Paul Gian asked:




When you have recently retired or are taking a break from the responsibilities in life that claim our time, and want to learn how to play the guitar there are grownup guitar lessons that are available for you. It is true that in most cases the lessons that are available on the internet and that are offered in the stores are directed at the younger age. However, there are lessons available you just need to know where to look to find them.

Since you are new to the guitar scene and are not sure what to look for there are some terms that you will not want to spend your money or your time learning. There terms are aimed at the younger individuals who are more inclined to want to try to play guitar like the individuals you see on the MTV network of VH1. Do not pickup any books or dvd’s for your use at home that have anything to do with the terms Guitar God or Guitar Superstar. These are meant to teach you how to become a teen sensation when playing the guitar.

Other terms that are meant to be avoided when learning to play the guitar at home include the use of shredding methods as well as the term of speed picking. Both of these are methods that should be avoided as they are the methods that teenagers use when they are playing the guitar. Your grownup guitar lessons will be aimed at much more appropriate way of playing the guitar that is meant for you.

When participating in grownup guitar lessons there are some things that you can do at home in order to learn better and faster. Consider purchasing some books that will allow you to understand the notes and how to read them better when you are learning to play the guitar. You will also want to research the lessons on the internet that can also offer assistance when wanting to learn the guitar. There are a number of resources on the internet that are free to use and therefore if you don’t want to have to purchase anything, you can do it for free through online websites.

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Chris J Jones asked:




Learning to play guitar is an exciting and fulfilling hobby, which will give you pleasure for the rest of your life.

If there is one thing that I’ve heard from all of my students, it is the fact that they feel that playing the guitar is going to be difficult. I’m not saying that it is not going to take any work for you to learn to play guitar but I am saying that with a little bit of work, you can begin enjoying it after just a few lessons.

Here are some of the basic techniques that are used in order to teach people guitar, some of which will probably be used in your own lessons as well.

The first thing that you’re going to need to learn are the basics about playing the guitar. Although some people may already understand these things, it is best if you review them before moving on to the next step.

Having a basic understanding of the strings, frets and finger placement are the building blocks of being able to play the guitar successfully. From there, we will move on to more advanced techniques but there are still plenty of basics to learn.

Once you understand the basics about the strings and finger placement, you need to become efficient at strumming the guitar. It’s more than simply going up and down across the strings, there are a lot of subtle differences in strumming techniques that will need to be learned.

Since it is really only necessary for you to learn a few chords in order to effectively play a song or two, understanding how to keep the rhythm with strumming is the next logical step that you will need to take. From that point, it is a matter of practicing and making sure that you become very efficient at switching between chords. This is something that can be taught in a classroom environment but it is usually better if you learn how to do so at home.

One of my favorite methods of doing this is switching between chords whenever you are watching TV or any time you’re sitting idly. It’s not necessary for you to strum at this time, just get used to switching in between the chords so that there is not a delay in your playing.

It’s going to take some work and a lot of determination on your part but if you get started today, you can be playing songs within about a week with some practice.

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Bernice Eker asked:




We all know how popular guitars are. The guitar is a very versatile musical instrument that there is practically no end to the wonderful music that can be played with it.

Guitar music has gone way beyond the simple strumming and country music-type beat. The advent of electric guitars made it possible for musicians to pour more of their creative juices.

Add to this the gadgets that can be used to make the music better and more distorted based on preference. Your interest may be in the different genres of music. It may be country, jazz, folk rock, modern rock, acoustic, bald, and others. A guitar will just do as long as you know how to play and you play it in right place with the right mood. With a guitar with you, you can even right your own piece of music in the long run.

What You Will Need

Of course, before you begin your journey to playing the guitar, you will need a few essentials. You need to be armed with enough materials to make sure that you maximize your learning.

First off, you need a six-string guitar. It is unwise to practice with a twelve-string guitar I you have not mastered the six-string guitar yet. Next, you will need a guitar pick to play guitar music smoothly.

For beginners, it is always said that thinner guitar picks are better for easier control when strumming. You also need a guitar chord chart so you have a reference whenever you forget a chord. Lastly, you need a music book that contains music lyrics and the guitar chord corresponding to the tune. There are two other intangible things that you will need. You need patience to learn how to play the guitar and you also need a deep passion for music. Without these two, you will never be successful in learning how to play the guitar.

A Few Tips Before Starting

If you want to learn how to play guitar music, you should realize that there are a few things you need to keep in mind. The first thing is that you need to keep your fingernails trimmed.

With long fingernails, you will not be able to press the strings well and this will result to a bad sound. You can produce better sound with trimmed fingernails since the tips of your fingers will be free to press the strings. Next, remember that your fingers will hurt as you progress in playing. You will also develop calluses as a result of pressing the strings. This can be painful but you need to keep on.

This is only one of the few sacrifices you will have to make if you want to learn how to play the guitar. Lastly, you need to ensure that you have already learned your first lesson before moving on to the next one. It is not wise that you move to the next lesson without sort of mastering the previous one because you will not be able to remember it by heart.

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Mike P Hayes asked:




Learning to play guitar is a process, and there is no finish
line. How long does it take to play guitar, is a question
students often ask their teacher. How long it takes to play the
guitar depends on what your definition of guitar playing
is!

The last few decades has seen a remarkable growth in the
popularity of rock music and guitar playing has become pretty
attractive for many.

Today the guitar is everywhere; a versatile instrument – adapting
itself to almost any kind of situation, Victimized by it’s own
success, it has become something more than a musical instrument –
like the swastika before it, it has become the symbol of a social
revolution! The ultimate emblem of grooviness! It is now an
object unto itself!

Guitar enthusiasts are so often blinded by the symbol that they
remain deaf to the world of musical wonders that lie beyond their
blinkered six-string field of interest.

Many teenagers exist who aspire to become rock superstars, but
there is also a section who wants to learn guitar playing just
for sake of it. But many of them end up losing hope of learning
guitar since they don’t find the best way to learn guitar.

How long does it take to play guitar? If you can answer the
following questions and make these important distinctions you
will have a good idea.

QUESTION ONE: How do you view the instrument?

Do you want to be (a) guitar owner, (b) guitar player, (c) a
musician who uses the guitar for musical expression?

Essentially there’s three levels of involvement with the guitar:

1. Guitar owners – to qualify you need only to have enough funds
to purchase the instrument, for these people the guitar is simply
a toy, like a computer game, or fashion accessory. How long does
it take you to play the guitar if you’re in this category? About
5-10 minutes max. The important thing here is to “be seen to be
playing the guitar”!

2. Guitar players – players in this category are often very
dedicated and speed many hours practicing their instrument.
Mostly self taught, they learn almost exclusively from guitar
tab, and their friends. How long does it take to play guitar in
this category?… these players understand it’s a lifetime
journey.

3. Musicians who play guitar as their chosen instrument- players
in category two focus on guitar playing skills, whereas
level three players understand the whole scope of the musical
landscape. A good musician not only plays their instrument well,
they understand and can intelligently discuss all music.

These players:

(a) listen to all types of music

(b) read about all types of music

(c) study all types of music

How long does it take to play guitar in this category? Again,
it’s a lifetime of hard work and discipline. What’s the
difference between category two and category three?

Level two players must have their instrument in their hands to
communicate ideas, whereas, musicians who play guitar as their
chosen instrument know and can discuss, the qualities which make
Herb Ellis or Barney Kessel a great jazz player; why Duke
Ellington is a jazz innovator; Michel Legrand a great composer
and orchestrator. They know why good symphonies are good and bad
symphonies are bad; they know why good pop or country songs are
good (musically) and bad songs are bad.

QUESTION TWO: Are you internally motivated or externally
motivated?

Externally motivated players usually give up playing the guitar
once they realize that they are responsible for their progress.
these players quickly move on to the new ‘hip’ fad (only to give
up on that as soon as things get a bit challenging).

An obvious example of this type of externally motivated player
and their associated problems and disappointments is with the
recent popularity of computer games where people pretend to play
the guitar.

Despite PR claims from computer games companies
that their computer guitar games improve the player’s rhythm
and hand dexterity, professional guitar teachers worldwide have reported
that guitar computer game veterans have been disappointed when
confronted with the real-world requirements of hard work and
delayed gratification. They expect to jump into it and learn it
as quickly as they learned the game, and they realize that they
can’t.

I’ll assume if you have read this far you’re more interested in
category two or three!

needless to say that only internally motivated players make it
into category two and three.

QUESTION THREE: What is the source of your information? common
knowledge or specialized knowledge?

Today it is not a question of information on any particular
subject, after all we live in the information age, don’t we? To
accelerate your progress on the guitar and rapidly decrease the
time it takes you to play the guitar, what we need is specialized
knowledge to help us assemble the relevant knowledge to achieve
our goals.

The first thing to understand is that learning guitar is
something that takes a long time. how long it takes to learn
depends on what you want to learn.

Learning guitar is hard work but it’s really important to have
fun and have your guitar make cool sounds while you’re learning
all the hard bits. The main thing you have to consider when
learning how to play guitar is who is teaching you how to play
guitar.

How long does it take to play guitar? It depends on what you want
to achieve.

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Advice Online asked:




Beginners should try to choose simple and easy songs to learn. Such songs will help the beginner to grasp the fundamentals of playing the guitar, and help to build confidence.

So how do you spot an easy song to learn? The simplest songs will consist of two or three chords. The slower love songs are generally the easiest to play. Some songs will only consist of the three basic chords – A major, C major, and D. When students have mastered the easier songs they can advance their skills by moving on to more difficult songs.

Learning easy songs will help you to learn the fundamentals of guitar playing faster than merely learning the individual chords in isolation. When choosing your easy guitar songs, it is a good idea to listen to a recording of the song while reading the sheet music. This will give you a good idea of how the piece should sound, and will help with your ear skills.

When choosing an easy song there are two main criteria to consider: the number of chords, and familiarity with the song. As I have already highlighted, the easiest songs only require you to be familiar with two or three chords. It goes without saying that it is much easier to learn a song that you know well, as you know how it should sound when played correctly. It also helps if you like the song – if you choose one of your favourite songs this will motivate you to practice it until you get it right.







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Christopher Buckley asked:




Although the electric guitar has originated in blues music, it is rock that gave its popularity. With rock music, the electric guitar became a massively expressive instrument. All guitar lessons have to touch on rock as well, but if you want to learn to play rock guitar, there are special modules you can take up. These modules focus almost exclusively on rock music.

The things you will be taught when you learn to play rock guitar can be roughly spread into three modules: first lessons, where you will learn the basics about playing the guitar, electric guitar improver and power chords.

First Lessons

These lessons are mostly for beginners. If you have some knowledge about playing the guitar, you may skip some of these. This is up to your teacher to decide.

However, if you’re holding a guitar for the first time, this is where your teacher will usually start. You will be taught the fundamentals about playing a guitar in general and playing rock guitar in particular. You will learn the basics about rock lead guitar and power chords. After these first lessons, you will have some idea on how to play classic rock guitar. If you get these right, you are on your way to actually playing rock guitar.

Electric Guitar Improver

In the next lessons, you will probably be taught various rock techniques, such as sliding, string-bending, pull-offs, vibrato and hammer-ons. These tips will enable you to play some fairly good rock solos. You will also learn about scales and chords that will help you start making up your own music.

There might be a lot of blues references within these lessons. Going through all these will help you understand the relation between blues and rocks, which is essential if you want to learn to play rock guitar like a pro.

Power Chords

Power chords are two or three string distorted sounding chords used in some of the most popular rock songs of all times. You will learn to play several rock songs during the first few lessons of this module. Afterwards you will be very familiar with the fretboard and surprise yourself with the sounds you will be able to play.

If you seriously want to learn to play rock guitar, don’t get frustrated or discouraged if you’re not playing the way you would like to at the beginning. If you enjoy playing, the progress will come at some point. Find a guitar teacher you communicate well with, design a workable schedule to practice and, most importantly, try to have fun while you’re learning.



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Pierre Manningham asked:




Are you searching for a way to start playing the guitar fast using guitar software or a variety of ways? There are many things you can do, however, the fact that you are trying to get started is what will set you apart from all the rest!

Learning Guitar Tabs and Chords

You should get yourself familiar with guitar tabs and chords and so you can ultimately learn how you can start playing the guitar immediately!

Guitar tabs will tell you exactly where you should place your hands when you are playing the guitar, what notes to play, what fret you should place your fingers/hands at, and how to pluck the guitar string. They are designed for the beginner of beginners and the most advanced people.

They are great, and are much less complicated than chords.

There are some things you should think about:
When you first start, you will need to buy a cheap acoustic guitar right off the bat. You can usually find a great one from Craigslist or a used guitar store for well under 200$. By doing this, you will not have to worry about breaking your new guitar strings or anything of that nature.

Your guitar’s going to have to take a beating in the beginning. People usually fail in the beginning because they have unrealistic expectations of being a rockstar in the first week. When you give yourself realistic expectations – you will definitely learn how to start playing the guitar like a pro.

Benefits of Guitar Software

There is plenty of guitar software that is all around the internet just waiting for you! Guitar software will get you the results you want to see in a quick amount of time because they are a complete combination of audio, video, and written instructions that will help you learn the guitar easily!

They appeal to all learning types and you should definitely try to get your hands on a great piece of software if possible! The best distributors usually offer you the opportunity to download the software and to have it on your PC almost instantly!

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michael asked:




Discipline when you are practicing the guitar is very important. Learning to play the guitar is one of the most rewarding things I have ever done in my life but it was also one of the hardest. The reason that I became proficient with my instrument is simple. I practiced, and I practiced a lot; every day in my bedroom from the age of 16 (Im 25 now). I spent most of my time practicing the fundamentals: running up and down scales, changing chords and trying to improve my repertoire of songs.

Sometimes it was easy to make time to practice because I was in a good mood and I really wanted to play. At those times I could spend hours just listening to how cool it sounded when I changed from the chord D to the chord G. But on other days it was my discipline and desire to play and improve that made me practice and develop as a player.

There are two main factors when it comes to discipline in practice: practicing regularly and practicing well. Both of these are important to address.

Practicing regularly is the most obvious and easy to do. Basically you should play the guitar every day. These dont need to be mammoth, three hour long sessions. 30 minutes will generally be fine if you are focused during that time. Doing regular, small amounts of practice is far better than going all out for hours once a week. I know that in a busy life it can be hard to make the time to practice but honestly 30 minutes a day is achievable for anyone. There is no set time that is best to practice but I prefer to do it in the evening simply because I find playing the guitar is a relaxing way to wind down after a stressful day.

Practicing badly is a more common and difficult to address problem. This is something that affects even the most experienced player. This problem has several causes and solutions.

Playing the same thing over and over every time you play. I am a firm believer that you should play something perfectly before you move on. BUT, once you know how to play something you need to move on and keep challenging yourself. The opposite is also a problem: moving on too quickly. You should practice so that you play a piece well before you go on to the next thing. Playing perfectly and accurately is an excellent habit for any musicians to have. Not focusing on developing all parts of your musicianship when you are practicing. I like to split my playing into parts. For example I might spend 5 minutes practicing new scales or chords, 10 minutes working on writing new music for myself and maybe 15 minutes learning a new song or part of a song. Playing things too fast when you first try and learn them. This can cause you to become disillusioned with your playing when you are trying to learn a new song. Most guitarists, including myself try playing a song at a slow speed before trying it a fast pace.

Practicing properly and regularly is the best way to become good at anything including playing the guitar. This requires discipline. Not only discipline to practice regularly, but also discipline to stay focused and on track when you are practicing. If you stay disciplined with your playing you will develop in to an excellent player.

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Dominic Donaldson
asked:




In North Carolina a teenager has officially dropped out of school to become a professional Guitar Hero player. Not an actual guitar player but a Guitar Hero player. In case you have been frozen in ice, or trapped in a fall out bunker or any other generic Brendan Fraser style plot for the last 50 years and you do not know what Guitar Hero is then I will endeavour to unveil the cultural phenomenon that has been sweeping the world.

Guitar Hero is a game that simulates playing the guitar by having a plastic model of a guitar as a controller. The game itself is a series of songs which are represented by what they call a Musical Staff modelled on the neck of a guitar down which fly different coloured blobs which hit a line and explode indicating that the player must hit the corresponding colour on the Fisher Price style plastic guitar. The art is to flick the strumming button at the same time as the coloured buttons are activated, in synchronisation with the coloured blobs on television.

This is all done to an array of classic guitar tracks and although I have massively oversimplified it, as it is quite difficult, that is literally all there is to do. The simplicity might go some way to explain the massive popularity of the game which has created a sub culture consisting of young and old, crossing the class boundaries and uniting want-to-be musicians in their rock and roll simulating fantasies. The burning question is, can this lead to actual guitar playing ability?

The answer is a definitive no from basically anybody who has any musical ability or knowledge, however there are some diehard guitar hero loyalists who insist that their abilities are transferable. Looking into the concept a bit further and we can see that there are some skills that could potentially be transferable. The act of site reading in music is similar to that when playing guitar hero, as you need to see a certain symbol and transfer it into a movement.

The art of reading ahead in music is a valuable on and this is also important when playing guitar hero however this is generally where the similarities end. What people forget is that as opposed to six coloured buttons there would need to be approximately 140 for it to naturally replicate a real guitar and in real musical sight reading, the years of theory that it took to get to that position are squeezed into a couple of hours of intensive practice on Guitar Hero.

All being said there must be something in the cultural phenomenon, even if it is just people with no musical ability living out their repressed ambitions of rock stardom. The global obsession has gone so far that there are actually professional Guitar Hero players! This is absolutely astonishing and as previously mentioned there is a young man in North Carolina that is 16 and has just quit school, with his parents consent to pursue his dream of becoming a professional Guitar Hero player. The saga continues.

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Ricky Sharples asked:




Guitar students often focus on learning the guitar fretboard as a task on its own. They feel that once you know all the notes in all the positions, you can get down to the business of playing the guitar. So, we should start this article with the statement that learning the guitar fretboard as a distinct project is not necessary. If you learn to play the guitar systematically, by learning scales and chords in different keys in the first position, and then go onto learning barre chords and playing scales further up the fretboard, after some months you will have a working knowledge of the notes on the guitar.

If you choose to learn the guitar by learning chords, then playing some songs, then learning the notes on the guitar fretboard, it seems like a less boring and tedious task than learning to play one key at a time, but it won’t be any quicker. If you decide to commence learning the guitar fretboard then you should know how to play some simple chords and scales, at the very least, so that you have something to relate to as you learn the entire fretboard.

Learning the guitar fretboard is a fairly difficult job because there are really no big, all-encompassing ideas that apply to all the notes on the guitar. If you learn to play the piano, you learn the notes in the octave. You find that the C major scale is in the white keys, the incidentals are the black keys and the same rules apply to each octave on the keyboard.

When you are learning the guitar fretboard you will find that there are no principles that you can apply to all the strings. Let’s make one ground rule clear, though, we study the guitar as it is found in standard tuning. The notes in standard tuning are E A D G B E. If you alter the tuning of your guitar in any way, the notes and their relationships are different, so learn the fretboard in standard tuning first, then go into other tunings later if you want to.

The C major scale CAN be found on the first and sixth strings on the guitar. You will notice that your guitar fretboard has dots that mark the third, fifth, seventh, ninth and twelfth frets. These dots can be a pain because we come to rely on them to find the frets, even though classical and flamenco guitar players manage quite well without them. But they can help us learn the location of the C major scale. The first and sixth strings sound E when they are played open and the first fret is F, the third is G, the fifth is A and the seventh is B. That is where the dots run out, but you simply move up one fret to get C and to the tenth fret to get the note D.

So, you have made a start on learning the guitar fretboard by memorizing the C major scale on the E strings. The work involved in learning these notes will not be wasted. To learn the notes on the other four guitar strings you will need to find other patterns but the C major scale and playing notes will already be imprinted on your brain and in your fingers, so you will be surprised at how quickly learning the guitar fretboard in its entirety will pass.



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