Any Guitar players out there? Tips/advice, easy songs to help out the beginners

[alexp36]

For beginners, I found this a while back - ZeGuitarist's Ultimate Guide to Guitar:
The Ultimate Guide To Guitar. Chapter I: 1 Introduction - The Guitar | Guitar Columns @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com

It's a pretty comprehensive guide, taking you from the basics of naming the parts of the guitar, how to hold the guitar, getting the thing in tune etc., right through to chord theory and other more advanced stuff.
There's a number of pages/chapters, with lots of pictures, diagrams, and accompanying .mp3 songs/riffs to play along to, and examples to hear what he means.

Tons of other great info on ultimateguitar.com too, but I'm sure anyone with access to google will eventually find that out...

All free - yay for teh internets!

 

[Grennan]

yeah dude its cool,i play in a covers band called MOTORCITY on the gold coast.Ive bin playing on and off for years but honestly know "Jack" about reading music.I would sugest going onto "you tube".just type in the song you wanna learn and search til you find someone teaching it....its that easy!!!

rock on!!

Yeah thats like me. Im self taught guitar and I much prefer playing bass (Jazz and Funk bass, while I do play the boring metal stuff when my mates are around) I cant read sheet music. I know tabs and thats it.

 

[alexp36]

Grennan, I play bass too, and have never really learned much music theory.
How do you play jazz without knowing much theory? Do you just know some scales etc, and play around with those over the chord changes? Or do you actually know a bit of theory, but just don't read sheet music?
- I'd like to play around with some jazzy type stuff on the bass, but I have no idea where to start.

 

[Grennan]

I do have an understanding of some theory as I have a lot of friends who play Guitar and Bass and I just look at what their doing and pick it up and learn from them. But give me sheet music and im just lost.

 

[alexp36]

Fair enough.
What's some good jazz tunes for a bass player to learn?
I really like cool groovy stuff, like "Love Rears it's Ugly Head" by Living Colour, and some more funky stuff.
But really I'm pretty ignorant about jazz, except for knowing that I've heard some I like, and lots I didn't like...

 

[Grennan]

Yeah so am I really. Im into metal and stuff, when i picked up a bass I was playing with mates and it was extremely boring so i just checked out Ultimate Guitar forums and looked at what stuff they recommended to keep me busy.

One song i want to play, and cant play for the life of me, is Higher Ground, the Red Hot Chilli Peppers version.

 

[alexp36]

yeah, me too. Although I admit that a: I haven't actually tried very hard, and b: I don't play any other slap and pop stuff (although I do play with either pick or fingers, depending on the song), so there's no reason why I should be able to play it without quite a bit of practice.

There's a guy on YouTube, calls himself "Munkybarz", who has posted some good bass vids. They're not tutorials as such, just vids of him playing a song where you can see the fretboard well enough to get a good idea what he's doing.

He seems pretty good. He had one of Higher Ground on there, where he goes right through the whole song, sounds pretty much perfect to me. Unfortunately I just had a look, and can't see it there anymore. I've got a copy I downloaded though if you want it.

 

[Grennan]

Yeah Ive tried, I just cant seem to get the timing right, it just doesnt sound like the song should haha.

 

[magpies1]

Time of your life - Good Riddance Time Of Your Life Tab (ver 16) by Green Day @ Ultimate-Guitar.Com

thats the 1st song i ever learnt its pretty easy just start off slow and u will get it