I've tried learning twice (with a few lessons) with no success. Is there still hope for my 59 yr old fingers? Where should I start and with what kind of guitar. I had an Ovation, but was told the neck was too thin for me; could that be?

It's NEVER too late. I wish you were in this area. I would never charge, but one of the most satisfying things I do is help people learn guitar. I currently help three kids from a family I help, three mid-level players who want to learn jazz and a VP at one of the financial institutions I do contract work for.

Lessons are GREAT, but some professional teachers intentionally dole out things in a manner designed to maximize the number of lessons students buy.

You already have a lot of the basics. If you decise to proceed, email me and I'll try to help with some shortcuts. Guitar is a great instrument, and easy to understand (the basics, anyway) if you get the right start.


Good luck!

Russ

[This message has been edited by captain Russ (edited 04-16-2009).]

Hi cass,

I've been playing since i was 5. Guitar is awesome. I would actually suggest learning on a cheap electric. The action is low, use extra light guage strings. Much softer on your fingers. Both these recommendations are based on ease of learning and not getting discouraged, not for overall sound purposes.

I say learn how to play chords first, It will build your confidence in a shorther time. call me anytime for advice or any tips. my phone numbers are on my sites.

Good Luck

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God Bless,
Mikey

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www.77bucks.com Affordable web design

Neck thickness is not really an issue and is more a matter of personal taste. The Ovation was probably fine. It's more a matter of what feels comfortable for you. I have Gibsons that have thicker necks and Fenders that have slimmer necks but they are all quite playable.

But Mikey's point about getting a guitar that has a comfortable action is a good one. You want to have a guitar that isn't awkward to play by having too high an action and having lighter gauge strings is a good idea. You can always increase the gauge as your fingers get stronger over time. But a lighter gauge and low action will let you easily play barre chords along the full range of the the neck that will allow you to play a lot of songs by just knowing a few basic barre chords.

And nowadays cheap guitars can be very good value thanks to computer controlled manufacturing. Just go down to a local guitar store and try a few out to see what feels good to you ( electrics or acoustics ).


[This message has been edited by Nigel (edited 04-16-2009).]

Isn't it amazing how people jump out of their skin to help someone with their expertise for free.
It could turn this site into something useful for the lesser talented to subscribe to for a change.
Ray

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Ray The Saint

I agree 100% on this recommendation and electric squire will cost you $99 and they are very easy on the fingers.

I started teaching 5 teenagers at church a couple a years ago all of them became good players better than me,but I'm not a very good guitar player



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www.tagworld.com/vicentelopez


HE'S COMING, MAKE MUSIC, GET READY!

I agree with working on your chords first. Once you learn the variations of one barre chord, you basically know many....

Good luck!

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Bill in Dayton

YOU GUYS ARE GREAT! Thanks so much for all the advice. I have a friend willing to lend me her nylon string acoustic and have access to a great used guitar store too. I'll start there.

Feel free to keep the thread alive. I'm sure I'm not the only one interested in learning guitar. We can all benefit from all your many talents. Thanks everyone.

I have been studying guitar for about three months. I’ll be eighty next year. No, it’s never too late. Find that chords are as much a problem as learning the notes of the fret board, because of problems with finger positioning to prevent buzz or muting of adjacent strings. So, I don’t see that much advantage of concentrating on chords at first. For me, chords can be more discouraging than practicing single note songs, at times. Sometimes I think I would do better with a Classical Guitar with a two inch nut. That would spread the strings a little. My hands are large so I don't have a problem with reaching the sixth string. Am using a cheap ($200) Epiphone Electric guitar which seems to work out well as a learning instrument.

There is an excellent guitar course from Legacy Learning Systems with Steve Krenz as the instructor. http://www.learnandmaster.com/guitar/ If you already know music theory, there is a lot of repetition in that area. But if you don’t have time or schedule consistency to work with a local teacher, that DVD course is a great way to get “personal” training in a structured way.

I started playing guitar at about age 11 and have played both acoustic and electric. Both Piano and Guitar are great instruments to help you learn how to play various other instruments too. That's why it's nice to have solid, fundamental musical skills on those instruments i.e. guitar and/or piano, at an early age. It's never too late to learn of course though. For instance, I didn't start playing piano (keyboards) until my mid-forties. How much time you spend practicing will be your quickest means of achieving your goal(s) of accomplishment on your instrument of choice though, needless to say.

All the best,
Mike

Cassp,
No you are not too old. What type of music will you be playing? We have classical guitars with wide necks and soft nylon strings – Acoustic guitars which have round holes, they are the most difficult to finger because of the gauge of the strings, they are normally heavier because of the desired volume. Electric like guitars Gibson, Fender and the cheaper models would be considered the easiest to finger.

Fact --- The most difficult learning on a guitar is to learn to play melody combined with chords, very much like a piano player. I would suggest learning chords, not just the fingering but everything about them. How they follow each other (Progressions) how they are constructed (What notes make up a chord) everything you can find get into.

Most the past 50 people I have taught I direct to chords combined with chord understanding. Note learning is great it will give you the entire picture but leave that for later. The chord understanding I am talking about will keep the doors open for future self-learning.

You’re going on a great journey Cassp, there is nothing as personal as a guitar. My last thought is about the people on this forum – boy, they are up and ready to help, after your 2389 posts it’s time you sat back and enjoyed.
Let us know how you are doing with the guitar.

John C.

Cassp,

I turned 58 in March and got an Ibanez electric and a Line6 amp for my birthday. I have fooled around with guitar on and off since my teens. I can play well enough to play rhythm guitar in a church praise band. Since I got my new guitar I have been practicing chords everyday. It's never too late.

Tom

Great thread. I'm turning 58 (a lot of us seem to be near this age). I used to play guitar regularly but stopped around 15 years ago in favor of learning keyboards/arrangers.
This thread has renewed my interest and a desire to pick up my guitar again. I thank you all for this.
Question - My hands/fingers are no longer the slim size of 15 years ago - hee hee. Can any of you recommend a tradtional electric guitar for larger hand folks? I have an old Gibson L6S from the 70's that my larger fingers can no longer squeeze into.

Thanks again for this thread.

Mark

Cass, lots of my return business is from clients who like the quiet guitar solos I do along with keys.

I also work with just guitar (nylon string-no vocals-all quiet instramentals), with a guitar, bass and drums trio (large jazz guitar, electric upright (son) and drum kit (grandson).

In the last month, I got a new Godin Kingpin (a 40's era style non-cutaway arch-top with a single P-90), a Guild 150 (large jazz hollow-body-single pick-up), an Ibanez Montage (Hybred-piezo and magnetic pick-up-on-board effects), a JazzKat PhatKat amplifier, an ART tube pre-amp, a tremolo effect box and a replacement MXR Phase 90.

Been playing guitar for almost 55 years, been getting paid to play for 53 years (since age 11) and still get that great feeling when I pick one up.

YOU'LL LOVE IT!


Russ

Russ, thanks for all the inspiration. I hope to receive the nylon guitar on Sunday. I'll write up a quick review of my first torturous chord changes. Who knows, maybe this third time will be the charm - I hope so.

I have to confess though that I haven't really played a "real" guitar for going on a few years now. The reason you ask? Well, I have found out that playing guitar on the 'keyboard' is really, really, REALLY FUN! My current Fantom G7 keyboard has some real nice guitar sounds on it, both Acoustical and Electric/Distorted. With such a wide palette of guitar sounds to choose from it is really easy and convenient to just use my keyboard as my "guitar(s)". I know that might sound a little strange to some but with the sonic improvements keyboard manufacturers i.e. the "Big Three and the rest of them" have made in producing better and more realistic guitar sounds (and other sounds as well), that I really look forward to the day when the sounds will eventually be "spot on" and you can't necessarily tell them apart from the real deal. They're getting closer and closer to that ideal even as we speak, and with each new high-end model that comes out things seem to keep improving. For instance with Acoustic Piano sounds we have the new and breathtakingly beautiful sounding Roland V-Piano. And I'm sure Yamaha is cooking up something even as we speak too (as far as piano sounds go anyway ).

The point being is, you won't necessarily have to go buy tons of other 'real' musical instruments e.g. real Guitars, real Pianos, real Bass's, real Trombones, real Rhodes, real Violins, real ***, real ***, real ***...... well, you all get the picture right?

PS: I'm not trying to dissuade you Cassp from getting a guitar though. Learning on the real thing is the best approach of course. I'm just trying to explain why for me personally (after years of "real" guitar playing under my belt) I now prefer to just use my trusty keyboard for essentially every known instrument under the sun, (including guitars) - to play them on. Which BTW, saves me literally hundreds of THOUSANDS of dollars - if not more, if I were to have to buy each and every 'real' one separately.

Just for the fun of it I am posting a couple of Nylon guitar demos I did on my Fantom G7. They are short demos I did a while back in demonstrating the "aftertouch" effect (on one of the demos) and just to give a general idea of how the nylon guitars sound on the Fantom G. Of course there are nuances missing when comparing to a real nylon guitar, but as I said, I am looking forward to when keyboard manufacturers will eventually incorporate more and more of the 'subtleties' of the real thing into keyboards to where you won't be able to really tell them apart. >> I realize we may have to wait 'awhile' before that actually happens though of course.

PS: I kept the files in .wav format to retain as much of the quality as possible. Enjoy!

Fantom G Bright Nylon Guitar.wav

Fantom G Nylon 1 Guitar.wav

All the best,
Mike

Trouble is, as guitar SOUNDS get closer and closer to the real thing, the skill involved in playing them idiomatically stays just as formidable...

Sorry, and all that, but to be honest, most of those demos sounded like a keyboard player playing a guitar sound, Mike. And you a guitar player, too! Have you considered at least getting a MIDI guitar, and using that to trigger the sounds? That might help pull a more 'guitaristic' performance from the sound, IMO.

Another thing might be to dial down the velocity sensitivity, to make the highest strength string samples MUCH harder to hit... It sounds, at least to my ears, like a guitarist (of sorts!) that has 'muscled up' on the guitar and is whanging away with all his strength! As soon as you back down a bit, it becomes more believable (a bit ).

To be frank (and fair to manufacturers other than Roland ), most of the really credible guitar keyboard performances I have heard involve the Tyros2/3 SA guitars, which do an amazing job of bringing in performance nuances in response to your playing (sorry about the fret squeaks, squeak, but they don't bother me!), especially when you keep it idiomatic.

But then again, I've heard really bad, un-idiomatic demos of the same sounds that fail utterly to convince. It really IS down 99% to the performance, I'm afraid...

BTW, before anyone 'muscles up' on me, and demands I show them MY guitar emulation in order to be legitimate in my criticism, let me just point out I come from the other end of the spectrum...

I rarely EVER try to do guitar emulation, at least acoustic and nylon, simply because i DO find it next to impossible to stay completely idiomatic and still express what I hear in my head. Real guitarists always achieve this without, so it seems, the slightest effort whatsoever... Hence, I tend to nearly always play with a guitarist!

Leave them to what they do best, and leave myself with what I do best... It seems to work out admirably

But, at least from working with real guitarists (and some quite good ones, too), I feel I've got a pretty good ear for what IS good emulation, and what isn't. Sorry that this is how I feel, but of all the sounds in a keyboard, guitar is the one I generally cringe when I hear someone try to emulate unless they are VERY skilled at it. Of course, in the meanwhile, arrangers are making great strides in achieving believable guitar strumming and picking on the auto side of things, but on the whole, I haven't seen much that can make bad emulation into believable on the 'live' side of things.

Of course, JMO... yada yada yada....

[QUOTE]Originally posted by captain Russ:

I also work with just guitar (nylon string-no vocals-all quiet instramentals), with a guitar, bass and drums trio (large jazz guitar, electric upright (son) and drum kit (grandson).

Russ, Now you have me drooling.

John C.

I agree with Diki about the guitar as far as strumming sounds and lead guitar.

I think as far as just picking, you can do fine with a keyboard.

I play a handmade Yamaha LL 400 acoustic - cost about $1000 ten years ago - and a Yamaha Custom shop Pacifica USA 2 electric. Both good instruments.

Beakybird