learning to play guitar better... with $0

[wing]

i've always had guitars, and noodled around on them. i can play decently well, when i try really really really hard. it never comes easily. i can play only some chords.

anyway, i see others who just go crazy on the neck. they are able to just find the notes and jam around. many of you can just slip and slide on the thing like there is no tomorrow. and obviously i realize it all takes practice and time...

but see, i've been around guitars my whole life. been playing around with them for years. but i've never had money for a teacher, so i could never really learn what was what and how to do it.

i still don't have money for a teacher, and the internet tutorials and books i've seen appear formidable and almost impossible for me to learn from. i'm a real hands on kind of guy. soooo... i feel stuck sometimes. but i really want to get better.

are there any exercises i can do that will REALLY help improve my playing? are there absolute things i should do and practice that will increase my knowledge and understanding of the instrument?

the other day i taught myself the major pentatonic scale through a lot of crappy internet sites and manual guesswork. but i'm terrible at playing it. i just want to be able to dance around this neck like i see everyone else capable of... i know i am too! it's just disappointing that i've been trying for years with no real dramatic improvement. it makes me feel like it's just one of those instruments you simply must have a teacher for to understand. but i haven't the money, so i have to do something, or else i'll die!

[OM15.2]

ahhh man - you're gonna open up a hornets next here.

Before I start I am definately not a great guitarist but I think it as two separate aspects

- first of all finger speed, ANY practice will help here. Scales, learning songs.... practice practice practice practice blah blah blah, but really there are no short cuts to make your fingers work fluently. JUST PRACTICE (oh & I used to squeeze a ball and do finger exercises too)

- secondly, what notes to play? This is MUCH harder, when I was at school and bored I used to draw the full guitar fret board and label each note (useless & obsessive but everything helps... maybe?) and I used to study and play and just make myself KNOW the fretboards & notes. Then I used to put on a simple 3cord song and play leads over the top and use different route notes all over the fretboard.

I dunno as I said I find the second aspect lots harder, I don't think you need to play a ton of notes or play 'em fast. You just need to play the right ones.

The good news is IT DOESN'T COST ANY MONEY!!!!!!!
just learn a few string bends and 'tricks' from a real basic blues scale and then practice practice practiccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeee

[Brian Brock]

Well, I play guitar and teach a guitar class in high school. Here's what I suggest. #3 is my favorite.

1. You don't have to play it right or play what other people do. In other words, you can just make stuff up that sounds good to you. Then, go make a recording of it, and that will help you see what needs improving - try to incorporate it into a song.

2. Find a friend who's good at guitar, and get them to show you a few things or answer a question every once in a while. Most teachers, in my view, do exactly that, and then wait another few weeks, getting paid by the hour, until the budding guitarist practices it in and so forth.

3. Get a songbook by a band you absolutely love and know all of their songs backwards and forwards, and play every song in the book every day. I had this Beatles book and I spent at least two hours a day with it. Since you know what it should sound like, and you like it, it can be a real motivator/kick-in-the ass when you play the wrong chords. Also, learn to play all the melodies on the guitar. Since these are written on a staff this will also teach you to sight-read on the guitar, which you can then apply to other learning/playing.

4. If you feel like it, try finding every E on the guitar, and move between them for a minute or two. Then F. Then F# etc.

5. Play for 15 minutes every day solid. Then up to 20, 30, etc. That's really all you need. Even a steady 45 minutes a week here and there is good, you know?

Check out this guy named D'Gary, if you want to hear someone really awesome who sounds unlike anyone else.

[JamesHE]

I've been playing for almost 15 years now. I did take some lessons when I was 14-15 from this lesbo folk singer. We'd sit around and play bobby magee for a bit. Just basic strumming patterns, basic chords, very fundamental but it was good cause I was actually playing songs, evey though they werent Metallica and they sucked. I could never get into working on scales or something like that. I manage to learn a few "rock" tunes from tab, assorted metal riffs, Nirvanna, Pearl Jam. With a skewed view of the basics I got "better" by just writing songs on the damn thing. Really stoopid poorly executed riffs played through a BOSS MG-10, with the ear pads from a pair of headphones taped to the grill going to whatever tape player was around... (the good ol days)

Come up with some groovy/ bluesy chord progression, something really simple like a two chord progression. record it/loop it whatever, then just rock that pentatonic scale for hours till you break it. Listen for the notes that really grab you, then start stringing a few phrases together. you'll be jamming in no time! (give or take a few years)

[wing]

so most of you would agree it helps to jam along with songs?

[Piotr]

JAMJAMJAM!!!

Play as many songs as you can grasp. The more tunes you can learn the more you will see why the writers chose to write the tunes.

Figure out why you can take any chord shape and move it up and down the neck. Figure out how you can take the five open chord positions and apply them anywhere on the neck.

Figure out why cadences matter: 1-4-5; 2-5-1; etc...

Learn the entire Back in Black album!!!

[wing]

but what i don't understand... is why it's so important to learn other people's music in order to play my own and play it well?

i mean, when drumming, i never really learned to play by songs. i just... drummed. i mean, of course, i picked up ideas and beats from places, but i would never sit down with a song and learn how it was played exactly.

why for guitar?

[Bear]

I never learned to play other people's songs, and I never had any lessons. I'm by no means an excellent guitarist, but I can play. For learning scales and where to find notes, I played along to CDs, but instead of learning what was there, I would write my own part or just play it over and over and improvise. But I learned the most from writing songs, and thinking how the next part should go and not be able to find/play it. Then I practiced until I could, realized the song sucked anyway and repeated the process.

But with most things, it's just a matter of doing it. If you play everyday, you'll improve. Or you'll get frustrated and quit. Or you'll eat a cheeseburger.

[wing]

I never learned to play other people's songs, and I never had any lessons. I'm by no means an excellent guitarist, but I can play. For learning scales and where to find notes, I played along to CDs, but instead of learning what was there, I would write my own part or just play it over and over and improvise. But I learned the most from writing songs, and thinking how the next part should go and not be able to find/play it. Then I practiced until I could, realized the song sucked anyway and repeated the process.

But with most things, it's just a matter of doing it. If you play everyday, you'll improve. Or you'll get frustrated and quit. Or you'll eat a cheeseburger.

that's mostly what i do. i find songs i like, and play along. it seems though no matter how often i've been doing it, i haven't seen great improvement. i still struggle all over the neck. i can't really wail. i can't chickenscratch with the best of em!

haha. just kidding. i just want to COMPETENTLY play, which i don't feel i am confidently able to do. i can't really write anything interesting this way, and there are so many times in which i have this amazingly perfect melody in my head, and it takes me all day to figure out how to play it on guitar. that's just sad.

i do eat lots of cheeseburgers, though, but i don't know if that is directly affected by my guitar playing.

[wing]

i still very often pick the wrong string when playing a scale or solo.... i'll be watching the neck, and next thing i know i'm all over the wrong string! taadaa!

[wing]

oh and... after i learn and practice a chord sequence, i can get good at the chord changes. but as soon as a new chord sequence or whatever is introduced, i fumble and have to sit down and try to figure out how to best change. shouldn't i be able to just change naturally? and in what ways can i practice this? because i have practiced chord changes... so that doesn't seem to help. or does it?

i have so much yet to learn...

[Bear]

That might be part of your problem. I got a lot better when I quit looking for the notes. Literally, I mean. I just let my hands move around instead of telling them where to go, and I learned a lot by forcing myself to look ahead. My hands often know better than my brain.

And please don't doubt the connection between learning guitar and cheeseburgers. The universe will go out of balance again.

[jamoo]

the other day i taught myself the major pentatonic scale through a lot of crappy internet sites and manual guesswork. but i'm terrible at playing it. i

Maybe break things up a bit. I find it's easier to play pentatonics upwards (high scale->low) than the other way around, so I used to just play that way.

From what I hear the key is not giving up.


..

[psychicoctopus]

I started playing guitar with lessons from a really good classical guitar instructor. He had me learn pieces by Fernando Sor, Bach, and Villa Lobos. That music is beautiful, finger-twisting good excercise on the guitar. But reading music was no fun. Yuk!

The other thing I picked up from this instructor was the most important thing I've learned, and it was almost painless. It applies to any stringed instrument: scales AREN'T made of fret numbers and note names, they're just patterns of dots - 2-dimensional maps. When I look at a fingerboard, I see scales as a grid of dots that represent possibilities. Most chords fit right onto the grid. When I see a chord, I also see the nearby notes that fit into the scale it comes from.

I recommend learning the five basic positions for the diatonic scale, and understooding which notes are the root, 2nd, 3rd, 9th etc... When you've got that in place, you can be like, 'you guys in B minor?' and make up shit anywhere on the fretboard. Or take boring bar chords and spice them up without playing sour notes.

Of course, it will sound formulaic until you FORGET WHAT YOU'VE LEARNED and let your ears guide your fingers, instead of your brain.

Studying chord encyclopedias and tablature was frustrating. It always seemed like the stuff I learned this way never fit together conceptually. But those five basic diatonic scale positions GLUED IT ALL TOGETHER!

Anyway, I played guitar almost every day for 10 years then I got bored with the sound of it. Ha ha. Chug Chug Chug Tweedle Deedle Dee...

[bobbydj]

I learnt a lot by playing other people's songs - Holiday in Cambodia (selected high-lights), Blitzkrieg Bop. Etc. Can you do bar chords - bar chords with the interesting notes sounding? Like, say, if you were playing a chord of B by barring the 7th fret on the E string can you put the notes of D, F# and B down on the G, B and top E strings? And can you convert that to a major chord by putting a D# (or is it E flat?? I never know that shit) down? If you can do 'proper' bar chords like that - which is kind of the next step after 'power chords', then I think you've got quite a lot of the stuff you need right there. This is a serious question - can you do these kinds of chords?

Sure, noodling up and down scales is great if you can do it, but c'mon. They're not really the skills you need to write a song.

For me, playing the guitar has never been an end in itself. It's always been a means - a means of writing MY songs. That's why I'm sort of with Ben. I wouldn't push the idea of learning other people's stuff too hard. Like, I think it's important in the early stages, but you sound like you may have gone passed that point. I dunno.

The thing to do, I think, is to practice the strumming side of it, I reckon. That is, IF you can do the kinds of chords I was talking about. Along with those chords I'd also stress the importance of finding your way around the 'natural', 'open' chords - the ones where your hand stays right at the bottom of the neck. Like A minor, C major, D minor and major, E minor and major. Etc. And try and suss out in your mind which notes, precisely, are making these chords what they are - i.e. which notes makes them minor and major. I think that's really important, honestly.

And bear in mind too (although you'll already know this fine well) that a lot of the most effective solos and noodling are VERY simple. Like, a lot of Mick Jones's solos in the Clash were 2 or 3 notes. Less is more. The way a bass line changes under just a few notes can be far more emotive than 300 hundred lead phrases tossed off in 20 seconds. Ditto chord progressions. That's where the real power and potential of the guitar lies - in 3 or 4 well-conceived strings of chords. Fuck complexity. I mean, if you listen to someone like Can, what precisely is the guitar doing?? Yeah, ok - sometimes it's 'noodling'. But it's very rarely virtuoso style noodling. It's often incredibly economical, textural type stuff.

I really think that a lot of the guitar is about the right hand (if you're right handed) not the left hand. I know the left hand gets all the applause - hey, look how quick s/he went up and down that scale!! Etc. But honestly, learning what the right hand (the strumming, picking aspect) should be doing is so crucial it's not true. Especially in the case of chords. Pathetic as it might sound, you've got to become kind of fairly obessessed by it all. You've got ENJOY even LOVE sitting down and choosing 3 or 4 chords and just playing them to a rhythm - playing them only where the kick drum is placed. Or on the off-beats. Get that timing thing nice and tight. Fill out the playing with strumming patterns that emphasise the groove with the kick - do that for a month, then do it so you play against the kick, putting in the off-beats. It's all that kind of drone-work that pays off, and gets you on the road to proficiency imo. PS I've never paid for a lesson, fwiw.