When You Are New to Learning Guitar

When you first decide that you want to learn to play guitar, things can be a bit confusing. You’re filled with all this anticipation, but most students don’t even know where to start out. And that can be very annoying. Well the very first thing you need is a guitar. Yup, before you can understand guitar you in fact require a guitar.
A beginner guitar
Plenty of people actually ask what a good beginner guitar is. My answer is that there is no true beginner guitar. On the other hand, I do have some input for why I think beginners should get a certain kind of guitar. Personally I think its ideal to learn guitar on a pretty Low-cost guitar. Simply because if you learn on a Inexpensive guitar then, not just will you appreciate the more luxurious guitars more, but you will also notice the difference when you upgrade, and probably notice that more pricey doesn’t always mean better.
In addition Its much easier for a beginner to learn to play guitar on either a classical nylon string guitar or an electric guitar. Simply because the strings have less tension and they’re easier to play without agonizing your fingers. myself I learned on a quite cheap steal string guitar, still, it is actually the most difficult guitar I have ever played. That guitar completely calloused my finger tips because I played it all the time, till I finally upgraded. Now I don’t recommend you get a guitar that is tough to play, trust me if I had a choice I would rather the strings be easier to play. But when your guitar isn’t perfect, you definitely enjoy better guitars, no matter the price. But if you’re an acoustic guitar fan particularly if your on a budget I recommend that you learn guitar on a classical guitar, and most are fairly cheap.
Play Guitar
So now you have your guitar, now you need to learn to play guitar. So, what is the very best way to learn guitar? There are lots of options out there for the novice guitarist. But, which one is the best? Well lets look at the options.
You can learn from a teacher.
If you learn from a personal teacher it could be excellent because you have someone right there with you who is a professional and they can correct you when you mess up. Nevertheless instructors can be very high-priced and they are not always reliable.
You can learn to play guitar from a book
Guitar guides are full of information, and can help you understand chord patterns very easily. Nonetheless books can not consistently teach some techniques, especially if you need to hear the technique. However for theory, scales and chords books are fantastic.
You can learn by video
With video you can truly witness whats going on and correct your techniques. However with videos you feel like you have to keep up with the teacher and your playing and enthusiasm can suffer from this. Especially since its hard to follow tabs or notes when they keep moving…
You can learn to play on-line
Currently If you have a computer this is definitely the finest choice. Learning on-line combines the best of all the previous options. And its usually less than the price of one or two private lessons. Additionally some courses even have certain built in software that will make learning feel like a video game and makes guitar easy. The only thing missing is someone who is actually right in front of you correcting you.

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The Best Ways to Learn a Guitar

Lots of people want to learn the guitar but they aren’t always sure where they should start. For beginners out there who don’t know the first thing about a guitar or playing one, here some tips so you can be playing like Jimi Hendrix in no time. After all, playing a guitar is a great way to relax and reduce stress.
First, get a good guitar that will not impede your playing or learning ability. I have seen many instances where the guitar is the problem, not the student. Make sure the “action and playability” (distance of the string to the neck) of the guitar are good and that it is correctly intonated (the bridge adjusted so the strings are the correct length) or you will have tuning and playing problems that are not your fault. Also learning on light gauge strings is advised to stop finger strain it is worth paying a few extra dollars to have the guitar ’set up’ before your start to play.
Second, get a good teacher or at least a good DVD that explains the methods of learning in a simple and easy manner and will ensure you are playing ’songs’ or at least ‘riffs’ within the first lesson. Avoid learning boring scales and exercises that will de-motivate you. These can be done later. Try to learn individually (one on one) rather than in a group situation.
Third, practice every day for at least 10 minutes, and always practice what you cant play rather than what you can otherwise you will not progress. Try to learn simple versions of songs you know so you can sing along (even if it’s just in your mind) with the song.
Fourth, learn a mixture of chords, single notes, scales and riffs even at the first stages of learning. This is important to develop your technique and strength in the finger and wrist. Moreover, have the guitar, if possible, on a stand where it is easily accessible, so you will want to pick it up often. If it’s in a case under the bed you will forget about it. If it’s next to the TV you will pick it up more often.
Fifth, know how to tune your guitar and always have a tuner or at least a pitch pipe to ensure you are in tune otherwise you will sound horrible. Use a metronome or even a basic drum machine so you can stay in time and develop a sense of rhythm. This is one of the most neglected areas of learning and often the biggest cause of bad habits later on in a student’s progress.
Sixth, try to learn songs you enjoy and in a style you like. It is no use playing Metallica songs if you like Bob Dylan. However its not a bad idea to learn new styles but stick to what you know and like at least in the beginning. This way you will keep your interest in playing the guitar up while you are just starting out.
Finally, record yourself and listen back to it. No matter how awful it may sound it will improve both your desire and your ability to play better. Also if you want to play lead guitar, play over a recorded rhythm part so you have a musical backing to play to. This will improve your solo ability dramatically.
By using these tips, you will keep your interest in the guitar up and help you learn much better than you normally would have otherwise. Learning a guitar is great and you want to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.

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9 Rocking Tips For How to Play the Electric Guitar

So you’ve gotten your first electric guitar, and you’re thinking about becoming a rock star. You’ve been working on your skills, and you want to begin wowing the babes. Here’s a list of nine tips to help you keep on rocking in the free world:
1. Keep your strings fresh – Electric guitar strings lose some of their luster, and can sound tinny over time. A good rule of thumb is to change them every 3 months or so.
2. Get a tuner – Nothing is worse than listening to some wannabe bang out Clapton’s “Cocaine” on an out of tune guitar. While you need to develop your ear, you also want to keep that electric in tune.
3. Don’t be afraid to play loud – You’ve got the skills. Now let your neighbors hear it. If you want to play with the big boys, you’ve got to build that confidence. Nothing helps with that more than being able to hear what you’re playing. If you wanted to be quiet you would have bought an acoustic anyway.
4. Get an effects pedal – If you want to sound like Guns ‘N Roses, Green Day, or The Red Hot Chili Peppers, you’re going to need an effects pedal. Whether you want reverb, chorus, echo, distortion, or other sounds, you can’t get them without a pedal or a special amp. The pedals are cheaper.
5. Stretch your fingers – Many aspiring guitar players don’t realize the importance of a solid stretching routine. Stretching loosens the fine motor muscles involved in playing electric guitar, and allows faster muscle memory retention. It also increases dexterity, and diminishes fatigue.
6. Know your fret board – Most electric guitars have six strings with about 21 frets. That makes for about 126 notes. That allows for a ton of diversity in note selection. Knowing the board can speed up your guitar learning, playing, and mastery.
7. Learn and practice scales – The cornerstone of any good electric guitar player is often mastery of scales. Working on these exercises helps increase speed, dexterity, muscle memory, strength, and you’d be surprised how many riffs are actually just adapted scales.
8. Slow down to speed up – Sometimes a riff can be difficult to learn at full speed. When you are having difficulty with a rocking riff, slowing it down can often speed up how fast you learn it.
9. Actively listen – Many new guitar players fail to realize the importance of having a decent ear. The tonal quality of a guitar has tremendous impact on an overall performance. Knowing when you are a little out of tune is helpful, and so is knowing what your common chord structures sound like, so be sure to work on that ear.
To improve your guitar skills, be sure to implement the nine tips above as you learn how to play the electric guitar.

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How to Learn Bass Guitar Online

If you have an interest to  learn bass guitar, you will find it to be a very rewarding instrument to play. The bass guitar player is an important member of the band. The quality of the group's playing depends largely on how well the bass player keeps in time. Not only are the demands heavy but the rewards are great. It only takes a short time to get up and running as a bass guitarist and once you have learnt a few basic bass lines and worked out whether you are a plectrum player or a plucker, you will be able to start improvising your own bass licks.
There are two ways to learn bass online. One is to take advantage of the many free bass lessons on the web. These online bass guitar lessons will help you to understand how the place of the bass guitar in a band, music theory, reading sheet music and tabs as well as giving you basic rhythms to play. Some of the bass lessons you find will have some kind of interactive component where you can play along with riffs or a backing track.
Of course, many of the bass guitar lesson sites are offering paid courses, but there are also some good free lessons. If you do a search for "online bass guitar lessons" (without the quotes will give you more results) you will be able to compare the various paid lesson courses for bass guitarists, and you will get a chance to compare them with the free courses. If you decide to learn to play bass guitar for free you will probably need to find yourself some free bass guitar tabs on the internet. There are many places that offer bass tabs for popular songs. Another option for the bass guitar student on a budget is YouTube. If you go looking for online bass lessons on video you will probably find about a thousand clips, all offering something of value to the beginner.
As a bass player you must learn to play in time. A newbie guitar player can spend years playing guitar with the tempo and timing all over the place because he does not have to play with other musicians. The bass guitarist's job is to play in a band so the sooner you get any little rhythmic or timing peccadillos ironed out, the better. For this you will need a metronome. Type "free metronome" into a search engine, find one you like and bookmark it if it is online, although there are metronomes you can download for free. The same goes for a tuner. There are quite good bass guitar tuners online. You will also be able to find free backing tracks for guitar online. Playing along to these is a great way to get the feel of playing in a band. You can tell the program what chords to play and the time signature, and you can play along to the looped track online or download it in mp3 format. For more inspiration find video clips and mp3's by leading bass guitar players like Jaco Pastorius, Stanley Clarke, Waylon Tisdale, John Pattitucci, Mike Mason or Miroslav Vitous.

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Easy to Learn Guitar Tabs for Peter Gunn

It is easy to learn guitar tabs. Only one basic idea needs to be understood, the rest falls into place. To illustrate this idea I will be using tabs for a simple piece of music called Peter Gunn. Guitar tabs are seen by learning guitar players as an easy way to start playing guitar right away. That is true but it is wrong to think that guitar tablature just needs to be read. Like all languages it needs to be understood. So if you have an idea that you would like to become a guitar player and tabs would be a great way to sidestep any difficult learning, there are a couple of things you need to get straight.
For somebody who just wants to play along with the singing around a campfire, it must look like a fairly easy job to play the guitar. Lots of people can do it and many of them are idiots. But when you look at a piece of guitar tab it looks kind of scary. Well, look again. It is just a picture of a guitar. Visualize it in your imagination. The tuning end of the guitar is to your left, the body of the guitar is to your right. The thinnest string is on the top, the thickest string is on the bottom. Nothing scary about that.
Moving on, we see numbers on the guitar tab. What are they? The numbers running down the left side are the notes sounded when you play the open strings, the numbers that run along the strings represent frets. Frets are the metal strips on the neck of the guitar. You put your fingers a fraction behind the frets to alter the length of the string, so that when it is plucked, strummed or picked the sound is higher or lower depending on how far up the fingerboard you are. So the number one, for example, indicates that one of your fingers must be placed behind the first fret of the guitar. This is the fret closest to the tuning gear on the end of the neck.
Now let us look at a section of guitar tab. This is a short riff from a piece of music called Peter Gunn. It was written by Henry Mancini who probably wrote most of the orchestral music that most of us have ever heard, and it has been recorded by many artists, notably The Blues Brothers, Jimi Hendrix and Emerson, Lake And Palmer. The first recording of it was a hit for electric guitar pioneer, Duane Eddy.
All the notes are played on the sixth string - the thickest string, remember? If you play the piano, try it out, the notes are E E F# E G E A G# played as one bar in 4/4 time.
e------------------------------
B------------------------------
G------------------------------
D------------------------------
A------------------------------
E--0--0--2--0--3--0--5--4--
To play the tabs use down strokes with the pick or your thumb. Once you have played the notes once, go back to the start and play them again until you are tired. Congratulations, now you know first hand that it is easy to learn guitar tabs. Really you have all you need to go on and learn your favorite songs. Not many songs have not been put into tab form, so it is just a matter or searching on the net. As your technique gets better, you will find that there are symbols that represent any left hand guitar technique you will learn. If you find tabs for a song that you like, and it contains symbols you do not understand, the tab often has an explanatory key at the top or the bottom. Or you can just look on the popular tab sites for explanations of any symbols you do not know.

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Electric Guitar Lessons Online – Advantages of Learning Electric Guitar Online

You may have been inspired by the most popular rock band when you saw them playing in their latest concert and you suddenly have this passion in learning to play electric guitar.
Who could blame you, guitarists are simply the most famous member in a rock band, and they just totally rule and make all the girls sway at their feet. So if you want to follow their footstep, it’s about time you get some serious consideration in your desire to learn your instrument well.
You don’t have to worry about the expensive guitar lessons that are offered in music schools, make use of the free resources over the internet and you can be a rock star in your own right.
To find free electric guitar lessons online, all you need to do is perform a standard search in your favorite search engine. You’ll be amazed of the results; your search can return thousands of websites catering to your interest.
Electric guitar lessons online can come in many forms, free sponsored sites, paid sites, e-book format and others may offer DVD instructional video.
Whether free or paid sites, these online guitar lessons are well covered, and you can be assured that you will learn how to play your electric guitar after your session has expired.
Most websites offering electric guitar lessons have instructional video that students can easily follow. The instructional video is a simple but effective tool in demonstrating theories into practice, and many beginners find it convenient to play and replay at their own pace and convenience.
One such site is Ben Edwards Jamorama. They provide over 60 instructional videos on how to play the guitar. You can learn how to play the guitar by watching how others play at your own time and pace.

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Learning Beginner Guitar Songs from Tabs

When you get your first guitar and take some lessons, the first thing you want to do is learn to play a song or two. You are painfully aware of your status as a beginner guitar player but you want to learn a song or a riff or a tune that sounds really cool.
Maybe you're up to learning your first chord. You are feeling a little bit shaky getting your fingers around the first chord but you are looking forward to introducing it to your second. A beginner guitar tutor always helps but if you are going to make some progress, you will have to start learning some songs.
Guitar songs are songs that highlight the guitar in some way and they are often quite easy to learn. When you start guitar lessons the pressure is on from friends and relatives to "play something" so let's look at what's available.
Many songs by The Grateful Dead are great for beginners to learn. Some of their songs carry heavy bluegrass overtones. Give American Beauty a try. Or Workingman's Dead. Whether you are learning electric or acoustic guitar, these are ideal beginner guitar songs.
The Ramones recorded songs that a beginner guitar player could learn and so did Nirvana. Get some tabs for Smells Like Teen Spirit. Whatever you choose you will find that learning songs is the way to go if you don't need to go too far into the theory and mechanics of guitar music. If you are working on a song that you enjoy, the chord fingerings and the strumming patterns will get into your fingers all the more quickly.
One recommendation from an amateur guitar player I heard recently was to buy the Nirvana Unplugged DVD and the tabs for the album. You've got your intro to the world of guitar in one package. Psycho Killer by Talking Heads uses the chords Am, G, F and C and the strumming is easy. If you decide to learn to play songs from tabs, rather than just accepting the tab as being correct, play the tab along with the song and try and pick any bits where the tab varies from the CD. Or look for places where you can change the music to make the song your own.
Finally, let's depart a little from guitar songs and take in a reminder that power chords consist of just two or three notes that can be played up and down the fretboard. You can play any song using power chords even though it isn't a permanent solution.

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