I want to stop screwing around and actually learn to play the guitar

sounds like the right thing to do. i only had one year of lessons back when i was 15, just to learn the basics, but by 18 I'd let my playing fall by the wayside.
Picked it up again in my mid-20s and found I was able to progress quite quickly into new areas. There's always new stuff to learn and technique to improve on.
One of the best things I did was pick up a bunch of those lyrics and chords books with songs from specific decades that I knew and just learned to play them while singing along. You get used to the chord changes pretty quickly and discover new chords you'd never seen before. Improves your singing ability too.
I really want to know more about scales and soloing now. Not being a trained musician, I feel that it's the theory stuff that lets me down. I can play a pentatonic scale or 'feel out' a lead solo over a bunch of chords, but the stuff we're doing in our band can involve some quite complicated chord progressions and it's getting to the point where I'd like to be able to improvise without hitting duff notes on occasion.

the simple joy of playing an instrument is stronger when you have faced more of the banality of daily life

this is exactly what i am going for

yeahhhh that sounds ridiculous.

I really want to know more about scales and soloing now. Not being a trained musician, I feel that it's the theory stuff that lets me down. I can play a pentatonic scale or 'feel out' a lead solo over a bunch of chords, but the stuff we're doing in our band can involve some quite complicated chord progressions and it's getting to the point where I'd like to be able to improvise without hitting duff notes on occasion.

This is the kind of thing either a good teacher or at least a more formal "guitar method" book can help with (I don't have a specific one to recommend off the top of my head). It also can help if you have any kind of keyboard or piano in the house to help understand the relationships between notes or intervals or chords. But even if you don't, the guitar actually has a beautiful logic to it when it comes to music theory, much moreso than I'd imagine a wind or brass instrument does (although I don't actually know if this is true since I've never played one).

For scale exercises, Sal Salvador's Single String Studies is good (it's not really all exercises played on a single string, it's just single-note picking)

For theory, it can be a long road, but you really need to start with the basics if you don't have them. Learn the notes on a treble staff, learn basic musical notation symbols, and learn how the notes correspond to the guitar (start in first-position -- the position you play basic chords in).

From there I'd suggest learning intervals -- halfstep, wholestep, minor third, major third, perfect fourth, perfect fifth, etc. These are the building blocks of chords, and understanding chords is one of the keys to understanding how not to play "duff notes."

A lot of this stuff is probably available free on the internet, on youtube, etc.

thanks man alive, i'll see if i can't dig some of those out.

as a lefty who plays drums right-handed, my advice is to develop a style based on having a shitty right hand.

I'm not the most chop-heavy player, but one thing I can always impress people with is my ability to improvise over pretty much anything, and to learn things easily by ear. I attribute this to having developed my ear and to working on the boring theory stuff that most guitarists skip.

Oh btw I think Single String Studies is all written on staff, so you need to learn how to read notes on a staff before you can use it.

or just get one of these, picking problem solved.

http://www.stick.com/instruments/stick/stick.jpg

is that a chapman stick?

oh sweet, my main problem with regular guitars is that they're not quite phallic _enough_ yknow

have I got a guitar for you

http://cdn.mos.musicradar.com/images/features/outrageous-guitars/penisguitar-630-80.jpg

Dan!!!

when HR takes me away, I will shout over my shoulder "IT WAS WORTH IT" as they lead me from the building

Mods, seize him!

thanks dan that's exactly what i was looking for!

Can anyone recommend a book that is a good beginner's tutorial for playing electric guitar? I've read this thread and I'm not really serious enough to start taking lessons at the moment but a good book would be invaluable. Thanks.

What would you want such a book to have ideally? (All I wanted from a book was to reveal how to make wheedleywoo sounds, which no one has written a good book for)

I think that's what I want to be able to do as well. But if there's no book for it...

Mel Bay's Shredding for Beginners is somewhere in Borges library

What sort of wheedleywoo sounds? Like shreddy metal? Noise?

All of it -- guitar center hero to Glenn Branca

Those are two very divergent paths. Guitar Center Hero = learn scales and modes, work on your tapping, bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs, etc. Branca = buy a lot of pedals and spend a lot of time fucking around, and if you learned scales try not to think about them.

Just find a song that you love and learn how to play it. Then repeat

^ buy the $5 songsterr app for you phone. It plays through the tab and you can slow it down or loop sections. Pick a favorite section of a favorite song. Set it to slow speed. Play along. Ramp up the speed.

the only thing wrong w/ something like this is that it plays all notes at equal volume. So you do eventually need to learn to play it like chet atkins after you learn to play like robot chet atkins.

I want to write an instructional book called "Start Screwing Around and Learn to Play the Guitar"

Troy Stetina's books were recommended to me for teaching hard rock/heavy metal guitar technique and I found them to be successful. The metal lead guitar and rhythm guitar books are the core of the method, although Total Rock Guitar works well for students who are not very advanced. That one assumes that you can fret notes and count a beat and starts you out on power chords. (He uses an 80s definition of 'metal', even including Slash and Hendrix.) Like a good snob, I had my reservations about the reliance on tab and the total absence of standard notation in the metal books but I doubt most people would mind. The metal books might be one side of what you're looking for, Philip?

Branca = buy a lot of pedals and spend a lot of time fucking around, and if you learned scales try not to think about them.

I don't think Branca ever used pedals very much, actually. He has worked a lot with customized instruments and alternate tuning systems (particularly just intonation).

i'll check it out, thanks! (but basically less interested in learning to play all along the watchtower than how to make a guitar sound interesting while it is on fire)

Well, there's always this: http://users.wfu.edu/breckers/howtoplayguitar.htm

Still recommend Arnie Berle's Chords and Progressions for Jazz and Popular Guitar for learning, um, chords and progressions. That and Rikky Rooksby's books, particular the Beatle Chord Songbook and How to Write Songs on Guitar.

But really came to post that FB is recommending me to get a Danelectro 12SDC 12-String Electric Guitar Black at Musician's Friend for $399.99, but I don't play electric or with a pick so...

xp or this:
Captain Beefheart's 10 Commandments of Guitar Playing

Richard Lloyd had some good lessons on his site, I heard, but I believe he took them down.

What would you want such a book to have ideally? (All I wanted from a book was to reveal how to make wheedleywoo sounds, which no one has written a good book for)

― Philip Nunez, Friday, 22 January 2016 14:24 (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

'Play In A Day' by Bert Wheedlon

^Worked for Steve Jones.

I bought an acoustic a few weeks ago, been playing around with a few random shapes that I like the sound of, including 000220, which apparently is E13sus4. Can I start a song with this chord or do you have to start with the tonic chord?

Can I start a song with this chord

Yes. You can start a song with any chord you want. Joe Meek said it best: "If it sounds right, then it is right."

all songs need to start with a b-minor chord iirc, it's the law

Chuck Berry to thread.

Because each one of songs usually started with a particular "fanfare," as somebody said, such as the augmented chord at the beginning of "School Days."

I came across this cheat sheet to help me with chord progressions, and am a bit confused...
https://www.adsrsounds.com/music-theory-tutorials/music-theory-cheat-sheet/

Question: My verse is in C Major. It says that I can write my chorus in a different key, and that I can use one of C Majors 'neighbours' in the circle of fifths, so F or G. If I take F, and use the same I - IV - V - V progression, I get F Bb C C. Bb isn't part of the C Major scale is it, so if I use a Bb chord in my chorus, won't that sound 'wrong'?

Sorry this probably should have gone in the music theory thread.

No such thing as wrong though, surely?

I thought that but then wondered if I was reading the circle incorrectly.

You seem to be over-thinking this guitar playing thing. Are you a keyboard player by any chance?

Anyway, everyone has their own approach, I don't understand anything about music theory beyond the names of the notes on the fret.

Having the chorus in a different key than the verse is not common practice. But hey you can do what you want

Using a Bb chord (or Major VII) does sound weird since you would expect a diminished 7 chord (B-D-F) but I've seen it used like that in pop music for sure. calstars and Tom are both right, basically

McCartney does this for the middle 8 in Two of Us iirc (altho I guess that's in G?)

That modulates to Bb major from G major, so that's a bit farther. Three of the seven notes are different, whereas in Chris' example - C major modulating to F major - Bb is the only note that's different.

Modulating to a key a fourth away or a fifth away is pretty common, I would say. And as soon as Bb is used, the song will start to suggest that the modulation has occurred, so that is something you can play with.