You make it look so easy. Check out this guy I was watching. I'm not suggesting he's brilliant or anything, but my point is what he's doing with his fingers at 11:30 (if autoplay thing doesn't work). I know he says he's been playing for years, but that four finger roll across the first four frets! How in heaven's name does he make them fall naturally at such a distance apart?? There's no way on this earth each of my fingers will fall behind the subsequent frets. If I place 1st finger behind 1st fret, 2nd behind 2nd and so on, by the 3rd, my 3rd finger is no where near the fret, and my 4th finger barely reaches beyond the 3rd fret. I need hands like Jeff Goldblum!
Oh you just need to get a good hand stretcher! Kidding, there is no such thing (that I know of... ) But it's like learning to walk or ride a bike—things that seem totally impossible now will become natural and you won't even need to think about it anymore. You'll manage to find just the right ways to hold your hands to make it all work.
Brass? There are four types of strings; nylon, steel, nickel round wound, and bronze wound. Acoustics can take any of the three, and each will sound different. Also thickness will play a factor, but a decent Jazz or Blues set of strings 52-12 will give you a decent range of tone. Brass sucks for cymbals, so how would it be any better for strings? Get a set of nickle or steel. Standard tuning for a 6 is: E A D G B E For low tuning things get tricky after B. Good luck and get some decent strings.
I thought he was saying the rod in the neck of the guitar is brass or bronze. Though now that sounds rather foolish...
Practice. Practice. Practice. I wouldn't worry about your fret board hand too much. Mastering the pick hand is three times more difficult in my opinion. Your fret board hand will always lag behind your pick hand.
God the calluses I used to have as a kid. I haven't played for a year or so on my guitar, but damned the tips of my fingers can still withstand a nuclear blast. Although I think its horses for courses, I always used to pick away without a second thought given to it. My fret hand was always the slower one. And yeah, practice practice practice is all it takes. I used to get aches in my hand as a kid when i first started, until my fret hand started getting used to it. ...maybe that's why my hands now look like this...
No, I was referring to the strings. I'm guessing an error, but check for yourselves. In the technical details chart it says 'String material: Brass'. But then right down the page where all the phots are there's another spec list and here it says 'String material: Bronze'. I dunno. https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07L9Z3RQP/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1
Yeah, acoustic strings are often made of brass. Yeah, seen that too. I was referring more to alternate picking, sweep picking, string skipping, rakes, and the like. That's the kind of thing you want to learn correctly on day one so you don't spend decades years trying to unlearn bad habits. Tips of my fingers haven't had feeling in them since I was a kid. When we hands get cold in the winter, the tips stay blissfully numb.
Ah, okay. Tell me about it. It can take me several seconds to locate a given string when picking because I have to look.
I can play Happy Birthday... so long as anyone singing along does so in super slow motion. I also now have my brother-in-law's Les Paul copy on loan to see how I get along with the smaller body of an electric.
I'll start playing some today. So far, been using Justin Guitar to try to learn. Know a few chords, just working on transitioning to them as quickly as possible. Really having trouble using "anchors" and sliding my fingers, though. I'd rather just let go, make the shape, and reposition.
That's how you get started. Play it as fast as you can play it perfectly. Get a metronome and try to play it a few bpm (beats per minute) faster every day. You'll be as fast as Buckethead in no time!
Maybe I downloaded a free tuner app and it's far better than the little clip on one that came with the guitar. At least now I'm confident it's in tune. The version of Happy Birthday I learnt wasn't in chords, it was single finger on the top E string. It took me about an hour before I could labour through it without the video to follow, but like my fellow learner @frigocc transitioning between chords is going to be where my guitar's life will be most at risk.
