re: Official: Guitar beginners question and answer thread.

Rythm is very important, but is oftem overlooked while practicing. Play with a metronome, and learn to keep time. Some people tap their foot while playing, and think they have pretty good timing, usually the foot is following the playing not the other way around, a metronome doesnt let you get away with that.

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Lanier > the most important thing in getting better is simply this, just play everyday, even if for 10 minutes watching tv.

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That has been some good advice for me I think. I am doing that for the most part. I wold say I am getting 5=6 days a week for sure. Usually for longer than that but for atlease 15-20 mins.

Yesterday, I sat on the couch watching TV with the wife for a couple hours and just fingered chords with no strumming. Doing different sequences and just trying to move a few fingers as possible to get from one chord to another possible. Its starting to feel more comfortable to me.

Going to be refocusing on my playing. Got three Hal Leonard books to work through. Will probably split my evenings between the books and writing.

Checking in with my fellow novices!

I found this guy on youtube for song tutorials. I like his layout the best. Shows how to finger chords, picking pattern, tab, and himself playing all the time on one screen. I haven't run across anyone else that provides all of this at the same time and same place.

Handle: GuitarZero2Hero

LINK

I really like his cutaway he plays as well. Sweet looking axe

I still have to really focus on tab to understand it, so there’s that

I'm good with tabs. It's how I learned to play.

But I want to learn to ready music and play along with it. No real reason, just something I want to learn.

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Anyone have good websites for tab? I'm going camping this weekend and want to print some new songs out to start fiddling with while I'm out of service

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Ultimate Guitar
Songsterr

Both can be riddled with mistakes so I often will reference both (although I have found the same mistakes on both sites).

If the song is really popular, UG will have many different versions. They have a rating system so I usually go for the ones with a lot of votes and stars. They also have versions that are just chords as well as bass tabs etc. They offer a "Pro" version but I've never signed up for those.

Songsterr does it a little differently. Each instrumental/vocal part of the song can be accessed from the drop down menu. There may be several layers of guitar in a track and you can select which one you want to see.

Progressing. Fingertips are hard as rocks but I didn't have any pain with them while toughening them up.

I work on 2-3 different things when I practice. I'm developing a warmup that includes working on stretching my fingers on the fretboard. Chord transitions are getting faster and chords are getting cleaner. Still a long way from perfect but it's progress.

How are you guys doing?

Bump from a newbie. Got a couple of questions.

The past few weeks I've been using JustinGuitar videos. I started from the beginning and it's going okay. I'm slowly getting the hang of it and making progress.

1) I have a hand-me-down electric Squire I've been using. I know it's not the best, but the price was right (free!), so I'm using it to see if I stick with it. I don't have an amp, however, which has been fine up until now, but I'd like to hear things better. Do any of y'all have experience using your computer as an amp? I see they have these cables that go from the guitar to usb. Do those work? If so, what kind of software do I use for that? Is there anything basic and preferably free or cheap on the software side?

2) I'm building up callouses and strength on my left fingers, but I still have trouble with my index finger. It's shaped different than my middle, ring, and pinky. Whereas those fingers are rounder at the ends, my index is somewhat pointier and the nail sits further out. I have a hard time getting enough pressure on the string because my fingernail gets in the way, and if I roll my finger down to get better contact, it hits the string below. I'm sure I'm not the first person with this problem and didn't know if y'all had encountered this at all.