# Begin at the beginning!



## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

Today I went to JustinGuitar.com and worked my way through the first two lessons.

This included how to tune your guitar, how to hold your guitar, how to hold your pick, and how to play a D chord in first position.

Very painful to my fingers, have not played much at all the past ten years. This time I am determined to do it right.


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## violation (Aug 20, 2006)

rhh7 said:


> Very painful to my fingers, have not played much at all the past ten years.


That'll do it lol. 

The way I started was learn the basic chords E, A, D, G, and C major then E, A and D minor then just make up progressions with them. Once I could do that easily I moved on to learning some tunes. 

Actually that's a lie. That's the way I should have learned. Rather than that I dove straight into playing songs only for those simple chords to come back and bite me in the ass a few months later. I'll save you the time and possible frustration and recommend you start with those, lol. I'm far passed that now but back then it was such a headache... I'd say easily the hardest part of playing guitar for me was getting those down back then.


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## rhh7 (Mar 14, 2008)

I taught myself twenty years ago, dove right into barre chords and blues scales, then started trying to learn Stevie Ray Vaughan songs from lick for lick tab...soon gave up in frustration.

Spent about ten years just jamming by myself, with the chord progressions and scales that I knew...never made much progress.


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## violation (Aug 20, 2006)

I don't have too much experience but my first two years of playing weren't very structured at all. I learned simple songs, came back to chords people swore I should have played first while playing some songs, changed my right hand picking technique atleast 3 times, learned all the basic scales, learned more tunes. 

But hey, experience has taught me how to fix my mistakes and I can help prevent others from making the same ones I did. I devleoped what I consider decent right hand technique, developed some moderate rhythm chops and some basic theory.

After those two years I decided to get serious and developed a regimen. Well... now I can play any rhythm I want and a decent share of the leads. From my experience once you have time, dedication and know what you want to play you're half way there. The other half is figuring out what gets you the best results. 

Steve Vai's 10 hour (and 30 hour) workout books he splits stuff into categories and dedicated a certain amount of hours to each category. Petrucci puts everything he wants to learn in categories too, figures out how much time he has to practice that day and divides that time by how many categories he has. Paul Gilbert just learned tunes he liked. Everyone learns differently. Me? I did what Petrucci has suggested over and over and it worked for me.

Whatever you do just make sure you're having fun. If it's not fun/satisfying there's no point IMO. 

"What could be more fun than playing the electric guitar?" - Paul Gilbert.


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## NB-SK (Jul 28, 2007)

Check this out. The guy is a music professor and well respected jazz performer.

http://www.jimmybrunoguitarinstitute.com/

Well worth the 20$ per month.


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