teaching yourself guitar?

soulsinging

anyone round here self taught? ive got a guitar that i havent picked up in ages. i took a handful of lessons a few years back and got the nuts and bolts but im pretty vague and rusty now. however, i dont have money to pay for regular lessons now, so im hoping to learn on my own. has anyone else done this and if so how? any good books or anything you can recommend?

Garner

My buddy is self taught......he just bought a guitar like a year ago and he's actually pretty good now

MissYouAllDay

Hey,

As of now I am still self taught. It is very easy to get the basics since the hard part about them is practice not understanding. Check out giventowail.com and some other sites.

Just do a google search and you should find tons of sites with the basic chord shapes and guides on how to read tabs.

It's not difficult to self teach but it takes a while.

ledvedderman

im self taught, i started with basic tabs and moved on to recognizing chords, than the various types of chords, and now im a fairly decent guitar player. i cant solo for shit, but i can do pretty much anything else

dont_go_on_me

i taught myself by using instructional books. I really wanna start up with lessons though...$$$

YeahThatRocks.com

There are so many resources for tabs online now, that you can see how to play almost any song. I think it's easier to start by learning songs you know, because you know how it's supposed to sound.

Start with easy rythym stuff, like some Rolling Stones, Ramones, or Green Day and work from there.

It's all about the amount of practice you put in. I have very limited talent, but can hold my own with most stuff except real complicated solos like Mike Mc plays.

Try http://www.guitartabs.com or just google guitar tabs and you'll find tons of sites with almost every song.

KillerIsMe

i started off bad religion tabs and now id like to say that im a competent guitar player, my solos are fairly zeppelinish and im a little sloppy but ive also never taken a lesson in my life.

soulsinging

i can read tabs and have learned a small handful of tunes from tabs. but im not looking to just be able to play a bunch of cover songs (and most tabs are done by ear anyway). i wanna learn real guitar... chords, chord progressions, notes, being on key, major versus minor, and all that jazz. if i go solely by tabs ill be able to play a bunch of other people's songs but wont really know how to do anything on my own is what im thinking. i wanna understand it, not just play it, if that makes any sense.

in any case, i suppose ill start by refreshing myself on all the songs i know.

KillerIsMe

ya i still dont know a large chunk of the technical shit. i play what sounds good to me and thats about it. for those things guitar classes are cool for. you can take em at a junior college for fairly cheap. not personal like private lessons but its a lot cheaper and you still get a lot out of them.

SCORPION

I am self-taught.....

I always wanted to learn, but never could find anyone to teach me, so one summer (when no code came out) I sat down with my moms "really fucking old" silvertone and started hacking away until I stumbled upon a mangled "G" chord. I hung out there for awhile until I got comfortable enough to move on to something new. I was listening to the No Code album and fell in love with Off He Goes and started messing around with it until it actually sounded like the song. Fast forward to the present.....I now do a solo-acoustic sets at a local bar in my home town. I have also done the same in California (Rancho Bernardo), have played with Jeff Moore and the Witch Doctors (local band in the Encinitas, CA area and have also played 1 night in vegas.
My point is that everything has to start somewhere and with dedication, perserverance, and above all, LOVE of what you are doing, you will find a way to make it happen.

helpful sources:
Guitar One
Guitar World
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com
your local music shop has literature and videos if you need to travel that route
your favorite CD and time (My favorite approach)

hope this helps all who wish to persue a dream like this.

GOOD LUCK!!!

62strat

Im self taught as well, going on about 9 years now. i started in 9th grade, my good buddys uncle had a guitar and he showed us "big me" although i didnt know how to play and i remembered two of the chords. one night we borrowed the guitar and we thought we were going to learn how to play by watching pj's SNL taping of not for you. we tried, but couldnt do it. my freind fell asleep...i took the guitar downstairs with the chord book, memorized 8 of the major chords or whatever, i dont want to count...and the next morning i showed him i wrote a song! ha..obviously just threw all the chords together. then his father had drums, and is an amazing drummer...taught him..and boom bam.

shortly after i got better at the chords, i learned how to read tab..then it took off from there.

i ended up having a half semester of lessons in college...so maybe the self taught is now out the window, is was good to finally put a concrete understanding of what i was doing...

KillerIsMe

ive been considering taking lessons for a bit just to learn some of the backbone stuff but the battle between lessons and new gear always ends in new gear.

YeahThatRocks.com

If you want to learn theory and "real" music, I'd recommend getting a teacher. There's tons of books out there but a teacher can show you how to do it...

Rock's easy Jazz is hard. Classical is hardest.

FinsburyParkCarrots

I'm self taught. I worked out the pentatonic by ear when I was fifteen and was amazed to see, when I started consulting books a year or so later, how different my scale shape was from the standard one: my pentatonic went down the fretboard diagonally! I still use that shape occasionally because the notes have a different tonality when fretted and picked.

Banana-Rama

I am self taught in every instrument that I can play....For myself it is was the only way to go and now I am quite good at guitar and can play most songs if I have tabs for them. I have written several songs on guitar as well. It is totally up to you and what you feel is best for yourself.

signaltonoise

I took some lessons from my brother last summer. He's still willing to teach me, but I'm kind of impatient and often too busy.. However, sometimes I just pick an old used Japanese guitar I bought for practising and I try to play some songs..Guitar pro is a good program I often use- it has so many tabs and chords and it shows you how to play them. I would really like to learn more than just several songs, but now I don't have time..plus I should work on patience..

enharmonic

I started out self-taught...took a lesson here and there along the way to learn some techniques that I couldn't figure out on my own.

Then, about 5 years ago, I was broadsided by a drunk driver and nearly killed. The accident left me with considerable nerve damage...no feeling in my left arm and hand. I had to "re-learn" how to play guitar without feeling the frets.

Fast forward 20 months, I had a surgery to move the ulnar nerve in my arm. Fortunately, it restored much of the feeling I had before the accident. Unfortunately, they had to cut through the muscles in my triceps and forearm to move the nerve and create a new "channel" for it.

I have recently started playing again on a regular basis...this time...I am using these tutorials/DVD's

http://www.guitarprinciples.com/

Good luck to you!

mccreadyisgod

I taught myself for quite a while, started with a stupid "Intro to Folk Guitar" video that conveniently taught me how to read tab, and then I started getting tabs from the net. Learned basic and then more elaborate chord shapes, figured out patterns in chord structures, and got used to playing, fretting, strumming, picking, etc. I joined a band about two years into learning, and that helped a lot, not only learning from the other guitar player, but challenging myself to learn faster and put more time in. My senior year of high school, I took a guitar class that they had that taught me the stuff I didn't learn on my own, like chord theory, the circle of fifths, etc.

I think everyone learns differently... some people need lessons to get off the ground, some just need a patient nudge in the right direction, and some people will actually learn worse thru lessons. I think it's worth trying to find a decent tutor and see where it takes you.

KillerIsMe

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

I'm self taught. I worked out the pentatonic by ear when I was fifteen and was amazed to see, when I started consulting books a year or so later, how different my scale shape was from the standard one: my pentatonic went down the fretboard diagonally! I still use that shape occasionally because the notes have a different tonality when fretted and picked.

same exact thing here too, except i still dont know/use the standard pentatonic