QBN Music School
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- curiouscat
My wife gave me a Yamaha acoustic guitar for Father's Day a few years ago. Safe to say, it's been collecting dust. I tried lessons with someone locally, but their availability and mine did not align.
So, now I'm looking for online classes. Any QBN guitarists in the house that can recommend a good source for learning how to play?
- kingsteven0
If you are a complete beginner:
Learn these chords first
And power chords
Congratulations! you are better than 50% of guitarists
Then barre chords
Learn A minor pentatonic scale and move it up and down the fretboard...
Congratulations! you are better than 75% of guitarists
From there learn some more pentatonic scale shapes and learn how to move between them with slides and bends... Play around the shapes of the major and minor bar chords and the open chords you know to create your own solos and chords.
The circle of fifths dictates that every major scale has the same notes as the minor scale 4 notes down (so G maj has the same notes as E min) and everything repeats at the 12th fret... congratulations, you just quadrupled your potential fretboard positions...
At any point you get bored, learn some songs you like... tab is so easy to learn from, it's like painting with numbers... learn some solos, some picking techniques or try some open tunings.
- kingsteven0
Thinking about when I started playing guitar how good it felt after rehearsing a solo for several days at less than half speed, stringing it all together and playing at speed along with the whole song.
All the best musicians I know have played in cover bands/ wedding/ jazz bands. I'd definitely say learning other people's music and practicing or playing regularly is what makes a good musician more than any other factor.
Of course, you don't need to be a great musician to make great music so you find a balance. I've played in bands with great guitarists who wouldn't pick up a guitar between rehearsals and these days I mostly noodle around playing my own compositions in strange tunings for an hour or so a day - and that's more than I have played in years.
Whatever floats your boat.
- autoflavour1
im pretty sure i saw that Garageband has guitar lessons .. my kid used them until he finished them and then got an actual tutor
- cherub1
Kingsteven's advice is good, but for an absolute beginner I'd start with 2 things before you do anything else.
Get a guitar tuner and learn how to use it. I still use an app called "pano tuner" which works great, u adjust the string until the needle is in the middle of the green area. Do each string this way, and never forget:
Every
Acid
Dealer
Gets
Busted
Eventuallyis how u remember all the strings. EADGBE
Other thing I'd do is develop some callouses on your left hand and cut your fingernails short.
- The idea with callouses is you keep pressing your fingers against the strings, for hours each day, until it no longer feels painful.cherub