So I just got a guitar and I can't play it all too well. Anyone know some good tabs for beginners, something to get me used to fingering and especially strumming?

When I first started playing guitar about 3 years ago, I started learning all the chords from www.cyberfret.com (Find the lesson called "beginning 7) I think it's a great place to start. I'm assuming it's a steel string guitar and you want to play regular pop/folk type stuff. If it's nylon string/classical, I reccommend Christopher Parkening's Classical Guitar Method if you wish to play classical music. That's what I started with teaching myself and now I'm a music major in classical guitar :D Hope that helps, Jeremy

So I just got a guitar and I can't play it all too well. Anyone know some good tabs for beginners, something to get me used to fingering and especially strumming?
I don't know what your musical tastes are, but here are some old rock standbys that are pretty easy to strum and get you feeling like you are actually making music. You can look up these tabs online, they should be readily available.

They are pretty easy to play. some have tricky parts which aren't essential to the overall groove so you can just skip it, like the solos or the little riffs and runs in Patience.

Acoustic (you didnt specify)
-----------------------------

Tangerine - Led Zeppelin
Wish You Were Here - Floyd
Patience - GnR
Time of Your Life - Green Day


Electric (gotta learn to do bar chords!)
--------------------------------------

Smells/Teen Spirit - Nirvana
Iron Man - Black Sabbath
Paranoid - Black Sabbath
Sunday Bloody Sunday - U2
Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet


That outta get you rockin soon. Take it one chord at a time. I myself am self-taught and I play pretty well. Tangerine was the first tune I ever played.

I strongly feel that the key to sticking with the guitar is to be satisfied with playing. The quicker you get yourself making real music, the more you will enjoy the experience. Get to a point where you can have some fun, THEN tackle music theory and learning the fretboard.

Good luck!

Take a good look at the guitar you have. Does it match the style you want to play? If not, get one that does. You won't stick with an instrument you don't like. I can recommend many good ones depending on what style you wish to play, in all price ranges.

Take lessons. Find a teacher who is experienced, preferably a true musician who plays shows, writes and records music. Learn. Practice. It's just like being in school again - you have to do your homework to learn. Learn to read music. Not just read - site read. I can read, but I can't site read.

Be on time for lessons and always have your guitar in good repair. Learn to work on your own guitar - buy an old one (a cheap, but promising guitar) and fix it up yourself.

Practice, practice and more practice. Vibrato is a bitch, get used to it - you'll have your own signature vibrato, but it will always evolve. Pick educated guitar heros, not hacks with guitars. You'll be able to tell the difference. John Petrucci is an educated guitarist. Gary Moore is. Nuno Bettencourt is. Use them to guage the others. Practice - [b]try your favorite players' rhythms and leads. You'll pick up their feeling and their sound to some degree and bastardize it into your own style. That will also push you to be better.

Practice, practice, practice.

I think that's all.

Did I mention you need to practice? I used to practice (when I had no life) for so long my fingertips would bleed. Then I'd fill them with superglue so I could keep practicing. I love playing. And I love being good at it. And I still practice.

-R

a good source of tab is www.ultimate-guitar.com

they also have tutorials there for a range of skill levels.

i agree with bluestreak. you do have to practice but, dont just kill yourself with scales and dexterity lessons. Also practice having fun and playing stuff you really enjoy.

sing along, even if you can't sing well, it is a hard lesson to learn and if you can sing whilst playing, it means you have stoppped having to concentrate on your hands.

another good way to learn is by finding other people who can pay and jamming with them. you will pick up new chord shapes, new techniques and get altogether a better musical sense just by playing along with someone else.

have fun with it and good luck

Question, how do you read these things? i see like G C D etc and like 320002.. always wanted to use this acustic guitar i had, cant read music!

tab makes it really easy to read music..

the 320003 is representative of the strings (lowest on the left highest on the right) and which fret you put each finger on. so for the chord listed you would do:

middle finger, 3rd fret, lowest string
index finger, 2nd fret, 2nd lowest string
ring finger, 3rd fret, highest string

all the other songs get to stay open. (which finger you use just comes with experience and comfort - i have seen some odd formations of chords in my time - hendrix used to use his thumb to barre the neck because his hand was so big)

now you're strumming a G Chord (not quite as much fun as a G-String!)

Here's a link

http://www.olga.net/faq/tabbing.php

that will show you hwo to read and write all tab. (including stuff i dont know like slides and bends and hammer-ons/offs)

Enjoy

you do have to practice but, dont just kill yourself with scales and dexterity lessons. Also practice having fun and playing stuff you really enjoy.

Actually, do kill yourself playing scales and dexterity lessons. Don't spend all day doing it, but spend 15~30 minutes warming up with scales, dexterity runs, and picking exercises.

Why?

You need to be able to make your fingers work comfortably in patterns. John Petrucci's Rock Discipline DVD has many, many good dexterity lessons. I spend the first 15~30 minutes I pick up a guitar running through a plethora of exercises designed to warm my fingers up. By practicing dexterity lessons, you'll also learn what fingering patterns you favor, what strings, positions, bends, string-skipping patterns, arpeggios, etc you like to use. You can then take those things and refine them; this is how you develop speed, accuracy and cleanliness in playing.

Minimize practicing with distortion! Practice using a clean sound. If you can play your parts with a clean sound and be accurate, then you're ready to tackle distortion. Practicing with distortion on is a sure-fire way to create a muddy, unclean playing style.

Practicing scales promotes memorization. You'll need to be so familiar with your scales and patterns that you can pick up and move those scales to any position on the neck and play. Why? When you begin to play with other musicians, who play other instuments, you'll have to be very flexible in the ability to play in any key thrown at you. If you don't know your scale patterns, you can't do that. Knowing and being flexible in keys/scales is how you learn to solo and not sound like a hack.

If your guitar has a floating bridge of any kind, take the whammy bar off and block the trem. You ain't ready for that either, and as you learn your vibrato, it will only tempt you to use it and/or hinder your vibrato development. Every guitar I have ever had has a Floyd Rose on it, but I didn't touch that thing until I was ready. The whammy bar - it's a privilege, not a right.

Another thing to consider is how you'll tune your guitar. Up front, I implore you... stay in standard EADGBE tuning. Do not start learning by playing with drop D, drop D tuning, etc. You ain't ready for that; it will put you on the path to the uneducated mediocrity of many renowned guitar players out there today who don't deserve the adoration they receive. They may make millions, but I couldn't care less; I'll toot my own horn and say that there's many a guitarist today whose paycheck does not reflect their skill level - would that skill determined pay, they'd be living in a cardboard box and I'd be living in the 20 room mansion with 6-car garage.

Yeah, yeah... nobody said life was fair.

Above all, enjoy it. Jam along with your favorite songs after you warm up. Try to learn the parts verbatim - don't dumb them down or make them easier for you. Learn the songwriter's phrasing (mimic verbatim on the fretboard how the guitarist plays the song). Use your ears first, then when you hit a snag or a part you can't translate by ear, look up the music/tablature. Your ears are a very important tool to develop. I don't have perfect pitch, but I can tune a guitar by ear. I can learn most songs just by listening. Very, very good skill to have, especially if you're asked to just show up and jam with other people you've never played with before.

Yes, it's work to become good with a guitar, but the dividends it pays are... innumerable to say the least. Later on, you will take a look at more advanced techniques, utilizing effects, and alternate tunings. In 15 years of playing, only the last year has seen me get into alternate tunings (my personal favorite is the "Bad Horsie" tuning, CGCFAD).

I'll get off my soapbox now. This, of course, assumes this is something you want to pursue as a serious hobby, not just someone who can say they can play guitar.


-R

I've been playing for... Seven years, I think. You're getting some great advice, and I feel like giving what I can tell ya, too. The first song I learned, and only partially at that, was the first line from Dualing Banjos. Two years later, I was taught the chords. And from that point, I've been pretty much self-taught.

I quite enjoy the electric blues, and there is quite a plethora of sites dedicated to rock-and-roll. I am, however, more of a classical guitarist. I heard of the Chris Parkening books -very- recently, and I went out and bought one. Now, I just need to learn how to read music (Six years of choir is a little helpful in that respect, but now I need to read more than one note at a time...).

But the best tablature compendium site I've found for classical music has been Classical Guitar Tablature (http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/music/classtab/) Throughout the large list of music are a few left- and right- handed exercises, some studies, and some full songs. So far, I can play three songs from the entire list.

But, eh... Good luck!

Balbo, I hope you'll have a lifetime full of fun as a guitar player! I don't have anything to add to the detailed technical advice you already have here. I just want to tell you about what I experienced as a beginner (I am self-taught), in case some of my experience is your own. Like anything you do, you'll have good days and bad days when playing. Take for example switching between chords. One day you'll be able to do it in a flash, clean and "ringing" - you'll nail it so well, you'll surprise yourself. Another day, trying the same thing - even in slow motion - will feel (and sound) so awkward, you'll feel like you've gone paralyzed.

In my history I have tended to jump in with all kinds of passion when doing some new thing, and then over-do it and become discouraged. I discovered that if I just put the thing down for a day or two, and didn't even think about it, it was as if my brain was using the "down time" to train itself without practice at its own, doable pace. I would go back, pick up the box, and suddenly out of nowhere the thing that seemed so difficult a couple of days before was easier than ever to do.

Of course everyone learns and improves in different ways and at different rates. So if I can encourage you in any way, I encourage you to keep your uniqueness in mind, and learn how to be comfortable with yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, at whatever level you play. -Martin

... Like anything you do, you'll have good days and bad days when playing. Take for example switching between chords. One day you'll be able to do it in a flash, clean and "ringing" - you'll nail it so well, you'll surprise yourself. Another day, trying the same thing - even in slow motion - will feel (and sound) so awkward, you'll feel like you've gone paralyzed.

Great point! I didn't even scratch the surface of this part of the topic...

Yeah, there will be "those days". Other times, you'll be taken aback at how you've progressed, only to slip into a black abyss the next day. Guitar is like anything else you do; it has it's ups and downs.

After 15 years and a lot of practice, I still have those days where I'll play for 20 minutes and put the thing down in disgust because I can't even pull off my oldest warmup exercises. Those are rare days, but I still get 'em. Then there will be days where my hands can do no wrong... happily, those are becoming more frequent with just as many "in between" days thrown in for good measure.

In the beginning, you can push yourself forever and a day because your skills can only improve. But at some point, it'll level off, and you'll have the good and the bad... and the in-between. Perservere. I promise it'll be worth it.

-R

Start out with Lessons. Getting used to bad technique will royally screw with your abilities later on. I see all kinds of guys in bands really limited by their technique and even have to stop playing due to Carpal Tunnel or tendonitis.

Depending on your goals and musical ability, learning piano can help a lot - particularly in understand musical theory and improving finger dexterity.

... I see all kinds of guys in bands really limited by their technique and even have to stop playing due to Carpal Tunnel or tendonitis.

As I am keenly aware of things like tendonitis, focal dystonia and repetitive stress injuries like carpal tunnel, I can safely say these injuries are only common to guitarists as a function of not warming up prior to playing; it has little to do with poor technique. Bad technique limits playing ability, it does not influence injuries... though I suppose if your technique were bad enough, you could conceivably hurt yourself. That would require a great deal of "talent", if you catch my drift.. Your hands are like any other muscle; if not properly warmed up, you will damage them.

There's a little spring loaded tool, I think it's called the "Gripmaster", that I use to warm up before I play. I've had the damn thing for so long, the emblem is worn off, which is why I can't tell you what the name is/was. I usually noodle with it for five or ten minutes in each hand before getting down to seriously practicing. In 15+ years of playing, I have never had so much as a twinge of pain in my hands.

-R

I've been playing for 13 years and some of these suggestions may have already been covered.

1.) Learn guitar theory, take lessons, learn how to not only read tabs, but site read.... understand and learn as much about music as you want to don't let it stop simply at guitar... you can learn about production and acoustics and everything else inbetween, it really will make you a better player musician.

Second, not only practice.... but practice the right way, you can get good and be able to push the strings down so there is no buzzing, but learning correct technique for chords and picking and strumming and timing, etc. will make everything really sound better.

Surround yourself with people who are better than you (this goes for anything, even running and weight lifting.... this will make you a better player and you can learn a lot from surrounding yourself with quality musicians).

I give guitar lessons in the west michigan area, and I've seen people do really well and people fail it all came down to who really wanted it more and who was passionate about it (going back to weightlifting/cardio/nutrition).... those peopl succeeded, the people who did it because it sounded cool or wanted to be in a band to be cool didn't do so well, and there is nothing wrong with that we all have to try things to know if we truly like them or not.

Keep it up and keep us update. :gl:

great advice!!! i just bought an Ibanez electric guitar a week ago :D

Bump to Euph's post. Great stuff. :tucool:

great advice!!! i just bought an Ibanez electric guitar a week ago :D

Excellent! Which one? Not necessarily the best guitars made, but they fit me like a glove... they're all I play anymore.

-R

First off, go to any good library or music store and get yourself a book that shows finger placements for MAJOR chords as well as transitions. e.g. the chord of D major can be played several places on the fingerboard. I assume you can't sight read.......neither could I when I first started......Once you get all your majors down pat then you can branch out to minors etc. After that work on scales. I found that scales came automatically as I progressed. You have to ask yourself what your ultimate goal is ..........blasting off lightening riffs, songwriting, strum-alongs etc. Once you SEE where chord locations are on the fingerboard it greatly demystifies the whole process (just like a piano keyboard). The TYPE of guitar you own in large part determines what you are going to be able to do with it. Even on acoustics, string thickness and brand can make a difference in sound and playability. Don't overlook blues chord structure as a basis to build on. e.g. Learn a blues song in the key of C. Soon as you've got it try playing the same song in the key of G. It's all a lot easier than you think it is unless your going down the "classical" road. I would also advise purchasing a metronome. Proper timing is the icing on the cake and makes any rendering sound ten times better. :cool: