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It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

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Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#181

Post by yahna »

DanHulton wrote: post #63
beat wrote: post #41

As someone who has been playing for 35 years or so, here are some observations... First and foremost, guitar is a pretty straightforward instrument for beginners. There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world. If you put in the effort, you can be playing something musical in a few months, and proficient in basic folk/rock music in a couple of years. It doesn't take "talent". It just takes effort. Som…

What is involved in getting your guitar "set up" anyway? I'm looking to get back into learning the guitar I bought a few years ago, and I mean it sounded fine to me when I brought it out to check on it, after a tuning, of course.

Setting the truss rod to ensure a properly straight neck, setting the action, cleaning, setting the intonation, setting up the tremolo system if the guitar has one

You grab a guitar off the shelf and you can find it has buzzes, or the action is a bit high, or it sounds right open and with chords near the nut but sounds off as you move up the neck.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#182

Post by zwieback »

pcsanwald wrote: post #151

I've been a professional guitarist since I was a teenager, and switched to upright bass about 3 years ago (I'm 40). The biggest advantages to learning as an adult is on average you are going to have money to pay for lessons and a decent instrument, and are probably going to be more organized in terms of practicing and all that. The disadvantages are that it's harder to network and find others at your level to play wi…

Straight to upright or did you play bass guitar first? I started playing upright in addition to bass guitar and it's a lot of fun but a lot of relearning as well.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#183

Post by yahna »

marsrover wrote: post #18

I'm 29 and have been playing guitar for at least half my life at this point. It's a great stress reliever and just fun in general. I'm not good by any stretch of the imagination, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying myself. These are some of my personal recommendations for starting out: - Use an acoustic, you don't want to have to carry an amp around with you. - Learn to sing while you play early on. I think it's h…

> Use an acoustic, you don't want to have to carry an amp around with you.

If you want to play an electric guitar get an electric guitar. Get a small amp that you can carry around.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#184

Post by drzaiusapelord »

beat wrote: post #41

As someone who has been playing for 35 years or so, here are some observations... First and foremost, guitar is a pretty straightforward instrument for beginners. There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world. If you put in the effort, you can be playing something musical in a few months, and proficient in basic folk/rock music in a couple of years. It doesn't take "talent". It just takes effort. Som…

> Picking is much harder than fretting.

Is it, really? I'm a lefty who plays righty guitars and found I had a small advantage with learning and playing because my dexterous hand was given the 'hard' part already. I never learned classical and stay with rock-ish music so picking never got terribly complex for me.

I also wonder at the reasoning for hand placement is. We're talking about a 2,500+ year old instrument and I imagine there's a lot of arbitrary decisions and tradition we just carry through. These ancient guitars had much, much simpler fretboards so it probably made sense to focus the dominant hand on the strumming/rhythm part. Nowadays its probably a wash, if not just a little wrong.

That said, its not remotely an ergonomic setup and fret handling is going to be a challenge for just about anyone at first. Guitar is an "easy" instrument but that first month or two is a real pain.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#185

Post by [deleted] »

eggpy wrote: post #174
SwellJoe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're playing rock guitar, there's a real temptation to use way too much distortion to get what you think is the sound on records. Most great rock guitar tones are much cleaner than they sound. When in doubt, use less gain." So true it hurts. I'm a guitarist of three decades and I worked as a recording engineer through college and occasionally as a hobby since then (I went to school for audio engineering). The n…

mosquito tone?

[deleted]

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#186

Post by vkou »

francisofascii wrote: post #10

I tried picking up a guitar this past week, and was overwhelmed. Just playing a basic chord was a struggle. How do you get your figure to press down just right on the string and not interfere with another. Amazed by people who can play effortlessly. The post encouraged me to try again. 15 min a day sounds like a reasonable practicing goal.

> I tried picking up a guitar this past week, and was overwhelmed. Just playing a basic chord was a struggle. How do you get your figure to press down just right on the string and not interfere with another.

I've spent ~2 months trying to learn guitar a few years ago, and I'm 2-3 months into my second attempt.

This is going to be incredibly unhelpful... But the answer is more practice. Practice playing chords, practice switching between two chords slowly, quickly, etc.

After ~5-10 hours of practice over a few weeks, beginner chord shapes will magically get much easier.

Your fingers will also toughen up and callus, which will make it easier to press strings down without interfering with other ones. The second time I picked up guitar, I made a goal of getting calluses as quickly and painfully as possible. Playing without them is an exercise akin to pulling teeth.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#187

Post by vkou »

haskal wrote: post #162
ashark wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can play a ton of songs with like 5-6 open chords. Find a song you don't hate that just uses G, C, and D majors, and drill the hell out of it until it's easy to transition between those. Way more fun to practice with a real song. You may pick up A-minor or something on the bridge of that song, which is nice. Pick up open A and E majors and E minor on top of that base and you can play rhythm on like 50+% of all gu…

My experience with barre chords is that I thought I could never get them right, but I kept trying them with very tiny variations, until one day I just got them. Never thought that I could play them correctly till the day before I got them right.

My realization with barre chords came from asking my instructor about how to play a barre A major chord. Seeing his finger bent slightly upwards at the last knuckle was the missing ingredient.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#188

Post by drzaiusapelord »

s_kilk wrote: post #56
beat wrote: post #41

As someone who has been playing for 35 years or so, here are some observations... First and foremost, guitar is a pretty straightforward instrument for beginners. There's a reason it's the most popular instrument in the world. If you put in the effort, you can be playing something musical in a few months, and proficient in basic folk/rock music in a couple of years. It doesn't take "talent". It just takes effort. Som…

> Don't try to learn on a crap guitar! If it has high action and truly hurts to play, or if it has bad tone, it'll drive you away. Learn on a good instrument. This x1000 Far too often I've seen people try to learn on a ghastly cheap acoustic because they were "building up to" an electric, the thing they wanted to play in the first place. There's a weird kind of asceticism around the notion of paying-ones-dues on an a…

>There's a weird kind of asceticism around the notion of paying-ones-dues on an acoustic first

This is probably mostly financial. Just about everyone knows someone with an old acoustic they can borrow. Picking up even a budget guitar like an entry-level squire and a budget amp is easily a $500+ commitment. Worse, if you end up not liking guitar playing, the resale value is especially terrible. Doubly worse, that 15 watt practice amp isn't going to cut it when you want to jam with a buddy who owns a drum kit or a real bass amp, so now you've sunk $250+ on something you keep in your bedroom and shortly will need to start pricing out 'real' amps and eyeballing pricetags at $1,000 or more with cabinet.

Don't get me started when you outgrow that Squire. Suddenly, $1500+ Fenders go from 'who buys that expensive stuff' to 'I should get one.'

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#189

Post by no_flags »

Inception wrote: post #132
fhood wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the one I was thinking about is a tendency to strum really really hard, and you would think this would be an easy habit to break, but it is surprisingly difficult.

Thank you. I've been debating trying to learn guitar and this is helpful information if I decide to learn on acoustic.

Plenty of people start on acoustic. It doesn't teach bad habits in my opinion. Acoustic teaches the good habit of more precise fingering, because when you fret a chord slightly off it sounds worse on an acoustic vs an electric. At the end of the day it really doesn't matter much which one you learn on. For me acoustic wins because you can pick it up any time and start playing immediately. There's no fiddling with amps and cables, no power cords or batteries to worry about, and I can wander around the house to different rooms while playing if I want.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#190

Post by SwellJoe »

eggpy wrote: post #174
SwellJoe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you're playing rock guitar, there's a real temptation to use way too much distortion to get what you think is the sound on records. Most great rock guitar tones are much cleaner than they sound. When in doubt, use less gain." So true it hurts. I'm a guitarist of three decades and I worked as a recording engineer through college and occasionally as a hobby since then (I went to school for audio engineering). The n…

mosquito tone?

This is a pretty good video abut the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYtXBUS_kwY

"Mosquito" just means buzzy and lacking clarity.

In the video, he's using good quality gear and is a pretty good player, so even when he does everything wrong it doesn't sound as bad as this problem can sound. Then again, his "good" example is still too distorted to record well even for the style of music he's playing (metal uses much more distortion than any other genre), and if I were recording him, I'd be begging him to take it down a couple more notches.

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