palgn musicians

[cosmoh]

hi all, cbfed hunting for an old/similar thread so i thought i might start one. anyone on palgn play any instruments? whether you're in a band or just like to jam with mates or on your own?

in particular any acoustic guitarists around? I've always been jealous of mates who can pick up a guitar and just start casually strumming away sounding and looking awesome at the same time. am thinking of teaching myself to play.

any advice? mostly wondering how much i should hope to spend on a decent piece, nothing to pricey as i'd probably upgrade to a nicer instrument if i really get into it but then also dont want to buy something that sounds shit and is no good to play.

and if anyone can link me in the right direction of where to start in terms of online tutorials and that sort of thing that would be great. a quick google search hits back with millions of results and i'm a bit in over my head. i'm not entirely new to playing music, use to drum but sold my kit a while ago, never really got further then an intermediate level on the drums because i kind of lost touch with them in the later years of high school.

also feel free to plug any bands you might be in or post up any youtube vids or anything of you playing, would love to hear them.

[Jedi_Amara]

I taught myself to play acoustic guitar. I'm not very good but I know enough to be able to pick it up and play songs. It helps a lot if you have some other musical training, too - I've been playing various instruments for over 17 years and I've found that I and many of my fellow musicians find it pretty easy to pick up a new instrument quickly.

I can't help you with buying an instrument as I kind of stole my dad's guitar. In terms of learning, you need to learn to tune, and you probably want to learn to read tabs. For guitar, it isn't so important to know how to read music, especially if you just want to pick up and play (having a good ear is pretty important though).

Guitar is a good instrument to learn to tune on because you don't have to worry about where to put your fingers really, it's all fretted (I'm primarily a violinist and guitar is relaxing for me because I don't have to worry about intonation). You probably need a reference note for the low E and then you 5th fret (4th to tune B) on that string to match it to the next open string. I'm sure tutorials/Youtube vids can describe it better than I can.

You want to learn chords on guitar, so look up chord tables. Learn the easy open chords first, things like E, A, G, C, D. Just those alone will let you do a lot. Also the basic barre forms, and then you can move those all over the fretboard. This is a great site for chord lists: http://chordlist.brian-amberg.de/en/guitar/ You probably won't need most of them for a while though.

I never bothered with actual tutorials, I learnt to read tabs (pretty much they just tell you what fret to put your finger behind on each string) and then started playing songs. That gives you a feel for chords and how to move your fingers around. Again, I have experience on stringed instruments already, so YMMV. I decided to learn guitar because I wanted to play my favourite songs, so you could start with some pretty simple songs you like, learn the chords and figure out the strumming patterns.
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