Newby questions.

Welcome, MetroGnome, and congratulations on your new guitar adventure! This is the best site to help you on your way.

What kind of guitar are you playing?

I'm still a beginner myself, but I'll tell you what I can to help, and the "big guns" will surely show up sooner or later to give it to you from the expert point of view. :D

Re: scales--learn them a little at a time--don't look at the big picture yet or you'll get overwhelmed. The minor pentatonic scale is one you'll need to know for blues and a lot of rock, I believe. Not sure about jazz. This scale you can learn in sort of a "box" pattern, which is moveable up and down the fretboard.

Re: barre chords--they are tough at first but with practice even I can play a few of them now, and I never thought I would. It takes time to stretch and strengthen and coordinate your fingers, so don't get frustrated if you can't play barre chords five days in. Not many folks can. :wink:

If you haven't already begun, take advantage of the great lessons posted here at GN. Hover your mouse pointer over the guitarnoise.com graphic at the top left of this page and click to start browsing.

Good luck, and again, welcome!

[edit: Do you have any books yet? For blues, I'm really liking the Hal Leonard Guitar Method "Blues Guitar" book by Greg Koch, and now I've also begun working in the Hal Leonard book "Blues You Can Use" by John Ganapes, which was recommended by some others here on GN. Both books are available with companion CDs]

Margaret

MetroG Welcome to GN. Lucky you, you found this site with only five days under your belt. :)

As Margaret said, this is one of the better sites, with the most helpful people around.

I've been at it for two years now and just got home from a friends house, (which I took a guitar along) and I found myself playing very well tonight.

With that said, The best advice I can give you is Don't Give Up. Ever.. If you really want to play the guitar you can, but it takes some hard work, especially at first.

Your off to a great start. Doing excercises. Very Important. You need to get your hands both in condition (ie strength, calloused, stretched) and muscle memoried enough to start playing and the initial phases of getting started can take quite a while. How long depends on you. How much you practice.

Finger drills are gonna get real boring real fast, but I look at those like how atheletes do excersises before they play, even the best of the best pros in any sport "workout/warmup" before they play a game. Its important both for conditioning your hands and your ears as well.

The second best advise is: If your in a larger populated area (or not), I'd also recommend you looking into finding a teacher/instructor. Its important, even if at first, its for someone to show you how to practice and workout. :)

Next is to read this sight and these forums. There is alot of information here in these forum. Many members here spend a lot of time writing lessons (all free BTW), answering questions, from technique to song, to studio topics to gear and equipment and much more.

C'mon in, take your time, stay awhile... we're glad your here.. or is that hear? :)

Cheers.

Thank you so much for the warm welcome and the reply Margaret.

Right now, im playing a used (four year old) blue Squire Stratocaster. The string tree is busted and there are scratch marks on the body but I still love and appreciate it. I got it for $220.

The minor pentatonic scale certainly looks a bit easier to learn than the major scale. It actually doesnt sound so bad when I play it! I think I'll start learning the box shapes and notes just for that scale for now and slowly work my way up.

Nope. I dont have any books yet. I've been using the net exclusively so far. After taking a look at the lessons section here, I may not need any books at all! I will deffinitely check out those books that you recommended though.

Thanks again for your help Margaret

MetroGnome:

Welcome aboard. Margaret gave you some sound advice. Here is some of mine:

1. It is great that you are so motivated after only playing the guitar for 5 days! But, remember to relax and enjoy the journey of learning. Too many start the guitar as motivated as you, but quit a month later because they are not as good as <insert your favorite guitar god here>.
2. The minor pentatonic scale is a great place to start learning scales. It is the "backbone" of blues (and a lot of rock). There should be a lesson somewhere on this board about the scale - search for it. The thing you mentioned about memorizing scales is partially true - it does take some time, but once you memorize it, you can "move" it up and down the fretboard, so learning one scale means you can play it in 12 different keys (you will learn what I mean later).
3. Start your chord practice by learning the "open" chords. Again, search here, probably in beginner lessons, and you will find them. Same thing with barre chords.
4. Read ALL of the beginner lessons and songs on this site - they will help you along!

Great to have you on board!

MetroG Welcome to GN. Lucky you, you found this site with only five days under your belt. :)

As Margaret said, this is one of the better sites, with the most helpful people around.

I've been at it for two years now and just got home from a friends house, (which I took a guitar along) and I found myself playing very well tonight.

With that said, The best advice I can give you is Don't Give Up. Ever.. If you really want to play the guitar you can, but it takes some hard work, especially at first.

Your off to a great start. Doing excercises. Very Important. You need to get your hands both in condition (ie strength, calloused, stretched) and muscle memoried enough to start playing and the initial phases of getting started can take quite a while. How long depends on you. How much you practice.

Finger drills are gonna get real boring real fast, but I look at those like how atheletes do excersises before they play, even the best of the best pros in any sport "workout/warmup" before they play a game. Its important both for conditioning your hands and your ears as well.

The second best advise is: If your in a larger populated area (or not), I'd also recommend you looking into finding a teacher/instructor. Its important, even if at first, its for someone to show you how to practice and workout. :)

Next is to read this sight and these forums. There is alot of information here in these forum. Many members here spend a lot of time writing lessons (all free BTW), answering questions, from technique to song, to studio topics to gear and equipment and much more.

C'mon in, take your time, stay awhile... we're glad your here.. or is that hear? :)

Cheers.

Thanks alot Dagwood! Say, you guys are pretty helpfull here!

I must admit. After reading about scales and modes, I fealt dreadfully overwhelmed. But, I will take your advice and not give up. I guess thats the key to being good at anything eh?

The "muscle memory" thing that you mentioned is VERY true. The first day I got my guitar I could not hold and strum C chord properly. But, now I am noticing that it is getting alot easier to do. Muscle memory is a great term for this.

I have been told before that getting a teacher is a good idea. I'll begin the search for one. But, I almost feel like I dont need one anymore b/c you guys and this site are so helpfull. Im sure that its much better to have personal help though.

You the man Dagwood. Thanks again! :D

Welcome to GN.

I'm starting my 3rd year of guitar playing. It took until this past Spring to start nailing barre chords. I didn't really work at them much, but I eventually got the hang of it and even found myself hitting the F chord recently without much effort. It just takes time to build things up, like everyone has said.

The lessons and beginner songs on the GN site are outstanding. Well worth the effort to go through them.

And, like what was already said, have fun lerning and be patient.

Don`t give up you can do it.But remember you will always be learning.I`ve been playing a couple of decades and i still haven`t arrived :(

Hello and welcome to GN!

Experiencing regular (no matter how small) breakthroughs is vital in learning the guitar.
It gives you a sense of accomplishment, keeps you motivated and makes you wanna practice ...

So, although there is no rule that says you cannot learn modes and barres in the beginning, you will do better to learn something that you can apply right away in playing a song.

Read a few David Hodge's lessons on open chords and essential beginner music theory; pick a song from the "easy songs" section and get started ...

Once you have a few easy songs under your belt, you could progress to the 12 barre blues, minor pentatonic scale etc ...

Soon you will find yourself looking for something harder, it would then be the time to tackle complicated chords (7th, 9th, jazz chords ... ) and other scales ...

Good Luck
Vic

P.S I am still a newbie to take my advice with a grain of salt!

Probably covered already:

1) Don't give up. If you get frustrated, take a break, even for a few days or a week, whatever, just make sure you come back.

2) Learn things "one bar at a time". Get the first bit down on its own. Then the second on its own, then add them togther, now do the third on its own and so on.

3) Search the web - there's like a gazillion cool places with help available, for example the lessons on this site, video lessons on You Tube and so on.

4) Don't give up. Worth repeating - everyone finds it frustrating to start with.

Hope you enjoy it, thats the main thing after all.

If you're serious about learning how scales relate to the fretboard (i.e memorising patterns)...

Learn the Major scale across the whole fretboard (5 box positions)
If you know all 5 positions, then you know the Major scale in all 12 keys. (just move the WHOLE pattern however many frets to the correct root note)

Once you know this, you have a great foundation for learning other scales..

Natural Minor: the same pattern as the Major scale, but the scale starts and ends on 6th degree of the Major scale
Harmonic Minor: the same as the Natural minor scale, but the 7th degree is raised a semitone
Melodic Minor: the same as the Major scale but with 3rd Degree is lowered a semitone
Major pentatonic: the same as the Major scale but the 4th and 7th degrees of the Major scale are not played
Minor pentatonic: the same as the Natural Minor scale but the 2nd and 6th degrees of the Natural Minor scale are not played
Blues scale: the same as the Major Pentatonic with an added note (the flat 5th)

Now, this is just a very brief and incomplete list of how all these scales relate to each other.
But my point is to show you that all of these scales i mentioned above relate back to the original Major scale in some way.

It's like learning the alphabet at school...
You don't learn a new alphabet to learn to speak/read/write French or German or Spanish or Italian, you just learn the differences or variations of the alphabet you already know and how to apply these differences. (actually, that's a pretty stupid analogy but i think you'll understand what i mean)

So to learn these scales, remembering the differences between them is easier than memorising entirely new patterns across the fretboard.

Recommendation: Don't worry about modes just yet... Concentrate on KEY based music until you're VERY comfortable with it. (Many great players never think in modes)

Hope this makes some sense

J

5 days in eh?

I wouldn't even come close to worrying about modes yet and wouldn't worry about the barres either. 5 days in..... I'd work on the 8 basic chords (Absolute Beginner Part 1: Chords) and throw in some scales as a break up during your chord practice. It's good to take breaks from time to time. Also, I would look at the scales as notes rather than patterns. It will help you in the long run.

Once you get those chords down, it opens (pun intended) the door to thousands of songs (if not more).

Warm-up exercises are very helpful as well. I always do the 1-2-3-4 across all the strings and back again in reverse order. Helps get the fingers ready.

Welcome MetroGnome!
I agree with Vic and Mike, start learning the basics for playing songs.
I've been playing for almost two months and haven't cared to think about scales, modes and stuff like that yet. I don't even know what modes is.:oops: If you want to learn to play songs, the best way is to play songs. Learn the basic open chords and learn the Easy songs for beginners is the best way IMO. You won't have any use of scales in the beginning anyway other than as a warmup exersice.

Hey, thanks alot guys!

This site has the most helpful members of any forum that I have been to. I really appreciate it.

I started learning some of the beginner songs on this site and i'm having loads of fun. Changing chords is getting easier and I have started to do some chromatic 4 fret drills to help strengthen my fingers.

Anyway, thanks again y'all. If you guys are half as good at guitar as you are helpful, then we certainly have a few phenoms here! : )

Gnome

The one thing I see missing in this post is something that as a beginner really made me feel better about my playing, yes scales, barre chords, all the open chords are so important to guitar playing, but as a newbie the one thing that I would advise to spend some time on is strumming patterns.

strum, strum, strum, and then strum some more :)

It will make everything sound so much better, even just working on a couple of chords that are giving you some trouble will sound so much better and more musical!

Just my two cents,

Scott