My name is Daniel Roberts and i'm 20 years old. Newly wed and my wife is a piano player. I get jealous of her talent and I want to suprise her by learning electric guitar. I have no idea where to start. I've sang in jazz choirs, but I forgot everything about reading music. So I have no idea where I would start.

Please someone let me know what video or lesson I should use to learn even the basics. I dont want my guitar to sit here and get dusty because I couldn't find anyplace to start

Thanks for all your help and in a few months I hope to suprise my wife on our anniversary by playing a couple songs.

Hope to hear from you


-hex

Hi Daniel! You can try with the beginners section's lesson. You have great exercises there!

http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/beginner-...eo-lessons1.htm

Yah I was watching what he was doing in the videos and that looks light years ahead of me. I even listend to the backing and was trying to read the 'tabs' but I have no idea how to even read the tabs .



Which one of those beginning lessons would be best to try and make it through first for someone in my situation ?

thank you for your help by the way


-hex

Hello Daniel.

You can find explanation on reading tabs here:

http://guitar.about.com/library/blhowtoreadtab.htm

Maybe it's best to try to learn the chords for the start.
But You should ask some of the theachers here on forum. They probably knows better than me how you can start with your learning.

Welcome on the site.
Iggy.

Welcome hex!

For a complete begginner I would say the power chord lesson is a good place to start!

Krisotofer

Yeah I would work slowly through all the beginners exercises! You will pick up all the right habits from kris, and give yourself a solid foundation. You really cant go wrong!

Even if the beginner lessons seems hard you should start practice them very slowly. Its like that with everything, when I starting sweeping it sounded like, uhm, yeah, crap. and I played it really slow aswell. But now I do it much smoother and much faster. Even if something seems totally impossible to start with you just need to practice it reaaaally slow and after a while it gets easier.

I think i was a bit more than a beginner when I first came here but I started with tapping.
Try that if u want. It's cool (great lesson from Kris) and easy! It's flashy too...or to most people who don't play guitar. They sometimes think ur amazing. You can use it for a little evil conspiracy.

Good advice given above for sure but if you are hoping to suprise the wife in just a few months you may want to go to one of the other tabs only sites and find something easy. Say some CCR for example.
I have been here for a month, just starting out really and I have been doing the beginner lessons over and over and I might be able to actually play something a little difficult in about a year. I should have choosen the nick name Webfingers when I signed up here.

Learn "smoke on the water" by: Deep Purple

An exercise i found extremely helpful when i first started playing was to play on the low E string (the biggest one) 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 and repeat. I just alternate picked that constantly and it really helped get my technique down. Also, don't be hesitant to get live lessons with a teacher, they will be able to correct your flaws much faster.

Pavel has a similar exercise in the beginning of his Alternate Picking series. 'Small finger movements and pick like hell' It's been good for reminding me that I need to get control over my left hand so the fingers don't make so big a motion.

Didn't think to mention this before, but I'll post it now anyway. There's some great advice just in the Intro section here that doesn't always repeat. There's some fantastic advice for a newbie in my Intro posting in January here.

I've been trying to keep in mind that I'm supposed to suck at this for a while until I put the practice time in to get the basics down. I'm still working on getting past the "everything I do on guitar sucks" stage and it's good to remember that it's normal.