I've started and stopped for a few various reason. I had to sell my last stuff due to losing a job and getting a new one that wasn't paying enough right away so I had to sell it to make up for the weeks I had off.
Any who I'm starting up again. Thing is, I was never THAT good. Just always jammed playing with power chords and shit. Didn't really have much room to play in for other reasons but now that I have my own office now I can finally get a decent set up.
Amp will be here Wednesday
I wanna do it proper. Like, where should I begin. I don't know scales, I don't know chords or any of that. Learn chords first? Then scales? Then what?
Picked up an Ibanez RG350DX
Picked it up cheap and it's just a placeholder until I get my Schecter Damien later next month or so.
Hmm, every guitarists story is different. I started playing the electric guitar x-mas 1990 after buying a crappy (but perfect beginner guitar) Duke Les Paul (Gibson copy). I didn't even have an amp (I bought a mini-amp, one of those you put a 9v battery in as well as connecting it to line-in etc. to stereos etc.). I bought my Fender Strat summer '91 (a jap assembled 62'ish strat with american parts) and at the time had gotten the hang of the pentatonic scale (and the extended blues scale) as well as learning the major scale for C (starting on the F-string on the low E) and further positions (which changed the mode) and figured out how to play minor versions as well as altered variants based on ear and certain chords with diminished/added notes that changed the feeling of the chords (and thus the scales although I didn't consciously think of it as being a scale, just a melody that fit with that particular sound/feeling of the notes in that chord).
I jammed a lot to albums (Allman Brothers, various Blues stuff, Rock stuff etc.) and developed my style for playing melodies and solos that way.
I did play two terms of acoustic guitar in 5th and 6th grade but ultimately quit because it was boring as hell to play the stuff they tend to teach kids in the 5th and 6th grade. I did play around with the acoustic on and off until my teens.
In 1987 I started making music on computers (oh, Soundtracker 1, how I loved you and hated you until Protracker arrived and sorted out all your problems). This gave me a good start when it came to using my ear (well, I've always had a good ear when it comes to music, something I'm grateful for) as well as rhythms, composition, instrumentation and so on.
Anywhoo, ~2 years after I bought that strat I had a Marshall 8080 Valvestate (piece of shit), a Zoom 2020 (great value for money), an Ensoniq SQ1+32 (a quite advanced synthesizer/rompler at the time), a 4-track Fostex XR-5 and later on got hold of a 520ST with Cubase.
I experimented with many different styles of music and kept on jamming/soloing on top of my own songs, backing tracks etc. as well as writing songs for bands I was in.
My story differs a bit here since I never sat down and practiced scales, modes, learned how to read music (I can read tabs but I never use it). I am basically 99% self-taught, driven by interest and need.
In 2003 I took a ~10 year long break from writing/playing music/guitar (long-term depression, back-stabbed by the vocalist in the band I had built up and written all songs for) except for a few weeks in 2006 and a month in 2008. I just felt sadness when I looked at my strat.
In second half of 2012 I had a new battery implanted (figuratively speaking) and felt that bolt of need and love again. This led to me starting a band with a friend (drummer) I had met at a part-time job at a media design business (all kinds of printed material).
While we waited in line to get our rehearsal space I took a 5-hour "refresh"-course at a local guitar teacher (a jazz guitarist) to get into the game again. It basically meant jolting my muscle and music memory as well as remove the insecurities about my abilities after ~10 years abstinence.
I bought a new guitar (I was just down there to check out the prices on amps but ended up buying the new guitar), a PRS SE Mikael Åkerfeldt because it was just sex in my hands with a satin-finished mahogany neck, a super-smooth ebony fingerboard and ridiculous building quality oozing from the kind of money you pay for a PRS SE (Student Edition). It's eye candy as well.
Next step was to get some kind of multi effect (I couldn't afford to buy a bunch of separate stomp pedals even though that's what I want) and I found a great bargain on a Line6 POD HD300.
I noticed after a month of buying that PRS that my playing was better than it had ever been and I still didn't practice scales, figures or repetitive technique-runs. I can't do sweeps but I'm not interested in doing sweeps since I'm not into music where sweeps may be appropriate. I'm sticking with old-fashioned alternate picking (and the subconscious techniques that sits in the picking hand and wrist that angle the pick different depending on if I'm speed-picking or playing something else) etc.
Early 2013 an old issue with my left wrist flared up again (sharp pain locking the wrist, making it unusable.. like a severe sprain). I basically forced my doc to send me on a referral to the orthopedic clinic to figure out what was wrong. It was a benign tumor in my lunata bone in the wrist + a ganglion between the root index bone and the wrist bone that pushed and pressed the bones in the wrist causing inflammations and other issues. So I was scheduled for surgery where they opened up the wrist, cut the great ligament, drilled a hole in the lunata and drained it from the junk in there, cut up a rectangle on my radius bone and scooped spongious bone material into the lunata, removed the ganglion it's stalk which traveled under sinews, tendons and bones to the area of the lunata.
After 8 weeks they removed the cast (late june/early july).. and I couldn't move my wrist at ALL. Panic, fear, "never going to be able to play again?"... Took 6 months of training (first 3 with oxycontin since it felt like a Rambo-knife was constantly chugging up and down with the jagged edge where they had performed the bulk of the surgery which was basically a mess of swollen scar tissue, multiple repeating inflammations due to my wrist training basically ripping apart scar tissue etc. while the swelling pushed in all directions on tendons, nerves and muscles.
Anyway, late 2013 (a year ago actually) we finally moved into our rehearsal space and jammed like never before. We later moved to a bigger rehearsal space in that place. Early this spring my drummer bought a new Pearl drum kit with a custom wood snare while I couldn't help myself and bought a pure-tube Randall 50W head and found a Kustom 4x12 cabinet with Celestion speakers to run it through. This replaced the first set up of a Crate half-stack (sounded crap).
During all this time I've basically learnt by simply playing, jamming, picked out riffs and stuff from songs I like from memory and/or ear.
I'd say...........
Having a sheet showing the standard major and minor chords for CDEFGAB is a basic foundation. The same goes for the pentatonic/extended pentatonic(blues) scale.
Jam to backing tracks (there are tons of them on youtube, just search for "backing tracks" and randomly select some of them and familiarize yourself with the fretboard.
There are thousands of free shorter or longer lessons on the tube or guitar sites that show everything from how to tune your guitar to super-advanced Guthrie-Govan-magic.
Pick some classic songs based on the guitar that you'd want to learn (Pink Floyd, Eagles, Black Sabbath(!!!), ACDC-songs and so on), it's a great source of learning a lot more than just the song (you train your ear, you train your fretting technique, your picking technique, you learn where notes are relative to each other and "sense" the patterns that are used and can go from there.
The most important factor is two-pronged: make it fun and don't give up in the beginning, it takes a while to get the momentum going (after which some things will suddenly become obvious and easy to do and you move on to greener pastures).
Finally; technique is, in my opinion, secondary to feeling. That's why I think David Gilmour is a much better guitarist than for instance Yngwie Malmsteen. Gilmour doesn't play fast and furious but he's got a very unique bending style combined with the melodies and the use of the tremolo arm to infuse the tones with more meaning instead of more notes.
This is a part of a series of instructional videos by an absolutely sick (self-taught) guitarist named Guthrie Govan (once lead guitarist in Asia, now he's basically known as a guitar genius) where he explains how many guitarists learning scales are using it wrong etc.:
Ive been playing for around 10 years I guess. Started with an acoustic and got the hang of main chords, barre chords, some scales and even tried sheet music since I had a 7 year music school background, but at some point I gave up sheet music for guitar. I just wouldnt need it.
When I got better I got myself an electric and a shitty laney amp for home use. Started using tabs a lot and learning my favourites even when they were too hard helped me immensely. Just played things slowly at first. Havent trained playing by ear much, but I suggest you do it. Very useful skill to have.
Currently Im in a death metal band with my budget gear, which sounds as good as expensive stuff (ok my guitars are midrange)
Bugera 6262 infinium 120w with a resonance mod so I can sound close to peavey 5150 which costs twice as much.
using a maxon 808od tube screamer and an isp decimator g string noise gate with it.
For guitars I have a 2014 Jackson KVTQ
And a blackjack atx c-7 with bkp aftermath pickups
Im using elixirs on both. At first I tried the elixir 10-56 set, but the 56 was way too flabby for drop A tuning. I tried a size 60 bass string instead and it was much better. What still bothered me is the increased tension of higher strings because of the 26.5 scale. I now tried 9-46 and a low 68 which was for baritone guitar or something. The 68 is maybe a bit overkill, but it's 3x cheaper than a single bass string. The 9-46 feels weird on higher strings, because the tension is similar or a bit higher than 10-52 on my 6 string which is in d standard, but the diameter is small. Still better than 10-60 which I had been using for years.
So this guitar is a 900 dollar guitar. I was going to get the non floyd rose guitar which was like 840 new. American Musical Supply had it under their dent and scratch section for 650 which was a great price, but I don't get to see the guitar till it's here (free returns on their dollar).
Joined Reverb.com and looked around. Found this at a guitar shop a couple states over in perfect condition. 460 bucks
Mahagony body. Ebony fretboard. Seymore Duncan Full Shred/59' Jazz pickups. Push/pull coil splitting.
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