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Hi - I'm a newb at this guitar thing (2yrs now) - do the strumming thing mainly. I practice on a Takamine EG530 Electro-Acoustic.

Whereto from here (I know most chords - have started practicing barre chords and fingerpicking - with metronome - but feel it is going sloooow)?
    Cool

    Now take those same chords and create your own picking patterns

    examples: pick 1 string at a time from low E to all the way up to the high E.
    from high E to low E
    low E, high E, G, B, high E

    You have probably done this already, but play around with different picking patterns.

    Once you can play normal Barre(Major and Minor) chords try the Major7 and Minor7 chords.
    You can google for : G Major7 chord (and there should be a few chord diagrams to show you)

    And how about learning some of your favourite songs (download the guitar tab) ?

    Metronome by the way is a great practice tool.
      mmm the best advice you will get is to find a tutor......... it will speed up your progress immensely ........ and also you can have someone's brain to pick when you get confused by theory or have questions..... and someone who knows what they doing .......

      peace and light
      keira
        Keira WitherKay wrote: mmm the best advice you will get is to find a tutor......... it will speed up your progress immensely ........ and also you can have someone's brain to pick when you get confused by theory or have questions..... and someone who knows what they doing .......

        peace and light
        keira
        Totally agree with Keira on this one.. It's easy enough to learn the basics, but now you get to a point which you either really excell or you just kinda jam some chords..

        You could get some tabs, work on some riffy intro stuff on your acoustic, play some acoustic stuff, like clapton's unplugged stuff.. But really, if you want to get good and do so quickly, get a teacher!
          + 1 with Andy, Keira and guitar boy.

          I have no idea what level you're at right now, but i'm gonna give you my two cents (maybe a little more) anyways.
          There's pros & cons to almost everything in life (except maybe playing the guitar).
          You could be a well schooled guitar player that knows jacko about creativity, or you could be a self taught guitar player that has tons of creativity.
          You could be a Satriani type self taught guitar player or you could be a Steve Vai type schooled guitar player.
          What i personally strive for is to find that ground where i am able play the music in my head, on the guitar.
          And i think every guitar player needs to list their personal goals in relatively the same way as well.
          If what you want to play requires education, then find a teacher.
          If you can't afford a teacher (like me in my early days..after which, most i ever took was 3 lessons and if that means i'm no good at guitar, that's alright by me, but i'm happy and i can pretty much play what i want to), use your imagination.
          If you're confident enough in your skills and learning ability, then go for it!
          Technique, tone, compositions etc are all relative...what's awesome to you might not be so to another person, and vice versa (check out Jeff Healey for the technique bit of my rant and the 80s shred guys for the bit on tone).
          With regards to using the info thats available on the internet, there's tons of it out there (and its a potential minefield as well) and you should use your common sense to sift through the stuff.
          May the force be with you!
            • [deleted]

            It's a very tricky thing to gage what would be the best step for you. To add to the advice here I would say try to train your ear a bit. This will help you in creativity and learning theory. There are the traditional ways I learnt ie. identifying intervals and major and minor chords, modulations blah blah blah, then again you can throw yourself into the deep end and try to figure out the chords in songs you like by ear or make up something that'll go with a backing track you like. I would suggest looking for aural (ear training) exercises on line.
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