It’s not much, but it’s mine!
I managed to get it clean, restrung and learned how to tune it. I’ve spent the last couple weeks just practicing the chromatic scale and just started learning some basic chords yesterday.
I started with the trumpet in high school and then went on to do digital music production as a hobby for ten years and even managed to produce my own album.
I realized a lot of the tracks on my album had guitar elements and it dawned on me that I could eventually work to make those my own actual recordings rather than synthesized.
So I’m already familiar with the slow burn process of learning a new instrument and I’m already seeing massive progress from the first time I picked it up. Here’s to the next decade of learning a new instrument!
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It sounds cringe, but playing in front of a mirror (once you don’t need to constantly look at the fretboard) is one of the best ways to spot poor technique.
Look up some “guitar heroes” (Brandon Ellis, Samy Elbanna, Teemu Mantysaari, Jack Gardiner, Guthrie Govan are a few examples) and just observe what their posture and hand positioning looks like and then play in front of the mirror to compare. If your posture/technique looks significantly different that means you have room to improve!
This was one of the biggest catalysts for skill gains in my novice years.
Great advice! I’ll have to get a floor mirror to try this now.
I was just watching a Post Malone song a friend sent me the other day and now that I’ve been trying to learn, I was just blown away with how smoothly and effortlessly his hands were moving.
Humbling to know every single one of the greats started out holding it just as awkwardly as I am now.
You’re absolutely right! Nobody is born with the skills. You gotta learn and practice! Once the initial frustration of getting your hands to do what you want is over, practice becomes a lot more about pushing your limits than struggling.
Trust in the process. Embrace practice and the betterment of a new skill and you’ll be jamming comfortably in no time.
Try to get Rocksmith 2014 copy. You can get tons of custom songs on it and learn your fav ones. This game is crazy good for starters. Later you can improve on theory and technique through YouTube.
Strat-style is peak guitar, IMO.
Chromatic scale is a fine starting point, too.
The frets are in good shape? The action is ok?
For chords, look up “The 3-chord trick” and you unlock a LOT of songs with that.
(I have no idea how much you know about stringed instruments, so apologies if anything comes across as condescending)
I am learning guitar (when I find the time) and hearing stuff like this is helpful to me, even if not to OP. Thank you.
My friend who spotted it knew a bit about what to look for. Fretboard is in great shape, although it was originally pretty dirty, and missing two strings. It just needed a clean and restring.
There is some warping where the two plastics meet (I’m sure there’s a term for that piece), but for my first guitar, it’s plenty good for learning. Maybe in a couple years I’ll get something new, but not until I sound mediocre at least.
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Explorer, SG or Les Paul?
I like them all
Hell yeah, have fun
Was it heavier than you imagined?
Just kidding. I accidentally learned how to play on a left handed guitar because I didn’t know that was a thing! I bought it at Goodwill without any knowledge of guitars.
It was definitely awkward at first. It took me a decent few hours before I didn’t feel goofy holding it.
Congrats! Have a blast learning it. Sounds like you’ve got the right mindset going in.
It looks like you set it back down.
It’s boring, but if you’re just learning, do a lot of fundamental work to build a good base. Work on making sure your hand position is good, fingers are set right, and string muting on open strings your aren’t playing. The string muting is probably going to be more difficult early on, but it’s good to at least be aware of it.
Practice scales to a metronome. You don’t have to know the notes necessarily, but memorizing the shapes will be beneficial going forward. For me, it made learning new music more intuitive because you start to inherently understand how notes are connected so it’s more organic when playing something new. If you want to start learning the notes, I’d say first get a grasp on the shapes, then when comfortable with that, start saying the notes out loud, even if it’s slow. Eventually it’ll start clicking and you’ll start to recognize other patterns on the fret board like intervals.
When I first learned bass many years ago, I just learned songs and that’s fun. Years later I went back and focused on fundamentals and even just a few weeks of that paid dividends going forward. I found I had to think a lot less because things were just more natural having been ingrained and everything got a lot cleaner once I was doing it properly.
But with all that said, that stuff is boring, so find some tunes and learn them. If you don’t enjoy playing because you’re just running scales, you won’t keep playing, so pepper in some fun stuff.
This is exactly the type of stuff I plan on drilling for the first few months. There are a couple songs I want to try learning after a little while, but I’m not trying to jump into anything rhythmic yet. Just going very slowly and feeling for when the note starts to sound right.
I’m also making sure I have good form by checking the tuner occasionally for the individual strings. I’ve already trained myself to use a lot less pressure and I’m getting much better sound.
I plan on starting with things like hand drills, not so much focusing on music, but rather muscle memory. Once I can get used to the hand positions and feel of the strings, then I’ll start working with it from the mindset of music and start trying some riffs/songs I want to learn.
I’m looking at it almost as much as a tool as I am an instrument.
Bonus afterthought edit:
I also should mention that with my digital music production came the ear for what I want something to sound like. I’m way more focused on getting good form and a good audio capture than I am on getting my mental badge for playing a song poorly.
Excellent. Maple fretboard bonus points.
