Easy way to learn guitar?

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I didn't have the money for lessons, and really wanted to learn on my own anyway. Bought a cheap strat clone from a friend in high school who played guitar, picked up TAB pretty easily (it's not hard, and it's EVERYWHERE these days...it was only in those Hal Leonard books when I was starting in the early 90's.)

One thing about already knowing standard notation - I play some piano (can't sight read too well anymore...), but because it IS a different instrument, there are sometimes up to 4 or 5 places on the neck where you can play the exact same note - admittedly only 2 or 3 of them would be in a realistic range, but just know that possibility IS there. That's why you want to learn tablature early on for songs you may want to play, so you can be sure you're playing efficiently, and not having to fly all over the neck.

Be prepared for callouses and pain :) especially when you first start out on an electric guitar. Some days I just didn't feel like playing, cos I wanted them to heal up faster. The more you play, the stronger your fingers will get though. I started on guitar, but I also picked up bass guitar in 2000, so I can play either one without any issues now. It's just all about practice.

Good luck!
 
When I started learning guitar I was lucky to have some friends that were quite a bit older than I was and they had been in bands for years. They had some great guitars they let me play so I was able to get the feel of a quality instrument with a good set-up.
I was into rock & roll but they would play lots of different styles like rock-a-billy, blues, country and jazz that helped me learn a lot of styles and develop my ear for more harmonies than rock would offer.
 
You've already get a jump on most people since you already are involved in music and play piano :D

I was 12 when I started and knew nothing about music.
It's a somewhat infamous story around here that I didn't know for about a year that you were supposed to tune a guitar (for a few days I didnt even know you were supposed to use frets :() :o
I knew nothing about notes or anything of the sort.
I'm actually kind of glad about that now.
Since I couldn't make chords because I wasn't in tune I was able to understand the value of and explore each individual string. It really helped me to understand melody, and how to create and intertwine them. So once I discovered that the letters on the tuner actually mean something and that they're supposed to be brought together in a certain way understanding the notes in correlation with melody was amazing for me... I guess I sort of already understood theory. Without knowing it existed :confused:
Anyway- you've probably already got an understanding of melody and the such so the
hardest part for you will more than likely be fingers. Check out guitar aerobics. Amazon.com: Guitar Aerobics: A 52-Week, One-lick-per-day Workout Program for Developing, Improving and Maintaining Guitar Technique (9781423414353): Troy Nelson: Books

And I managed to dig up an article I wrote years ago on picking. http://www.guitaraction.net/the-importance-of-picking/
might be useful for you.

good luck.
 
If I could start over I'd just get a guitar and start messing around with it. Learn a few chords if you want to just to get a taste of the structure behind it. Outside of that I'd say just do your own thing. It's impossible to avoid influences, if you're like me and you try to write something you'll hear a lot of what you've been listening to come out in your playing. Whether that's a good or a bad thing is up to you, but I personally find that to be a massive hinderance on my ability to write.

I hate the idea of theory, if it sounds good to you then why try to analyze and mutilate what made it beautiful. It's like that E.B. White quote "humor can be dissected such as the animal, but the being dies in the process" you're gonna kill it if you try and hammer it with rules. I'm sure you've already learned a ton of theory through your experience with piano, and from what I've heard it will translate to guitar at one point or another. Just don't approach it as something mathematical, yes there is a lot of truth behind theory, but in the end it's still just theory.

On the contrary there are only so many notes on a fretboard, and something tells me (as much as I don't want to believe it) that eventually there will be no more truly unique arrangements. "Ice, Ice, Baby"

If you just want to play songs that you like, then you've got a wealth of knowledge at your fingertips as the previous posts have explained. Lots of practice, even if you're just sitting in front of the t.v. doing the endless minor pentatonic subroutine. And yeah, lose all your friends if you wanna be like Yngwie or this clown nitro-freight train official Video [HQ] - YouTube
Yngwie is pretty dope though...
 
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