TRL Helpdesk: guitars

[ckn]

An update. 

My fingers hurt...  I'm too much of a soft desk-jockey and it's taking its time to get my fingers hard enough for any sort of prolonged effort.

I've been using the recommendation in this post of justinguitar and it's very good so far for me, easy to learn lessons that are very well paced.

On 12/2/2017 at 7:02 PM, thetimberman said:

Hi, loads of good stuff on't web, best to try and find a tutor you like, i have sent a few people to 'justinguitar.com' its an aussie guy called justin sanderco or such like and he doe's FREE lessons from absolute beginner to virtuoso stuff, the thing to do when you first start is try and stick to one tutor as with many things on the web you can become overloaded with conflicting views and techniques etc, some of the other guys you can have a go with once you have a few basic chords mastered are 'party marty' and another is guitar jamz i find i tend to play what is loosely called  texas country having started out as a glam rock guitarist in the 70s but now just play for my own enjoyment and others annoyance, either way you have fun with it, as for guitars most has been covered in the other posts but i prefer for what i do (playing in my arm chair) a wesley cut away as these are not as deep as a regular body guitar so easier to play slouched.....lol

Fender have a nice tuning app for the iPhone that has helped immensely with just getting that basic thing right.

The hardest part is trying to restrain my impatience to get onto complex things...

[Farmduck]

Don't waste your time with fingerings and chords 'n' stuff. Get your mirror out and focus on your posture and facial expressions during the solos.

 

[ckn]

I decided "sod it" and went back for another go.  I went a step above my competence level and straight into getting the opening bit of Highway to Hell.  Didn't half bring a smile to my face when the wife recognised it on my first play for her.  My fingers are just too slow though, that'll come with time and muscle memory.

My fingertips are now numb...

[Phil]

A common mistake beginners make is “hammering down” far too hard onto the fretboard with the left hand (assuming you’re right handed) you don’t need to exert a massive amount of pressure 

[chuffer]

the sore fingers will ease and the frustration with not being able to do things will be replaces with "wow, did I just do that"....I never went down the route of lessons etc, I simply found tab books for albums that I loved listening to and attempted to play along, the better books have chord boxes (to show you what shapes to fret amd strum along to) but also have tablature (to show you what string/frets for riffs/lead, for when you've progressed a bit more from basic chord strumming)

[ckn]

On 1/10/2018 at 6:16 PM, Phil said:

A common mistake beginners make is “hammering down” far too hard onto the fretboard with the left hand (assuming you’re right handed) you don’t need to exert a massive amount of pressure 

Ah, you forget that I'm a soft southerner these days with marshmallow hands caused by nothing more taxing than typing on a keyboard.

[Futtocks]

14 minutes ago, ckn said:

Ah, you forget that I'm a soft southerner these days with marshmallow hands caused by nothing more taxing than typing on a keyboard.

Get a manual typewriter - that should train the fingers up a treat!