Starting Electric Guitair

[Yshynsin]

Hey all,

Im doing a job this summer and have decided i would like to strat electric guitar, i love Metallica and the guitar solos they do and i decided i would like to teach myself to play their songs as it would be a achievement.

Just wondering if anyone else here plays and if anyone has any tips?

 

[Himse]

Hey all,

Im doing a job this summer and have decided i would like to strat electric guitar, i love Metallica and the guitar solos they do and i decided i would like to teach myself to play their songs as it would be a achievement.

Just wondering if anyone else here plays and if anyone has any tips?

Good luck playing Metallica straight off mate, start off with easy stuff (i found Blink 182 etc is good although it may not be your cup of tea)

www.ultimate-guitar.com is a great website to get tabs. Pretty much every song you can think of you can get a tab for and learn.

You have background knowledge about guitars? A bit...?

Also ! learn chords, power chords and stuff! it helps alot.

Any more q's or stuff just ask.

Himse

 

[Yshynsin]

Thanks m8, im not too sure about tabs etc, but im sure once i buy mine i will be more educated by then.

 

[Himse]

Thanks m8, im not too sure about tabs etc, but im sure once i buy mine i will be more educated by then.

Ask when you go to the shop for a couple of books also, you wont be able to play electric guitar from day one, its very difficult and takes a bit of time, ive had mine 2 months now, and am learning quite fast to be honest.


With a tab, you read it from top to bottom, but the bottom line is actually your top string, each of the tabs will contain alot of numbers, theres are frets. A fret is indicated by a little dot on the guitar, these usually go 3,5,7,9,12.. strange pattern, usually ends up about 22-24, mines 24 fret personally.

Most songs are quite simple to play, depending if you play the rhythm part or the lead part. Rhythm is very easy where as lead you'll find yourself learning solo's etc. So stick with the Rhythm part untill you become confident.

Himse

 

[Yshynsin]

Have you been teaching yourself?

 

[Himse]

Have you been teaching yourself?

Yes pretty much, with a little help from my mates.


Also a little program called Guitar Pro. Google it and download it, if not just use limewire or something.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Well if you like metallica, start with something like seek&destroy. It's "rather" "simple" to do.

Also a classic way to start rock&metal is to play...yes...paranoid

 

[Varna]

Get a teacher, he/she will be able to make sure you start off without making the mistakes, like not resting your guitar correctly, stringing, tuning, basic chords and progression.

Try to play silly things like Twinkle Twinkle, you'll laugh but it's simple songs like this that use the major scale which is used alot in rock music. Then goto guitarworld, find a simple tab and pratice it - sometimes it helps to play a chord, but play it in a powerchord format, so your using say 3 fingers instead of 4, so the 4th finger isnt resting on a string and thus not making it sound 'fuller' or giving 'warmth' to a sound, it just helps with finger movement, once you know where your fingers need todo, practice it over and over until your happy with it, then add in the 4th finger and practice and practice, it's all about practice really.

Oh, and the simplest things can get you a chick into bed also, being emotional about music and saying how you love the way a song is structured gets chicks loving you, take 'em home, turn up the distortion on your amp and play twinkle twinkle like brandon lee outta the crow, she'll fucking love it, trust me, tell her your learning but she'll love you cos atleast you tried to impress her.

Just pick up your guitar when you feel like it, sometimes you'll come home and wanna jam, sometimes you wont' Don't make it a chore 'cos you'll get discouraged, just don't completely ignore it though.

 

[Yshynsin]

cool, will do, thx for replies guys, OT rox!

Just need to get 179.00 and my mums coinsent to play in the house and im there, this is the guitar im looking at, got good reviews from friends, http://www.soundcontrol.co.uk/mod_1...1/pages/index.php?sku=1.1.1.1.4-7-181-1.8.111

 

[Ekadeath]

Ibanez do some decent starter packs, not a fan of the fender ones.
I play bass

 

[Himse]

Ibanez do some decent starter packs, not a fan of the fender ones.
I play bass

GG, i have an ibanez, quality guitar

 

[pikeh]

played guitar for about 8 years now. Got a few tips for beginners.

1) Build up finger strength.
2) Always warm up before playing (stick hands under warm water for a min or two)
3) Learn theory. (i know this goes against some guitar players techniques, but it WILL make you a better player). a good guitar teacher will teach you all you need to know.
4) Get good equipment. If you are starting out, its best to buy a mid range guitar first up. Dont play on some peice of shit you found in a skip, buy something that is a good instrument, that you can play well on.
5) Dont worry about getting a massive 200W Marshall Mode Four head and cab for a practice amp. You will be doing just that. Practicing. Get a better Amp when you start gigging.
6) Play with mates. Find a bassist, another guitarist, drummer. Dont make a band, just jam together, bounce ideas around, and your playing will improve VASTLY while jamming with fellow shredders.
7) Learn stuff you like. Dont go through all that "twinkle twinkle little star" Shit, go for stuff you wanna hear. If its too hard, you will soon be able to tell whether a song is in your "difficulty" range. Dont start off with Dreamtheater or Avenged Sevenfold.
8) So your into Metallica. You might wanna learn something called "down-tuning". Basically, you down-tune (no shit sherlock) your guitar strings, or just one. A common Tuning example is DADGBE. This simply down-tunes your top "E" string , down one tone, to D. It creates a dark , more moody/metally sound. (dont worry about this right at the beginning - there are thousands of alternate tunings around, and you wont need them all ever)
8) LEARN TO READ TAB! www.tabcrawler.com www.911tabs.com - Loads of websites out there dedicated to bringing you your fave tunes.
9) Enjoy it! If you ever get pissed off with it, your creative juices arent flowing, your fingers are locking up, put it down for a while. Everyone has off days, sometimes even weeks, but dont neglect it. The longer you stop playing for , the harder it is to get back into it.
10) Look fucking cool. Thats it.
11) Practice!
12) learn a vast amount of chords. Can play scales over the top of chords providing they are in the right key, making something simple sound cool.

have fun dude. guitar is fucking awesome.

 

[Yshynsin]

I play rugby a lot, i think that will increase my finger strength by doing the passes etc, once again thanks for the help, i need one of these bad boys badly now !

 

[Himse]

I play rugby a lot, i think that will increase my finger strength by doing the passes etc, once again thanks for the help, i need one of these bad boys badly now !

But, it may not always be in the right motion etc you need to get used to playing it because sometimes it does stretch your fingers a little and puts them into weird places that you need to get used to..

if that makes sense

 

[pikeh]

But, it may not always be in the right motion etc you need to get used to playing it because sometimes it does stretch your fingers a little and puts them into weird places that you need to get used to..

if that makes sense

agree.

practice standing up, stretching your fingers as far as you can, playing two decipherable notes. the hardest motion to get used to, is "tapping" your little and ring finger , in succession (and still applying enough force to sound the fret). practice on a table when your playing daoc or smt.

 

[Turran]

I play bass, kinda similair..
Try White Stripes - 7 Nation Army.
Piss easy,

 

[Svartmetall]

Played for about 25 years now, taught guitar for 15 of those...

I'd recommend getting some lessons, too, make sure your teacher gives you proper warm-up exercises (so vital to avoid tendon/muscle pains or problems) and instills good physical habits, e.g. left-hand position and picking-hand motion etc. The first thing I gave any new pupil of mine was a set of warm-up exercises, that also helped greatly to build up co-ordination and finger independence over time.

If you want to play Metallica-type stuff, you're really going to need to build up your picking ability, especially for the 'Ride The Lightning' through to "...And Justice For All" material - they got slower + easier after that. Always use alternate picking, and always pick from the wrist, don't have your whole arm moving to get the pick going (the guitarist from Immortal actually permanently injured the tendons in his right arm by not warming up properly and can no longer play). Small, controlled movements - the more mechanically efficient you are at getting that pick across the string and back, the faster you can play. It's going to take time to build it up - never be tense in the muscles of you picking arm/wrist/hand, always keep things relaxed and build up the speed over time. If you tense up by trying to play too fast you'll just end up slowing yourself down in the end.

Start off learning realistic material - go for the simple-but-fun stuff like Black Sabbath, Nirvana, 'Black Album'-era 'Tallica etc. Don't start out trying to play 'Master Of Puppets' because it's just not going to happen for a while. It's better to learn a simple song well than play bits of a complex song badly. I once had a new pupil turn up for his first lesson saying he wanted to play Cradle Of Filth - I told him it would take at least 2 years before he could play COF stuff right, and that was if he worked at it very hard. Not what he wanted to hear, perhaps, but it was the truth.

Book-wise, I always thought most 'how to play' books frankly sucked. Get a decent chord/theory book and slowly absorb the information from it, don't try to absorb too much at once - better to learn one new chord and scale a week and know it thoroughly than try to do everything at once and end up forgetting it all anyway. 'The Guitar Grimoire' is pretty good as a source of info - it'll look daunting at first, but like I said, take it easy and build stuff up over time. It's not a race.

Remember you're playing the second-best chord instrument in the world after the piano; most guitarists' chord knowledge is lamentably basic, and the instrument is capable of stuff that's way more interesting than the G/C/D/power-chord stuff most people seem to be stuck at. Learn your major and minor 7ths, 9ths. etc and then try more complex stuff; you'll have much more choice available to you and be able to recognise more complex stuff in other peoples' stuff that you try to learn as a result.

Always try to come up with stuff of your own; it's never too early to try inventing your own music. Never, ever be afraid to just throw your fingers around the fretboard a bit and see what comes out. It might suck, but it might also be something cool.

Listen to other stuff than just guitar; most guitarists just listen to other guitarists and what you end up with is a guitar vocabulary made up entirely of the same old 5th- or 6th-hand recycled licks. Listen to every damn thing that makes your ears prick up and see what you can take from that and bring back to the guitar; you might just stumble across something really interesting.

Any guitar questions, just ask.

 

[Svartmetall]

A few people I think are worth listening to (looking at things from a learning-stuff point of view as much as anything else):

Paul Gilbert: one of the best speed-pickers ever, his picking patterns are a great way to become a monster picker. And far too tall ...also, watch his picking hand, you'll see exactly what I mean about picking from the wrist. He was one of the biggest influences on my own picking style, I learned a lot from his stuff.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jmGXIrVTJ5Q&search=Paul Gilbert

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CNfknoXOVbs&search=Paul Gilbert

Check out the sheer energy in his playing on this solo, from his first instructional video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AqRvYDkXP2c&search=Paul Gilbert


John Petrucci: a superb all-roundplayer, here he shows some very useful warm-up exercises:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CMMsyzTmc10&search=John Petrucci


Steve Vai: genuinely one of the all-time great guitarists. Here he does his classic 'For The Love Of God':

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O44TBckhu30&search=Steve Vai

...and the amazing 'Whispering A Prayer':

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DoxhaH6jTtQ&search=Steve Vai


Vinnie Moore: Ok, bad hair. But an amazing player, he has incredible smoothness; check out his sweep-picking stuff here from his first instructional video:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dulmJXawfjg&search=Vinnie Moore

...I think he ended up being Alice Cooper's touring-band guitarist of choice.


Yngwie Malmsteen: OK, nowadays he has more chins than guitars, but he's still the man who invented the whole 'neo-classical' thing in the 80s, that quite frankly kicked the overall technical level of guitar playing up the arse more than anything before, Here he does some parts of his concerto for electric guitar + orchestra:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2S2mRY1QeY4&search=Yngwie Malmsteen

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Fn6-XqmkKUA&search=Yngwie Malmsteen

http://youtube.com/watch?v=g5IZ907OnDI&search=Yngwie Malmsteen


Hope some of this stuff helps and gives you some inspiration, these are some of the guys who inspired me

 

[Naetha]

I know this isn't cool, but try starting with an acoustic guitar. It won't be as hard on your fingers (strings are a little bit further apart) and its good for learning the basics of guitar. You also don't need amps etc, don't need to worry about wiring etc, or worry about pissing your mum off with all the loud noise. You can get an acoustic guitar for £60, and then when you're good enough, progress to an electric.

You can still play all the same songs on an acoustic as on an electric, you just don't get the same sound effects and distortion, but in a way this is good, as the distortion can mask all the mistakes you make, so you're likely to be a better guitar player.

I doubt you'll take the acoustic idea up, but I really would recommend it.

 

[Svartmetall]

To be honest, I never bought that argument; a steel-string acoustic will be harder on the fingers than an electric. And a classical (nylon-string) guitar is too archaic to be much use these days. Cheapo steel-strings acoustics are more likely to have high action and be difficult to play; I know of people who were put off playing by how bad their nasty 'starter guitars' were.

If it's mainly electric music you want to play, then get an electric; however, once you've been playing long enough to get some proper callouses on your fingertips, it can be a very good thing to practice on a steel-string acoustic - they're physically harder to play, so they will strengthen your hands up a bit, so that playing an electric will always feel easy.

 

[pikeh]

I know this isn't cool, but try starting with an acoustic guitar. It won't be as hard on your fingers (strings are a little bit further apart) and its good for learning the basics of guitar. You also don't need amps etc, don't need to worry about wiring etc, or worry about pissing your mum off with all the loud noise. You can get an acoustic guitar for £60, and then when you're good enough, progress to an electric.

You can still play all the same songs on an acoustic as on an electric, you just don't get the same sound effects and distortion, but in a way this is good, as the distortion can mask all the mistakes you make, so you're likely to be a better guitar player.

I doubt you'll take the acoustic idea up, but I really would recommend it.

steel strung acoustics are a lot harder to "physically" play that electric. You wanna play electric, then player electric. Acoustics are good for writing songs , but until you know the structure and basics of song writing, it isnt really worth it.

 

[pikeh]

Oh and also, use a thick-ish pick. I would recomment at least .96mm, the thinner your pick, the less tone you will get. Less expression.

 

[Svartmetall]

What pick you use is a very personal thing, it is after all the point at which your picking hand interacts with the strings themselves; I'd recommend trying a whole bunch of different picks to see what works for you.

 

[pikeh]

What pick you use is a very personal thing, it is after all the point at which your picking hand interacts with the strings themselves; I'd recommend trying a whole bunch of different picks to see what works for you.

Best to get used to a thicker pick though surely. Cant do jack with a thin one apart from strum (and even that sounds weak).

In rock and metal music, while playing electric guitar with hi-gain amplification or distortion, it is generally assumed that thinner picks produce muddier, heavier, less controllable sound and thicker picks produce more delicate, more controlled and well-shaped tone.

 

[Svartmetall]

Best to get used to a thicker pick though surely. Cant do jack with a thin one apart from strum (and even that sounds weak).

Depends on someone's individual style, and what they prefer the feel of; I wouldn't play death metal with a thin pick, but you use different things in different situations. Over the years I've gone back and forth between medium and extra-heavy picks; it's all a matter of taste. Brian May uses an old sixpence coin, Jeff Beck uses his fingers, use whatever works. There's no one 'right way', there's just your way, in the end.

I'd say start off with a medium pick and see how it goes; when you start picking, you always tend to hit the string harder than you actually need to (because you've not yet developed the economy of motion that you get over time) and heavier picks - because they transmit more of the picking motion's energy directly into the string - will result in more broken strings. Put it this way - when I started out, I used medium picks and broke strings all the bloody time. Nowadays, I use extra-heavy picks, I play much more extreme music, and I haven't broken a string for over a year.

In rock and metal music, while playing electric guitar with hi-gain amplification or distortion, it is generally assumed that thinner picks produce muddier, heavier, less controllable sound and thicker picks produce more delicate, more controlled and well-shaped tone.

Never assume. The universe is full of dead people who assumed . In actual fact, the pick you use is more about feel than tone; your tone comes from so many different factors that while the pick is definitely part of the equation, its not really that big of a part.

The classic story about tone: on an early tour of the US, Van Halen supported Ted Nugent. Ted loved Eddie Van Halen's tone so much that he bribed a VH roadie to let him try Eddie's rig while the man himself was away from the venue doing promotional interviews. Ted Nugent played Eddie's guitar, through Eddie's amps, via Eddie's cable, through Eddie's effects, even using Eddie's pick, and sounded exactly like Ted Nugent.

 

[pikeh]

Depends on someone's individual style, and what they prefer the feel of; I wouldn't play death metal with a thin pick, but you use different things in different situations. Over the years I've gone back and forth between medium and extra-heavy picks; it's all a matter of taste. Brian May uses an old sixpence coin, Jeff Beck uses his fingers, use whatever works. There's no one 'right way', there's just your way, in the end.

I'd say start off with a medium pick and see how it goes; when you start picking, you always tend to hit the string harder than you actually need to (because you've not yet developed the economy of motion that you get over time) and heavier picks - because they transmit more of the picking motion's energy directly into the string - will result in more broken strings. Put it this way - when I started out, I used medium picks and broke strings all the bloody time. Nowadays, I use extra-heavy picks, I play much more extreme music, and I haven't broken a string for over a year.


Never assume. The universe is full of dead people who assumed . In actual fact, the pick you use is more about feel than tone; your tone comes from so many different factors that while the pick is definitely part of the equation, its not really that big of a part.

The classic story about tone: on an early tour of the US, Van Halen supported Ted Nugent. Ted loved Eddie Van Halen's tone so much that he bribed a VH roadie to let him try Eddie's rig while the man himself was away from the venue doing promotional interviews. Ted Nugent played Eddie's guitar, through Eddie's amps, via Eddie's cable, through Eddie's effects, even using Eddie's pick, and sounded exactly like Ted Nugent.

fair enough
just when i started playing, i used paper thin picks. Only when i started using medium and up picks, my playing and tone vastly improved. palm muting no longer sounded like a badger eating marmite, got a much crisper sound, but as you say, down to personal preference

 

[Svartmetall]

Speaking of tone, you won't find many people with a better tone than this guy, the very under-rated Eric Johnson...here he is doing the classic 'Cliffs of Dover':

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=6833529017668510290&q=Eric+Johnson

 

[Succi]

Always use alternate picking, and always pick from the wrist.

Hetfield plays all downstrokes when possible to get more of a aggressive sound , eg spider riff in master of puppets and I find mainly I end up picking with just thumb and index finger ... wrist is abit clumsy with faster stuff

But yeh , learn alternate picking asap...just remember with metallica alot of the riffs are all downstrokes

 

[Svartmetall]

Hetfield plays all downstrokes when possible to get more of a aggressive sound , eg spider riff in master of puppets...
But yeh , learn alternate picking asap...just remember with metallica alot of the riffs are all downstrokes

True, but he switches to alternate when it's needed due to the speed of the song. If you just practice downstrokes you end up tensing up again when you come up against fast stuff.

...and I find mainly I end up picking with just thumb and index finger ... wrist is abit clumsy with faster stuff

Not quite sure what you mean here, are you talking about how you hold the pick? Yes, thumb and forefinger is how I hold it; I was talking about the actual picking motion itself though.

 

[Succi]

steel strung acoustics are a lot harder to "physically" play that electric.

actually alot of things are easier on acoustic I find , due to greater gauge of string and therefore tension... for example I can play the run in pantera - cemetery gates solo alot easier on acoustic than electric


nylon .73 dunlop picks are nice n medium to start out on and yahama pacifica starter packs blow most others (especially squires) away