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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

#91

Post by jesuslop »

grimmdude wrote: post #62
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…

Cool to see a guitar post on the front page of HN, I suppose it makes sense since many of the programmers I know are also musicians. I'm a guitar player as well, been playing for about 20 years. Completely agree with all your points, especially that it's a "deep instrument". Many people think there's a progress bar for learning it which maxes out, but that progress bar's max is ever increasing (or it should be if you…

subscribed videos and nice voice man

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#92

Post by thiagooffm »

davidreiss wrote: post #9

If I ever win the lottery, I'd love to learn to play the guitar, learn a few foreign languages, contribute to open source software, make a bonsai tree, read all the books I have in my apartment that are collecting dust, [a long list of other stuff I'd like to do]. I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the money to buy time.

maybe then you need a job that lets you do those things

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#93

Post by SwellJoe »

devwastaken wrote: post #68
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…

The big thing that's been driving me away from learning is the necessary hardware/Software to create the tones I want. Rather than folk/rock, I'd like something like the ghostly effect of https://youtu.be/mP194XwD2Wc . But audio hardware is expensive and isn't something I can directly research. I made a little jump a month ago and got a condensor mic and a Scarlett Solo mixer, which can do both XLR mic and 1/4 Jack f…

That's just a big long reverb and delay, maybe a bit of chorus, a nice guitar (a moderately nice guitar will sound very nearly as good and can be had for a few hundred bucks...a used Made-in-Mexico Tele would do the trick for $300-$400), and a soft fingerstyle playing technique.

The playing style is at least as responsible for the gentleness of the sound as any of the effects or the guitar itself. The spacey/shimmery sounds come from the big reverb and maybe chorus.

You can replicate those effects with lots of free or low-priced VSTs. Ableton probably includes reverb, a delay, and chorus plugin, as they're very simple to implement and pretty low overhead.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#94

Post by beat »

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.

Making sure the strings are the right height, all the way down the fretboard. Making sure each string is intonated correctly - that it plays in tune at every fret. (For mechanical reasons, guitars always have problems being in tune everywhere, even the best guitars. Have you noticed that the bridge is not straight, relative to the frets? That's because each string is a slightly different length, to help get it in tune better.)

A good setup should also make sure the tuners are moving freely and accurately, that no more substantial repairs are needed (fretwork or major neck adjustments), etc. For a beginning player, these differences can be hard to discern, but they do help. For an advanced player, a poorly set up guitar is a pain in the butt to play.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#95

Post by snarfy »

amelius wrote: post #42
mattparlane wrote: post #30

If you are interested in learning /music/ and not just learning the /guitar/, I would strongly encourage you to start on the piano. I started on the piano and moved to the guitar later, and I've now realised that the piano gives you such a good musical grounding, so much better than the guitar can. There's nothing quite like having it all laid out in front of you. It's the only way that things like sharps and flats m…

I find the piano quite illogical. Playing a chromatic scale requires to jump from white to black keys. The guitar with its "basic" strings is actually much closer to the underlying physics (and thus mathematics), imho.

This might be true from a physics standpoint, but it's not from a musical standpoint. The vast majority of all western music was composed on a piano first. It really does help to know it when learning any western music. Even the chromatic scale on a guitar doesn't accurate represent the physics. It's still based on sqrt 2^12 mathematics, not natural waves. If you want true temperament it looks more like this:

http://www.truetemperament.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/sl...

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#96

Post by beat »

olivermarks wrote: post #71
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…

tldr: buy a guitar whose neck fits the size of your hands. Excellent points by @beat. One other aspect for new guitarist is neck size: if you have small hands buying a guitar with a 'baseball bat' style rounded neck makes it very hard to play barre chords and difficult stretched chords. Conversely large hands and fingers need a longer fret board and deeper neck.

I'm not convinced that small hands need a small neck, or that big hands need a big neck. It's all about what feels comfortable to you.

A tradeoff I've noticed is "fast" versus comfortable. Fatter necks tend to be more comfortable to play, as are necks with more pronounced fretboard radius (like vintage-style Fender necks). Flatter, thinner necks are easier to play faster on, but make my hands sore after a while.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#97

Post by criddell »

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…

My recommendation is to buy the instrument you are going to want to play.

I keep a guitar in my office and it's a nice way to disengage from a problem for a few minutes. An acoustic would be far too loud.

Another nice thing about electrics for me is that I love playing with the sound through my crappy little effects box (I bought an old Line 6 Pod device - it looks like a big kidney bean).

Plus, you can plug an electric into Rocksmith which I've found to be a fun way to spend more time playing.

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#98

Post by jodrellblank »

monster_group wrote: post #14
davidreiss wrote: post #9

If I ever win the lottery, I'd love to learn to play the guitar, learn a few foreign languages, contribute to open source software, make a bonsai tree, read all the books I have in my apartment that are collecting dust, [a long list of other stuff I'd like to do]. I don't want a big house or an expensive car or "bling". I just wish I had the money to buy time.

You don't need to win a lottery to have the time to learn to play guitar (multiple foreign languages - yes you do). It is actually quite difficult to practice more than 15 minutes every day because of sore fingers and frustration. Lottery or no lottery - if you really want to do it you will be able to find 15 minutes in a day.

multiple foreign languages - yes you do

Benny the Irish Polyglot didn't. ( http://fluentinthreemonths.com )

Re: It's Never Too Late to Learn Guitar

#100

Post by SwellJoe »

wambotron wrote: post #28
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…

I completely disagree with the acoustic recommendation as well. They're harder to play, which means it's much easier to give up on. You can get a 1w belt-clip amp if you really need to plug in, or you could just get a semi-hollow and play it unplugged. Learning to sing is unrelated to playing guitar. I'd argue most guitar players do not also sing whilst playing. If someone wants to sing AND play guitar, I'd actually…

Acoustic guitars are only a little harder to play. A decent acoustic guitar (which can be had for ~$250 used, or $500 new) with light strings is a fine learning guitar. If it's got reasonably comfortable action, it's not going to be an impediment to a beginner.
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