How to Self-learn the Guitar?
Posted in learn guitar on 18. Jul, 2010
What’s this week’s question? Let’s dive straight in…
Question: Hello guys. Well I just bought a guitar and I don’t have any money for lessons haha. But I hear the guitar is one of the best instruments to teach yourself and I have heard of many people doing it. So I wanted to know, what exactly should I learn to get started? I know I need to practice of course, but practice what? Scales? Chords? Is there any guitar teachers out there that could possibly give me a check list of things to do? That would be very helpful. Thank you
Answer: I’d say start by just playing around to get comfortable with it. You can work on chords and scales at your own pace. I learned on my own by learning some of my favorite songs then working my way up to more difficult songs. The more you like it and the more you feel that you can reach it with some practice, the more you can improve, so take small steps and ALWAYS start slow, or else you could end up being a sloppy player. For learning just about anything, I highly recommend starting really slow, then slowly speeding up a little bit. A metronome is very useful for this, it also helps your timing.
I personally never really practiced scales as much as I probably should have so you can get away with not doing so. One good thing to do is make up your own patterns and practice them, or learn different types of patterns from songs you like. One common things professionals do (based on what I’ve heard from interviews) is to set times. Like 20 minutes on scales, 20 on chords, jam for an hour, and so on.
Start on easier things because you most likely don’t have the dexterity and finger strength to pull off crazier things yet, and I guess the most important part is to just play and have fun. Their are two programs you can use to learn songs. Power Tab and Guitar Pro (I have both) you can get the notes from websites like Ultimate-Guitar and learn from there. GuitarPro also has a built in thing that shows you chords and scales.
Just remember: Guitar, like most things in life, requires time. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. With that in mind, the more you practice, the quicker you can be better and the way you practice can determine how quickly you improve also. Just do some research on things like theory, because that can be very confusing until you figure it out, though you don’t absolutely need to know it (it’s very useful and is a good way to be able to explain things)
Just remember to have fun and that’s all that really matters I suppose.
I personally never really practiced scales as much as I probably should have so you can get away with not doing so. One good thing to do is make up your own patterns and practice them, or learn different types of patterns from songs you like. One common things professionals do (based on what I’ve heard from interviews) is to set times. Like 20 minutes on scales, 20 on chords, jam for an hour, and so on.
Start on easier things because you most likely don’t have the dexterity and finger strength to pull off crazier things yet, and I guess the most important part is to just play and have fun. Their are two programs you can use to learn songs. Power Tab and Guitar Pro (I have both) you can get the notes from websites like Ultimate-Guitar and learn from there. GuitarPro also has a built in thing that shows you chords and scales.
Just remember: Guitar, like most things in life, requires time. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it. With that in mind, the more you practice, the quicker you can be better and the way you practice can determine how quickly you improve also. Just do some research on things like theory, because that can be very confusing until you figure it out, though you don’t absolutely need to know it (it’s very useful and is a good way to be able to explain things)
Just remember to have fun and that’s all that really matters I suppose.
It’s called SELF learning for a reason. <_<
go to ultimate-guitar.com and start learning your favorite songs.