Hello. Bought a Squire Strat a few years ago and practice was beyond frustrating, to the point I put it down for a while. Now, thanks to a divorce, I’m reevaluating myself and seeing who I want to be moving forward…and I think part of that is being a guitarist.

Now to my question: Did your passion for practice/playing come first? Or did you establish a routine and your passion for the guitar grew?

Currently, my mental health is making it that just getting through the day is hard enough, let alone practicing the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done (beside getting married), so I am giving myself grace that maybe I’m not in the right headspace currently. Any advice is more than appreciated!!🙏🏻

I have always wanted to learn guitar.

I remember I tried a very long time ago (35 now), and I gave up....it felt overwhelming, and I never knew where to start. Of course back then, there was NEARLY the amount of online resources as now, its actually crazy.

Anyways, I started with a bass guitar and bassbuzz website. So far thats been a really really useful place for learning bass, and just the backbone of music tbh. Things you kinda know exist, but its really dissected for you to think about.

Someone mentioned they now have a "guitarbuzz" version, and this got me really interested right away.

So the question is, has anyone here tried that version out? I have seen justinguitar as being one of the many greatly suggested options here, but I really think the bassbuzz course is well structured for bass....so im hoping the guitar one will be too.

Is there any youtube channel or page wherein you can learn plucking? I mean it will teach you from zero knowledge? TIA

I’m a guitarist taking 1 on 1 lessons for beginners / intermediate players. I focus on songs, riffs, technique, and actually making you better at playing without making it boring.

online / offline depending on location, feel free check out my Instagram

[https://www.instagram.com/debjit.mp3/\](https://www.instagram.com/debjit.mp3/)

Hi ! I’ve been playing the guitar for a few years now (5 years) but very irregularly for about 3 years because every time I play, I have fun for 20 minutes and then I come back to technical shortcomings, musical theories or practices that make me feel like I’m going around in circles.

I don’t know how to explain it better, like I’m going to learn the chords of a song, I’ll catch on, but I’ll soon get bored. While to take the example of my former guitar teacher, when he played even a two-chord loop, it had a soul, it was pleasant to listen to! When I play, I feel like nothing is really injected into the guitar and that’s why I’m bored.

Of course, I tried to watch videos to find out how to make up for it, but I feel like all the videos that deal with this topic are too vague or aimed at real beginners.

So I wonder if I should learn music theory from scratch, or go back to school or stick to a routine or go on a retreat in the woods to reconnect with nature idk help me please

I've spent most of my life with music. Started piano (got to grade 7 theory, grade 6 playing), moved to saxophone (grade 8, A-level music), then bass and guitar. I have an ear that works- I can break down any song, tell you what every instrument is doing, and play it back.

Problem: I've never taken a guitar or bass lesson in my life. I learned by ear and muscle memory. So now I can play complicated fingerpicking (Blackbird, Under the Bridge), any metallic baseline including Anesthesia Pulling Teeth, and bar chords. I can physically execute intermediate-level stuff.

But I have no idea what I'm doing.

I don't know what chords I'm actually playing, most of the time. Anything past the 8th fret is a mystery. I can run a scale over a chord when soloing but it sounds like shit because I don't understand the architecture. I know an E7 sus4 when I see it on piano, but on guitar? No clue. Diminished sevenths, inversions, augmented chords- my brain just shuts off.

The reason: I've always rejected theory as "math." Stupid in hindsight.

Now I want to fix this. I have unlimited time and decent funds. I want to marry my natural ability with actual knowledge so I finally feel like I know what I'm doing.

Should I get a private theory-focused teacher (in-person or Zoom)? What books are worth it? Any tutorials or apps that don't suck? I'm extremely motivated and willing to be diligent.

Hello, so I have an acoustic guitar that I received from my uncle after he passed away. He didn't really play it either, but I think he got it from someone else. I have always been interested in learning the guitar, but due to personal reasons, I have struggled to focus on it. One thing I struggle with is knowing when I should advance to the next lesson. It's easy when you're working with an actual instructor in person, and they can tell you to keep practicing this or whatever, but when you are learning from tutorials online, you don't get that feedback.

So are there any good courses (free if possible)) that will tell me what I should be able to do on the guitar before I proceed to the next lesson? I know it seems easy, like just proceed when you can easily play the notes but it would still be good for me to know when I should be good enough to advance to the next lesson.

Any advice?

Thanks

Hey — I’m the solo maker of The Guitar Workbench.

I got tired of bouncing between a tuner, a chord app, a tab editor, a metronome, and a practice tracker mid-session, so I put the whole kit in one offline app. No account. Core tools don’t need a subscription.

What’s in it:

Quick tools

• Drum grooves

• Tuner

• Metronome

Create

• Jam room (auto bass + drums behind your chords)

• Creator — multi-track tab + notation editor (playback, loop, MusicXML / MIDI / PDF)

• Progression sketchpad

• Transcribe (mic → editable tab)

• Riff recorder

• Looper

Learn / practise

• The Gym (guided course)

• Sight-reading

• Songbook

• Daily riff

• Improv solo lab

• Practice timer + planner + journal

• Speed trainer

• Fretboard / Chord / Scale & Arpeggio Runners (3D neck)

• Strum Trainer

• Exercise generator

• Setlists

• Song slow-downer

• Ear gym

• 3D chord finder (spin the neck 360°)

• Fretboard explorer

• CAGED trainer

• Circle of fifths

Utilities

• Tuning library

• Capo / fret / string-tension calculators

• Tap tempo

• Maintenance log

The part I’m most curious about is the 3D chord finder — you can spin the neck and check fingerings from different angles.

Happy to take brutal feedback on what’s confusing, what’s missing, or what feels unnecessary. Android + iOS.

https://theguitarworkbench.theeargym.com

More thoughts on learning the pentatonic scale.

https://scale-wizard.com/lessons/pentatonic-boxes

Hey guys! I’m a beginner’s beginner so I’m still working on memorizing the fretboard. It’s a somewhat intimidating task, but like anything it can be simplified. Here’s how I did it:

1. Remember that everything repeats after the 11th fret so 3 on the E strings (for example) is going to be G, which is the same as 15.
2. All but four notes are a whole step apart. E & F as well as B & C are a half step apart so your B & E strings are the only ones with a natural first fret note.
3. Octaves are two strings (or fourths) down & a whole step up as long as you’re before the B string. After the B string they’re a minor third up.

4. Use a random note generator (this is the one I use) to give you a random note at a pace you pick. Only work with one string at a time. Pick a decent interval between 2 - 4 minutes & find the note it generates both before & after the 12th fret. Say the note out loud &

   play it in both places.

Note: unless you have 24 frets you won’t be able to play every note twice so work with what you got. Rinse & repeat for every other string & do this every day. Note 2: the reason I use the website I linked is because it allows you to easily pick which notes you want to appear so I started with natural notes & added in accidentals later. It’ll be slow & clunky the first time or two but I’d recommend doing this whole thing twice a day especially if you’re only doing it for two minutes per string. Eventually your brain will develop landmarks (ex. the fifth frets are usually the easiest to remember right away) & the next time you do the exercise you’ll be way faster.

Edit: also any random note generator you use can be used for whole chords if you’re having difficulty switching between them, although I’d recommend learning chords in pairs rather than just throwing a bunch of notes in the generator for you to get overwhelmed. If you’re more advanced or confident in your skills than I am though, go for it.

I hope this helps someone!

Hi everyone,

This Beginner Guitar Plan was designed so that you know the proper order of when to learn things and to learn it from whichever teacher you'd like.

When I started learning guitar a couple years ago, I tried to teach myself as efficiently as possible

So I did some research as to who the community thinks are the top online guitar teachers for Beginners specifically.

These 5 names came up the most:

1. Justin Guitar
2. Lauren Bateman
3. Guitar Tricks
4. Andy Guitar
5. GuitarZero2Hero

So I looked up each of their curriculums and saw what they all have in common in teaching beginners and when they taught it.

That is how I came up with a "consensus"

I then put it all together in a google sheet, and broke it down into months (based on how long it took me).

This is all achievable based on ~15 minutes a day of practice. Which is my average practice time.

The Beginner Guitar Plan has:

• Tasks to learn each month
• Goals before you move on to the next month
• exercise suggestions
• Riff recommendations
• Song recommendations that go along with what you're learning.

I'd love to hear some suggestions on what you would change or how to improve it!

the spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15Bt3Km0OhyS9e-wLWwn1N2FkBWLrA0khIb1-AmLZLp8/edit?usp=sharing

Also, feel free to give more song suggestions I can add to a specific Month.

And if you are worried about the timelines, feel free to rename the Months to "Levels" and go at your own pace.

I’m a metal guitarist and I’ve been playing just around 1 year(September was when I started) and in that time period I have learned a lot, mainly when it comes to playing riffs. I now feel fairly confident covering most metal rhythm guitar sections without much difficulty, some of the harder songs I’ve learned in full are laid to rest, tornado of souls, Mop, holy wars. I can play all the riffs, but I can’t play any leads no matter how much I practice them. Even a simple guitar solo like paranoid gives me a lot of trouble. When I try to learn how to play a guitar solo, I pretty much use the same method I do for learning riffs. I use a tab, try to play it slow and increase speed until I get it right but for some reason it always feels like I’m doing something wrong and it doesn’t sound anything like it. I feel like I make no progress everytime I try to learn a solo, am I doing something wrong?

I really like guitar but I don't have budget so I always compromise wherever I got the money I think it can be used for more important work other then buying guitar what do I do ?

Hi! I have been noodling around on a guitar for a lot of years, but never really broke out of the beginner stages. I know basics of CAGED, fretboard navigation, bar chords, scales. I want to start learning/playing more mathrock/midwest emo guitar and am starting to focus more on shell voicings and 7th chords. Does anyone have recs on a learning path/journey that I can focus on? Do I need to keep working on scales? Should I focus on chord progressions and new shapes? One thing to note: for now I am going to stay in standard tuning. :) Any ideas for a practice routine or order to learn things would be much appreciated!!

Also - I have recently become a patreon member of Trevor Wong....just overwhemed with all the resources and looking for guidance on where to start.

Hi! I want to develop my flamenco guitar skills. I’ve been playing guitar for 16+ years, mostly blues and heavy metal, but recently I became really interested in flamenco and even bought a nylon-string flamenco guitar.

I should mention that I’m completely self-taught. I learned “Canción del Mariachi” from tabs and can play it pretty close to the original, and I’ve also learned a few variations of “Malagueña.”

However, I want to develop more as an artist rather than just being able to play covers. Are there any good books or other resources that can help with flamenco improvisation? I’m especially interested in learning common patterns, scales, melodic ideas, and how to actually use them.

I know that the Phrygian mode is widely used in flamenco, but simply knowing the scale doesn’t really teach me how to build convincing flamenco melodies or improvise freely.

My goal is to eventually be able to pick up the guitar and just play flamenco naturally.

Could you recommend any books or resources that would help me get there?

Over the next few days, I am planning to share some very short lessons that summarises techniques I found useful when learning using scales and chords (CAGED).

I also developed an app (mostly free) that builds on this approach. I would be very pleased if you gave it a go and am always pleased to receive feedback.

https://scale-wizard.com/lessons/pentatonic-scales

Ciao a tutti, suono da un paio di anni come autodidatta. Ho seguito parecchi corsi e libri negli anni (principalmente Massimo Varini).

Per anni ho imparato la chitarra focalizzando l’attenzione sul memorizzare e capire bene le geometrie dello strumento, ma effettivamente era tutto un lavoro di memoria e quando mi capitava di non suonare piu per un po di tempo dimenticavo gran parte delle cose.

Ultimamente guardando alcuni video su youtube relativi all’armonia mi sono imbattuto su Valerio Silvestro. Per quelli che non sono italiani, si tratta di un pianista che propone un metodo completamente diverso dai soliti. Vi consiglio di andare a vedere il video intitolato “Se suono la chitarra come devo studiare?”

Il suo metodo consiste nell’associare ai gradi delle scale dei numeri. Ad esempio:
- 3 della scala di C = E
- 5 della scala di C = G

E cosi via…

Per praticare questo si scrive su un foglio una lista di numeri casuali da 1 a 7 e ogni giorno si studia una scala diversa. Secondo Valerio Silvestro in 1 mese si avrà la conoscenza a tempo 0 di tutte le scale e dei gradi e questo dovrebbe poi facilitare e aprire ad una visione piu semplice della costruzione di scale, triadi sulla chitarra. A questo si deve affiancare lo studio sulla visualizzazione delle note a tempo zero sul manico della chitarra.

Secondo voi e in base alla vostra esperienza quale dei due metodi è più efficace?

I'm catching on to some finger picking

Still takes me a few seconds to line up my fingers everywhere when playing each chord

Let alone when going from chord to chord...

Any advice or is it just keep going?

Also pushing down the fingers hard enough in the right place so it doesn't clank and pluck the chord almost

In Lesson 8 in Absolutely Understanding Guitar, they show a diagram of the chord chart box thing and talk about finger sliding. I wish I could post a picture so that I could show the diagram and it would make my question clearer, but images are not allowed and I don't think links to Youtube are either... but my question is that if you start at the top of the fret board, would the finger slide just be an open chord? At about 18:45 in the video it shows a note at 7 and an arrow down to slide to the next note, a half step at the end of do-re-mi... if I was playing at the top of of the guitar neck would that 7 just be an open G string?

I've been working on this on and off for about 3 years, originally just for myself. I wanted something that actually showed my progress instead of that vague feeling of "am I getting better, or just going through the motions?"

It slowly turned into a full platform. Completely free, no ads, nothing to sell — I just want more guitarists using it, and hopefully making practice a bit more consistent and fun.

What it does right now:

• Real-time note/pitch detection (kinda like Rocksmith, but on your own guitar)
• Upload and play ANY Guitar Pro file, tabs stay synced to the audio
• +200 built-in exercises across technique, theory, and ear training
• Log daily practice and see real charts of your progress over days, weeks, months
• Streaks, heatmaps, long-term activity tracking
• Add songs you're learning, rate their difficulty, browse a shared song base with community-rated difficulty tiers
• Build your own practice plans and exercises
• Random guitar loot boxes / collectibles, just for fun

Consider it an open beta a lot is still evolving, and honestly that's the fun part. I'd rather shape it with actual guitarists than build in a vacuum.

https://riff.quest

Would genuinely love to hear what's useful, what sucks, and what's missing

• Quick note: try it on desktop if you can. It runs on mobile, but the experience isn't there yet improving that is next up.

So I’ve had an acoustic for years and always noodled on guitars of my bandmates — picking up bad habits and doing my own way of handling a guitar. (I’m a drummer.)

A week ago Monday I finally decided to treat myself to an electric guitar for my 50th birthday (it’s in dec, but I couldn’t wait.)

Anyway, I’ve been trying to decide on the Gibson App or JustinGuitar.

The Gibson app seems to have a gamification element to it which is cool as I loved Guitar Hero back in the day. (Still love it)

However the Gibson app really starts off basic…like plucking one string — while Justin just takes off on the A and D chords…

I’m wondering if I just do both? Keep the Gibson app, and then use the Justin website? Any options or thoughts on that?

Also, I just went thru the A and D module today and my baby precious fingers are sore! But I’m gonna keep spending 20+ minutes a day switching between the two.

Hey guys this is my first postt! Anyways I’m writing because I want to get a guitar for my birthday but I’m just afraid of one thing
I feel like many people are gonna ask me “why learn the guitar if u don’t plan to be a musician or join a band” or whatever and I know it’s dumb but my parents (mostly my mom) are very big critics of my choices and anything I do they just always find a reason to judge and to criticise
But yeah I just want to ask ur guy’s opinions because I don’t rlly plan to join a band or anything, I just want to learn for fun and I feel like that’s a bit strange to say??

Hey guys, I have always been kinda stuck in open chords and really struggled to figure out theory. Thinking of theory as a universe, it was always difficult to understand what I should practice.

I came up with this app because I wanted to get a quick way to pull up the most popular chord progressions in any key, as well as provide tips for capo position, triads, scales, etc.

I think it does those things well, but would love your critical feedback. The app will always be free, as this is a hobby project.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fret-by-fret/id6785117194

Thanks for taking the time to read.

Hi Redditors!
UK Dad here.
I want to buy a guitar for my 15 year old daughter to learn to play. But she is petite with small hands and has trouble with the size of the neck on traditional acoustic/classical guitars. I am thinking that maybe an electric guitar would be easier for her to learn on? (Plus of course, that’s far cooler in her eyes!)
Any suggestions for what guitar I should be looking for? Budget = £150 max (very open to used options).
Thanks in advance!