[Rune]

i agree with most of malevolence's post except for a few things


I'll start with the thing that i noticed first and straight off the bat, and if you follow this thing that he said you will learn a bad habit that is the mark of a bad guitarist

Rule #1 for playing guitar: DO NOT EVER.....may i emphasize....DO.....NOT.....EVER use distortion to cover your mistakes, it will make you feel like playing sloppily is ok and you will never truly master a song.

The best example i can give you is this: let's say you take that advice and you learn a song and just crank the distortion on the part you can't play that well so it sounds ok because it's more or less drowned out.

A few days later you go over your friend's house and he asks you to play the song (after you having told him you can play it very well and it being his favorite song) so he hands you an acoustic guitar and says play. You're screwed, because without distortion you can't hide your mistakes.


My advice to you: learn all those songs clean on your electric first, once you can play them well, do them how they're written with distortion and don't crank the gain on your amp, you will sound 500x better if you can play the song accurately vs. drowning out your playing.


Nothing ticks me off more than someone who thinks it's ok to play a song wrong and just crank the distortion to try and hide it.



A few other things i would like to add:

1) Start with MOP first, not illusion. MOP has very very basic riffs in it and it's fun to play and will teach you hammer ons and basic barre chord shapes. It's chord progressions are not very complicated and you should learn them quickly, illusion will only frustrate you as a beginner because (as a beginner) it has awkward timing and it has a lot of bends and quick playing that you will have never done. It is better to learn two songs quickly (mop and then illusion) than to spend the same amount of time trying to learn one song.

2) Don't learn songs in order of the cd's, they dont' go up in order of difficulty through the cd's (as malevolence seems to think, there are easy and hard songs on every cd). My best advice is to start with My Own Prison, then try Beautiful (very very simple song as well), Wash Away Those Years (shouldn't give you too many problems except for the bridge, it's a step up from the first two). Those are the ones you should start with, then you can move on to songs like Torn (fills may give you a few problems, just practice practice practice), Don't Stop Dancing (will introduce you to a chord shape different from the barre and power chords you'll be used to by then, solo may be difficult, but it's not that hard), etc. etc.

3) Say I - Chorus is not hard at all (don't know why malevolence thinks it is?). It's a little quick, but i learned it by ear in my garage in about 2 minutes just humming to myself. Word of advice: The verse riff to Say I and the bridge of Are You Ready have some similarities (the are you ready bridge is much harder than the say i verse, so if you learn that first, the say i riff will be a piece of cake).

4) Do NOT limit yourself to creed, they're a good band to pick and choose from, but there are a lot of gaps in skill requirements. It doesn't slowly build up harder and harder, it skips and jumps, so look around in other bands. The first song i ever learned was the chords to the song Good Riddance by Green Day (better known as Time of Your Life)

5) What If - The intro to this song is probably the best thing you can learn as an introduction to finger picking. It's relatively basic and it repeats itself, but learn the actual song first before you do the intro as it will take time (note: when finger picking, use your thumb for the 3 thickest strings and your pointer for the three thinnest, this is not always how you finger pick, but it's how you do it best in this case...why? i'll explain that in a bit). The verse riff is very basic, don't worry about the harmonic (that screech before the song goes heavy), that takes practice, you'll get that later on. The chorus is extremely easy (again, confused as to why malevolent thinks it's hard?) it's two chords back and forth, you just keep your fingers in the same place and slide. The bridge to this song is my favorite creed riff hands down, it's mostly on one string and pretty quick, it will take practice but it sounds really cool when you get it at the right speed. The break down is 4 chords (3 barre and one open) it's very quick and you will want to be able to change from barre chords to open chords quickly.

6) Finger Picking: The reason i said above that you use only your thumb and pointer (as opposed to all fingers but your pinkey as you would normally do it) is because in this song there's a point where you need to go from fingerpicking to struming pretty quickly. You won't be able to do this at first, but the best thing to do is to cup the pick in your picking hand with your middle, ring, and pinky finger against your palm and picking with your thumb and pointer, then sliding it into your thumb and pointer to strum (this will take a lot of practice but makes everything sound smoother when you're transitioning, like when you play With Arms Wide Open).

7) With Arms Wide Open: Stay away from playing this song all the way though until you can do #6, otherwise you'll pause too long during the song and it'll mess up the rhythm. It's a fairly basic song, the solo is just a little harder than my own prisons, but it's not a biggie, this is finger picking and strumming, it's a nice little song, but again when you go from verse to chorus you need to change from finger picking to strumming and you'll want to be able to do #6 for that.





To make learning the song easier for yourself i would advise this: Don't start out by learning songs. Learn basic chord shapes first and practice changing from one shape to another. Once you are comfortable with changing from chord to chord at a decent pace, then move on to learning songs. You will see that a lot of songs use basic open and barre chord shapes and it will make it much simpler, fun, and quicker to learn if you can change quickly.




Also, don't rush into learning Ode. The verse, while not overly complicated, is very fast, especially for a beginner. This song is best learned once you can play What If's bridge (it's another one string riff). The fills in the chorus are very quick (faster than tha verse) and they will take a lot of practice to get the timing right.

i think i hit on most of what i want to say, if not i'll post again.