Getting Started on Electric Guitar
The 7 things you need when starting out on electric guitar.
Apart from a decent guitar teacher or guitar tuition course, having a playable guitar and good sounding amplifier will go a long way towards keeping you motivated and enjoying the journey.
Here are the seven things you'll need:
An electric guitar for a beginner: Here's the first place I think we're all in luck.
When I first started playing guitar, way back in 1976, a beginners electric guitar was something worth avoiding.
Guitar building standards have advanced by leaps and bounds since then.
A general rule of thumb for getting a good beginners electric guitar is to look at guitar companies that are big names in the music equipment industry.
They have a reputation to uphold, and if you know guitarists like I do, there's a good reason they want to make a good first impression.
You could buy a cheaper first electric guitar from a lesser known company, and you may get lucky, but my advice to you is to play it safe.
A decent beginners guitar can last you well into the future, and even if you buy something really expensive to play on later up the road, it's always good to have a knockaround guitar that you enjoy playing as well.
Just to back up my point of view, I recently bought one of the cheapest guitars I could find, whilst visiting family overseas, and with just a minor setup, it's very comfortable to play, well built and sounds great.
A plectrum: The kind of plectrum I would get is a normal V shaped plectrum.
The ones made of nylon are fairly robust and wont break suddenly from hard strumming.
They come in various thicknesses, so I would go for a medium thickness.
I find the.
67mm Nylon plectrum by Jim Dunlop to be about right.
A guitar cable: Just as a general consideration, the better quality cables are usually standard thickness and the ones that wont last at all are thinner with molded plastic on the jack plugs.
A better quality cable always has a removable cover by the jacks so you can see if the wire has disconnected.
The cable is the most abused pice of music equipment I know of, so buy a quality one, even if the electric guitar package you buy has one included.
It will break.
A guitar amplifier: Here's where the fun begins.
Your amplifier is fifty percent of the sound and choosing just any little practice amp will make you sound terrible, no matter how well you play.
Recently, I went out looking for a small practice amp to go with my beginners electric.
Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I hardly ever use an amplifier at home, as most of the time I'm in the recording studio and go straight into the mixing desk via a processor that imitates various amps.
There are some basic problems inherent in the idea of a practice amp.
Firstly, a good guitar amplifier sound has a lot to do with the kind of speaker and the size of the speaker.
The ideal speaker size is a 12 inch guitar speaker.
Practice amps generally come with a 6 or 8 inch speaker.
These will sound tinny on the clean sound and buzzy on the overdrive, or distortion channel (if they even have one).
My advice here is to go for something that models a few different amplifiers to cover various styles of playing, and has a few basic effects, most important of which is reverb.
Guitar amp modelling has been around for a while now, and it's the best way to make a tiny little speaker sound big and bold like a guitar amp should.
A guitar strap and a guitar stand? These are just optional extras that you would probably want anyway.
Nothing too special here to be concerned about so I would just get the cheapest.
It's also good to practice playing standing up every now and then, cos that's what you'll be doing eventually.
Electric guitar lessons: The way you choose to learn how to play electric guitar is really up to you.
What I can help you with, is give you some basic advice and tell you of some things that helped me along the way.
The first thing that helped me was that I got professional instruction from a teacher right at the beginning.
Whether you go for private lessons or get a DVD guitar course, it's important that you get started on electric guitar using correct technique.
Bad guitar technique at the beginning is very difficult to undo later.
Another thing that helped me progress a lot, was that I got involved with other musicians and learned to play in a band.
As a beginner, you'll probably not feel ready to play guitar with other musicians, so here are 2 things you can do.
I know that sounds like a tall order, so let me be a bit more specific.
Although, as an electric guitarist you'll probably use a plectrum most of the time to play guitar, it's a good idea to learn a bit of finger picking as well.
Another thing that a lot of guitarists neglect to do, is learn how to read music.
If you start out learning it, it'll become a lot easier a lot sooner and you'll be in demand as a guitarist with far more opportunities available to you later on, even if there are people who play way better than you on call.
Apart from a decent guitar teacher or guitar tuition course, having a playable guitar and good sounding amplifier will go a long way towards keeping you motivated and enjoying the journey.
Here are the seven things you'll need:
- An electric guitar.
- A plectrum.
- A guitar cable.
- A guitar amplifier.
- A guitar strap.
- A guitar stand.
- Electric guitar lessons
An electric guitar for a beginner: Here's the first place I think we're all in luck.
When I first started playing guitar, way back in 1976, a beginners electric guitar was something worth avoiding.
Guitar building standards have advanced by leaps and bounds since then.
A general rule of thumb for getting a good beginners electric guitar is to look at guitar companies that are big names in the music equipment industry.
They have a reputation to uphold, and if you know guitarists like I do, there's a good reason they want to make a good first impression.
You could buy a cheaper first electric guitar from a lesser known company, and you may get lucky, but my advice to you is to play it safe.
A decent beginners guitar can last you well into the future, and even if you buy something really expensive to play on later up the road, it's always good to have a knockaround guitar that you enjoy playing as well.
Just to back up my point of view, I recently bought one of the cheapest guitars I could find, whilst visiting family overseas, and with just a minor setup, it's very comfortable to play, well built and sounds great.
A plectrum: The kind of plectrum I would get is a normal V shaped plectrum.
The ones made of nylon are fairly robust and wont break suddenly from hard strumming.
They come in various thicknesses, so I would go for a medium thickness.
I find the.
67mm Nylon plectrum by Jim Dunlop to be about right.
A guitar cable: Just as a general consideration, the better quality cables are usually standard thickness and the ones that wont last at all are thinner with molded plastic on the jack plugs.
A better quality cable always has a removable cover by the jacks so you can see if the wire has disconnected.
The cable is the most abused pice of music equipment I know of, so buy a quality one, even if the electric guitar package you buy has one included.
It will break.
A guitar amplifier: Here's where the fun begins.
Your amplifier is fifty percent of the sound and choosing just any little practice amp will make you sound terrible, no matter how well you play.
Recently, I went out looking for a small practice amp to go with my beginners electric.
Just so you understand where I'm coming from, I hardly ever use an amplifier at home, as most of the time I'm in the recording studio and go straight into the mixing desk via a processor that imitates various amps.
There are some basic problems inherent in the idea of a practice amp.
Firstly, a good guitar amplifier sound has a lot to do with the kind of speaker and the size of the speaker.
The ideal speaker size is a 12 inch guitar speaker.
Practice amps generally come with a 6 or 8 inch speaker.
These will sound tinny on the clean sound and buzzy on the overdrive, or distortion channel (if they even have one).
My advice here is to go for something that models a few different amplifiers to cover various styles of playing, and has a few basic effects, most important of which is reverb.
Guitar amp modelling has been around for a while now, and it's the best way to make a tiny little speaker sound big and bold like a guitar amp should.
A guitar strap and a guitar stand? These are just optional extras that you would probably want anyway.
Nothing too special here to be concerned about so I would just get the cheapest.
It's also good to practice playing standing up every now and then, cos that's what you'll be doing eventually.
Electric guitar lessons: The way you choose to learn how to play electric guitar is really up to you.
What I can help you with, is give you some basic advice and tell you of some things that helped me along the way.
The first thing that helped me was that I got professional instruction from a teacher right at the beginning.
Whether you go for private lessons or get a DVD guitar course, it's important that you get started on electric guitar using correct technique.
Bad guitar technique at the beginning is very difficult to undo later.
Another thing that helped me progress a lot, was that I got involved with other musicians and learned to play in a band.
As a beginner, you'll probably not feel ready to play guitar with other musicians, so here are 2 things you can do.
- Find a friend who is also learning to play the guitar, and is possibly a little further along with it, and
- Find a guitar course that gives you backing tracks that you can practice with.
These are also referred to as Jam tracks.
I know that sounds like a tall order, so let me be a bit more specific.
Although, as an electric guitarist you'll probably use a plectrum most of the time to play guitar, it's a good idea to learn a bit of finger picking as well.
Another thing that a lot of guitarists neglect to do, is learn how to read music.
If you start out learning it, it'll become a lot easier a lot sooner and you'll be in demand as a guitarist with far more opportunities available to you later on, even if there are people who play way better than you on call.
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