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Yes Randy, this is the only beginner forum. Where are you at with learning to play the guitar? If you let us know what you do know it will help us to give you some suggestions. Do you play any chords, do you use 1 finger to play chords, do you play bar chords, do you know the notes on the lowest 6th string?
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge -
Hi Randy, glad you’re here! In addition to telling us a bit more about yourself and your current knowledge, check out the Essential Theory course that Brian has put together. In it he starts at the beginning of musical concepts and guitar, explaining the foundation of what you need to know to get a good handle on the weekly lessons. You can find the course through the top menu: My Account > My Courses > Essential Theory.
Enjoy the learning journey and keep asking questions here. It helps all of us!
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Bill Cosby (it’s OK to talk about him) had an opening line for his standup comedy routine on his life story which went: “I started off as a child”. The crowd considered it funny because it was such a statement of the obvious. And when it comes to guitar, every one of us can say “I started off as a beginner”. Every beginning guitar student has been welcomed here on the forum, because we’re nice people and we want to help our fellow students learn. Just ask anything any time, and we’ll be glad to help.
Sunjamr Steve
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It would also help to know your goals. Do you want to learn how to strum songs? Do you want to learn how to play lead? Do you want to learn to play only for yourself or the public? Do you want to learn theory? Anything will help us help you!
Joe
The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sound,
Or the strength of an Oak with roots deep in the ground.
--Graeme Edge -
I updated my profile. I only half-assed it the first time. I read a little music, but I’m lazy. I’d rather watch and listen and learn that way. I’ve had pretty good luck with that. I’d like to find alternative ways to make chords or note variations without stretching my fingers so far. I don’t have very large hands so bar chord and stretching my pinky and forefinger from the 2 nd to the 5th fret is a little challenging to me. I think I finally understand what this site is about. But I haven’t seen great examples of improvising. In other words, how can I take this weeks lesson and apply it to a popular cover or another song in the same key. I don’t have the smarts for that. I have learned 5 or 6 of the tunes on the sight. But I pick and choose the ones that appeal to me most. I tend to gravitate to the Blues, but I’d like to learn some alternate picking for bluegrass. That may be beyond the scope of this site. Hope that helps. Like I said, I updated my Bio if that helps.
thanks for any tips that aren’t too heavily weighted on theory and technical terminology.thanks, Randy
Randy P
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Some of us love music theory, and some of us hate it. I never go out of my way to learn it, but somehow over time I have accidentally learned more than I expected. It was an effortless process, since those little theory tidbits are fed to us in small doses within almost every ActiveMelody lesson. As for bar chords and complex chords, you really don’t need them, so just say no. We have learned that most pro guitarists don’t use bar chords during performances, because it’s too hard on the fingers. Same with long reach chords. There’s always an easier alternative.
If you want to hear some of the AM members’ improv, start listening to the submissions for the Monthly Challenges. There you will find that some of us are terrible at improv (but nobody cares) and some of us are quite good at improv. It’s also worth noting that there are very few singers among us members. So you won’t hear a lot of talk about “songs” and how to create fill licks for them. Instead, it’s more about putting on a jam track and just playing what comes into your head. If nothing comes into your head, then that’s why you can’t play improv. So your first mission should be to put on a jamtrack and see if you can just hum an improv melody to it. Like BB King said, “If you can’t hum it, you can’t play it.”
Sunjamr Steve
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Hi,
My name is Andy and I have been a full member for about 6 months and I’m still not sure where to start!
I have been playing fingerstyle tunes (attempting) for about 50 years and have never used a pick.My approach has always been to get the tab and work on a piece for Months or sometimes years with some success,
so the idea of improvising and jamming with a pick is very new to me and I simply do not know where to start.I love the blues and can play a little fingerstyle, but would love to learn some electric blues improv. However I don’t
own an electric guitar and have never played one.I’m beginning to think I am the wrong place and should give up and just keep playing fingerstyle tunes from tab.
Help!!
Andy
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I use a 0.73 up to 0.88 pick, but you should try a bunch of different sizes. Honestly, I googled how to use a pick on guitar and waded through a slew of video’s watching the various techniques and experimented with them. My middle, ring, and little finger used to splay outward as I strum and pick, but I have switched over to Brian’s style of picking (fingers curled in) after trying it for a while. I realized, I liked it better, so it’s all about experimenting and finding what works for you.
The pick gives you more volume on the notes IMHO. In the beginning I really attacked the strings way to aggressively and found out much later that using a much more gentle attack and motion with the picking hand gave me much better results. Think economy of motion and using dynamics to make your playing more musical.
As far as improvising, start with any melody you can dream up that fits the key of the jam track. If you don’t know your scales well, just call up an interactive scale and display it on screen to work with initially. I use this site: https://muted.io/guitar-scales/
I’m also a big believer in learning that circle of 5ths to make up your own chord progressions and use it to decipher existing music you like to listen to.
Go slow and practice correct technique, and your abilities will dramatically improve.
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Hi,
My name is Andy and I have been a full member for about 6 months and I’m still not sure where to start!
I have been playing fingerstyle tunes (attempting) for about 50 years and have never used a pick.My approach has always been to get the tab and work on a piece for Months or sometimes years with some success,
so the idea of improvising and jamming with a pick is very new to me and I simply do not know where to start.I love the blues and can play a little fingerstyle, but would love to learn some electric blues improv. However I don’t
own an electric guitar and have never played one.I’m beginning to think I am the wrong place and should give up and just keep playing fingerstyle tunes from tab.
Help!!
Andy
Hi,
My name is Andy and I have been a full member for about 6 months and I’m still not sure where to start!
I have been playing fingerstyle tunes (attempting) for about 50 years and have never used a pick.My approach has always been to get the tab and work on a piece for Months or sometimes years with some success,
so the idea of improvising and jamming with a pick is very new to me and I simply do not know where to start.I love the blues and can play a little fingerstyle, but would love to learn some electric blues improv. However I don’t
own an electric guitar and have never played one.I’m beginning to think I am the wrong place and should give up and just keep playing fingerstyle tunes from tab.
Help!!
Andy
Hi Andy, I’m more or less in the same boat. I’m just looking for the easiest possible lesson to start with. Did you get any replies, or find your way around the site? Thanks. Mike.
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Michael M, I didn’t really know where to start either when I started using this site. I just simply started to work through weekly lessons and the ones I liked from the past. The more lessons I worked through, the more I started to understand what Brian was trying to tell us. When I was confused about the number system, I did google searches on the subject and quickly found out what it was and how to use it. Later on, I got the theory bug, which is the desire to learn what music is to every musician and of course the specialized theory for guitar only which is mostly the CAGED system. If you don’t know that system, there is an entire course on it here. I don’t think you need to start there, but eventually, you have to bite the bullet and go through the course. It makes every weekly lesson much easier to understand and will get you closer to your goal of being able to improvise.
You know the old saying: How do you eat an elephant? That reminds me of this very question on how to improvise. You eat the elephant one bite at a time. Same with improvising, you learn one thing about what you don’t know at a time.
Now to get down to brass tacks on how does one improvise. For me, it was a combination of finally learning all the notes on the fretboard, learning all of the five patterns of the major/minor pentatonic scales without fumbling. Then mastering the major scale in different positions on the neck. There is no magic pill, or easy path forward to improvisation other than learning what you don’t know yet. So make a list of the things you think you don’t know and count those as your current weaknesses or road blocks to learning to improvise. Then start searching for lessons on a particular subject that you want to tackle and just put in the work.
Rinse and repeat to gain knowledge of how the guitar works. Most of us see patterns and shapes and that will take you so far. Eventually, you will need to know the intervals and formulas for the scales and chords. It’s not hard at all to pick one thing for the day and tell yourself that you are going to learn this one thing and understand what it is by the end of the day or by the end of the week.
At some point, I ended up understanding that the key of the song or progression lights up many possible notes that can be played. I also see notes that should be avoided. I call those notes poison notes, and depending on the key of the song, I review where those notes are and learn to see them as obstacles to jump over.
In addition, the scale formula is known and I can simply look at the fretboard and start mapping out all the possible notes that I can potentially play in the most common area’s that are played by most musicians. Once you go through the trouble of doing this enough times, you don’t need to do it anymore and you just see all of the possible notes that can be utilized during an improve.
It now comes down to creating musical phrases or licks that can express different musical ideas. That can either come from doing the weekly lessons, or studying the lead guitar course that comes with you membership on this site. There are ton of killer blues licks that can be studied and learned and applied to a multitude of provided backing tracks.
As soon as you learn something new, you must use it in a musical way (preferably with a backing track) or in the context of a song or weekly lesson. But I found that once you have even a small quantity of licks that you can play in time, those will automatically give you exploration into variations of those vary same licks. So suddenly, you know more licks than you think you do to create some great musical improvisations.
Yes, there is more to it, but it’s impossible to go through every little detail. You will be on a self discovery journey to learn as much as you can about what you don’t yet know about the guitar and how it can replace or compliment your real voice to do the singing.
Go slow and practice correct technique, and your abilities will dramatically improve.
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Michael M, I didn’t really know where to start either when I started using this site. I just simply started to work through weekly lessons and the ones I liked from the past. The more lessons I worked through, the more I started to understand what Brian was trying to tell us. When I was confused about the number system, I did google searches on the subject and quickly found out what it was and how to use it. Later on, I got the theory bug, which is the desire to learn what music is to every musician and of course the specialized theory for guitar only which is mostly the CAGED system. If you don’t know that system, there is an entire course on it here. I don’t think you need to start there, but eventually, you have to bite the bullet and go through the course. It makes every weekly lesson much easier to understand and will get you closer to your goal of being able to improvise.
You know the old saying: How do you eat an elephant? That reminds me of this very question on how to improvise. You eat the elephant one bite at a time. Same with improvising, you learn one thing about what you don’t know at a time.
Now to get down to brass tacks on how does one improvise. For me, it was a combination of finally learning all the notes on the fretboard, learning all of the five patterns of the major/minor pentatonic scales without fumbling. Then mastering the major scale in different positions on the neck. There is no magic pill, or easy path forward to improvisation other than learning what you don’t know yet. So make a list of the things you think you don’t know and count those as your current weaknesses or road blocks to learning to improvise. Then start searching for lessons on a particular subject that you want to tackle and just put in the work.
Rinse and repeat to gain knowledge of how the guitar works. Most of us see patterns and shapes and that will take you so far. Eventually, you will need to know the intervals and formulas for the scales and chords. It’s not hard at all to pick one thing for the day and tell yourself that you are going to learn this one thing and understand what it is by the end of the day or by the end of the week.
At some point, I ended up understanding that the key of the song or progression lights up many possible notes that can be played. I also see notes that should be avoided. I call those notes poison notes, and depending on the key of the song, I review where those notes are and learn to see them as obstacles to jump over.
In addition, the scale formula is known and I can simply look at the fretboard and start mapping out all the possible notes that I can potentially play in the most common area’s that are played by most musicians. Once you go through the trouble of doing this enough times, you don’t need to do it anymore and you just see all of the possible notes that can be utilized during an improve.
It now comes down to creating musical phrases or licks that can express different musical ideas. That can either come from doing the weekly lessons, or studying the lead guitar course that comes with you membership on this site. There are ton of killer blues licks that can be studied and learned and applied to a multitude of provided backing tracks.
As soon as you learn something new, you must use it in a musical way (preferably with a backing track) or in the context of a song or weekly lesson. But I found that once you have even a small quantity of licks that you can play in time, those will automatically give you exploration into variations of those vary same licks. So suddenly, you know more licks than you think you do to create some great musical improvisations.
Yes, there is more to it, but it’s impossible to go through every little detail. You will be on a self discovery journey to learn as much as you can about what you don’t yet know about the guitar and how it can replace or compliment your real voice to do the singing.
Thanks for your thorough reply, it’s very helpful and encouraging!
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