I need some Guitar Help

So I've just started learning (electric) guitar a few weeks ago (havent found as much time to practice as i wanted to) and I'm already kind of frustrated. I had the bad idea to skip learning acoustic guitar and use online guides instead of seeing a teacher (though I may end up doing that). My problem id that I feel really inefficiant even while just picking and I feel like I'm getting progressively worse at playing. Also I've only really had the time to practice two songs (breaking the law and T.N.T) and with tnt for example, I feel like I would need to mute some strings but I still dont know how to do it most efficiently. Any advice (maybe some good online guides)?

First off, everyone learns how to play instruments a bit differently. There's no single golden way to learn how to play an instrument. It is both important to adopt best practices via teaching/practice mediums and also to use mechanics that feel the best to you when playing. Also, there's no need to learn how to play on an acoustic guitar before moving to electric. The main benefit of starting on an acoustic is that it really builds up your finger strength since it takes more effort to play an acoustic in general. Once someone is decently familiar with playing on an acoustic, switching to an electric can seem a bit easier as far as fretting effort goes.

I'd recommend not focusing on only playing songs. Especially at the beginning, I think you should be spending most of your time on developing basic techniques such as finger strength and stretches; chord changes and forms; alternate picking; palm muting; hammer-ons and pull-offs; etc. Playing songs should still be a part of your practices, but you need to do a lot of repetition when it comes to basic practice techniques.

I'm not sure what are the "best" guides that are available these days, but this series below appears to be pretty good after a quick scan:

Once you get through the basics and feel decently comfortable with holding the pick, strumming, playing the main major chords (C, A, G, E, D) and start to get more proficient at changing between chords, I'd highly suggest seeking out a guitar teacher for in-person sessions. It really helps a lot to play with someone else who can tailor instruction to your needs.

A few questions:
- What make/model of electric are you using?
- What kind of music do you like? What music genre(s) would you like to focus on playing first? Judging by what you mentioned, I'd guess rock.

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so straight to electric? That's really not a bad idea... particularly if you plan to mainly play electric. Lower action requires less force so you can play longer before your calluses build up.

Learning techniques is difficult... there are certain fundamentals to keep in mind.
1. Strumming is all in the wrist (seriously, don't be moving your arm unless you know what you're doing).

  1. Take your time. Patience is key to learning any instrument.

  2. Stay motivated. Do things that you feel motivated to do... don't sit there rote memorizing scales and chords unless you feel motivated to do so. Maybe practice songs by just playing chords instead of the riffs. etc. If you hit a difficult part in a song and get stuck and mad, leave it and come back to it later, maybe do something else in the meantime.

Learning guitar there are a plethora of ways to do it. I learned first with tabs and picked up some techniques from that (hammer ons, pull offs, palm mutes, etc.). A good source of knowledge that I used when I wanted to learn scales, lead patterns, and chords better is the Fretboard Logic series of books. Really great stuff in there and it makes learning the guitar seem like a much more manageable task.

The main thing is to keep at it and don't give up. Guitar playing is a very fulfilling activity and a lifelong skill.

I would agree, electric is generally easier to learn on. Plus, if you play unplugged people can't hear you failing as much :D

Patience is a better tool for learning any instrument than any guide you'll find online. Take baby steps and don't stretch to far beyond your ability. One day, in a few months, you'll realise how far you've come :)

I was the same way, took lessons hated it never played again until one summer in middle school I hit an extreme motivation streak and learned a shit ton and have been playing in metal bands ever since.

The best advice I can give you is don't focus on learning songs, learn theory. Not how to read or write music I mean scales, modes, notes, when and where to combine what you know and what makes genres unique from a theoretical perspective.

Mainly depends on what you want to do with guitar though. I learned about writing and creating and what separates genres and forms. Some people just want to mess around and impress people which is perfectly fine.

Just decide why you want to learn guitar and what you want to do with it.

Electric guitar is in the first place a rhythmic instrument. Use it as such, muted not open like acoustic, percussive,... and you'll learn all the different techniques much quicker and you'll learn the economy of playing.

My best advice would be to try to learn the shit out of the song (eg. TNT) until you can't get any better at it, than take a break and play some other songs. After some time, come back and you might be able to discover something different that you can do in order to play it better. Don't give up!!!!

I am not familiar with breaking the law but what sort of muting in TNT do you mean?

I figured it out now, but what I meant was when playing the riff, which I got from here, and you're switching from A0/D2 (i know this is probably and incorrect and confusing way to say it, but I know fuck all about chords, so I dont know what the chord is called) to E3, without moving the finger from D2, the D string keeps ringing (I tend to automatically mute the A string when playing E3), so I have to mute both the A and the D string. I just had to train myself to do that while playing the E string

Thanks, that guide will probably be a great help! As for your questions:
1. It's a start-like guitar from rocktile (not that great but I'm not complaining since I didnt have to pay a single penny for it)
2. The music I'm into is rock and metal (especially early heavy metal)

Also thanks everyone, you actually motivated me to practice more than before!

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Hey. The reason I was asking about the guitar was so I could look into its components. Depending on the bridge type and several other things, folks could give you additional advice on hand position, etc. Any idea what the exact model number is?

Unfortunately not. I just know that its stratocaster-style guitar with three single coil pickups. It even has the funny lever thingy (whatever its called lol)

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Whammy bar (or some prefer tremolo bar). Probably like a traditional fender strat style bridge then.

"wang bar" lol, that's what it's mostly called...

good piece of advice: get a cheap single coil spaced rail humbucker to replace the bridge single coil with. Rail pickups don't have string drag, so you'll get more sustain, and you'll have more output to work with. If you like metal, you really need that to be honest, unless you're an experienced player. A single coil guitar always makes you fight it just a bit more. You can buy an EMG Select or a Rockinger or something similar for about 25 bucks. Don't need to be a brand, just a high output single coil spaced rail humbucker, that you hook up in standard series config on the leads where the single coil pickup was, that's only two solder joints basically, very easy to do in about 5 minutes. It will make a big big big big big difference in playing hard rock and metal and getting a feel for it.

Props to ya bud!

I also want to mention EMG's and active pickups are pretty sweet, but at least from my experience when you play quietly, the EMG's barely pick up the sound. Just something to keep in mind if you want to play other genres with less gain and distortion.

Just dont play "Core" genres. They ruined me as a musician and made me develope "lazy" playing habits :cryingemojis:

Also learn how to read notes. Dont worry, is 2016, use guitar pro, nobody will bother. It ain't cheating, it's a LEARNING AND WRITING TOOL. People and robots already learn how to do sh*t and music by watching youtube videos too! watches elitist musicians directly to the eye

You can learn to play on that and play metal later... Yngwie uses a strat, anyone's argument on "You cant play XXX genre on 2016 without such guitar and pickups" is totally freaking invalid, also you can upgrade to a mini-humbucker down the way, when you get familiarized with tone palettes, amps, sustain, "feel" etc etc. I learned with a cheap lyon strat and was a short time user of a Hello Kitty strat guitar which I used to play in Grindcore band. Also owned a Kramer ST300 "superstrat" with all singlecoil-sized p-ups and a Duncan JB mino on the bridge. Sweet ass guitar.

Don't guide him through that path yet, hes a novice. Someone did with me and I developed a blind form of GAS, the type of GAS where when you have EMG's or Duncans you think you're the shit, but then soon realize you're not skilled enough to use the full potential of your new high end gear and you've already spend $1000 on it :scaredemoji:

Yes, there's no need to invest in a guitar that is more tailored to the genres he likes at this point. That will come later. For now, any guitar works for learning, etc. However, some genres of metal have sounds that are impossible to recreate with single coils or mini-hums. As an example, you'd never be able to produce the super thick tones required for heavy stoner/doom metal even with a beefy rig.

I've been there. I gave up on the actual learning part of guitar.
I realized my computer fixed all my fuck ups for me, and for any complex stuff I could just record 1 note at a time and then quantize all of the notes how I wanted...
Then one day I realized "Wow...I barely needed to quantize any of that".

Okay, not 100% true.
If you are starting blank slate, it's definitely good to learn the theory as someone mentioned. Just some notes, scales - nothing advanced, just the barebones basics.
Then to get a little technique under your belt, I personally liked Rocksmith...but I have an affinity for rhythm games. Rocksmith is Guitar Hero except with a real guitar. And surprisingly, it's more of a teaching tool than a game (at least in the earlier editions, I don't know if they have changed that)

You need to find what your motivation is and strive to work towards that goal. It's hard to learn if you don't know what your end goal is.
To me, it was always my music. I knew how to write music in my computer, but I wanted more. I had a guitar handy, I decided "fuck it, let's see what I can do." And when I realized adding even just a little guitar - even if it was just whole-note chords, perhaps the least complicated thing - it still added a new spice to my music and from that point I was motivated to utilize a guitar more often.

and then to shit all over this motivational speech, I later acquired Kontakt and got a sampled guitar player for Kontakt and realized it's much easier to just program the guitar player than it is to actually record my shitty playing

EDIT
Also, even though my dad said that his Les Paul Custom with humbucker pickups WAS MINE to keep. He seems to have forgotten he said that because he was drunk. And so when I moved to china I left my only guitar behind.

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