One
of the main reasons I play guitar is because there’s nothing cooler than
playing along with some of your favorite songs and groups. It all started when
my friends little brother attempted to learn how to play, and my friends and I
tried it out. The first song I ever attempted to play was that one Super Mario
song everyone knows all on one string. It took me about 5 seconds to get to
each note, but I still thought it was pretty cool. After practicing the songs
every beginner guitarist learns (back in black, crazy train, smoke on the
water), a friend who was already a pretty good guitarist came over and amazed
us with his skills. This was my main motivation for learning: I wanted to be
as good as him.
First
thing I did after I decided to figure out this “guitar” business is look on
the internet for tabs. Tabs are sheets of music that are written down, or
typed down, on paper or some computer applications such as
Power Tab, or
Guitar Pro. Tabs are kind of the easy way of reading music; they actually
tell you which string and which fret to play using numbers. They are widely
available on the internet, but I think the best place for tabs would be
http://www.Ultimate-guitar.com .
After you figure out how to play some notes on your
guitar, you need to learn essential techniques and tricks. For the people who
like to play fast music (me, for one), you will notice that it’s really hard
to pick the strings fast
enough to keep up with the song, this is where
tremolo picking comes in handy. With tremolo picking, you can pick twice as
fast as repeatedly down picking. Next, most songs with solos require bending,
another guitar trick. All you really do is bend the string while holding down
a fret to increase the pitch of a note, simple enough. There are loads of
other things to learn, but I didn’t intend for this to turn into a lesson on
how to play guitar.
The type of guitar you get doesn’t really matter for
learners, the only big decision you need to make is whether to play
acoustic or
electric guitar. Acoustic usually has, in my opinion, simpler, chord after
chord type music played using it. Electric, depending on the style of music of
course, has much more energy and more intricate riffs. Harder to learn but
much more fun to me; it’s sort of like a challenge instead of a method of
relaxation, as opposed to most music using acoustic guitars. This isn’t a rule
or anything; I have only noticed that it’s true for every guitarist I’ve seen
in person. Once again, it all depends on what styles of music you like.
The best guitar resource, which has already been
mentioned, is
http://www.Ultimate-guitar.com. It has virtually everything you need to
learn how to play guitar. It doesn’t hurt to use
Google either, for specific things you couldn’t find on
U-G.
