I bought an Epiphone PR-5E acoustic/electric over the holidays. Looking for good online sources to learn it. Thanks!
That, the REM Best of tab book and the Nirvana tab book were practically my teenage scripture. To this day I can still play the first half of Nevermind without needing to refresh my memory.
I can't honestly say I've 'learned' the guitar, but what I know I got from Steve Krenz' (apparently now Gibson's) course. Not cheap, but very well done. http://www.learnandmasterguitar.com
Thanks @stevesh I'll look at that too. @Lemex I'm learning Polly, but I can't change between chords fast enough yet.
There's a wealth of tutorials of varying degrees of quality available these days on YouTube. A resource that wasn't available when I started out but a great tool you can utilise for a real visual representation of what it is you want to play. There are even tuner videos in which it simply plays the note on each string from first to sixth for you to tune up.
@Lemex I'll try that one as well. I'm still trying to figure out Kurt's tuning. @outsider I'm going to be looking at a lot of YouTube videos. The guitar I bought has an electronic tuner, which makes tuning easy, but I want to learn how to do it by ear as well.
You'll find you can do it by ear relatively quickly. It's just a case of finding E on your first or sixth and tuning the rest from that. Happy strumming!
Nowadays I rely mostly on YouTube videos for everything from techique tips, exercises etc. as well as gear reviews and demos (just pick ones with good sound quality since a bad recording will make even a Mesa MkIV stack sound like bees in a can). I pretty much learned how to do pinch harmonics properly on the fly from a YT vid even though I've been playing for over 25 years (I showed a teeny bit too much pick which also made faster runs trickier than necessary; it was a tiny adjustment but it makes a world of difference), so it's definitely helpful just as long as you can distinguish the good stuff from the crap floating out there. It's also a good idea to check out a few vids and articles about proper guitar maintenance; even a great guitar can be a pain to play if it's set up badly and isn't maintained well, and a cheap guitar can be a joy to play when you've set it up just right and take good care of it. Likewise, you can always pick up new pointers even if you're a seasoned player, so it's definitely worth your time to browse those vids as long as you remember to also woodshed diligently and implement all that stuff. Anyway, The Tone King has a pretty good YT channel for gear reviews (just be wary of catching GAS), and Ben Eller has some solid stuff too (esp. his "This is Why You Suck at Guitar" vids). CSGuitars is another channel I like for tips on how to set up your gear, get a good tone, gear reviews etc. and of course Rob Chapman is good too, whether it's technique tips on his personal channel or gear demos and reviews on Andertons' channel (another GAS inducer). There's so much great material out there for free nowadays that there's really no need to pay for tutorials or such anymore. If only YT had existed when I first started out...
http://www.justinguitar.com/ That is how I started out. I would recommend learning up to the F (Major) chord using that site, or until you can do a barre chord, and then switch sites. By then you should know C, D, E, F, and G. Once you have those down it is time to hit up YouTube! For almost any song you can think of there will be a four chord cover of that song, likely using one of those four chords. Any easy chords that you don't know up to that point, like Am, should be a breeze to learn if you've already learned the previously stated chords. And other barre chords, maybe excluding B, should be just as easy if you have learned how to play an F right.
http://www.songsterr.com/ This helped me evolve as a guitar player a lot, I have not used the premium features but from what I have heard they are worth the money.
I know a guy in my town who is very good at what he does, I think he was # in guitar world's best teachers (something to that effect) anyway just google - Steve Stine- hes based in Fargo ND.
I've owned a guitar for about 5 years now (Both acoustic and electric). I can play some tunes here and there. But I just haven't seemed to be able to get the grasp of barre chords. And every once in a while I'll pick the guitar back up and start jamming. I'll try to learn them, get intimidated and give up.
Thank you everyone for the advice and links. I think things are progressing pretty well for the most part, though the B chord is kicking my ass right now. I agree that at times it does get discouraging...with anything like this, it seems like plateaus discourage people. I think people tend to learn quite a bit, then plateau in level of skill for some time, until there's a sudden break to the next level. Those plateaus are where a lot of people quit.
Just feel like it's a big stretch to have my pointer finger pressing down on all strings. I mean, I can play a barre chord...it just takes me like a minute to get my fingers in the right place lol
That's how I am with the B, which is a Barre chord, right? I can do it, but it takes me a while to get it. I can't just switch to it.
That's good, then; all you guys need is practice (even 15min a day is good as long as it's almost every day, better than 2 hours once a week, actually), but I'd practice that by playing some barre-intensive songs you like to make practice fun (back when I was 14, my barre practice song was "Fly Away" by Lenny Kravitz). Just remember not to squeeze any harder than absolutely necessary to make the chord ring clearly, otherwise you could get serious wrist problems later on. Alas, today I found out my main axe (a banged up Tele) seriously needs new pups: comparing its rock tones side by side to @KaTrian's Epi SG showed clearly that the Tele's double-stacked Dimarzios muddy up the distortion tones horribly (clean tones are nice enough, but that doesn't help much). Even the stock pick-ups would be better, but I'm really GASsing for Bareknuckle Flat50s. Not only that, my Boss CE-5 died a little while ago, and a new, comparable chorus pedal is around 120e, so replacing the pedal and pick-ups, I'm looking at around 300e (with shipping etc.) which I don't have.
