Becoming a Home-learned Guitarist

Okay, so it all began when I was about 5 years old. It was christmas eve and according to usual habbits, my grandfather was the one that played the music for the carol singing.
That was the day when I suddenly realized I want to start playing guitar too, and with my grandfather as my idol, I then walked to him in an urge to get help. Well. This did not exactly help as I was way too eager and not willing enough to listen, so I eventually gave up.

But this only lasted for a couple of years. Once I was 9 I then met a friend that owned two guitars, and he insisted on learning me to play a couple of simple songs. We then played and played for several hours in a row, and I actually learned 3 basic riffs.

From this somewhat boring story of mine I would like to point out a couple of notes for those of you wanting to learn to play :

1. It is important that you actually want to learn

2. It usually helps if you have someone that is patient enough to teach you, and does not try to learn too advanced things at first.

3. It helps if you have your own instrument, but this is not neccessary if you know someone who does.

And now, that I learned these few basic riffs, I then wanted to learn more, of course.
So I then started to look for notes on the internet, but in vein. I found a few and realized that even though I knew how to read notes, I had no clue how to play these on the guitar. So I called my friend – And he recommended that I should take a look at TABS instead. So I did !
Once I started reading TABS it all became clear to me. I started learning new songs, songs that I actually listened to myself. I mostly trained on the most basic songs by Metallica, like Enter Sandman and later on Fade to Black.
These two are great songs for learning guitarists, since they are kind of easy with only a couple of riffs to learn.

From this we learn :

1. It is important to find songs that you know and like listening to, because this way you know how it should sound like, and also this way you keep the mood up while listening to good music while playing!

2. You should not try to play songs that are too complicated, you will usually end up quitting and getting annoyed.

3. TABS are a great way to learn, since they basically are a ‘picture’ of the fretboard, in difference to notes [which, once you learn them, can be to huge help]

You should look for tutorials in Youtube, most of the famous songs have tutorials on how to play them, and also, keep looking for videos that have the tabs in them, since this way you do not need to switch between the video and your tab site.

Videos are a great way to learn. Here you have the visual aid, and also you get to hear how the song should sound like.
If you are more of a rock/metal music player, I still recommend that you practice on the acoustic, since this keeps your finger dexterity up!

Here are a few links that you might want to use :

http://www.911tabs.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmnfzxL9GVE  – Video tutorial on Enter Sandman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_y8jH-w85M  – Video tutorial on Fade to Black

Keep on training!
Only practice makes perfect.
Also feel free to check out my channel [ still kind of empty, but Im working on it !]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=iv&v=I2PNz3ELKzs&src_vid=nX2Rz8s_3PY&annotation_id=annotation_896635

DownLain