@RolandsDad

1 year ago

Self taught for over 20 years, a lot of what is mentioned here is rock solid advice. I will add my own for those who care. Those who sort by "new" I love you. : ) I began with trash gear and getting ripped off as a kid, took a long time to learn my way around things. Tabs were a godsend, especially once I learned that you actually have a tuning! I trusted my ear and used (and still use) tabs as a great framework and let my ear do the rest. The hardest part was direction. What, when and how should I learn? Good habits and good technique aren't things you know if you are doing until much later down the line. A video or seven might really set you up well, but without a buddy or teacher it can feel a bit weird. If you have a chance to jam with friends, always take it, I've rarely had a bad time and I knew my limits were pretty easy to achieve. Absolutely positively use every tool at your disposal like YouTube, tabs, whatever you stumble across if it's something you're serious about. There's no real "right" way to learn, and self teaching introduces you to all the hard parts faster, I believe. You find the parts that come naturally and the ones that stump you every time. Those are the ones that should be babied in the beginning but really hammered on as you genuinely progress. I had a penchant for things like pinch harmonics and triplets. I really struggled with getting my pinky involved and accurate picking in the early years. I got to a point where that had to be adjusted and focused on that exclusively. As for your gear: sometimes you gotta piss with the cock you got. I did for a looooong time, and you will feel like a new amp, guitar or pedal is what you need. In the early stages it absolutely likely isn't so. It might prevent you from a sound you want i.e. a Floyd Rose on an axe or maybe some delay from a pedal, but it becomes very easy to think a new sound will fix or change you. It gives a lot of inspiration but a month later you'll be in the same rut. I hid behind distortion for YEARS until I stuck with acoustic for an extended period. Then I got a tube amp which is unforgiving for mistakes, ditto delay. That screw up will replay until that delay fades out, baby. As you progress you will begin to know without a doubt what it is you want, then you'll reach the plateau of "gear queer" where you will want all the shiney's. It happens to all of us, inevitably. Play with your knobs and tunings and find how you can get a sound you enjoy with what you have. Theory, learning your roots and chords will pay dividends as you progress. You'll hear a dude talk about some weird "Dsus7b add3# extra cheese" or whatever and when that makes sense, you're really ahead of us in the game. That's where I am, 20 years later. Don't follow my footsteps and you'll be better. The ever so cliché, have fun. If it isn't fun, you'll quit. You're going to suck when you start. Those exciting moments of "I got it!" are key, even if they suck. If you mean it, you'll get over the learning hump quicker than you think. We all sucked in the beginning and played "smoke on the water" on one string. We all hated it. Our fingers hurt and always hit a wall where we wanted to quit. It passes, it gets easier and sometimes a fat break helps. A new tuning, a different location, whatever. I've got some faith. If I can learn, I promise you can. I went almost two years before I knew how to tune a guitar.

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