To all of the guitar players out there. I am playing again. I dunno why but I didn't touch my guitars for a few years...and now I suck. I can't remember anything but I can still sorta play. My fingers are all soft again so the acoustic is torture.. luckily I had a set of super light gauge strings that I threw on one of my electrics so I can at least stand to play a bit. I never really got very good at playing.. I usually mimicked what my friends would play and never really built my "own" repertoire of songs to play. It was always stuff I'd heard other people playing and decided to learn later. Well.. now I'm kinda stuck. Dunno really what to learn. I don't really feel like playing the stuff I used to play.. I played with a couple of punk bands and stuck with a lot of that (so obviously I never got any good at guitar) and I played a bit with a metal band.. but never really became truly dedicated to the instrument. I'm ready for that now, though, and I wanna get good.. no, damn good at playing. I just have no idea where to start. It's pretty frustrating. Any suggestions? Btw I suck hard at this instrument now.. so it's gonna take a good bit of practice to get back up to a respectable level.

 

Learn the fundamentals first, get the Christopher Parkening books and learn classical methods and scales. The rest will be easy after that.

I'm not kidding, the fundamentals are key to playing properly.

 

Got ne good websites? lol My wallets been on E for a while now.. like seriously.. I sold one of my guitars for some money a little while back.. paid 900 for it new and after trying to sell it to 2 different stores I ended up taking $100 for it Feeling so bad after selling the guitar got me thinking about playing again so I decided to dust off the other guitars I had laying around at home.

 

I think I have the first book in .pdf. I'll check when I get home from work.

 

Thanks a bunch dude I'll prolly end up posting a few videos in a few months of how great I've become, heh.. right. Yeah but I don't sleep a whole lot anymore and I bet I'll be shredding in no time flat with all the spare time I have in the middle of the night.

 

Im not sure if you know of this website or not. but it has some decent lessons and a ton of tabs you can download or view for free. A lot of the tabs are close, but not exact, but its enough to get you playing again.

just follow the tabs at the top of the home page.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/

 

Oh yeah I know of that site. I'm just completely lost with guitar lately and can't even find my way around the fretboard like I used to. I never really studied any theory/fundamentals.. I just played and it all fit together. I could play solos really well and all of the notes fit even though I didn't know I was using it.. someone told me I played all penatonics usually.. I think. I was never much for tabs though cause I hate trying to learn a song with wrong tabs.. I always just used to listen to music and just play it. I never knew that site had much of any lessons though.

 

How did I not see this thread? Amyway, I would say you need to find a guy to take lessons from ASAP. Trying to teach yourself is hard, and it takes a lot of dedication to look at a book and go for it. A teacher can give you little bites and get you on a clear path. X is right, you have to learn the fundamentals just like anything else. That part sucks. If you are serious, though, you are going to be able to get through that. When you start improving, it will make it more fun and worthwhile to continue practicing.

 

^ Dude I tried the teacher thing years ago.. my first teacher printed out tabs for me and had me learn them and play them for him. My second teacher just asked me what kinda music I liked and he wrote down the chords for some songs and had me learn them. Wasn't really impressed by either of those guys so I just stopped with the lessons. I don't exactly understand what "the fundamentals" are. I've been playing for a fairly long time and I kinda quit when most of the people around me could play a hell of a lot better than I could with less experience than myself. I probably should pick up a book or something to see what all you guys are talking about. X if you stumble across that pdf I'd love to get a look at it. I don't exactly have enough money for a book :/

 

The whole, it feels like every one is better with less experiance thing, is something most guitarists feel. It just shows that you have the nack of reconising good music.The ones who think there gods gift to guitar are usually jerks, with no soul in there music. IMO If I was you, id check out the local libary for some books. And practice one of your fav oldies. Or just try to make some cool stuff up for a while.