How do you learn guitar?

  • Played for 50 years- took lessons from "Jeanie Foster" starting in 1969. Fundamentals. Get those down 1st so that you don't have to retrain your finger memory later (yes, your fingers have a mind of their own). Whether you get a teacher for those or learn on yer own, get the basic fundamentals down 1st. Find them- get them-learn them. Then, play every day. In about 20 years (flies by fast) you will be a good picker. ^^

    If you use FRFR the benefit of a merged profile is that the cabinet is totally separated in the profile.


    For my edification only... ;) Kemper/Axe-FX III/ Quad Cortex user

  • I learned a few chords from my brother when I was a kid, then started learning songs from records & tapes. Started reading Guitar Player magazine when I was about 14 and used to do all of the lessons and learn from interviews.

    Eventually got a traditional "music book" and used it to teach myself theory.

    Mostly it's been LOTS of hours of learning.

  • Played for 50 years- took lessons from "Jeanie Foster" starting in 1969. Fundamentals. Get those down 1st so that you don't have to retrain your finger memory later (yes, your fingers have a mind of their own). Whether you get a teacher for those or learn on yer own, get the basic fundamentals down 1st. Find them- get them-learn them. Then, play every day. In about 20 years (flies by fast) you will be a good picker. ^^

    Its funny when you don;t know people and you imagine their age etc from just their posts...


    I thought you was a youngster - and that's meant to be a compliment BTW :)

  • Started off with the tab book for Ride The Lightning and a Guitar World magazine with an Eric Johnson lesson in it. That carried me for a few months, then I moved half way across the country and I realized there was a lot more to learn. Took a few lesson and didn't have a good teacher so back to self taught. I eventually worked with a guy who had gone to GIT (back then that was the unchallenged holy grail of guitar education) and that seed was planted. Not long after, I packed up and moved to LA and attended GIT myself. I learned more there in a comparatively short time than I would have in ten years elsewhere. Took the next couple of years to assimilate what I learned, then found one of the world's most deeply buried jazz virtuosos, Gary Brunner, and took a few lessons to broaden my influence. By that time I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do as a guitar player so I just jammed with everyone I could from all kinds of styles. Several more years go by and I had the absolute blessing to sit down and study a bit with the one guy who inspired me to pick the thing up to begin with, and easily my number one influence.


    Now I've got 181 unpublished, unreleased songs spanning 20 years of my life so the next "lesson" will be to sit down and learn how to objectively be my own producer and start filing the songs into groups that could end up on the same album together and put some of it out 8)

    Just a guy who plays a little bit of guitar.