What's something you wish you had known when you started playing guitar?

wiznrd · 3 months

I wish I knew how important the pinkie is. I just practiced being shredtacular with my pointer, middle and ring fingers and neglected my tiniest of friends. Now he grows strong and his pride returns and soon I shall shred with the force of not 3, but 4 finger pals. And there shall be great might.

f_zzyslippers · 3 months

"This is going to have to be your entire life."

imagineyouarebusy · 3 months

How to tune it. When I started in the late 1960's, I lived in a small farming community in the midwest. No one I knew could play guitar. I owned one for two years before i found out how to tune it. Till then, all I did was play single string licks.

I had a couple of serious strokes in late 2004, and was told to get my affairs in order. I'm still kicking, but just back into playing the past couple of months, and loving it.

It's great to be alive!

hcregular · 3 months

That there are 10 guitar players for every drummer out there.

yakka2 · 3 months

Why the strings (in standard tuning) are tuned the way they are.

EDIT:

Reason: Like Moonrabit, RadioUnfriendly said, and...

Because it's tuned in 4ths/5ths (discard the top or bottom note for a moment because they are the same) and because of the B string it means the circle of 4ths and 5ths spirals along the fretboard.

Buoie · 3 months

How to read music fluently.

jesselikesfood · 3 months

That you cant expect to get good by ignoring barre chords just because theyre difficult. (I prefer them now to standard, first position chords!)

nedak · 3 months

How important tuning is

Sam_the_scholar · 3 months

If you want to get better.. Get a practice routine, work out how much time you can afford on a daily basis to play guitar properly and build in some proper warm up exercises into this..

goose666 · 3 months

That the slower you go, the faster you get there, and that if your hands aren't both in sync with each other, you'll always be plateaued.

theripper5150 · 3 months

That learning songs by ear is extremely beneficial

meetmybryson · 3 months

how to play the guitar.

ultrantoday · 3 months

That I don't need all these pedals

r0kk0n · 3 months

proper picking technique, left hand finesse, and music theory

hexapus · 3 months

How to play Cliffs of Dover. Still don't :-(

cratermoon · 3 months

That acoustic and electric are not interchangeable styles. Each takes unique skill, knowledge, and practice. My appreciation for the musicians that can go "unplugged" and still impress borders on hero worship.

freeTrial · 3 months

That all you'd have to do to get slutty women in this decade was DJ.

"One of the dark secrets of the guitar: guitars don't play perfectly in tune. Actually, all fixed tuning instruments, such as piano, play slightly out of tune." (http://timberens.com/essays/tuning.htm)

Elonine · 3 months

I wish someone would have told me that I will never sound good in my own head.

achilles_last · 3 months

I wish I'd started experimenting with alternate tunings earlier, and spent a whole lot more time working on my bar chords

funkymonkey144 · 3 months

Wish I had known that it's not what you play, but how you play it. This applies to the instrument and the actual music you play. A good guitarist can make a simple solo sound good on a cheap guitar.

JerBear5352 · 3 months

How much my fingers would actually hurt at first.

darkyouth · 3 months

I wish I had known how fucking hard learning to play guitar would actually be. I hate it when people say "oh this song is easy to play or "that song is not too difficult to learn" IMO, BULLSHIT!!! learning to play most songs perfectly note for note on guitar is very difficult, and takes ALOT of patience and dedication. And I totally agree with the negleted aspect of the pinky, beginners should learn to use it very early on as it will serve them very well in the future..

mig-san · 3 months

Usually 'anchoring' limits your speed.

Non-playing related: Guitars have limits and i don't think there is one guitar that can cover everything, not without a huge stack of effects anyway.

gtwglenn · 3 months

How to read music.

greym84 · 3 months

On a gear level: whoever said the thing about pedals was right! But gear in general. I had a PRS Santana SE for a while and sold it to buy a high end Epiphone Les Paul. I could have saved myself some time and money and frustration just trading out the pickups for something more Gibson-y. I also which I had known that I the thing I was missing every time I changed pickups was alnico (I kept gravitating toward ceramic and had no idea what I was buying).

On a playing level: How much lessons matter. Here I am 10 years later. I know a lot of chords and some scales and can improv and play kinda fast. But I'm sloppy and I don't know half as much as a kid who took lessons learns in the first two years.

RadioUnfriendly · 3 months

Melody is what matters, and you don't have to play heavy metal.

music_user · 3 months

The difference between practice & play.

FuckChrisColinsworth · 3 months

How scales work and the difference between scales and modes. and how learning that lets you learn any song you want easily.

wekiva · 3 months

C A G E D

cyancynic · 3 months

That the hot lead singers always sleep with the drummer.

RainbowGoddamnDash · 3 months

That there's other chords out there besides power chords

McBlumpkin · 3 months

That guitarists are some of the dumbest, most narcissistic people on earth.

RadioUnfriendly · 3 months

How important it is to keep your thumb planted smack in the middle of the back of the neck.

BitsOHam · 3 months

The first year of my playing (Been playing for three) I didn't know how to tune it. Then it took another year to learn the notes. I feel like I've only been a year into my amateur playing. I wish I knew those.

Theophagist · 3 months

Well I started at like 17 then put it down after 2 years of never getting past power chords. Picked it back up at 33, and 3 years later, skilled axemen think I've been playing for 6.

I wish I knew back then just how capable I was.

wooly_bully · 3 months

Don't stress about it...this shit is really fun.

WilhelmSchmitt · 3 months

How much fucking time I would end up putting into it. And how much all that time paid off in the end.

gordonjay2 · 3 months

there's a huge difference between what sounds good on its own and what sounds good in a band context. bass, treble, gain and notes all follow the same rule - less is more. the midrange is where the important stuff is going on, so crank it.

the_jules · 3 months

There was a post on r/guitar about proper left hand positioning a couple weeks ago. OP complained about a weak left thump, that it started hurting when he played barred chords for a while, a problem I have been having for years now.

Someone suggested that it's less about applying pressure with the left thumb, but more about using the left hand to pull the neck towards you body and the right arm to apply counter-pressure. This has been absolutely eye-opening, barred chords have becomeso much easier to play. I wished I'd've known that earlier.

mainsoda · 3 months

I wish I had trained myself to circular pick from the start.

MitchsLoveSmilyFaces · 3 months

Stop worrying about your hands+eyes, concentrate on your ears.

orangesalamander · 3 months

Once I learned the blues box, I didn't memorize all the positions & the Major boxes. Partially because of the thrash invasion in the 90s made the blues box seem outdated, but now I wish I had memorized them and become as comfortable as I am with the blues (minor) box.

orangesalamander · 3 months

Here's a pro-tip: Raise the action and get heavier strings! I see new players with the strings resting on the frets and thin assed strings and I remember when I did that too. Thicken up the strings and raise the strings off the buzzing frets and you'll increase tone 200%.

ShahpEleven · 3 months

Pinkie, for sure. My pinkie playing has fully recovered though through practice. Also, It's super important for a new guitarist to practice picking down AND up. That was a big hurdle to leap early on in my playing, but it's the most important thing I've learned.

joshuajonah · 3 months

How to play with a band, less is more.

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