The guitarists here...

Yeah, Drop D sucks. Its the way to cheat at power chords!!

Spiff: find whatever method of learning you feel most comfortable with. I'm entirely self taught and have been playing for 3 and a half years. But practise is the most important thing for any guitarist. I used to play for about 2 hours a day. now it's only about 1 or so, but the practise shows. I learnt from tab books and total guitar (a GREAT guitar magazine for every guitarist). if you can then play along with CD's and stuff. I was never that good at figuring out stuff, although i've been getting better.

Another thing. Don't try to play anything too complicated. Try a mixture of chords and notes. I can e-mail you the C-major scale and the basic notes if you want. I typed them out for a friend of mine a while ago but they're still on my computer. I can also get you some basic chords (as in major and minor chords not just power chords). Just tell me if you want them! :)
 
Spiffy, if you want to get playing straight away so you dont lose interest, Drop D will do that, it makes no difference if its easy, it gets you to enjoy playing!
 
It isn't much easier though! Power chords require 2 fingers! If he wants to learn chord shapes and his way around the fretboard PROPERLY there is no way in hell that Drop D is the way to go about it!!!!
 
Oh my god, what the hell is it with you guitarists? If he wants to get going straight away and not sit there bored to tears learning what a c# is, tune to drop d and riff out! He doesnt need to become a virtuoso, so screw all the "learn it the hard way" stuff, rock on Spiffy. ROCK. THE F**K. ON. :) ;)

:D :headbang:

Slash: Total Guitar rules! Did you get the issue where 7 from Slipknot showed how well he could actually play? It was amazing, especially that death metal riffing at the end that he did.
 
If your in Sydney,get Timmy to teach ya,he'd be a hell of alot of cheaper and you have the added conversation starter,"god my guitar teacher's a dickhead":)
 
HAHAHA!

Actually, Chris is a good player!

Useless trivia: He actually tried out for Dungeon back in 1993 or so but I think he had a problem with his hands at the time and couldn't take it up!

Small world! :)

(And yes, my lessons are MUCH better! I'm not biased at all! :D )
 
Spawny..... Drop D is *NOT* the way to go!! Standard tuning is not harder if your playing power chords... how is a power chord harder than a Drop D chord?!?!? They are both as easy as guitar playing comes!! But in standard tuning you have a lot more options of things you can do!
 
Spawn: Yes, i did get the total guitar. And yes, it was very cool. He must be about the *only* talented guitarist in nu-metal!

And as for Drop D: I can't say i find it much easier to play power chords. It also limits what other types of chords you can play, and makes it harder to use the lower string when soloing, but i guess that doesn't really matter. I don't like playing in Drop D for the simple reason that it makes the songs i know too hard to play, and also because i know shapes, not so much scales. I know every note on the fret board of C, G and D Major but if you tune to drop D then the lower string goes to pot. I've got pretty long fingers but not long enough to be able to reach to the notes i need to that normally fall right under my pinky.
 
Its not that its all that much easier then normal tuning Troops, but to learn songs that are in drop d is very easy, and if Spiffy wants to get going straight away so he doesnt get bored, he should gor for that! Its easy to move from drop d to standard after you have played for a few weeks, its not going to screw his guitar playing for life!
 
Songs in Drop D aren't that much easier and there is less good stuff for him to play, and it will make learning HARDER rather than easier! Because as Slash said, its easier to learn shapes on the fretboard rather than what the actual notes are, and if you have a string tuned differently, all those shapes change!
 
You'd be surprised - a lot of what you learn in the first few months of playing can influence what you do for years!

I thoroughly recommend using standard tuning first so you can get your head around the standard shapes and understand the relationships between the intervals on all of the strings.

It's no harder or easier than drop D, really (except for power chords initially, but shit - you gotta learn sometime, you may as well learn properly from the start), it'll just set you up to be a better player from Day 1.

Trust me on this, I taught guitar professionally for years and if you check out FURY, one of the guys in the band was taught this way by me from scratch and within a year he was riffing like a mutha!

Just patience and practice, is all! :)
 
Originally posted by Lord Tim
You'd be surprised - a lot of what you learn in the first few months of playing can influence what you do for years!

I Just patience and practice, is all! :)

Yep Yep Yep.....

Man, get something that isn't too expensive to start on - but feels ok.
Start slow, I dont care what anyone says - it takes a while to be able to express your self on the guitar - and that also means being able to rip and shred.

Just grab that sukka , practice and have patience.
 
Originally posted by Lord Tim
You'd be surprised - a lot of what you learn in the first few months of playing can influence what you do for years!

I thoroughly recommend using standard tuning first so you can get your head around the standard shapes and understand the relationships between the intervals on all of the strings.


Exactly my point! Spiffy... don't listen to Spawn!!! Starting guitar with an alternative tuning just makes no sense! It will get you into bad habits.
 
You'd be surprised - a lot of what you learn in the first few months of playing can influence what you do for years!

I agree with this completely. I remember when i first started playing i (very foolishly/stupidly) tried to learn Aces High after about a month. I learnt most of the song okay, and luckily it's one of Maiden's easier ones, but after only a month i was in NO fit state to learn the solo. However, i now find that whenever i improvise it's very Dave-ish with a LOT of trills etc. although i still can't get the speed and stamina of Dave i've only been playing 3 and a half years. :)
 
Hey I'm back!

Not going to mess around with the tuning or anything - don't want further headaches on top of trying to play far-out things like chords, that's going to be difficult enough for me! :)

Won't be buying a geetar any time soon, maybe in the next couple of months. I think I'll teach myself at first out of magazines and books, maybe get an instructional video or two as well. I just have to make sure I don't get impatient and quit after an hour!
 
When I got mine, the thing that really hooked me into it was when I figured out how to play The Wicker Man's main riff :D