I have wanted dot play guitar since I was little and through either lack of motivation, fear or lack of time, I had never got around to it. One of my best friends Elvis Dzebic had played guitar for my years and a couple of years ago I asked him how he thought I should start learning, at this stage I had not even bought my first guitar.
I was well aware that I was never going to become the next Page, Clapton or Hendrix and it turns out that I was right, I have however, improved greatly in those couple of years and here is how I got started.
Acoustic First
One of the best pieces of advice that my friend gave me was that I should start out with an acoustic guitar instead of an electric. I was unsure at first, I had dreams of stomping on the wah-wah pedal as I crunched though some AC/DC but that dream had to wait. I took my friend’s advice and you should too. The reason for this is that playing an acoustic is much tougher on your fingers and it helps you to better learn the craft of strumming and fingerpicking, you can disguise bad playing on an electric, you can not on an acoustic. Once you have played the acoustic well, you will find that playing the electric is incredible easy.
Daily Practice
Although it can be frustrating at first, you need to ensure that you are practicing for at least one hour every day. You will find that with daily practice, your finger flexibility gets better and that you will improve a great deal in a short space of time which is great to keep you motivated.
Learn to Read Tablature
Unless you can read music then you should try to learn how to read guitar tablature so that you can learn your favorite songs. Tablature is really easy to read, far easier than learning to read music, as each finger on your fret hand is given a number, the tablature has six lone resembling the strings and it shows you which number, or finger, to place on each string. If you want to learn your favorite riffs or songs then the best way to do so is to learn tablature because there is thousands of guitar tabs online which can help you learn.
Go Blues
Blues is where the guitar has its roots and if you want to become a better player then you should invest some time learning some of the blues scales. These scales are often the origins of many songs and if you can nail down the scales then whenever you have a variation on them in songs, you will be able to perfectly adapt. Blues scales also work really well when it comes to keeping your fingers nimble and flexible and they are also a great deal of fun to play.