Guitar Playing: How difficult is it to learn??????

[markraine]

One thing I've always been interested in, but never had an opportunity to do, is to learn to play a guitar. I currently have a month off, from school, from work, nothing but time on my hands and I'd LOVE to be able to pick up something about playing a guitar. I have a pretty nice Yamaha acoustic guitar, but absolutely no clue how to play, can anyone here give me some tips, as far as what helped them, what would be good places for me to turn? I'd like to take lessons but can't afford to spend a fortune, I really want to be able to pickup some songs, some Johnny Cash songs as well as Maalguena Salerosa which are among my favorites

[simon_uk]

Hi

 

I have played guitar for about 15 years but it is only in the last three years or so that I have felt confident and not intimidated playing away in the local guitar shops.

 

There are loads of free online tutor pages on the internet some even have video demonstrations. The only two I can think of off the top of my head are

 

http://www.cyberfret.com

 

and

 

http://www.riffinteractive.com

 

You may want to start with them.

 

Good luck. Oh and about your question, how difficult is it? well it is much likeanything else, the more effort you put in the more you get out. It can be very frustrating at first but once you get your first couple of chords and pick up a tune you will be hooked to learn more.

[westernxer]

I started playing in January. It's a helluva lot of fun, once you start picking up chords and such. Wish I had more time to play.

 

You really don't need to shell out dough for lessons... all the greats are self-taught.

[Zephyr45]

The nice thing about learning guitar is that you don't have to worry about learning to read music, it's purely a mechanical activity. At least for most cases. There's music notation called guitar "tab" (short for "tablature") which simply consists of 6 lines which represent your strings and numbers on the lines representing which fret you finger and play. You can find tab to just about any song on the internet, so if you can find some songs you love that happen to be simple or have simple parts, you can very quickly learn how to play (parts of) them. It's great inspiration to keep practicing! (I can still remember how thrilled I was when I learned how to play the two notes that repeat during the verse of Smells Like Teen Spirit - the 'ding ding' part. )

 

I would recommend taking a few lessons or having a friend give you a review and basic run down. I think the human interaction and you able to ask specific questions and them being able to immediately see what you are doing wrong is important. Once you have the basics, it's just a matter of repetition and getting your fingers in shape.