FUQ (eff -yu - cue) - FAQ's with an EDGE

Tagged As: Easy To Play Guitar

Question:
From what I've read so far, I should start learning on an electric guitar.If so, should I opt for a better guitar and low-end amp or vice versa. I'm on a limited budget but I don't want a cheap piece of shit either. Also, where should I start? Learn to read tabs or I'm not sure ?

Answer:
I second that other guy on the acoustic. If you just gotta gotta have an electric (eg the only kind of music you ever want to play is electric guitar rock) then you can start there, but learning on an acoustic first will do you good. An acoustic guitar doesn't let you get away with as much sloppiness, and its harder action will build strength and calluses faster. It's true that they ARE harder to play, but that will work to your benefit later when you decide to pick up an electric. If you have to go the electric route because you just have to, then I would suggest that the budget-minded player needn't buy an amp at all. I don't own an amp. I plug my guitar into my soundcard and pipe it through my stereo (admittedly I have a pretty decent stereo hooked up to the computer... if you just have a set of cheapass computer speakers then you'll want to plug into your main stereo or buy an amp). No effects that way (I'm hoping to get one of those multi-effects doodads from Santa Claus) but you can get a lot of different sounds out of a standard Strat just by fiddling with the pickup selector and using palm muting and such. As to where to begin, just pick something and try to play it. I started out with the tab version of Pink Floyd's The Wall songbook... (It was supposed to be the piano version... Mom bought me the wrong thing, so I had to go buy a guitar to play the stuff, and that's more or less how I got started on this whole trip.) I don't recommend that you start with anything this hard (10 years later I can still only play like three of the songs) but my point is that you don't have to follow any particular game plan. Take a look at www.wholenote.com Oodles of lessons on there for free, and you can pick and choose whatever interests you. One great thing about the guitar is that while there will always be a thousand people out there who can play circles around you, you can still do tons of interesting stuff with just a few basic chords. You can learn as much or as little as you want, and still have fun. I mostly just learned the open chords and that pretty much did me for 10 years. I've only recently started going deeper, and I'm a beginner all over again and having a ton of fun in the process. BTW, buy yourself a tuner. You'll be glad you did. A guitar tuner with only EBGDAE will do, but you might want to pop for a chromatic tuner because it is much more useful in the long run.