Learning to play guitar

[cobra_gordo]

That may be part of the issue. As mad as it sounds, spending a bit of money on a Marshall combo will make a world of difference to how she sounds. I went from something similar to the Third Avenue but it was designed more for keyboard than guitar to a 10w Marshall combo. It was a Christmas present and at the time, probably 1998 or so, was fairly expensive at 65 quid. It was only a small combo amp, not some massive stack, but the difference in sound encouraged me so much and genuinely made me want to get better. Plus it had distortion and I could sound a bit closer to Brian May or Slash or Ritchie Sambora or whoever I was trying to be that week.

You can get a new 15w Marshall combo for under 90 quid (Marshall MG15G-H 15W Black Gold Combo Amp | PMT Online) and they're half that second hand on marketplace and Ebay. Like you say, she's ten and it might end up in a cupboard with the roller skates, karate uniform and pogo stick but it could be worth a go.

Also worth stating that if she does take to electric it's a wonderfully expensive slippery slope. "What's that, there's a effects pedal that's basically the same as one I have already but it has one extra knob? It's £150? Sign me up".

Edited October 4, 2023 by cobra_gordo

[d-d-d-dAz]

I get caught in an awful loop of buying guitars, selling them 6 months later as I don't play as much as I should and then within a couple of months buying them again. I was alright at guitar as a kid, but broadly hopeless now.

If it's genuinely just a cure for middle-aged idle hands, and you have no intention of jamming with friends or whatever, I recommend the FENDER PLAY app very highly. It's questionable how much it sets you up to be an independent minded musician who can write your own music, but it's absolutely brilliant at teaching you skills and very quickly getting you playing along with familiar songs. I think it's so good. Really good for bass, too.

There's a tonne of genres to pick from; so if you pick 'PUNK', say, it'll teach you a basic chord progression, and then have you play along with a Ramones riff or whatever, and then another technical lesson, and then another song you know... rinse and repeat, with the difficulty slowly increasing without you realising.

Very fun for hobbyists.

[SuperBacon]

41 minutes ago, cobra_gordo said:

Also worth stating that if she does take to electric it's a wonderfully expensive slippery slope. "What's that, there's a effects pedal that's basically the same as one I have already but it has one extra knob? It's £150? Sign me up".

She wanted a loop pedal BEFORE she had an electric.

I blame Ed Sheeran.

[TibBo]

The key with Electric guitars is definitely getting a tone that sounds decent and recognisable for the song/riff you are trying to play.

The thing I recommend to a lot of learners is buying one of the mini Laney amps.  They have an app which you download on your phone/ipad, and you plug the amp into the headphone socket of your device.  Once plugged in, you can search any band/song on the app and it will give you that sound/tone through the amp as you play!  They have pretty much everything on there.

When you are a beginner and trying to learn something, hearing the right tone/sound come back out of the amp that you recognise from the CD is so amazing!
You can go on the app and create your own amps/effects too which is really cool for experimenting. 

I'm pretty sure mine was only about 30 quid when i bought it a few years ago. 
The app I use is called Tonebridge, but i think there are loads of others.  You can download it without the amp (its totally free) to have a look/listen to the different bands/songs/tones on there.

[Surf Digby]

I never considered putting lighter strings on an acoustic, mainly because I started on electric and didn't buy an acoustic until about 10 years later, but it makes sense.

I think one of the best resources YouTube has is backing tracks, because the best way to get to grips with chord changes is to just play, and playing with others (even in a virtual sense) gives you a sense of support.

Quote

My 10yo picked up the acoustic no issue, but she has massively struggled with her electric and is now becoming disinterested more and more,

With electrics, there's so much variety that it might be that that particular guitar doesn't feel comfortable or inspiring.

 

These all fall under the "electric guitar" banner, but they sound different to one another, have different shape necks (the one on the left is like half a baseball bat, and the one on the right is about the thickness of a pencil, and very flat), and balance differently. As a teen, I didn't like Les Pauls because there was too much weight at the bottom for them to sit comfortably on my skinny thighs, so I was a Stratocaster man for years.

Is the guitar suited to the type of music she wants to play? Is the amp giving her the sound she wants? When I started, my parents tried to convince me that I should get an acoustic first, and then move onto an electric later, but this seemed pointless as I wasn't going to be playing acoustic music.

If the amp can give a good "neutral" sound, then maybe sticking a basic multi-effects in front of it will bring the sound closer to what she's aiming for. Valeton, Mooer and Zoom all make decent budget models, and many of them have loopers built in.

My first guitar came with an amp and a distortion pedal, but only one lead, so I couldn't use the pedal (and I didn't know you could overdrive an amp) and I spent the first couple of months playing with a very flat, uninteresting tone until I got a second lead, and all of a sudden my guitar sounded like all those rock Gods that I aspired to be like.

Alternatively, it may be that she just feels better connected with the acoustic, especially if she's gravitating toward the singer-songwriter/Ed Sheeran thing, or like you say, she feels that she sounds a bit shit on the electric. This could be down to how electrics tend to be played as part of a group, and can sound a bit weedy on their own, especially single coils into a small clean amp.

[Chest Rockwell]

I put my guitar in to my computer and use a couple of different amp and gear simulators. You can get a decent sound for nothing through them. It made the most sense for me as I already had an audio interface and set of good active monitors. 

Depending on what you're planning to do and what your set up is  buying a cheap audio interface might be a better way to spend your money than buying an amp. 

Edited October 5, 2023 by Chest Rockwell

[waters44]

My nephew is obsessed with Seven Nation Army so I’m going to learn that and the chords previously mentioned

Bearing in mind I’m half an hour into this journey - can you listen to this - that squeak where my finger is going up and down the string is that normal? It sounds really loud to me. Also what causes the vibration sound? Is it not pressing hard enough on the string? Finger in wrong place? 

 

i also think I’ve fucked the tuning as well, as the top string seems a lot tighter then the second string! I think I need lessons just to start me off with all this stuff

[westlondonmist]

As a suggestion to anybody who REALLY struggles, even with power chords, do drop D tuning and it's easy.

[CAREBEAR LUVVA]

The squeaky finger sound is normal, especially with brand new acoustic strings. If you lift your finger further off the strings when you move your hand along the neck, it'll make less noise. The vibrating is likely to do with finger placement - you want to be pressing nice and firmly just behind the fret. Your low E (referred to as the bottom string, rather than the top) definitely isn't tuned properly - it should sound lower than the string that's next to it. Tune that string down until you get to the next E (if you haven't got a tuner handy, there's a free app called GuitarTuna which does the job nicely), and it should sound loads better.

You seem to be doing pretty well for half an hour's work. A lad I'm currently working with claims to have been teaching himself guitar for three years, but he's not able to play a simple pattern of three chords without forgetting either the rhythm or which chord comes next. I've no idea what I'm supposed to do with him.