I use to play the trumpet but sucked ass at it so I quit.

I played the French Horn, Baritone and Tuba for about 11 years.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

Breaky wrote: I played the French Horn, Baritone and Tuba for about 11 years.

Band nerd thank you.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

It was "Band Geek" where I was from, and "Orch Dork"
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For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.

I play guitar, bass, harmonica, and the steel guitar.

QuakeJam bishes!
http://www.planetquake.com/quakejam/

Off topic somewhat so feel free to move if needed.

I've been thinking about learning how to play guitar. I don't have a schedule that would allow me to take lessons, but I can already read music and have (according to my old instructors) a great ear.

So, given that, what would be a good start for teaching myself to play the guitar? Can anyone recommend a good book or two? I'm not interested in just picking up some tabs and copying dumbed down versions of songs, I'd like to be able to play it correctly and learn the right chords.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

Tell you the truth any tab book over CDs that you like and want to play will have tabs, music, and the name of the chord. Over time as you learn more and more songs you'll learn what the chords are. And then when you jam with people you'll see what chords they are playing, or be able to ask them, and fill in as needed.

Any "learn how to play" books that I've seen are some what dull and read like: Here is a chord that is in Mary had a little lamb, play that 50 times and you'll know it. If you want to learn scales and stuff yeah they can help with that, but who the fuck wants to learn scales. heh Tab books also, most of them that I've seen anyway, tell you the correct way to tune your guitar for playing said song so that you can learn what chords are better to play with the guitar tuned differently.

As for tabs on the internet, that's where your going to get the dumbed down versions of song, those are what people think the songs sounds like and alot of the time say "here is what I play" and when you play it you can hear it's missing most of the sound the real music has.

More or less what I'm getting at is if you already know music then, IMO, the best way to learn is to just play. And tab BOOKS, not off the internet, not only have music notes but also have tabs and the name of the chords. Most of them that I have anyway.
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It's just me..

Look on the net. There is tons of free learn to play stuff.
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More RAM than Dodge!

Tab books aren't always accurate either. My SRV tab book is off a lot of the time.

But yeah, even a tab site on the internet (Taborama is fine) would be fine to start with.

If you could tell me some of the bands you like I could probably tell you a good, easy song to get started with. (As long as you're not obsessed with Dream Theatre or Steve Vai, good luck learning that)

Heheh... no no Dream Theatre or Yngwie Malmsteen or uber shit like that.

I like the older blues rock related stuff. I have realistic expectations about how long it would take to play something well. For me its mostly Beatles or Chuck Berry, the less complicated pieces they have.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

Completely unrelated to my former playing of the violin. I listen to classical music mostly. Next on the list is Techno or pretty much any electronica. After that I like OLD country music. I don't listen to the new stuff because if I wanted to listen to pop music I'd tune to a pop music station not listen to "country".
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Blargle Flarg Bergah Merg

Band Nerd thnx. Trumpet from 7th - 12th. Was good, coulda done college but didnt. Still have it and pick it up from time to time and fart around it. Kinda smells now....

Similar but different question than Breaky's:

I want to start creating my own music and learn to DJ a bit (Trance/Ambient style music). I'm looking at buying some basic gear including a MIDI keyboard. I'm also curious about learning to play the keyboard as a piano. Does anyone have any experience in either of these areas?

I used to mess around with computer emulated mix stuff....

You can find a few good Roland 808 emulators, as well as a program called Rebirth or Reverb I think they renamed it to. Fun stuff to play around with mixing.


Also, fasttracker is a good sound sampling/ midi program with a bajillion options to work with doing sampling/ mixing for track based music.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

Speaking of digital, has anyone played one of the digital guitars that Gibson came out with? I seen it on their website and was curious how well it played and sounded on a amp.
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More RAM than Dodge!

Finding decent Lefty electric guitars is the suck.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

Breaky wrote: Heheh... no no Dream Theatre or Yngwie Malmsteen or uber shit like that.

I like the older blues rock related stuff. I have realistic expectations about how long it would take to play something well. For me its mostly Beatles or Chuck Berry, the less complicated pieces they have.

Thanks for the info LC. I'll probably have more questions for you later when I get into things a little more. Before this thread started, I actually had been looking into playing music again and picking up a guitar for the 1st time for about a month or so.

Got any advice for a new buyer? I've been doing a good bit of research on stuff looking for what sort of sound I could get from different guitars and what would fit more into what I was looking at.

Right now I'm interested in purchasing a lefty Telecaster, but it's hard finding a good used one. I can afford a new standard one (probably mexican made tho) I don't really want to spend more than ~$400. I don't want to buy a cheap POS either. I really need something that's gonna keep tune well. I might not have any skills yet, but I do have a good enough ear to tell me when my tune is off.
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I am your mom and I just took you to school in the car of pain.

For starters if you're going to learn the solos on these songs you need to learn the pentatonic/blues scale. The blues scale is used in like 80% of blues solos and it is really fun to learn, and it really sounds good no matter how you play it.