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What are the best instruments for a beginner to pick up?
(lemmy.fmhy.ml)
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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I have played guitar for over 20 years and I fully recommend guitar.
You can get a decent instrument for about $100. Don't get one a Target or Best Buy for $100. Those are toys. Get one at a real music store. Yout probably have locally owned used instrument shops. Those are your best bet for finding a quality instrument for a very low price.
Because guitar is so popular, there is an unlimited amount of free learning materials online. You can find videos on YouTube to learn the basics like how to strum and how to press frets. Once you can make sounds come out and feel somewhat comfortable moving your fingers around on the fretboard, watch a YouTube video to learn to read tabs. It's easy. You can learn in one day. You don't need to read music. That's a waste of time unless you want to play professionally. You can always learn that later if you decide to go down that path. Every song you have ever heard of has free tabs on the internet. ultimate-guitar.com even has many songs where you can press a play button and hear the tab. It makes learning very easy.
This is just my experience as an adult with little music background. I tried guitar and it was not beginner friendly for a few reasons:
Notes appear multiple places on the fretboard, which means chords have tons of forms. This leads into my next point of knowing what to play and where to play it.
For reading music (I know you say just read tabs but tabs have their own issues) there are several notation systems that all get crammed together to make sight reading extra difficult. For any given note, in addition to the pitch and duration from the standard musical notation, there may be instructions for which string to fret, which finger on the right hand to use, and which position to be in (how far down the fretboard your where hand is).
Bar chords. I really hit a wall with these and the awful contortions expected of me to produce these.
Counterpoint or music in two parts. Having trouble remembering where a note is as a beginner or keeping rhythm? How about we add a few more than will be fretted differently depending on what comes before or after and that have a different duration? Now move only some of your fingers so you can let one line ring out while playing together from the other line.
You may say that these aren't beginner topics, but they're all covered in the first book I ever learned from that started with how to hold a guitar and notes in the first position.
You had a bad book, then. Those aren't beginner topics. Don't learn to read music, it's a waste of time. I will die on that hill. Use tabs and listen to the song to get the timing.
You don't need to know many forms of chords at the beginning. Just memorize 4 of them and you can play most songs.
Barre chords are really hard. I don't think I learned them until like my third year of playing guitar. You don't need them as a beginner.
I used to teach guitar to beginners. Trying to run before you can walk just gets you frustrated and makes you want to stop trying. You need to learn the basics before you can learn advanced stuff. By basics, I mean, how to strum a single chord. So many books and teachers want to start teaching reading music or chord notation right away, and that's just dumb imo. Just get a feel for it. Strum open if you have to until you feel comfortable strumming, then add your fretting hand into the mix to make a chord.