i found a guitar! now what?

[pkpro1]

hey- somebody was throwing away a guitar down the street- a shitty six string acoustic... so i picked it up!

i've always wanted to learn how to play- but i wanted to wait until i graduated college next year. but now i have this thing so i want to get a head start. i don't want to get lessons because school, work, etc take too much time.

any suggestions on how i could just learn on my own until next year? websites? anything?

thanks!

[lhndmb]

my suggestion is to learn all of your basic chords first: D, E, F, G, A, B, C. After that, pick up a couple minor chords: Am, Bm, Em. Maybe learn some power chords after that. Keep noodling around on these chords and try to commit them to memory (with hand an brain coordination). Then work on strumming---down, down down / up, up, up...and so on. If you learn the chords first it'll give you the best headstart when taking lessons (it should speed things up). If you wanna work on a DMB song because some people wanna learn songs as soon as they pick up a guitar, try Watchtower with down, down, down strums first. When learning watchtower try the tradition Am, G, F, G chords first. Then try it with the power chords. Once you get this song down both ways, you should have more hand strength and calluses than when you have now. Hope this helps.

linh

[scoot_14]

What he said. Start learning a few chords, and then play them everyday for at least a half hour. It is important when you start to do a little every day to get your fingers used to it. It does no good to play for a few hours one day and then not pick it up for the rest of the week.

[jedip]

Originally posted by pkpro1
hey- somebody was throwing away a guitar down the street- a shitty six string acoustic... so i picked it up!

i've always wanted to learn how to play- but i wanted to wait until i graduated college next year. but now i have this thing so i want to get a head start. i don't want to get lessons because school, work, etc take too much time.

any suggestions on how i could just learn on my own until next year? websites? anything?

thanks!

Awesome!! Hey I'm actually in a similiar situation. A friend of mine gave me an acoustic guitar that needed some work....It cost me about $60 to fix and put strings on it and now I'm good to go. Thanks lhndmb and scoot_14 for those tips. Do you guys no about how long it would take for us (just starting out) to learn and play decent?? I know it depends on how much we practice and such but if I piddle around about everynight and try to learn...how long would it take to get decent at it?

[jedip]

Originally posted by jedip
Awesome!! Hey I'm actually in a similiar situation. A friend of mine gave me an acoustic guitar that needed some work....It cost me about $60 to fix and put strings on it and now I'm good to go. Thanks lhndmb and scoot_14 for those tips. Do you guys no about how long it would take for us (just starting out) to learn and play decent?? I know it depends on how much we practice and such but if I piddle around about everynight and try to learn...how long would it take to get decent at it?

Hey also....can anybody suggest any other DMB songs that would be good to learn for us just starting out?

I would love to learn GreyStreet, BEF, and the Maker or Christmas song. Any of these fairly easy to play for a guy learning to play?

[AC-777]

Originally posted by jedip
Hey also....can anybody suggest any other DMB songs that would be good to learn for us just starting out?

I would love to learn GreyStreet, BEF, and the Maker or Christmas song. Any of these fairly easy to play for a guy learning to play?

Well to answer your first question before this quote...everyone is different so no one can tell you how long it will take you, for me it took me a good 3-4 months before I could pick songs at my own will and not have to worry about how hard they would be (not saying that I can play everything obviously). For your second question... grey street would actually be a good one to learn because that has the "dave chords" as we all know them to be. He uses these chords in about half his songs. From there you can learn too much, hold me down, two step, say goodbye, and eventually tripping billies (they all have similiar chords in them).

[lhndmb]

Originally posted by jedip
Hey also....can anybody suggest any other DMB songs that would be good to learn for us just starting out?

I would love to learn GreyStreet, BEF, and the Maker or Christmas song. Any of these fairly easy to play for a guy learning to play?

well as AC-77 stated above, grey street would be good to start out with because it does incorporate those common chords that Dave uses often. My only problem with trying to learn something like that, is that you're gonna want to sound like dave but you won't get it because your hand strength won't be up to what it needs to be. to play dave songs, you need to finger them like he does. also, his strumming and flat-picking is also hard to absorb while you're just starting out on the guitar. i think out of the songs that you listed, BEF would be the best to start out with because it'll help get your individual string picking going and the chorus will help with your chord excercises.
Christmas song is fingerpicked and has a short slide that might be difficult when starting out.
If you want to play The Maker, play it like Dave has been playing it all tour without the slide he uses with the full band.
Also, listen to Angel From Montgomery and give that a shot too.

[AC-777]

Originally posted by lhndmb
well as AC-77 stated above, grey street would be good to start out with because it does incorporate those common chords that Dave uses often. My only problem with trying to learn something like that, is that you're gonna want to sound like dave but you won't get it because your hand strength won't be up to what it needs to be.

good point. and that is something I have to get myself out of the habit of doing. the fact is I will never sound exactly like dave or play exactly like he does. I think we all need to learn to incorporate our own styles and grooves into songs that we love.

[clemson357]

i would suggest for the first few weeks tapping your foot, and giving each chord four beats, C,A,D,G is good enough for now, work on switching between the chords smoothly. once you get that down learn bar chords, they take a little more hand strength. the good thing about bar chords though is that there are about 4-6 different forms to memorize (major, minor, minor 7.....)and then you just use those forms on different spots up and down the neck to get the different chords. having someone to sit down with you and give you pointers just 10 min. a week would be very good also. don't try to learn a song for atleast two weeks, you will just get frustrated.

when you try to learn your first songs, i know it sounds cheesy, but NIRVANA has very easy songs that sound good to you when you are first learning. also, much of jack johnson's stuff is just bar chords. dave's stuff is not easy.

[HenriOU]

Like everyone has said above, just start out learning the chords and getting those down. Then get the basic strumming patterns down. A big part is the first 1 or 2 months, they are the hardest times when learning guitar. Just dont get dissapointed because if you stick it out in a couple months you'll be able to play quite a bit of Dave. Best of luck to you all, guitar is a great thing to pick up.

[timhelms]

buy this poster...
then buy some d'adarrio exp or elixers
tune your gitfiddle
and play

[jkanter]

Originally posted by pkpro1
hey- somebody was throwing away a guitar down the street- a shitty six string acoustic... so i picked it up!

i've always wanted to learn how to play- but i wanted to wait until i graduated college next year. but now i have this thing so i want to get a head start. i don't want to get lessons because school, work, etc take too much time.

any suggestions on how i could just learn on my own until next year? websites? anything?

thanks! Well, no one else has mentioned it so I'll go ahead. If you want to learn how to play DMB songs on guitar....check out http://www.dmbtabs.com/ I got some pretty accurate tabs up there for everyone, along with some video's to show people how to play songs(they are zoomed up close on the fretboard). You can go to http://www.dmbtabs.com/lessons.php?id=1 to get lessons on how to learn to play live Dave and on the FAQ(at the bottom or here http://www.dmbtabs.com/faq.php?id=2 ) you can learn how to read the tabs.

Listen to what everyone else said also though....Dave stuff is hard at first so try to learn the basics of guitar first. Good luck and congrats on getting into such an amazing hobby....lata

[pele0069]

just learn cords...and learn songs like run around ...mr jones....watchtower....this will help with strumming and cord changes...this way you get to actually play songs....

[buffbarno2]

all of this has been helpful, and i am sure i speak for other beginners when i say thank you. i was gathering from the posts though that i should start out learning the chords before i even go into lessons. this makes sense and all but what is the best way to go about this without having someone there to show me. is there a good book or an online source that will do the trick. if not, would taking lessons just once a week be a good move?

[TheBigCaptain]

bang http://www.guitartabs.cc/fetchurl.php?filename=/m/misc/every_guitar_chord.crd