The Path to Guitar Playing

There are many elements to getting more out of your guitar playing and lots of ways to have fun doing it. This is a process we hope to talk about a lot more.

Naturally there's the basic of learning guitar;

Holding and positioning your instrument and hands.
This can lead to some really bad habits that will really slow you down later and could take you ages to re-learn. I really wish everyone could have at least 2 lessons with a human guitar teacher 1:1 so that people could be on the correct path form the get-go.
It's pretty hard to see what you are doing, even if you use a mirror or video camera, but at least they can help. You just need to be aware of the way you interface with your instrument and realise that it is very important o consider and monitor it. Long term your health could even suffer (RSI and joint problems). The solution is VERY easy, but if you're working on your own, you just need to make an extra effort to keep yourself in check.
We'll talk more about this, with pictures/videos when we can.

Tuning your instrument:
An obvious requirement, but one we can't avoid and need to do accurately. There's also creative applications of tunings like pen tunings and even micro tonality and different scales of other musical cultures to explore.

Learning chords:
Chords are great because they can also help you with scales and riffs (or is that the other way round LOL), besides the obvious backing track application.

Learning Scales:
Yeah scales frighten the heck out of me too. But (simplistically) you can just think of scales as chord shapes that help you to jam. That's cool isn't it?

Rhythms and playing techniques:
Oh yeah you have a right hand (left for lefties) had you forgotten ?
Plus all the left hand (right hand for lefties) things you can do as well, like hammer-ons, bends, slurs, mutes, vibrato and so on.

Guitar Attitude:
A lot more about this later

OK so my typing hand is flagging right now (damn qwerty strumming LOL) so terse mode on;

Guitar Music Exploration:

Composing songs with your guitar:

Playing Guitar in a Band:

Careers Playing Guitar:

Guitar Improvisation:

Playing Guitar Classics:

Different musical styles with guitar:

Guitar Technology:

Guitar Accessories:

Wow this list goes on.
So we'll come back and visit these topics when we can.

Happy Guitar Playing.
Peter