What method did you use to learn guitar?

[BigE13]

There are probably threads on this already but I am looking for fresh thoughts and comments. There are a million (it seems) guitar dvds and teaching programs out there and there are lots of willing guitar teachers out there as well depending on where you live, but what worked best for you and what didn't? Any particular recommendations on programs etc?...I want to move out of the beginner's type rut and start really playing not just mimicking my favorite songs or pieces of songs... Thoughts?

:think:

[Trem]

Metal Method ..Naw but really.

[Codex]

[Hellbat]

I learned by trying to duplicate the sound of what I was listening to and trying to figure stuff out by using tabs from magazines. Neither method ended up working well though. I wish I took lessons, I would probably be way further along. Best piece of advice I can give is to play with other musicians in some way shape or form. I have improved a great deal by joining the band at my workplace in the last year, playing cover songs waaaaay outside my comfort zone.

[horns666]

I played random notes as fast as I can, while trying not to hit any sour ones. Once I did that, I tried to hit all the "evil" ones.

[Ward]

Metal Method ..Naw but really.

I combined it with other books and a teacher for a few years, but Metal Method was definitely a part of my early learning.

I just checked, and I still have my original Metal Licks book

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I think I have the cassette that came with it around here somewhere too, even though I don't have a cassette player

[vampire dark]

thank god I was thinking of not even going to a guitar teacher cause the musical schools have teachers taht suck.they won't get you to play what you want and they care about learning notes first and chords and shit and after 3 months you can start playing them on your guitar.its like doing maths for the first 3 months and all kids are repelled by it .tehy take up the guitar and then they stop after a month or two....so my parents (my mother ) insisted I go to a teacher I told her I don't want to go to a music school teacher and I will only go for a year or two no more than that.....and oh yeah I got the coolest teacher ever ...he is aheavy metal guy so he learn to me the ropes on metal and on guitar so quickly ...at this summer I finished doing lessons with him and he told me that I was the first to graduate from him for the last 5-6 years he has being doing lessons.If you wanna check his music visit http://www.myspace.com/humangenom he plays a dk2s......

can't help you man though, but if you find a guy to do lessons with you its the best way and its gonna be way coller than any other shit!!!!check out metal mike chlashiak(fuck the spelling) he is showing some tips at guitar world

[BigE13]

Thanks for the tips guys and keep them coming. I am going to look for an experienced teacher. Too bad that Esteban dude doesn't live close by! lol Great suggestion Codex! Flamenco Metal! I may see if I can get ahold of the vintage Metal Method stuff to play around with too!

[Trem]

It depends on what you are wanting to learn. A lot of the instructional dvds are this lick that riff, whatnot. A few are covering theory and such.
Hard to say what to look at if one doesn't know where your abilities are at, or exactly what you are trying to accomplish. The Metal Method original program was a quick primer into the modes and how to make a chord progression based off of them. Kind of a quick and dirty, avoid the mary had a little lamb type lessons and sight reading type stuff ( which probably anyone who bypassed or shunned that stuff would later say, i probably should have learned that stuff ).

At any rate, i've found even going over stuff i know or more accurately "once knew" to still be helpful. You forget a lot if you aren't talking about it or using it on a constant basis.

Anyway, again it depends on what you are trying to learn. If it's songwriting, start writing songs. Learn some new chords or chord progressions, or take some progressions from popular songs and write some original songs of your own with them. A million songs out there use the same chord progressions as a million other songs, but it's all about personalization, finding your voice, and how it's executed that makes them different.

[horns666]

Finding your voice is purposely avoid playing covers..at all costs!!

Let your faves influence you..no tabs..note-for-note my balls. Write your own fuggin' notes.

[xenophobe]

I played random notes as fast as I can, while trying not to hit any sour ones. Once I did that, I tried to hit all the "evil" ones.

There's some truth to that.

[dvscool]

I actually took private classical guitar lessons. (The guy came to my home). But most of the time, my parents were not home when he was over and he would show me YJM, Whitesnake and Vai licks. I learned to read music and then literally, never read music again. I couldn’t read now if my life depended on it. After the lessons (about 5 years) it was all by ear /tab.

I've since told me my mom that story and she doesn't believe me :think:

[Maiden89]

I would use guitar magazine tabs to learn metal songs and keep playing them and listening to music until I could play the songs perfectly. I also bought a dvd showing basic techniques, power chords and simple scales. It actually helped a lot...

In high school, I actually had a guitar class, but that was kind of a joke. The teacher didn't want anyone to use picks until you learned how to play finger style and he really didn't teach or play anything outside of chords and 1 string riffs. The only good use for that class is I could play whatever I wanted when he wasn't around and I guess it was good practice.

What really helped my playing was playing in a band setting. I played with a bassist and drummer (sometimes) and we all got better at playing very quick. I would definitely recommend finding other people to play with regardless of skill. Just tell them your a beginner and start learning some easy cover songs with them.

[markD]

i started a band and we wrote all our own songs. we played terribly and the songs were terrible. when i listen to our demo, we sounded like venom met hellhammer on the street corner and had an ass-orgy. it was a lot of fun. i read a lot and hung around other musicians. i listened to them and paid attention to advice in magazine articles. i taught myself to read tabs, and on a RARE occasion, i would learn a riff or two that i thought was cool. i also never limited myself to one style of music. while i have always enjoyed metal the most, i absorbed many other types of music and tried to copy what i heard.

[ginsambo]

Yeah we used to listen to records, deciphering the American accents for the lyrical content was actually a lot harder than working out the guitar parts. Some of our translations were embarrassing to say the least. These days it seems easier but I think there is more exposure of accents worldwide than 25 odd year ago when we only had the A team, Airwolf, Battlestar Galactica and the Dukes of Hazzard for reference in our youth. Also Tab to an extent. My biggest regret and at the same time my greatest accomplishment was nailing the tone and sound, aka vibrato, bends and attack etc, of players. I also learnt all the main riffs and pull offs / hammer ons exercises etc. However I do wish I'd spent more time exercising and co-ordinating the right hand as that is where it is all at really and also studying and playing rhythms. It's only now that I am really coming to grips with fast rhythms as a 'proper' guitar player and I'm still crap. However I do have the trump card of making a guitar sound like it's being tortured or flying to heaven, which you don't get from practicing scales with a metronome, which I never did. Joining a band helped my rhythm playing but I still struggled, I was in time and everything, but everything was either rushed or slow for solo work and I always came in on the off beat for some reason. So I always really struggled with 'walking' solos or solos that were rhythmcal, the type of which I would say a 'proper' guitar player can improvise fluidly.

My advice is to ALWAYS tap your foot when paying anything-never forget that rhythm is king, feel how it feels against the beat. Get a feel for the most common solo riffs but learn how to link them rhythmical. Build some left hand strength up, not just so you can go widdly widdly but so you can bend all the strings at once 2' off the board and hold a wild vibrato on them. Also try and sing and hold a vocal melody over your playing. It will help develop your ears no end.

I would just learn EVH's stuff back to back, not necessarily the tapping stuff, but the fills and rhythms and bluesy riffs, he is not only about the best Rhythm guitarist around, he also is a killer blues player. No matter how good your left hand is at wild bends with vibrato or alternatively widdly widdly, it is absolutely useless in a band if you can't trip a rhythm off your cuff and fall straight back to it after a fill, or build a rhythmcal solo fill around it. This, I think is the downfall of many guitar players out there. Have as wide an exposure to great music of all types as you can, Blues Rock Metal Punk John Denver, Les Paul, everything, but try and learn from the innovators, not the imitators.

Play like you are the only guitarist in the band, in fact the only one on stage, no drums, bass or singer, just you and the world relies on you to set the groove and the melody and you won't go far wrong. At the end of the day it's an instrument to entertain people. People will soon tire of your out of time, badly composed, one piece widdly set or the eternal chugga chugga.

As I said though, it's all about your right hand really, getting loose and rhythmical soloing and playing. But obviously your end style depends on what elements you are drawn to the most.

Me - I could hold a 5 step bend with wild vibrato for a whole two minute solo and it would satisfy me, would it entertain? No! But it would feel good. I think it has taken me, without lessons about twenty years to finally get a handle and feel for improvised fast rhymical solo work and being able to hear where the notes fit and how, but I still lean towards the rushed or bluesy side, simple because I think it's more soulful.

I think you have to be wary of where you are coming from, very rhymical players who learn form exercies and fingerwork tend to shred very early on but do tend to sound a bit banal and light fingered, where as player that learn solely from listening to CD's will sound very organic but will suffer rhythmically, especially when it comes to phrasing. Then there are the jingle janglers, who will always jingle jangle and the chugga chuggas, but the later fall more into the first group as they do develop their rhythms. Ultimately, both get to a crossover stage at some point where they can play the part properly after having brushed up on their weaknesses, but for me, the organic player is the one that stands out and is the guy I would, personally want to listen to, I mean, assuming at least, he is in time and has some sense of rhythm of course. If he is shocking no, I wouldn't want to hear it it would be awful.

The best guitar players I know, usd to play the piano from an early age, their fngers are already like lightening and their ear is already well developed, they choose the guitar because it has that inbetween notes grey area organic thing about it, which a piano does not to such a direct degree. So they concentrate on playing soulfully and the combination gets immense results.

The players that are really great have have highly tuned senses of rhythm, phrasing and tone.

I also had a few classical lessons and lernt to read music and I aso forgot how to read it, but it comes back if I sit down for an hour. What I regret is, that in my youth, music seemed so inaccessible and boring, where as tab seemed so much quicker. The basic idea I failed to grasp though, is that a written music score is mostly written for timings and phrasing and feel, the actual notes are just a small part of it. With tab you will get all the right notes, mostly in the right positions, but without a keen ear and a reference played over and over again or better yet a teacher, it quickly becomes a jumble when you are learning and sounds off.

I also used to play along to the radio alot, whatever was on really, country, pop, ballads, R&B, rap, Techno... but be aware when you are just tittlelating yourself with a solo and when you need to learn the rhythmesque chunks and groove, whether soloing or rhythm playing to hold it together, be self reliant.

Go forth and change the world, don't end up being sad like me writing pages of waffle that is ultimately meaningless and bores people to death, as a distraction exercise because you are too afraid of getting in the shower and getting on with the day, because you can't afford the heating bills and its still only feckin 50F inside.