Guitar Tabs For Beginners

I remember very well the first time I heard Cream's "Crossroads", a cover of Robert Johnson's blues classic. And I was completely blown away. Up until then my interested in music, especially in making music, was rather limited.

A friend of mine had started playing the guitar three years before me. We were sitting in his bedroom and we were listening to "Crossroads" coming out of his little tape recorder. And he just played along the song. The riff, the solo, just everything. That left me deeply impressed and motivated enough to get a guitar and start to learn how to play it.

Unfortunately, I didn't want to listen to the advice I was given. Everybody told me to get a regular, inexpensive acoustic guitar in order to learn the basic chords. But I wanted to play like my friend. And he wasn't playing a boring acoustic guitar, but a Fender Stratocaster copy. And he had a Marshall amp. And this is what I wanted, too.

The next day I went to the music store and I bought my first electric guitar. I had never heard of the brand "Rockson" before, but the fact that this guitar looked exactly like the one I had seen in a Jimi Hendrix video, convinced me enough to just buy it. Further to that, with a $50,- price tag it fit perfectly into my budget.

But that was some lousy guitar, I tell you. Uneven frets and a slightly twisted neck! But all that really didn't mean anything to me. It was after all my first guitar and I started to play right away. Or to be more precise: I attempted to play.

The first thing that I noticed was that I had no talent at all. Learning even the easiest things took me forever. Or just tuning the instrument was nightmare. I'm sure I broke countless strings because I strained them a little bit too much. And there was another thing I had to realize; my finger tips really hurt since I used metal strings, because I insisted playing an electric guitar against the advice I was given.

Nevertheless, it got better, slowly but steadily. The bottom line is not to give up. Even if you don't pick up on songs quickly and even if it takes you longer than other people. I'm no Jimi Hendrix or Paul Gilbert, but I can now play decently.

I kept playing consistently, almost everyday a little bit. Rarely for a few hours a day and only when my scheduled allowed it, and more often only for a few minutes. But that helped me to stay in touch and keep my flexibility in my wrists and fingers.

I'm glad that I chose the guitar to be my hobby. And the cool thing is, even my kids who couldn't care less about my taste in music, like when I play "Johnny B. Goode".

The German author Ulrich Dietherr runs a German website called German musik instrumente gitarren and features articles about electric guitars, or e Gitarre made in Germany.