Learning to play electric guitar

Learning to play electric guitar - resources

This s a guide for the impatient, perhaps slightly lazy budding guitarist and it comes from my own personal experience. I’m not the next Jimi Hendrix or Van Halen, in fact, by the standards of a lot of people my guitar playing is probably a bit mediocre. I enjoy what I do though and more importantly, I can actually play quite a few songs all the way through without the original song playing in the background. This is quite a new thing for me and it has only really happened in the last few years. Before then I knew lot of beginnings, endings and bits of solos, but I didn’t have the patience to learn and play the whole song and playing along to a record (yes, vinyl) wasn’t fulfilling enough for me. So what has happened in the last few years to change this? What can a bedroom guitarist do to get along? Read on and I’ll share my tips to help make learning to play an electric guitar more fulfilling. If you’re in a hurry you can skip to the Resources for the modern guitarist section.

The old way of learning

Playing an electric guitar When I first started learning to play the electric guitar many years ago the first choice I had to make was how to learn. Do I go and get lessons (hmm... expensive), or do I teach myself. I chose the later, egged on perhaps by my friend Phil who played in a band and was very, very good. We used to pass a music shop on the way to work and he was forever trying to get me to go in and buy a guitar. Well, I did just that one day and I trotted off home with my pink Marlin Sidewinder and my Roland DAC 10 practice amp. Shocking colour, but it was in the sale so I got it cheap. Besides, I didn’t care what it looked like, I simply wanted to have a go.

Phil explained to me how tablature worked and gave me some basic pointers about stringing a guitar and tuning it. So off I went with this information - and got nowhere fast! As I mentioned earlier I was quite impatient. I learned by ear and occasionally tablature, although to be honest it was mostly by listening. Armed with some basic knowledge, namely power chords, string bending techniques, various muting techniques and of course the good old blues scale I was able to make some progress but it wasn’t enough to get me playing songs.

One problem is that whilst listening to songs I could more or less work out what was going on, but some bits I just couldn’t figure out and with the technology of the time, tape decks and turntables, there was no really effective way to repeat the bit you wanted to learn. I’m sure if I had the money I could have bought some specialist equipment to help, but it was all back to money again. Tablature helped a bit, but again it was a case of either buying books from the music stores or borrowing them from the library on the rare occasions the had some of the music books you were interested in. I did okay though considering. I honed my skills and at least made some of the right sounds.

Another problem that I had was what to do when I’d learned enough of a song to almost play it. Well basically I did the same thing that I did when I was learning except that I didn’t have to move the arm back to repeat bits of the song. I just played along to a record complete with the original guitarist in the background. Okay, you get some satisfaction out of that, but it’s not quite the same as playing in a band, which is pretty much what every bedroom rocker really wants to do, even if they don’t admit it to themselves. When they are rocking out and chugging out those power chords, they’re dreaming of being watched and listened to. Personally, when it comes to the crunch and I have a real live audience I tend to get very nervous and get the shakes. Not exactly sure what that’s all about, but hey, I still have a good time (eventually).

Resources for the modern guitarist

The good news is that there so many resources out there (usually free) for anyone who wants to play and electric guitar and with professional quality backing tracks, playing along to your favourite tune is now so much more fun. The growth of the Internet, PCs, smartphones and even console games are all responsible for this.

MP3 players

To begin with learning to play by ear is now far easier than it ever was. I mentioned playing along to records earlier on and how cumbersome it was trying to repeat the same small piece. Well this was somewhat solved by the invention of the CD player, but even then you had problems if it was a particularly tricky or fast song. These days however, most of us are listening to digital music files such as MP3s and they are much more convenient. It’s possible to repeat a part of a song and even slow it down without loosing pitch. Also, with all the digital sound processing and equalisation plugins that are available, you can really bring out guitar sound that you are trying to listen to. My personal favourite MP3 player is still Winamp and there are a huge range of helpful plugins available.

YouTube

Sometimes I would pick up bits and pieces by watching videos. I had a Tony Iommi Master Licks video (VHS) once that I used to try and learn from. These days however the Internet is saturated with videos from both original guitarists and others who play cover versions of their songs. Many cover playing guitarists on YouTube will often provide a very good camera angle and sometimes even some lessons on how to play a particular song. In fact I’d say that YouTube is one of the most handy resources I’ve used recently. Do shop around though and check out different versions of the song. There are quite a lot of guitarists who don’t quite get it right. Checkout out lots of different examples is a good way to get a feel for how it should be played and even better if you can see the original band playing it too.

Tablature

Tablature is still a good way to learn songs. It can help you nail those fiddly little bits that you can’t quite hear on the original track, and these days you’re less likely to have to trek down to the music shop as there are loads of sites that have guitar tabs, bass tabs and drum tabs for all you’re favourite songs. My personal favourite guitar tab site is Ultimate Guitar. Again, it’s a good idea to check out different versions because sometimes the tabs are wrong and you’ll find lots of different ways to play the same song. A good judgement call is required here. By listening to the song and possible watching the original band you should be able to figure out which are the best tabs to learn from.

Software

If you’ve visited Ultimate Guitar then you may have noticed tabs labeled Guitar Pro or Power Tab. To use these you need some software for your PC and I personally use Guitar Pro and have found it immensely useful in learning songs. As ever you need to download a few versions and compare them to see what’s right. With this software (which uses midi files) you can scroll through the tablature on screen, slow it down speed it up and loop particular sections that you want to learn. The software will usually highlight the notes as it plays them and you can solo or mute certain instruments such as rhythm guitar, bass, drums etc. As well as tab view there’s a fretboard or keyboard view, you can transpose the entire song into a different key, you can even create your own songs! These tools are a fantastic way to learn using tab because you can actually play the song and see the notes highlighted, either on the tab or on a fretboard.

Backing Tracks

This is the bit that actually makes playing along to your favourite songs in your bedroom fun again. Modern real instrument backing tracks make it possible for you to virtually take the place of the original guitarist and be part of the band. Well, okay maybe not quite, but it’s definitely a big step up from simply playing along to the original sound track. Another side benefit is that there are quite often several different versions of the same song, some with volcals and some without, sometimes they have also been done by different cover bands so you can have quite a bit of variety of backing tracks to play along to. There are many sites on the Internet hosting backing tracks but my favourite is guitarbackingtrack.com. A Google search may turn up many other sources of guitar backing tracks. Playing along to a backing track will help enforce the structure of a song in your mind because you don’t have anyone there to help you - you’re the guitarist! This is perhaps one of the most important discoveries I have made in recent years and it has improved my ability to play songs and enjoyment of playing immensely.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band

This is one might perhaps come as a bit of a surprise. Whilst not really a useful learning tool, these console games can come in handy when you need a backing track and are unable to find them on the Internet. If you put the game into ‘practice mode’ you can play along to the song all the way through - hey presto, an instant backing track!

Smartphones

With the increasing use of technologically very capable phones running Android there’s lots of interesting and useful Apps (applications) that can benefit the guitarist. There’s everything from guitar tuners to chord libraries and a few other interesting bits and pieces. This is one area to watch and as these phones become more and more sophisticated they’re likely to become even more useful to the guitarist.

With the help of some or all of the resources above you’ll be rocking along with your favourite bands in your bedroom in no time at all. Good luck and happy playing!