Guitar Player, July 1984.Rock and roll is feeling. And after you know most of the basics”chords, rhythms,
scales, and bends, which I’ll begin discussing in a minute”getting that feeling is just
about the most important aspect of playing guitar.
In my opinion, you can’t learn to play rock and roll by taking lessons. Although a
teacher can show you certain things, such as songs and licks, you still have to sit down
and learn how things feel by listening. My biggest influence was Eric Clapton when he
was with Cream and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. I learned his solos to “Crossroads”
[from Cream’s Wheels Of Fire, RSO, 3802] and “Sitting On Top Of The World” [Cream,
Goodbye, RSO, 3013] note-for-note by slowing them down to 16 RPM on my dad’s
turntable. By taking licks off records and listening, I developed a feel for rock and roll. If
you want to play, that’s the same kind of thing you’ll have to do. Eventually, you’ll take the
phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.
One of the areas that guys put too much emphasis on is equipment. Once when Van
Halen was on tour, we were opening for Ted Nugent and he was standing there watching
me play, wondering how I did it. The next day at the soundcheck when I wasn’t there, he
asked our roadie if he could plug into my stuff. Of course, it still sounded like Ted. In other
words, it doesn’t really matter what you’re playing through. Too many guys think a certain
player’s sound has to do with equipment, but it doesn’t make any difference. Your sound
is in your fingers and brain. If you’re going to learn to play lead, get an electric guitar. It doesn’t have to be an expensive one (I started on a cheapie Teisco Del Rey). Acoustic guitars aren’t good for learning lead, because you can’t play up very high on the neck and they take heavier-gauge strings, which makes it hard to bend notes. (I use light ones, Fender XLs.) Also,you don’t really need an amp at first, unless you’re in a band. When I’m noodling around the house, I rarely plug in.
Most beginners want to learn lead because they think it’s cool. Consequently, they
never really develop good rhythm skills. Since most of a rock guitarist’s time is spent
playing rhythm, it’s important to learn to do it well. Learning lead should come after you
can play solid backup and have the sound of the chords in your head.
Playing blues progressions is the best place to start learning, because they’re so
basic, and they form the foundation for a lot of rock tunes. After you’ve got one or two
patterns down in a couple of keys, you can start noodling with lead guitar. Examples 7
and 8 are two shuffle patterns in the keys of A and E, respectively. Memorize them as
soon as possible. Eventually, you’ll want to learn them in some of the other common rock
keys, such as C, D, and G. “Ice Cream Man,” from our first album, and “Blues Breaker,”
which I did on Brian May’s Star Fleet Project, are 12-bar blues. [Ed. Note: In the tablature,
the horizontal lines represent the guitar’s strings (the uppermost line is the first string),
while the numbers denote frets.]
TOP 10 GUITAR LESSONS MYTHS #3 | “In order to learn electric guitar, I must first learn to play Acoustic guitar.” — FALSE!
I really don’t know who came up with this: maybe the outlaw devil music Wing of some fundamentalist church or classical conservatories stuck in the 19th century, to steer people away from steel string guitar thereby not bastardizing nylon string I really don’t know.
But as you can see in the link to the Eddie Van Halen article I’ve included here, this is probably the dumbest thing in guitar lessons I’ve ever heard of. You can start to appreciate the absurdity of this by putting blanks in that sentence and replacing guitar with other instruments:
“In order to play the saxophone I must first learn the Tuba. “
Well ummm… they’re both wind instruments, I’ll give them that so you do blow on them and so forth but I would think they’re going to diverge pretty quickly and so too is electric and acoustic guitar. Yes they have similarities and I play both as many musicians to do, but that doesn’t mean that you should be browbeat into substituting one for the other just because someone doesn’t want to teach you hard rock and heavy metal. Which let’s be honest: that’s usually what it’s all about: steering students away from that evil devil music right?!?! Yes, you have Metallica and the Scorpions playing with classical symphonies now but at the local guitar lessons studio level, you STILL hear this… in the 21st century! So what does Eddie Van Halen – one of the greatest musicians ever to pick up an electric guitar say:
I really can’t put it any simpler than that on and this is usually the direction of the Senetece: you don’t really hear metal players trying to talk people out of playing acoustic; always the other way around! I’m not sure where this guitar lessons urban legend started but I think we all have an idea here. Certain techniques many of which are outlined in my video so please watch it… they just don’t translate from one instrument to the other, acoustic versus electric they have some similarity and it’s great play both. But the best way to become a great electric player is to spend your time on electric; the best way to become a great acoustic player is to spend your time on acoustic.
Would you tell someone that was trying out for the Olympics for 400 meter sprint that what they really should do is spend their time in the gym power lifting or running marathons all the time instead of running 400 m sprints?!?! This is so obvious when you take it out of the guitar context that we’re so used to hearing. Don’t be beat over the head with that. Like the US Constitution says: “we hold these truths to be self evident.”And so my advice to all aspiring guitar players when you go to guitar lessons : do not be talked out of playing the instrument you want to play if someone tells you to play something else walk out and find somebody who will teach you what you want to know.
Top 10 Guitar Lessons Myths #2: Playing Fast is the Hardest Thing to Learn | FALSE!
Top 10 guitar lesson myths number two: playing fast is the hardest thing to learn and that’s where I should spend most of my time. This is actually false: learning the correct technique in guitar lessons slowly is where you spend most of your time and scale it up from there.
Practicing the wrong technique may get you playing initially somewhat faster than you could if you were to play correctly however you will hit a glass ceiling with speed very quickly. When this happens, you won’t be able to play any faster, and won’t be able to play up the tempo of the song you’re trying to do… and then you will have to start over and retroactively work backwards. Undoing bad technique is way way harder – 10 times harder – than doing it correctly the first time. Believe me I know I’ve had to retroactively reproduce songs that were done badly by EDM producers with outdated sound design!
As a guitar teacher in the early 2000s, I would get a lot of classic rock and blues players in successful cover bands who would come to me because the 80s metal tunes were beginning to hit the twenty-year nostalgia point and audiences were requesting them. And so the classic rock blues bands are starting to get a lot of requests for Van Halen and Randy Rhodes and Ratt lot of the technical bands of that era.
These were very, very good, very accomplished blues players but they were three finger players and they didn’t know that in order to play these artists that I just mentioned they would need four finger technique because a lot of the 80s solos were based on seven notes scales. So I would have to tell these very accomplished players that their technique was actually all wrong for what they were trying to do. It was great for a play minor Pentatonics but not effective for playing seven note diatonic or melodic scales such as the major and minor scale. I watched very accomplished players in the classic rock and blues domain have to start from scratch in guitar instruction and undo all of these things and then start back over. Not a very fun place to be! You want to learn how to do this right the first time and play the correct technique.
One artist who has a lot to say about this in interviews this Kirk Hammet who is really adamant about playing slow and also playing clean for metal players. They want to turn up the gain and the delay and the reverb and those are really cool sounds, I use them all the time. But you don’t want to learn to play that way! One of the best things that happened to me was when my whammy bar system on my Steinberger Epiphone spotlight broke I had to convert it to a fixed bridge. And that’s what made me really a good guitar player was not being able to hide behind the whammy bar or effects. One of the things I stress in metal guitar lessons :If you do play distorted, play completely dry: no reverb, no delay, nothing really. So you can hear how you really sound. As the saying goes: “garbage in, garbage out” and you want to understand the correct technique to use from the very beginning.
Play it right, play it slow. The speed will come and often quite easily!
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