Harmony Acoustic
and now...with your fine help ...maybe....we can
figure something out on it! Thanks for explaining
tuning and the basic chords! Most Gratefully,Sky
__________________
"LOVE is The Sweet Surprise!"

Peacekeeper song ... Lindsey
Reply With Quote
  #10  
Old 09-04-2002, 03:27 PM
BlueGrass's Avatar
BlueGrass BlueGrass is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: CT
Posts: 829
Default

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccc$*@($!


The friggin A string snapped loose while trying to tune it. This blows. The guitar ain't worth re-stringing now.
__________________
Ed Murrow Had A Child and the dam thing went wild
Reply With Quote
  #11  
Old 09-04-2002, 11:24 PM
wondergirl9847's Avatar
wondergirl9847 wondergirl9847 is offline
Addicted Ledgie
Supporting Ledgie
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: The Ledge
Posts: 9,282
Unhappy Now Blue...

Don't give up on it!! Strings don't cost THAT much!! I was tuning my guitar when I first got it and my B string kinda snapped, and I THOUGHT I had broken it...but I didn't, I loosened it all the way almost and re-tightened it, and it sounded better!! SO, just go buy an $1.00 string (that's about how much my B string cost..nuttin at all!!)
__________________
**Christy**
Reply With Quote
  #12  
Old 09-06-2002, 08:30 AM
seteca's Avatar
seteca seteca is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: London, UK
Posts: 1,484
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by BlueGrass
....The friggin A string snapped loose while trying to tune it. This blows. The guitar ain't worth re-stringing now.
As Christy said, go and buy (if you haven't already) a new one...it will cost you about $1, and if you ask the guy/girl nicely i'm sure he/she will re-string it for you for free....

Congratulations, you broke your first string...here's to 1000 more...!!

Reply With Quote
  #13  
Old 09-06-2002, 02:05 PM
BlueGrass's Avatar
BlueGrass BlueGrass is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: CT
Posts: 829
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by seteca


As Christy said, go and buy (if you haven't already) a new one...it will cost you about $1, and if you ask the guy/girl nicely i'm sure he/she will re-string it for you for free....

Congratulations, you broke your first string...here's to 1000 more...!!

LoL...it's fun playing without it.
__________________
Ed Murrow Had A Child and the dam thing went wild
Reply With Quote
  #14  
Old 09-06-2002, 06:40 PM
seteca's Avatar
seteca seteca is offline
Addicted Ledgie
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: London, UK
Posts: 1,484
Default

Quote:
Originally posted by BlueGrass


LoL...it's fun playing without it.
Hahaha........whatever makes you happy man....!

(Maybe you do have the spirit of Jimi in you after all!!!)

Reply With Quote
  #15  
Old 09-07-2002, 01:22 AM
wondergirl9847's Avatar
wondergirl9847 wondergirl9847 is offline
Addicted Ledgie
Supporting Ledgie
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: The Ledge
Posts: 9,282
Exclamation LOL!!

That is the new "in" thing!! Playing without one string!! YEAH!! LOL
__________________
**Christy**
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump


Blues: The British Connection by Bob Brunning  picture

Blues: The British Connection by Bob Brunning

$12.99



Bob Brunning Sound Trackers Music Series Hardcover 6 Book Lot Pop, Metal, Reggae picture

Bob Brunning Sound Trackers Music Series Hardcover 6 Book Lot Pop, Metal, Reggae

$56.99



1960s Pop by Brunning, Bob picture

1960s Pop by Brunning, Bob

$5.16



Bob Brunning Sound Trackers Music Series Hardcover 6 Book Lot Pop, Metal, Reggae picture

Bob Brunning Sound Trackers Music Series Hardcover 6 Book Lot Pop, Metal, Reggae

$79.99



1960s Pop - Hardcover By Brunning, Bob - GOOD picture

1960s Pop - Hardcover By Brunning, Bob - GOOD

$6.50




All times are GMT -5. The time now is 06:39 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
© 1995-2003 Martin and Lisa Adelson, All Rights Reserved