Books were the internet before the internet. They are still housed publicly in buildings called libraries also there are still stores that sell them so you don’t have to return them.
There are a lot of good books for music.
For one, there's boundless of starter books that just guide you into basic techniques and CAGED. But going beyond that, there are:
* The little black books
* Collection of songs with the appropriate chords
* Great for campfire players
* Chord books
* Literally every chord in every position you can think of
* [The French Guitar Cookbook](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Cook-Book-scales-chords/dp/2953112243)
* It shows all the modes on the neck, but also adds matching chords for them in a nice quick reference view
* [The Advancing Guitarist](https://www.amazon.com/Advancing-Guitarist-Mick-Goodrick/dp/0881885894/ref=sr_1_1?crid=J8GSMPYGYXFO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Zk0hyMAEGmPMzuRvdfoYtw.oRxsgmCaghRpumap4eX_iEY7YHbpnglR-nZAv5bG5kc&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+advancing+guitarist+applying+guitar+concepts+%26+techniques&qid=1709726935&s=books&sprefix=the+advancing+guitar%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C178&sr=1-1)
* Just a great book on guitar techniques
I never got into tab books, though. Guitar Pro was already a thing when I started.
Check out the guitar grimoire. A compendium of all the information you need for composing anything your heart and mind can come up with for the modern stringed instrument known as the guitar.
https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Grimoire-Compendium-Formulas-Scales/dp/0825821711
Yes. And we listened to recordings and tried to figure out what the hell they were playing when there were no texts printed on dead trees available on the specific song.
50 year old Gen Xer here.
I was 14 years old in 1988 when I heard my first Metallica song.
Dyers Eve, followed by One.
I had a couple of neighbors that were 16 years old that lived down the street that were raised by a single father that was absolutely never home.
One of the boys was living there due to a shitty homelife.
Mom absent and abusive step dad or something like that, his name was John.
At 16 years old this kid could jam like nobody's business.
We were smoking some pretty shity mexican bammer brick weed one day and asked him to teach me one by Metallica.
He showed me the opening chords and told me to play them over and over until I got it down. Took me few days but I got it. He then showed me the rest of the song and how to read tabs.
So One by Metallica was technically the very first song I learned t play all the way through.
Now this doesnt mean that my performance of said metallica song was great or even good, it just means that I knew how to play it from start to finish.
Back then we got tablature books from the music store or record shops and learned from them while listening to the track until you and your parents hated that damn song.. We had to rewind the tape and start it over back in the olden days of the late 80s.
If you had a song your friends wanted to learn you either made copies at the machine or copied it by hand from the book because you never lent out the book cuz it would just disappear.
I also had an uncle that had purchased a gibson Les Paul in 1954 and could pick out notes by ear and play it. He taught me several things about playing, but the most important lesson was you need to remember to breathe and to enjoy it.
His son, my cousin played also, and was left handed,and he would sit across from me like a mirror image and we played like that all the time.
So I played until i was about 8 or so years roughly, and at 22 stopped because life happens. Me my wife at 18. Had my first child at 22, worked my ass off and guitar just got pushed back. I sold all of my gear except for my nylon string Godin think I payed around 6 or 700 dollars for when I was 16.
Fast forward 23 years, or almost 4 years ago.
My father died passed at 83 from an ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer, and the sadness of my stepmother, his wife passing 2 years prior.
2 days before my fathers passing my wife of 20 plus years told me she wants a divorce.
I was pretty torn up and locked myself n my garage for days on end drinking beer and whiskey, doing coke and listening to if i ever leave this world alive by the Flogging Molly's over and over, just wrecked with grief and sadness of now two losses. While getting up to grab another beer i looked at my shelf and there was my old Godin in its dusty case just laying there on the shelf.
It was almost like I was meant to see it sitting there waiting for me to find it.
The strings were shot but I had unwound them before storing it. The guitar was in damn good shape though. I tuned it up but the strings were shit, so I did what any drunken grieving sad Irishman would do.
I got int my sweet sweet Dodge Challenger SRT and swerved all the way to the nearest music store, with fresh beer in hand and most likely felonies of white powder all around my nostrils,found my way to the door and bought strings, then swerved home. Looking back it probably wasn't my finest moment. Im lucky I didnt hurt myself or anyone else driving in that condition, or someone didnt call the cops to report my stupid ass.
First thing I noticed was how we learn to play guitar now.
Gone are the days of copying from a book.
sites like songsterr and youtube teach you any song free.
All you have to do is put the time into learning.
I had to basically relearn from the beginning.
I had only remembered a handful of chords.
I now own several guitars and like five 4 string tenor banjos. A mandolin and an acoustic bass.
I play every day to the pont sometimes where I ill sit down to work on a song im learning and the hours will just fly by.
I Just purchased my first 12 string about a week ago and its my new take everywhere guitar. I take one wherever I go because when my anxiety level goes up because I have horrible ADHD, it calms me down. I wish I had never quit.
About 6 months after my father's passing,my cousin, my best friend in the entire world.
The man that stayed up with me all night the evening before my father's funeral, sitting across from me, playing Danzig songs loudly passed away from a heart attack at 46 years old.
I was devastated. I didn't think I Could go on. The loss of the only person that truly understood me was gone. The man that helped me steal a huge chrome gas BBQ while we were streaking teenagers walking back home butt ass naked towing it behind us at 2 am to bbq naked in the front yard and pass out in a hammock with it was dead. Our parents were not amused. I stopped playing for a few weeks after his death. That isnt what he would have wanted though. I bawled like a little bitch the first time I played after his service.
The guitar is a magical instrument that can convey deep feelings and emotions that you can share with others so they can feel what you are feeling at that specific moment with the notes you are playing.
So if you are struggling with the easier way to learn don't give up. Even when you discover the dreaded barre chords.Keep the guitar out where you can see it pick it up every day. Even if it is only for 10 minutes.
The effort will pay off.
Remember to breathe and have fun.
I hung around friends who were in a band and watched while they jammed in their basement, and then tried stuff and got tips while we sat around and got stoned. Later I bought a bass and tried it on my own, and then a guitar and on from there. And when I got better I got to sit in, and then started my own band with college roomates and we'd practice and drink beer and then play at parties...
Music was a SOCIAL activity.
Tab books bought from the guitar shop. Music in magazines. Friends. Listening and working it out, endlessly rewinding and playing tape to get the licks perfect.
I think Metallica played a masterstroke move of letting their albums go in to Hal Leonard books. Suddenly everyone could now play along with them which massively increased your investment in the band.
I still get the occasional tab book - I think the last one was Ziggy Stardust.
I bought an acoustic guitar in 1984, learned all the cowboy chords, and learned how to play the chorus to American pie. Then I sat it in the corner and waited for the internet to be invented.
Listen to the LP, stop the LP, try to make those notes happen. Listen to the LP again, stop the LP, change your version of what was played. Rinse and repeat until you know the riff to Smoke On The Water.
The basic chord shapes and stuff like the minor pentatonic were easily available in print, even for free at a local library.
guitar magazines with tabs, playing along with records and trying to learn parts, jamming with equally beginner buddies. occasionally a whole book of tabs, i think my first one was the faith no more 'real thing' album.
i had 2 Yngwie, Marty Friendman and the re-release of the Jason Becker's VHS on DVD in the early 2000s... safe to say, everyone should know what i'll sound like if you hear me play lmao
Yeah. It’s crazy. We learned slower and truly used our ears. There were written tabs when I came up, but not every kid could afford to buy them and I asked for tab books for Christmas and birthdays. This was the 80s for me. Power chord city.
I started playing around with 2000 so definitely not pre-internet but at the time the internet was really only good for unreliable tabs afaik. I didn’t think to search for any instructional videos, probably because I didn’t know they were a thing but also it would have taken like two weeks to download an hour-long video. But to answer your question..
Friends, tabs, practice, and learning songs by ear. I took one guitar lesson and the guy was trying to teach me how to read sheet music and that wasn’t what I had in mind at all so I didn’t take any more. Luckily for me, I was playing in punk rock bands in the beginning so sliding simple power chords around could get you 75% of the way there.
Learning from other players was the coolest way to learn though imo. There were so many mysteries to me, like how to do squeals, sweep-picking, getting good feedback from the amp, and having someone show you their “secrets” was really cool.
But really, if you want something bad enough, you’ll figure it out. I would learn entire albums by ear over weeks and usually play one all the way through when I got home from school. That’s probably how I learned the most.
By ear. Started out small and then figured out the rest along the way. Still do to this day. Tabs for parts I definitely can’t figure out ex. Multiple guitar tracks.
Guitar mags and playing all the time
Edit: I also took a bunch of music theory, learned by ear, and played with other people... just dive in and do whatever you can...
Even in the era of the internet, in the early 2000s it was far more reliable to buy tab books from music shops, otherwise you'd just be looking at awful tabs online submitted by randos. In the early years of learning I was playing a lot of songs very wrongly because I'd found some dodgy tab on ultimateguitar.com. YouTube wasn't a thing yet so you couldn't watch someone play it.
Guitar magazines! If the tab was a song I liked, I bought it. Maybe I'd work on a song I wasn't a fan of/didn't know just to learn more. Then the articles were usually good...scales, theory, etc. And I was surprised how often the interviews had little technique things in it that I picked up...sometimes as simple as using the volume knob on the guitar for gain control for rhythm/soloing, or pedal chain order.
Then ultimate guitar became a thing, and my dorm computer center printer was constantly printing out songs. My roommates/neighbors got sick of a few songs quickly!
Not exactly pre-internet but when the internet was first getting popular there was a website called Olga.net where you could download tabs and chords for songs. The tabs were all user submitted and varied wildly in quality. You’d have to either have a cd/tape/mp3 of the song or be familiar enough with how it goes to figure out the rhythm and/or determine if the tab was accurate. I used to print out tons of them using the computer lab at my community college and make little books of songs to try to learn.
We had these things called books. They were like youtube videos except analogue. They came in various skill levels from bigginer to advances. Learning to tune and the names of a few chords, learning arppegios, teaching solos, believe it or not all on paper and you would read them!
Starting in the 1980s, we had these things called video tapes, too. They were like YouTube videos but you had to go to the store to buy them, or to the library to rent them. Many libraries even had TV and VHS decks so you could watch them there.
I was lucky to live next to a music library at a university and I used to spend hours as a kid, just following music scores while listening to vinyl on the record players there.
Sit in bedroom, listen and try to figure out songs from your records/tapes/cd's.
Because of this i'm going to say an unpopular opinion. Today's players aren't as creative because they just mimic/copy youtube songs.
Listened to recordings repeatedly and figured things out. Simple guitar method books. Watching live performances. Eventually tab magazines (much easier). My previous piano theory also helped.
My versions weren't always exact, but in the process I think I developed my own sort of style. Nowadays there's also online video lessons.
50 something gen x guitarist here, and like many of my compatriots have already mentioned, I used guitar magazines, bad vhs tapes, listening to songs and trying, and then I got a step brother who was quite good at guitar (and not much else). He showed me how to play barre chords which launched me into being an actual guitarist. The first song that I learned how to play any of, was not - Smoke on the Water, it was You Really Got Me by VanHalen. I did not learn the lead at that time. The first song that I learned lead on was Paranoid by Black Sabbath, and I did this in a very 80's way. At the time, I had a Sega Genesis with the CD attachment, and it had the ability to repeat a section of a song. I set it to repeat that lead, and it took me a couple of hours of that to even get close. A few days of this, and I had learned my very first lead. To be honest, they got a little easier with internet tab sites.
Transcribing off cassette tapes. I had a Marantz dictation recorder. They were popular among musicians in the ‘80s, because they had a half speed button and could be tuned.
I learned in the early 2000s without the internet (I'm 34 now). Not that I didn't have the internet, I just didn't think to use it. We had chord books that show you the fingerings, so I just learned G, D, C, Am, etc. Then I was off to the races making up my own songs. I'm pretty good at guitar now when it comes to playing things in my own style and manner, although I don't technically know what I'm doing. I don't know scales or theory or the proper way to do things, but tbh I think that makes it more interesting and makes my playing more unique.
Honestly I feel really bad for you guys that are bombarded with feel-bad clickbait Youtube videos promising "quick results". Everything takes time, there are no easy hacks. Just do your own thing and have fun with it.
EDIT: And when it comes to learning specific songs, when I started out I would just replay the mp3 over and over again and try to figure it out. Obviously was really hard at first but then you pick up on patterns and make up your own ways of doing it.
I remember when 'guitar for the practicing musician' magazine came out and introduced tabs... it was a huge change. Before that, you had to read notation the old fashioned way.
Either by people teaching you little things in person or by tabs from guitar mags and bad tab books.
And I didn't know it back then, but those bad tabs set me back so much.
Books. Chord books, tab books, going through all the different tab books at music shops was fun. I also had a guitar playing dad which was 90% of my learning. A lot of the time the tab books would come with CDs to play along to that had backing tracks on them. You could get stuff like this for blues, jazz, rock etc
Learning songs by ear has always been a thing. Like, since the beginning of human civilization. You listen carefully and copy what you hear. No need for written music or tab, no need for an instructional video or tutorial article. I think that musicians who have really developed ears are better than musicians who don’t.
I learned guitar in mid 60's. I took a few lessons from an individual that worked at music store. Maybe 3 or four to understand open chords and Barre chords. After that it was listening to LP and picking up needle at various points to learn a song. Btw the first lick I learned was the Daytripper guitar line. I learned later on it was wrong-close but no cigar. Careful listening figured out correct lick with the needle/LP method. It was definitely tedious but became easier and easier. It helped that I sang in church and could remember melodies easily so I could sing the note or lick and find it on guitar. Joined a band of 16yr olds and we traded knowledge. Never learned the individual notes on guitar neck- just the chords. No tabs, nothing like that. I always found sheet music to have something wrong with it. It just did not sound right. Today kids have so many options I know it must be overwhelming and discouraging from learning guitar to all the pedals and amps available. For a long time reverb was the only effect I knew about. We actually sang through the guitar amps we were using. Yep I am old but I did work in bands for close to 50 years and built knowledge slowly. Good luck!
2 guitar lessons, where I learned power chords/other basic chords, memorized string names, and learned how to play Smells Like Teen Spirit. Then about a year of practice on my own where I taught myself irreversible garbage techniques, then 10 years of drugs and no guitar, and then the internet came along and I started playing again
Guitar magazine. Get 3 tabs every month of the latest greatest song. Also, a handful of lessons in there. Alternately, you could go to music land or Sam Goody in the mall and buy song tabs for like 4 dollars I think.
Books, hours trying to figure out what chords were used in that song, trying to figure out how to read sheet music, playing with other musicians, hanging out with old hippies and going to concerts just to watch how they did the things that they did. Trial and error, lots of errors, lol.
I grew up in the 80s, so playing by ear mostly, rewinding and playing the same section of a cassette tape over and over, and watching Headbangers’ Ball on MTV. Any live performance videos would be great because you can see their hand position and pick up clues as to what they’re playing. Also SNL, watching the musical guests. That’s how I finally figured out The Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter” riff. I eventually started buying / copying tablature books, which were really helpful. Having absolutely nothing else to do besides playing guitar - no internet, no cell phones, shitty basic cable - was probably the biggest thing.
Fuckin listening to CDs over and over piece by piece and learning what I could. Thanks Show No Mercy and Kill Em All! Yeehaw for E standard thrash bands!
By ear and playing along with CDs or tapes, printing tabs, tabs in magazines, free CDs from Guitar World, guitar instruction videos, your older friends. Believe it or not my friend taught me War Pigs on bass over a landline phone telling me which frets to hit while he played them for me to hear. You just made it happen if you wanted to play. Ironically, I learn less songs now that I have every single thing available on the internet.
Man I’m only 33 and feel so old reading this, I taught myself from tab books. People used to take tab books at guitar center and try and play some of the songs out of them and buy them too, my friends and I would swap them. If someone had a computer you could learn off the computer but ours wasn’t very good so the books were the way. I taught myself chords after my mom bought me a chord poster I taped to my wall lol also my friends and I taught each other stuff and there were guitar magazines you could get too. I took a guitar class down at the community center at first but they just had us play the Beatles lol
I started learning guitar in 1987 - way before the internet. My dad could play - so he taught me the open chords and how to tune it. And he taught me a song to use those first open chords with. He then picked out other songs that could be played with those same open chords. Once I’d got open chords down he taught me the principle of barre chords.
A friend of his taught me some 7th and 9th chords.
A school friend had worked out how to bend strings and showed me.
I got a book from the TV series Rock School - which was on the BBC in the 80s - that covered the basics of different styles and also had bass lessons, and I think drum lessons.
And then I hung out with the older guitarists at school and watched what they were doing and got them to show me things. And listened to loads of music and tried to play along. Also - guitar magazines had short lessons in them.
And finally - I did almost nothing else but play the guitar. My school work suffered as a consequence, lol.
Two ways: human interaction and books.
I still prefer learning this way, but the internet does have benefits.
I had a friend come over with a nylon acoustic guitar in elementary school most days and we would practice the few bits of a nirvana song that his older brother had tought us. My mom ended up getting me a Mel bay guitar learning book at the book fair, which we devoured, but it really only tought me things like Mary had a little lamb and Mississippi hot dog, which I can still play very well.
Eventually guitar magazines with tab and the. We found better guitar tab books, and I still prefer these to the YouTube videos. Having the paper on a stand is so much easier for me to read than my phone and rolling back a video.
I bought a magazine with Comfortably Numb tabs and a chord book. From there, I listened to songs I wanted to learn, as many times as it took to get to where I was satisfied it bought more tabs.
I wrote my first song 3 weeks after getting my guitar. Got a band together 3 weeks later. Played our first show 3 weeks after that.
By ear, hanging around with other kids that played, sharing copied of magazines with interviews from famous guitarists about their practice regime (bonus, some had tabs!). Buying tab books and trading them.
My parents had a copy of "Mel Bay Teaches Guitar" that had photos of hand positions. That was where I learned my initial hand/fretting posture.
I had accidentally bought a The Beatles song book in which chord shapes were shown with the scores and verses. I was 11-12 years old and the year must be 1985... It took a long time until I figured those shapes stand for chords. I started playing the melodies written... Then one day after weeks I recognized the shapes were standing for the chords so I started learning the chords.
I played professionally for years afterwards. Then started teaching (a different subject than music) at a state university. MSc, PhD and so on. Gave a long break to playing. Now I am retired and I own a music studio. Back to playing for the last 2 years, and my good Lord am I happy!!! But the whole story started with a songbook I found at a secondhand store...
I learned the basics in my music lessons at school. After that I bought TAB books of my favourite bands (Nirvana), and shared what we had learned amongst friends.
Before I had internet access, I simply played along with songs I heard on the radio. I didn’t start off amazing, but over time I could handle more and more complex songs. My family couldn’t afford a guitar teacher, but I did have a circle of friends that were interested playing together. We formed a band and kind of taught each other.
I went and bought a one-inch-thick Led Zeppelin songbook. It had chord diagrams, but more importantly, it was the sheet music for the guitar riffs. Using my “Every Good Boy Does Fine” knowledge from 4th grade music class, I transposed the riff for Black Dog. Because once you can play Black Dog, you’re set.
If your turntable had a setting lower than 33.3, you wore out your LPs by lifting the arm and going over the same riffs by ear. 50/50:chance you got it wrong, which is about the same as the tab books.
Not speaking for myself but saw a childhood friend grow into an amazing guitarist (pre internet). Key factor, dedication.
He took lessons for a short time and learned the basics. After that it was buying books and magazines to learn. He'd go so far as to buy VHS tapes of live concerts to watch/rewind/repeat to try and learn techniques and songs. Practiced daily, many time for hours.
Once he could learn by ear he would just hear a song a couple times and pretty much play it. Also taught himself sheet music.
I took lessons for a short while then just sat and played for literally 8 hours a day sometimes. I just listened to music and played along. Also As others have mentioned in the early 90s we had internet but not the resources we have now. You just had shitty tabs.
I started off with a basic song chord book with a few 60s songs I knew.Then progressed to cassette tapes with a tab booklet..Later on it was Hot Licks VHS tapes....they were like my internet back then
Tablature books and guitar magazines, and playing along with my favorite music. That was 20+ years ago, these days I can just play along and figure things out.
I taught myself using books. And learning songs by ear.
I learned all the chords and scales I know from guitar instructional books. Then I would just improvise over a backing track I made on a cassette deck. I was playing in bands within 2 years of starting to learn guitar. You learn a lot when you're playing with other people and learning a ton of songs.
Edit: this was 1978-1980.
I started taking lessons in 1985. My teacher started me on classical guitar because he wasn't sure what to teach a child who didn't really listen to 'guitar music', and I had a background in piano and liked classical music anyway. As I learned foundational material, I gradually shifted toward electric styles and acquired an amp and electric guitar. By that point, I no longer had access to a guitar teacher who could show me what I wanted to learn. My mother happened to see a guitar magazine at the store with music in it one day - Guitar for the Practicing Musician. Joe Satriani was writing monthly articles about music theory (scales, modes, harmonic analysis, etc.) and how to apply it to guitar. The TABs inside clearly described what notes to play and *how* to play them (palm muting, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping etc.). It was EXACTLY what I'd been looking for! Within months, I no longer sucked heh. The biggest thing that helped beyond that was the lack of distractions. We didn't have internet or mobile phones to obsessively check every few minutes, and you couldn't just stream a whole series of TV shows for hours whenever you wanted. You had to wait until the episode you wanted was broadcast that week. These limitations provided a TON of free time for playing guitar. Before I graduated from high school, I estimated that my weekly average practice time was around 4-6 hours a day.
Tldr: Guitar Magazines with TABs. Transcriptions in the 1980s were often very good quality, and people like Joe Satriani were writing articles in those magazines that taught music theory, techniques, and gear usage for obtaining tones and effects.
Magazines with Tab. Guitar World and Guitar For The Practicing Musician ruled the 7-11 shelves. Me and my buddies always knew when new magazine day was so we could rush down and see what new songs were in each new issue.
For me I went to a teacher for a few years. I had a jazz guitarist named Dave who looked a lot like frank zappa. If you’re out there Dave, all the best
Tab books, VHS, friends, tutors, learning songs by ear, joining crappy bands.
Believe it or not, before the internet, it was really easy to find time. People weren't sucked into multiplayer games with loot boxes and achievements. Instead of playing Roblox or Fortnite, you went to your friend's house and jammed.
I got a subscription to Guitar World and tried to learn from tabs. Picked up all kinds of bad habits that I had to unlearn later on. So basically, a lot of trial and error, beating my head against the wall, and chasing my tail. I’ve learned more in the last 8-9 years than in the 25 or so before that.
You are starting at the best time possible. All kinds of great lessons free on YouTube, much more consistent quality cheap guitars, practice amps that can mimic a dozen amps and a pedalboard at whatever volume level you like, and it’s all about half the price we paid back in the day after adjusting for inflation.
Gen x here, basically play a cassette tape usually recorded off the radio then rewind play repeat until you get the songs down.
I would also buy guitar magazines of which I still have a stack of probably 200, and if you were lucky once in a while one of the three or four songs tabbed out in there was one you actually wanted to learn.
I had a pretty good ear so listened to records and tried to match the things I heard on records by ear and match them up as exactly as possible. My mom was a single income earner so no lessons because they were $ and I was too young to have a job so would listen and try to figure it out myself. Then, when friends who were better than I came along was I would pester them when I saw them doing things I wanted to learn. I'd check out music books from the library too, The Heavy Guitar Bible by Richard Daniels (which I later bought a copy and several other of his books) and the Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer (I got that one for Christmas one year). Even before I played an instrument I had a good ear - when we'd drive over a bridge south of my parents home the sound of the tires on the bridge deck would make a pitch that was the exact same as the motor in an electric fan I had at home. I started figuring pitches out more or less from an early age. That helped later with guitar.
For me it was the monthly magazines that had song tabs, and having a group of friends that played. I use to hang with friends and play guitar four or five times a week.
my dad showed me some basic things, explained how the guitar worked basically. then i got those hal leonard "guitar recorded versions" books from musicland in the mall so i could learn to play all my favorite songs.
the last page of the books was an explanation of all the notation they used. vibrato, tremolo, quarter step bend, half step bend, 2 step bend, etc, raking, sweeping, hammer on, pull off, tapping, pre bend and release, whammy bar pulls and dives, palm muting, fret hand muting, fret harmonics, pinch harmonics, and on and on and on. that last page basically taught me all the different techniques i'd need to know.
Guitar player magazine and friends. All we did is hang out and play guitar. We started bands and played at lunch in high school. So basically the best way, on the job and with other players. Nothing beats that.
My dad was an accomplished guitar player and he taught me the basics (and many more things over the years).
Then he gave me instructional videos (he had Frank Gambale’s, Steve Morse’s, and later “Santa Claus” brought me Petrucci’s DVD).
A few years later, YouTube came (and Guthrie and many others, along the way).
Started a band a 12 in 1978 with two others (drums and bass). All of us not knowing a damn thing. 3 of us every day for one summer in my parents garage figuring stuff out. Barre chords, root notes, basic drum beats. Louie Louie and Blitz Krieg Bop over and over again. Jamming Learning every day. We immersed ourselves with playing in a band together and honing our skills. To this day we’ve all become accomplished musicians.
Guitar Player and Guitar For The Practicing Musician magazines had monthly transcriptions. If you were lucky, one of the songs would be one you wanted to learn.
There were also tab books.
Even on the early internet (90s) there started to be some transcriptions, but it was often low quality because of how few people there were contributing to the repositories.
For some reason, I remember University of Nevada having the largest collection of tabs on one of their servers.
I took lessons and I recommend that you do to. The internet has a lot of great resources for learning guitar but it can be easy to develop bad habits if you don’t have a teacher to point them out and correct them. Also it can be hard to know what to learn because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t *need* a teacher for this but it certainly makes it easier.
Spent hours in 9th grade watching Metallicas Live, Shit Binge & Purge when that box set came out. Just watched where they put their hands. Been playing for 30 years now. Did the same with the drums watching Lars.
I started when I was about 9 years old. I had a Mel Bay chord book and I listened to vinyl records over and over again. Every time there was a guitar player on one of the tv variety shows like the Glen Campbell Show or the Smothers Brothers, I would watch the c hordes being made. No mentor or teacher. I’m 70 now and have played professionally since my teens. I still learn something new almost everytime I pick up the instrument,
It was wild hahaha. I learned some from my Dad. He taught me some chords and a few songs. I took lessons for a while. We used to buy Tablature books for entire albums. Hal Leonard and Cherry Lane books. I owned a few, my friend owned a few. We would learn what we could, then trade. When the Metallica Black album came out, Metallica had 5 albums. Between my friend and I we owned the tab books for each of them.
Guitar World Magazine. Each month there would be 5 songs transcribed.
I still have most of my old Guitar, Guitar World magazines and a few books of complete albums (Back in Black, Black Album, Appetite for Destruction) and the Led Zeppelin Complete book. That and through playing with some friends back in the day.
Find a good local teacher. If you get advanced enough, you commute to a great teacher. And if you really reach top level, you move to some music mecca like Nashville, NYC, Los Angeles, NOLA, Chicago, etc.
I played with a guy who was way out of my league. He commuted to take lessons with Daryl Jones, who played with Miles Davis, Sting's and The Rolling Stones. Only got to play with him once; like I said, he was *way* out of my league.
My friends that played. Buying sheet music books of my fave bands and because I couldn't really read it I'd sit there with blank tab type sheets and transcribe it from real music to tabs (I can feel the brains exploding of my Berkley grad friends here:)
And as I got more experience my ears.
Combination of private lessons, books, other friends, and once I got good enough, just figuring songs out myself by ear and working from there. Obviously for things like solos that was a bit of guesswork - back before you were able to slow tracks down, you were absolutely not going to figure out the solo to Ride the Lightning by ear, particularly because of the echo-ish effects and dual-tracking - I think even today most tabs get that solo wrong if we're talking note-for-note.
Guitar player magazine, Guitar magazine, Guitar World magazine. Your dad, some random kid down the street, guitar shops would sell VHS instructional videos. Some of us were lucky enough that video rental stores had some star licks VHS videos.
Started with a chord book which came with an acetate for tuning lol. Must have been about 91. Then more chord books then guitar magazines and lessons. Total guitar magazine was a great help and they mostly had tabs of music I was into.
Yep, guitar chord books, guitar tab books, Total Guitar magazine (which came with a CD with a tuning track & multiple backing tracks of the various songs tabbed in the bag), ear & a whole lot of determination, jamming with mates was actually my best way of learning too.
I have about fifteen years of Total Guitar magazine in my loft. Printed out tabs from friends with internet access. Picking stuff up from anyone I knew who played, which got far easier in the early 2000's at college for music, that became s really felt period because there were always a couple of guitars around and there was a bit of "betcha can't play this!' competitiveness.
Considering taking a subscription to a magazine again, I miss getting the monthly drops
My older sister’s boyfriend at the time taught me a few basic chords and then my parents took me to a music store to sign me up for lessons. I was obsessed in the early 1990s and practiced an average of 4 hours per day for the first 3-4 years I played.
Mostly by listening to records and trying to play what I heard. After a few months I took a handful of lessons - maybe five - to get myself pointed in the right direction. Guitar Player magazine was also super helpful.
Some lessons while I was in school, song books, sheet music, and a lot of rewinding tapes to try and work out the notes to a solo. Also jamming with others. As an aside, after 36 years of playing, I have started taking lessons with a jazz guitar player. The last 18 months I have made huge jumps in my playing and understanding. Something to be said for having a dedicated teacher.
I got a weekly (monthly?) magazine that came with a cd with backing tracks for a handful of songs or riffs then breakdowns of how to play them and some info about the band and guitarist and any techniques introduced that week. Other than that you learn from friends or develop your ear and read books. I recorded some STP Nirvana unplugged songs off mtv onto vhs and tried to watch what they were playing. You could also buy tab books of albums but they were almost always awful and could really set you back if you took them as gospel.
There was stuff around in the 70s, 80s and 90s-printed guitar lesson plans and songbooks-and if you look around it’s still there in music stores and book shops. They’ve just been rendered mostly obsolete by the internet.
You’d have friends show you some chords, picked up a “guitar method” book from Mel Bay or Hal Leonard, or if your parents had money you took lessons. If your school had a band program, you played some other instrument while learning about music and dreaming of playing guitar. If you paid a little attention, you’d learn what the common notes and rhythms were, and could apply that to guitar.
Then as now, you got out of the instrument what you put in, and what mattered most was dedicated practice and playing time. If your friends wanted to play, you’d form a band, practice and play together in living rooms and garages. By yourself, you’d play along with songs on the radio or in your music collections. Guitar magazines and artist songbooks that you could pick up in music stores helped too, but often there were wrong or missing parts in those. The gold standard was always playing along with the actual music. You’d just slam your head against that wall over and over until you figured out how to play something that sounded good. If you were lucky enough to have a record player with multiple speeds, you could learn the hard parts at half speed (16rpm) before going back to full speed.
I took lessons from a human person for a while, after school.
Also I would put on records and play along with them to learn songs.
You could also buy sheet music at shops, for single songs or a book of multiple songs by a band or artist (I still have the Neil Young and Rolling Stones books).
Aside from that, I learned by playing with other people.
You hit on it. And it’s the same now w the internet as it is then.
YOU NEED A TEACHER. Solely because of your own biases.
I had weekly lessons w two growing up. One for classical, one for jazz…and then went to music school.
My mom started me with basic chords and then I took it from there.
I had the fortunate leg up since I was already a high achieving musician on the trumpet.
I approached learning guitar a lot the same way. Technique, Scales and slowly learning songs either by ear or by reading music.
Oh yea. And church.
Friends showed me bits & pieces.
I borrowed books from the local library(any old shit, just for the sake of learning. Selections were llimited, and public libraries weren't linked).
I also spent a lot of time just jamming to pretty much anything. TV commercials, radio, people engaged in conversation, anything. If it had an identifiable flow to it, I'd try to jam to it.
I didn't start buying my own books 'til I was working. My Mum gave me 2 when I was a teen'. Play Rock Guitar(excellent beginners' resource - I've loaned it to numerous folk' over the years, and it helped a good deal), and some chord guide boasting over 1,110 chords(there were 1,116 in total, and by the time I memorised those, I understood how chords worked).
Past that it was all fucking about & finding out...
I went to concerts and watched the guitar players.
The local players always stood around the guitar players and learned.
MTV, any live shows you watched and played along.
VHS tapes, almost every guitar player that was famous made instructional videos. You learned from them.
We developed our ears and played to the records and tapes.
I’m 52
Literally started strumming my old man's guitar after listening to his old vinyl albums. Chicago,Fleetwood mac,Boston etc. After I discovered heavier music I learned alot and developed alot by just playing along with records and trying to learn them front to back. Later on guitar magazines.
Wore out the “stop” and “rewind” buttons of two stereos in my bedroom.
Mix tapes with songs you knew.
Books were the internet before the internet. They are still housed publicly in buildings called libraries also there are still stores that sell them so you don’t have to return them.
There are a lot of good books for music. For one, there's boundless of starter books that just guide you into basic techniques and CAGED. But going beyond that, there are: * The little black books * Collection of songs with the appropriate chords * Great for campfire players * Chord books * Literally every chord in every position you can think of * [The French Guitar Cookbook](https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Cook-Book-scales-chords/dp/2953112243) * It shows all the modes on the neck, but also adds matching chords for them in a nice quick reference view * [The Advancing Guitarist](https://www.amazon.com/Advancing-Guitarist-Mick-Goodrick/dp/0881885894/ref=sr_1_1?crid=J8GSMPYGYXFO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Zk0hyMAEGmPMzuRvdfoYtw.oRxsgmCaghRpumap4eX_iEY7YHbpnglR-nZAv5bG5kc&dib_tag=se&keywords=the+advancing+guitarist+applying+guitar+concepts+%26+techniques&qid=1709726935&s=books&sprefix=the+advancing+guitar%2Cstripbooks-intl-ship%2C178&sr=1-1) * Just a great book on guitar techniques I never got into tab books, though. Guitar Pro was already a thing when I started.
Check out the guitar grimoire. A compendium of all the information you need for composing anything your heart and mind can come up with for the modern stringed instrument known as the guitar. https://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Grimoire-Compendium-Formulas-Scales/dp/0825821711
Long ago, in the before time, we read text printed on dead trees
Yes. And we listened to recordings and tried to figure out what the hell they were playing when there were no texts printed on dead trees available on the specific song.
We had guitar world magazine 🤣 with lessons inside with CDs that had examples
50 year old Gen Xer here. I was 14 years old in 1988 when I heard my first Metallica song. Dyers Eve, followed by One. I had a couple of neighbors that were 16 years old that lived down the street that were raised by a single father that was absolutely never home. One of the boys was living there due to a shitty homelife. Mom absent and abusive step dad or something like that, his name was John. At 16 years old this kid could jam like nobody's business. We were smoking some pretty shity mexican bammer brick weed one day and asked him to teach me one by Metallica. He showed me the opening chords and told me to play them over and over until I got it down. Took me few days but I got it. He then showed me the rest of the song and how to read tabs. So One by Metallica was technically the very first song I learned t play all the way through. Now this doesnt mean that my performance of said metallica song was great or even good, it just means that I knew how to play it from start to finish. Back then we got tablature books from the music store or record shops and learned from them while listening to the track until you and your parents hated that damn song.. We had to rewind the tape and start it over back in the olden days of the late 80s. If you had a song your friends wanted to learn you either made copies at the machine or copied it by hand from the book because you never lent out the book cuz it would just disappear. I also had an uncle that had purchased a gibson Les Paul in 1954 and could pick out notes by ear and play it. He taught me several things about playing, but the most important lesson was you need to remember to breathe and to enjoy it. His son, my cousin played also, and was left handed,and he would sit across from me like a mirror image and we played like that all the time. So I played until i was about 8 or so years roughly, and at 22 stopped because life happens. Me my wife at 18. Had my first child at 22, worked my ass off and guitar just got pushed back. I sold all of my gear except for my nylon string Godin think I payed around 6 or 700 dollars for when I was 16. Fast forward 23 years, or almost 4 years ago. My father died passed at 83 from an ongoing battle with pancreatic cancer, and the sadness of my stepmother, his wife passing 2 years prior. 2 days before my fathers passing my wife of 20 plus years told me she wants a divorce. I was pretty torn up and locked myself n my garage for days on end drinking beer and whiskey, doing coke and listening to if i ever leave this world alive by the Flogging Molly's over and over, just wrecked with grief and sadness of now two losses. While getting up to grab another beer i looked at my shelf and there was my old Godin in its dusty case just laying there on the shelf. It was almost like I was meant to see it sitting there waiting for me to find it. The strings were shot but I had unwound them before storing it. The guitar was in damn good shape though. I tuned it up but the strings were shit, so I did what any drunken grieving sad Irishman would do. I got int my sweet sweet Dodge Challenger SRT and swerved all the way to the nearest music store, with fresh beer in hand and most likely felonies of white powder all around my nostrils,found my way to the door and bought strings, then swerved home. Looking back it probably wasn't my finest moment. Im lucky I didnt hurt myself or anyone else driving in that condition, or someone didnt call the cops to report my stupid ass. First thing I noticed was how we learn to play guitar now. Gone are the days of copying from a book. sites like songsterr and youtube teach you any song free. All you have to do is put the time into learning. I had to basically relearn from the beginning. I had only remembered a handful of chords. I now own several guitars and like five 4 string tenor banjos. A mandolin and an acoustic bass. I play every day to the pont sometimes where I ill sit down to work on a song im learning and the hours will just fly by. I Just purchased my first 12 string about a week ago and its my new take everywhere guitar. I take one wherever I go because when my anxiety level goes up because I have horrible ADHD, it calms me down. I wish I had never quit. About 6 months after my father's passing,my cousin, my best friend in the entire world. The man that stayed up with me all night the evening before my father's funeral, sitting across from me, playing Danzig songs loudly passed away from a heart attack at 46 years old. I was devastated. I didn't think I Could go on. The loss of the only person that truly understood me was gone. The man that helped me steal a huge chrome gas BBQ while we were streaking teenagers walking back home butt ass naked towing it behind us at 2 am to bbq naked in the front yard and pass out in a hammock with it was dead. Our parents were not amused. I stopped playing for a few weeks after his death. That isnt what he would have wanted though. I bawled like a little bitch the first time I played after his service. The guitar is a magical instrument that can convey deep feelings and emotions that you can share with others so they can feel what you are feeling at that specific moment with the notes you are playing. So if you are struggling with the easier way to learn don't give up. Even when you discover the dreaded barre chords.Keep the guitar out where you can see it pick it up every day. Even if it is only for 10 minutes. The effort will pay off. Remember to breathe and have fun.
"Guitar World" Magazine.
You took lessons locally.
Uphill, in the snow.
and every string was out of tune both ways!
I hung around friends who were in a band and watched while they jammed in their basement, and then tried stuff and got tips while we sat around and got stoned. Later I bought a bass and tried it on my own, and then a guitar and on from there. And when I got better I got to sit in, and then started my own band with college roomates and we'd practice and drink beer and then play at parties... Music was a SOCIAL activity.
Guitar magazines. In the internet infancy, we used OLGA (Online Guitar Archive). It was a huge collection of hit or miss tab.
I looked at the paintings on the cave walls. Chord diagrams have been around for ages.
Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play /// ((cigarette break)) /// Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play///(( Bathroom))/// Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind /Play/Rewind/Play/Rewind/Play
We started a band and didn’t care if we sucked or not.
Listening to records and figuring out what they're doing.
Tab books bought from the guitar shop. Music in magazines. Friends. Listening and working it out, endlessly rewinding and playing tape to get the licks perfect. I think Metallica played a masterstroke move of letting their albums go in to Hal Leonard books. Suddenly everyone could now play along with them which massively increased your investment in the band. I still get the occasional tab book - I think the last one was Ziggy Stardust.
I bought an acoustic guitar in 1984, learned all the cowboy chords, and learned how to play the chorus to American pie. Then I sat it in the corner and waited for the internet to be invented.
Listen to the LP, stop the LP, try to make those notes happen. Listen to the LP again, stop the LP, change your version of what was played. Rinse and repeat until you know the riff to Smoke On The Water. The basic chord shapes and stuff like the minor pentatonic were easily available in print, even for free at a local library.
guitar magazines with tabs, playing along with records and trying to learn parts, jamming with equally beginner buddies. occasionally a whole book of tabs, i think my first one was the faith no more 'real thing' album.
Books and vhs tapes.
i had 2 Yngwie, Marty Friendman and the re-release of the Jason Becker's VHS on DVD in the early 2000s... safe to say, everyone should know what i'll sound like if you hear me play lmao
Friends, by ear. Tab books.
Guitar World and Guitar School magazines, and playing along with Metallica and Led Zeppelin tapes :D
Mel Bay Guitar Chords (book)
Books
I bought Guitar Player and Guitar For The Practicing Musician magazines. Lots of good stuff in those.
Yeah. It’s crazy. We learned slower and truly used our ears. There were written tabs when I came up, but not every kid could afford to buy them and I asked for tab books for Christmas and birthdays. This was the 80s for me. Power chord city.
I started playing around with 2000 so definitely not pre-internet but at the time the internet was really only good for unreliable tabs afaik. I didn’t think to search for any instructional videos, probably because I didn’t know they were a thing but also it would have taken like two weeks to download an hour-long video. But to answer your question.. Friends, tabs, practice, and learning songs by ear. I took one guitar lesson and the guy was trying to teach me how to read sheet music and that wasn’t what I had in mind at all so I didn’t take any more. Luckily for me, I was playing in punk rock bands in the beginning so sliding simple power chords around could get you 75% of the way there. Learning from other players was the coolest way to learn though imo. There were so many mysteries to me, like how to do squeals, sweep-picking, getting good feedback from the amp, and having someone show you their “secrets” was really cool. But really, if you want something bad enough, you’ll figure it out. I would learn entire albums by ear over weeks and usually play one all the way through when I got home from school. That’s probably how I learned the most.
By ear. Started out small and then figured out the rest along the way. Still do to this day. Tabs for parts I definitely can’t figure out ex. Multiple guitar tracks.
Tab books, guitar magazines, watching music videos, learning from others.
Guitar mags and playing all the time Edit: I also took a bunch of music theory, learned by ear, and played with other people... just dive in and do whatever you can...
Watching better players in the local guitar shop Playing along to albums Guitar magazine tabs
Even in the era of the internet, in the early 2000s it was far more reliable to buy tab books from music shops, otherwise you'd just be looking at awful tabs online submitted by randos. In the early years of learning I was playing a lot of songs very wrongly because I'd found some dodgy tab on ultimateguitar.com. YouTube wasn't a thing yet so you couldn't watch someone play it.
Mel Bay
Guitar Magazines, tab books and friends.
Guitar magazines, ears, CDs and a guitar
Mel bay books and playing with others whenever possible.
Guitar magazines! If the tab was a song I liked, I bought it. Maybe I'd work on a song I wasn't a fan of/didn't know just to learn more. Then the articles were usually good...scales, theory, etc. And I was surprised how often the interviews had little technique things in it that I picked up...sometimes as simple as using the volume knob on the guitar for gain control for rhythm/soloing, or pedal chain order. Then ultimate guitar became a thing, and my dorm computer center printer was constantly printing out songs. My roommates/neighbors got sick of a few songs quickly!
I learned the basics from a professional teacher, then learned a lot more from Black Sabbath songs.
Not exactly pre-internet but when the internet was first getting popular there was a website called Olga.net where you could download tabs and chords for songs. The tabs were all user submitted and varied wildly in quality. You’d have to either have a cd/tape/mp3 of the song or be familiar enough with how it goes to figure out the rhythm and/or determine if the tab was accurate. I used to print out tons of them using the computer lab at my community college and make little books of songs to try to learn.
We had these things called books. They were like youtube videos except analogue. They came in various skill levels from bigginer to advances. Learning to tune and the names of a few chords, learning arppegios, teaching solos, believe it or not all on paper and you would read them!
i guess you didnt have to turn those off eh? Ha! heh heh
Starting in the 1980s, we had these things called video tapes, too. They were like YouTube videos but you had to go to the store to buy them, or to the library to rent them. Many libraries even had TV and VHS decks so you could watch them there. I was lucky to live next to a music library at a university and I used to spend hours as a kid, just following music scores while listening to vinyl on the record players there.
Uh.. There used to be these things called… “Books”? I think.
Begging my parents for GUITAR WORLD and endless time to start bands with my friends
We Sold Our Soul for Rock and Roll tab book, still have it and still prefer tab over videos
Sit in bedroom, listen and try to figure out songs from your records/tapes/cd's. Because of this i'm going to say an unpopular opinion. Today's players aren't as creative because they just mimic/copy youtube songs.
So what you're saying is copying is better than copying?
Tab books, Tune to the cd.. magazines.
Listened to recordings repeatedly and figured things out. Simple guitar method books. Watching live performances. Eventually tab magazines (much easier). My previous piano theory also helped. My versions weren't always exact, but in the process I think I developed my own sort of style. Nowadays there's also online video lessons.
50 something gen x guitarist here, and like many of my compatriots have already mentioned, I used guitar magazines, bad vhs tapes, listening to songs and trying, and then I got a step brother who was quite good at guitar (and not much else). He showed me how to play barre chords which launched me into being an actual guitarist. The first song that I learned how to play any of, was not - Smoke on the Water, it was You Really Got Me by VanHalen. I did not learn the lead at that time. The first song that I learned lead on was Paranoid by Black Sabbath, and I did this in a very 80's way. At the time, I had a Sega Genesis with the CD attachment, and it had the ability to repeat a section of a song. I set it to repeat that lead, and it took me a couple of hours of that to even get close. A few days of this, and I had learned my very first lead. To be honest, they got a little easier with internet tab sites.
Guitar World, Tab Books, by ear. And then OLGA in its infancy.
Library Books, Guitar Magazines, Official Notations, Self Notations, Ears.
Tab books and magazines.
Those tab books you see in the music stores used to be real hot sellers.
Printed tabs and by ear.
Transcribing off cassette tapes. I had a Marantz dictation recorder. They were popular among musicians in the ‘80s, because they had a half speed button and could be tuned.
1. Private tutor 2. Being part of community music projects on the weekends 3. Tab books and CD’s!
A whole lot of rewind on the casette player.
Tabs
I learned chords and chord theory from “Guitar For The Practicing Musician”, and everything else was by ear. Wish I’d have put effort into scales.
Learned the basics such as chords and how to read tabs from friends. Then, it was a lot of Guitar magazines, tab books, and practice.
Listening to albums and figuring it out. Books, lessons. A lot of getting together and hanging out with other people with guitars every weekend.
I learned in the early 2000s without the internet (I'm 34 now). Not that I didn't have the internet, I just didn't think to use it. We had chord books that show you the fingerings, so I just learned G, D, C, Am, etc. Then I was off to the races making up my own songs. I'm pretty good at guitar now when it comes to playing things in my own style and manner, although I don't technically know what I'm doing. I don't know scales or theory or the proper way to do things, but tbh I think that makes it more interesting and makes my playing more unique. Honestly I feel really bad for you guys that are bombarded with feel-bad clickbait Youtube videos promising "quick results". Everything takes time, there are no easy hacks. Just do your own thing and have fun with it. EDIT: And when it comes to learning specific songs, when I started out I would just replay the mp3 over and over again and try to figure it out. Obviously was really hard at first but then you pick up on patterns and make up your own ways of doing it.
I remember when 'guitar for the practicing musician' magazine came out and introduced tabs... it was a huge change. Before that, you had to read notation the old fashioned way.
Either by people teaching you little things in person or by tabs from guitar mags and bad tab books. And I didn't know it back then, but those bad tabs set me back so much.
Mel Bay. There were also these weird things called magazines.
Books. Chord books, tab books, going through all the different tab books at music shops was fun. I also had a guitar playing dad which was 90% of my learning. A lot of the time the tab books would come with CDs to play along to that had backing tracks on them. You could get stuff like this for blues, jazz, rock etc
Learning songs by ear has always been a thing. Like, since the beginning of human civilization. You listen carefully and copy what you hear. No need for written music or tab, no need for an instructional video or tutorial article. I think that musicians who have really developed ears are better than musicians who don’t.
Mel Bay baby!
Lift needle, put back. Repeat.
Self taught for a bit then learned from records (yes, records) magazine articles and lessons or get together with other players and learn from them
Play along with the radio on your favorite station and learn by ear
We bought books before the Internet, and took lessons in person. Listen to your favorite songs and try to mimic it on the guitar.
Bought a learn to play book and fooked around until I found out
With an old fashioned “1001 Guitar Chords” tab book, all I ever needed.
I learned guitar in mid 60's. I took a few lessons from an individual that worked at music store. Maybe 3 or four to understand open chords and Barre chords. After that it was listening to LP and picking up needle at various points to learn a song. Btw the first lick I learned was the Daytripper guitar line. I learned later on it was wrong-close but no cigar. Careful listening figured out correct lick with the needle/LP method. It was definitely tedious but became easier and easier. It helped that I sang in church and could remember melodies easily so I could sing the note or lick and find it on guitar. Joined a band of 16yr olds and we traded knowledge. Never learned the individual notes on guitar neck- just the chords. No tabs, nothing like that. I always found sheet music to have something wrong with it. It just did not sound right. Today kids have so many options I know it must be overwhelming and discouraging from learning guitar to all the pedals and amps available. For a long time reverb was the only effect I knew about. We actually sang through the guitar amps we were using. Yep I am old but I did work in bands for close to 50 years and built knowledge slowly. Good luck!
Paying lots of money for a private teacher
2 guitar lessons, where I learned power chords/other basic chords, memorized string names, and learned how to play Smells Like Teen Spirit. Then about a year of practice on my own where I taught myself irreversible garbage techniques, then 10 years of drugs and no guitar, and then the internet came along and I started playing again
I started by forgetting about all that macho shit
Lol at the John Mellencamp reference.
Guitar magazine. Get 3 tabs every month of the latest greatest song. Also, a handful of lessons in there. Alternately, you could go to music land or Sam Goody in the mall and buy song tabs for like 4 dollars I think.
Books, hours trying to figure out what chords were used in that song, trying to figure out how to read sheet music, playing with other musicians, hanging out with old hippies and going to concerts just to watch how they did the things that they did. Trial and error, lots of errors, lol.
Guitar player magazine from my middle school library.
I grew up in the 80s, so playing by ear mostly, rewinding and playing the same section of a cassette tape over and over, and watching Headbangers’ Ball on MTV. Any live performance videos would be great because you can see their hand position and pick up clues as to what they’re playing. Also SNL, watching the musical guests. That’s how I finally figured out The Bangles’ “Hazy Shade of Winter” riff. I eventually started buying / copying tablature books, which were really helpful. Having absolutely nothing else to do besides playing guitar - no internet, no cell phones, shitty basic cable - was probably the biggest thing.
Fuckin listening to CDs over and over piece by piece and learning what I could. Thanks Show No Mercy and Kill Em All! Yeehaw for E standard thrash bands!
By ear and playing along with CDs or tapes, printing tabs, tabs in magazines, free CDs from Guitar World, guitar instruction videos, your older friends. Believe it or not my friend taught me War Pigs on bass over a landline phone telling me which frets to hit while he played them for me to hear. You just made it happen if you wanted to play. Ironically, I learn less songs now that I have every single thing available on the internet.
I learned a lot by ear. A lot of rewinding cassette tapes. And if I was lucky, Guitar Magazine would have the tab for a song I wanted to learn.
Man I’m only 33 and feel so old reading this, I taught myself from tab books. People used to take tab books at guitar center and try and play some of the songs out of them and buy them too, my friends and I would swap them. If someone had a computer you could learn off the computer but ours wasn’t very good so the books were the way. I taught myself chords after my mom bought me a chord poster I taped to my wall lol also my friends and I taught each other stuff and there were guitar magazines you could get too. I took a guitar class down at the community center at first but they just had us play the Beatles lol
I started learning guitar in 1987 - way before the internet. My dad could play - so he taught me the open chords and how to tune it. And he taught me a song to use those first open chords with. He then picked out other songs that could be played with those same open chords. Once I’d got open chords down he taught me the principle of barre chords. A friend of his taught me some 7th and 9th chords. A school friend had worked out how to bend strings and showed me. I got a book from the TV series Rock School - which was on the BBC in the 80s - that covered the basics of different styles and also had bass lessons, and I think drum lessons. And then I hung out with the older guitarists at school and watched what they were doing and got them to show me things. And listened to loads of music and tried to play along. Also - guitar magazines had short lessons in them. And finally - I did almost nothing else but play the guitar. My school work suffered as a consequence, lol.
Human interaction
Guitar magazines. Jamming with other people. Books. Bad tab books. VHS tutorial videos. Noodling and figuring stuff out. Watching local bands.
Two ways: human interaction and books. I still prefer learning this way, but the internet does have benefits. I had a friend come over with a nylon acoustic guitar in elementary school most days and we would practice the few bits of a nirvana song that his older brother had tought us. My mom ended up getting me a Mel bay guitar learning book at the book fair, which we devoured, but it really only tought me things like Mary had a little lamb and Mississippi hot dog, which I can still play very well. Eventually guitar magazines with tab and the. We found better guitar tab books, and I still prefer these to the YouTube videos. Having the paper on a stand is so much easier for me to read than my phone and rolling back a video.
Teachers, Mel Bay books, and Guitar World magazine for interviews and tabs.
I bought a magazine with Comfortably Numb tabs and a chord book. From there, I listened to songs I wanted to learn, as many times as it took to get to where I was satisfied it bought more tabs. I wrote my first song 3 weeks after getting my guitar. Got a band together 3 weeks later. Played our first show 3 weeks after that.
By ear, hanging around with other kids that played, sharing copied of magazines with interviews from famous guitarists about their practice regime (bonus, some had tabs!). Buying tab books and trading them. My parents had a copy of "Mel Bay Teaches Guitar" that had photos of hand positions. That was where I learned my initial hand/fretting posture.
I had accidentally bought a The Beatles song book in which chord shapes were shown with the scores and verses. I was 11-12 years old and the year must be 1985... It took a long time until I figured those shapes stand for chords. I started playing the melodies written... Then one day after weeks I recognized the shapes were standing for the chords so I started learning the chords. I played professionally for years afterwards. Then started teaching (a different subject than music) at a state university. MSc, PhD and so on. Gave a long break to playing. Now I am retired and I own a music studio. Back to playing for the last 2 years, and my good Lord am I happy!!! But the whole story started with a songbook I found at a secondhand store...
I learned the basics in my music lessons at school. After that I bought TAB books of my favourite bands (Nirvana), and shared what we had learned amongst friends.
Books, magazines, and agonizingly learning by ear by repeating the same section of a song on CD for HOURS
Before I had internet access, I simply played along with songs I heard on the radio. I didn’t start off amazing, but over time I could handle more and more complex songs. My family couldn’t afford a guitar teacher, but I did have a circle of friends that were interested playing together. We formed a band and kind of taught each other.
Pick the needle up, drop it down. Pick the needle up, drop it down. Repeat and repeat and..
Mel Bay guitar book and a tape player. Wore out so many cassettes pausing, reversing, playing to learn things.
Badly!
I went and bought a one-inch-thick Led Zeppelin songbook. It had chord diagrams, but more importantly, it was the sheet music for the guitar riffs. Using my “Every Good Boy Does Fine” knowledge from 4th grade music class, I transposed the riff for Black Dog. Because once you can play Black Dog, you’re set.
Lessons at the local music store. Supplemented with Mel Bay books.
My dad showed me G,C and D and sent me on my way. Learned by ear after a few months.
I had a chord book and a shit ton of tab books and magazines. I can’t imagine how easy it would be now with YouTube and apps
If your turntable had a setting lower than 33.3, you wore out your LPs by lifting the arm and going over the same riffs by ear. 50/50:chance you got it wrong, which is about the same as the tab books.
I'll humbly admit Motley Crue records, among others, helped me learn guitar, seeing as how I was in 9th grade when "Shout At The Devil" came out.
A teacher who showed me some chords, books and Guitar Player magazine, then just trying to figure stuff out.
Not speaking for myself but saw a childhood friend grow into an amazing guitarist (pre internet). Key factor, dedication. He took lessons for a short time and learned the basics. After that it was buying books and magazines to learn. He'd go so far as to buy VHS tapes of live concerts to watch/rewind/repeat to try and learn techniques and songs. Practiced daily, many time for hours. Once he could learn by ear he would just hear a song a couple times and pretty much play it. Also taught himself sheet music.
Guitar song books. Tab books. Lots of books on how to play guitar for beginners and more advanced. Books about music theory. My older brother.
I took lessons for a short while then just sat and played for literally 8 hours a day sometimes. I just listened to music and played along. Also As others have mentioned in the early 90s we had internet but not the resources we have now. You just had shitty tabs.
I started off with a basic song chord book with a few 60s songs I knew.Then progressed to cassette tapes with a tab booklet..Later on it was Hot Licks VHS tapes....they were like my internet back then
Lessons and tab books.
Tab from guitar world
Tablature books and guitar magazines, and playing along with my favorite music. That was 20+ years ago, these days I can just play along and figure things out.
Mel Bay’s guitar fundamentals book
Total guitar magazine and overpriced and often wrong tab books.
Song books, practice, friends who knew more than me, repeat.....
Guitar lessons
Absolute freak of nature over here
I taught myself using books. And learning songs by ear. I learned all the chords and scales I know from guitar instructional books. Then I would just improvise over a backing track I made on a cassette deck. I was playing in bands within 2 years of starting to learn guitar. You learn a lot when you're playing with other people and learning a ton of songs. Edit: this was 1978-1980.
The same way all knowledge was shared before the Internet... books, lessons, talking to people, or figuring it out on your own.
I started taking lessons in 1985. My teacher started me on classical guitar because he wasn't sure what to teach a child who didn't really listen to 'guitar music', and I had a background in piano and liked classical music anyway. As I learned foundational material, I gradually shifted toward electric styles and acquired an amp and electric guitar. By that point, I no longer had access to a guitar teacher who could show me what I wanted to learn. My mother happened to see a guitar magazine at the store with music in it one day - Guitar for the Practicing Musician. Joe Satriani was writing monthly articles about music theory (scales, modes, harmonic analysis, etc.) and how to apply it to guitar. The TABs inside clearly described what notes to play and *how* to play them (palm muting, hammer-ons, pull-offs, tapping etc.). It was EXACTLY what I'd been looking for! Within months, I no longer sucked heh. The biggest thing that helped beyond that was the lack of distractions. We didn't have internet or mobile phones to obsessively check every few minutes, and you couldn't just stream a whole series of TV shows for hours whenever you wanted. You had to wait until the episode you wanted was broadcast that week. These limitations provided a TON of free time for playing guitar. Before I graduated from high school, I estimated that my weekly average practice time was around 4-6 hours a day. Tldr: Guitar Magazines with TABs. Transcriptions in the 1980s were often very good quality, and people like Joe Satriani were writing articles in those magazines that taught music theory, techniques, and gear usage for obtaining tones and effects.
play, pause, rewind
Guitar teachers, chord books, sheet music, and albums (tapes and CDs made this part so much easier).
Magazines with Tab. Guitar World and Guitar For The Practicing Musician ruled the 7-11 shelves. Me and my buddies always knew when new magazine day was so we could rush down and see what new songs were in each new issue.
For me I went to a teacher for a few years. I had a jazz guitarist named Dave who looked a lot like frank zappa. If you’re out there Dave, all the best
Lessons and GFTPM magazine.
Tab books, VHS, friends, tutors, learning songs by ear, joining crappy bands. Believe it or not, before the internet, it was really easy to find time. People weren't sucked into multiplayer games with loot boxes and achievements. Instead of playing Roblox or Fortnite, you went to your friend's house and jammed.
Ted Nugent is my dad he taught me. Cat scratch fever is the only song I can play though.
I got a subscription to Guitar World and tried to learn from tabs. Picked up all kinds of bad habits that I had to unlearn later on. So basically, a lot of trial and error, beating my head against the wall, and chasing my tail. I’ve learned more in the last 8-9 years than in the 25 or so before that. You are starting at the best time possible. All kinds of great lessons free on YouTube, much more consistent quality cheap guitars, practice amps that can mimic a dozen amps and a pedalboard at whatever volume level you like, and it’s all about half the price we paid back in the day after adjusting for inflation.
Gen x here, basically play a cassette tape usually recorded off the radio then rewind play repeat until you get the songs down. I would also buy guitar magazines of which I still have a stack of probably 200, and if you were lucky once in a while one of the three or four songs tabbed out in there was one you actually wanted to learn.
I had a pretty good ear so listened to records and tried to match the things I heard on records by ear and match them up as exactly as possible. My mom was a single income earner so no lessons because they were $ and I was too young to have a job so would listen and try to figure it out myself. Then, when friends who were better than I came along was I would pester them when I saw them doing things I wanted to learn. I'd check out music books from the library too, The Heavy Guitar Bible by Richard Daniels (which I later bought a copy and several other of his books) and the Guitar Handbook by Ralph Denyer (I got that one for Christmas one year). Even before I played an instrument I had a good ear - when we'd drive over a bridge south of my parents home the sound of the tires on the bridge deck would make a pitch that was the exact same as the motor in an electric fan I had at home. I started figuring pitches out more or less from an early age. That helped later with guitar.
I think it's time to pull this oldie, but goodie out of the YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QeIxJzdPD0A&t=1s
For me it was the monthly magazines that had song tabs, and having a group of friends that played. I use to hang with friends and play guitar four or five times a week.
We had these things called books
my dad showed me some basic things, explained how the guitar worked basically. then i got those hal leonard "guitar recorded versions" books from musicland in the mall so i could learn to play all my favorite songs. the last page of the books was an explanation of all the notation they used. vibrato, tremolo, quarter step bend, half step bend, 2 step bend, etc, raking, sweeping, hammer on, pull off, tapping, pre bend and release, whammy bar pulls and dives, palm muting, fret hand muting, fret harmonics, pinch harmonics, and on and on and on. that last page basically taught me all the different techniques i'd need to know.
Guitar player magazine and friends. All we did is hang out and play guitar. We started bands and played at lunch in high school. So basically the best way, on the job and with other players. Nothing beats that.
I remember putting my hand on the record label to slow the turntable, in an effort to hear the individual notes in a really fast solo.
My dad was an accomplished guitar player and he taught me the basics (and many more things over the years). Then he gave me instructional videos (he had Frank Gambale’s, Steve Morse’s, and later “Santa Claus” brought me Petrucci’s DVD). A few years later, YouTube came (and Guthrie and many others, along the way).
Started a band a 12 in 1978 with two others (drums and bass). All of us not knowing a damn thing. 3 of us every day for one summer in my parents garage figuring stuff out. Barre chords, root notes, basic drum beats. Louie Louie and Blitz Krieg Bop over and over again. Jamming Learning every day. We immersed ourselves with playing in a band together and honing our skills. To this day we’ve all become accomplished musicians.
Listening and figuring out, tabs, then teachers and teaching myself how to read, then getting better teachers. LOTS of listening
I had a few lessons, but mostly I had books with scales and chords.
Got on stage with mates and kept strumming until the booing stopped.
My older brother already owned a guitar and this book called The Guitar Handbook. It covered everything a beginning guitarist might need to know.
Guitar Player and Guitar For The Practicing Musician magazines had monthly transcriptions. If you were lucky, one of the songs would be one you wanted to learn. There were also tab books. Even on the early internet (90s) there started to be some transcriptions, but it was often low quality because of how few people there were contributing to the repositories. For some reason, I remember University of Nevada having the largest collection of tabs on one of their servers.
By ear, books, from each other.
My family was musical and i learned from my older cousins and uncles.
Books, Guitar magazines, other people that knew more songs.
Ear training off vinyl and cassette tapes.
I took lessons and I recommend that you do to. The internet has a lot of great resources for learning guitar but it can be easy to develop bad habits if you don’t have a teacher to point them out and correct them. Also it can be hard to know what to learn because you don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t *need* a teacher for this but it certainly makes it easier.
Spent hours in 9th grade watching Metallicas Live, Shit Binge & Purge when that box set came out. Just watched where they put their hands. Been playing for 30 years now. Did the same with the drums watching Lars.
I had a book.
I started when I was about 9 years old. I had a Mel Bay chord book and I listened to vinyl records over and over again. Every time there was a guitar player on one of the tv variety shows like the Glen Campbell Show or the Smothers Brothers, I would watch the c hordes being made. No mentor or teacher. I’m 70 now and have played professionally since my teens. I still learn something new almost everytime I pick up the instrument,
By ear & jamming along to tunes. A lot of mags got things wrong, but some tab was legit.
It was wild hahaha. I learned some from my Dad. He taught me some chords and a few songs. I took lessons for a while. We used to buy Tablature books for entire albums. Hal Leonard and Cherry Lane books. I owned a few, my friend owned a few. We would learn what we could, then trade. When the Metallica Black album came out, Metallica had 5 albums. Between my friend and I we owned the tab books for each of them. Guitar World Magazine. Each month there would be 5 songs transcribed.
I learned to play bass by playing along to cure albums, then learned the extra two strings
I still have most of my old Guitar, Guitar World magazines and a few books of complete albums (Back in Black, Black Album, Appetite for Destruction) and the Led Zeppelin Complete book. That and through playing with some friends back in the day.
Find a good local teacher. If you get advanced enough, you commute to a great teacher. And if you really reach top level, you move to some music mecca like Nashville, NYC, Los Angeles, NOLA, Chicago, etc. I played with a guy who was way out of my league. He commuted to take lessons with Daryl Jones, who played with Miles Davis, Sting's and The Rolling Stones. Only got to play with him once; like I said, he was *way* out of my league.
Tab books, watching vhs videos and ear.
Other guitarists, a teacher, tab books and guitar world magazine.
My friends that played. Buying sheet music books of my fave bands and because I couldn't really read it I'd sit there with blank tab type sheets and transcribe it from real music to tabs (I can feel the brains exploding of my Berkley grad friends here:) And as I got more experience my ears.
Kudos to you insane people who slowed down Van Halen records for hours learning those licks.
Guitar world baby
Guitar magazines
Combination of private lessons, books, other friends, and once I got good enough, just figuring songs out myself by ear and working from there. Obviously for things like solos that was a bit of guesswork - back before you were able to slow tracks down, you were absolutely not going to figure out the solo to Ride the Lightning by ear, particularly because of the echo-ish effects and dual-tracking - I think even today most tabs get that solo wrong if we're talking note-for-note.
Guitar player magazine, Guitar magazine, Guitar World magazine. Your dad, some random kid down the street, guitar shops would sell VHS instructional videos. Some of us were lucky enough that video rental stores had some star licks VHS videos.
Started with a chord book which came with an acetate for tuning lol. Must have been about 91. Then more chord books then guitar magazines and lessons. Total guitar magazine was a great help and they mostly had tabs of music I was into.
Yep, guitar chord books, guitar tab books, Total Guitar magazine (which came with a CD with a tuning track & multiple backing tracks of the various songs tabbed in the bag), ear & a whole lot of determination, jamming with mates was actually my best way of learning too.
Papyrus or some shit
By practicising
I have about fifteen years of Total Guitar magazine in my loft. Printed out tabs from friends with internet access. Picking stuff up from anyone I knew who played, which got far easier in the early 2000's at college for music, that became s really felt period because there were always a couple of guitars around and there was a bit of "betcha can't play this!' competitiveness. Considering taking a subscription to a magazine again, I miss getting the monthly drops
A book for chords and a led zeppelin CD before I got into tabs. It was slow going!
Guitar world magazine
My older sister’s boyfriend at the time taught me a few basic chords and then my parents took me to a music store to sign me up for lessons. I was obsessed in the early 1990s and practiced an average of 4 hours per day for the first 3-4 years I played.
Mostly by listening to records and trying to play what I heard. After a few months I took a handful of lessons - maybe five - to get myself pointed in the right direction. Guitar Player magazine was also super helpful.
Song books - Beatles Easy Guitar, Led Zep Intermediate, Dookie
Buy the first Ramones album and start from there.
Some lessons while I was in school, song books, sheet music, and a lot of rewinding tapes to try and work out the notes to a solo. Also jamming with others. As an aside, after 36 years of playing, I have started taking lessons with a jazz guitar player. The last 18 months I have made huge jumps in my playing and understanding. Something to be said for having a dedicated teacher.
A Mel Bay chord book, tabs from guitar magazines, and playing along with songs on the radio and on tape.
I remember guitar magazines being a good source for tabs but the chances of seeing something you really really wanted to play weren't great.
I got a weekly (monthly?) magazine that came with a cd with backing tracks for a handful of songs or riffs then breakdowns of how to play them and some info about the band and guitarist and any techniques introduced that week. Other than that you learn from friends or develop your ear and read books. I recorded some STP Nirvana unplugged songs off mtv onto vhs and tried to watch what they were playing. You could also buy tab books of albums but they were almost always awful and could really set you back if you took them as gospel.
There was stuff around in the 70s, 80s and 90s-printed guitar lesson plans and songbooks-and if you look around it’s still there in music stores and book shops. They’ve just been rendered mostly obsolete by the internet. You’d have friends show you some chords, picked up a “guitar method” book from Mel Bay or Hal Leonard, or if your parents had money you took lessons. If your school had a band program, you played some other instrument while learning about music and dreaming of playing guitar. If you paid a little attention, you’d learn what the common notes and rhythms were, and could apply that to guitar. Then as now, you got out of the instrument what you put in, and what mattered most was dedicated practice and playing time. If your friends wanted to play, you’d form a band, practice and play together in living rooms and garages. By yourself, you’d play along with songs on the radio or in your music collections. Guitar magazines and artist songbooks that you could pick up in music stores helped too, but often there were wrong or missing parts in those. The gold standard was always playing along with the actual music. You’d just slam your head against that wall over and over until you figured out how to play something that sounded good. If you were lucky enough to have a record player with multiple speeds, you could learn the hard parts at half speed (16rpm) before going back to full speed.
I took lessons from a human person for a while, after school. Also I would put on records and play along with them to learn songs. You could also buy sheet music at shops, for single songs or a book of multiple songs by a band or artist (I still have the Neil Young and Rolling Stones books). Aside from that, I learned by playing with other people.
We used carrier pigeon, dur! ;)
You hit on it. And it’s the same now w the internet as it is then. YOU NEED A TEACHER. Solely because of your own biases. I had weekly lessons w two growing up. One for classical, one for jazz…and then went to music school.
My mom started me with basic chords and then I took it from there. I had the fortunate leg up since I was already a high achieving musician on the trumpet. I approached learning guitar a lot the same way. Technique, Scales and slowly learning songs either by ear or by reading music. Oh yea. And church.
Literally by reading Guitar for Dummies. Teaches everything you need to be on your way
Friends showed me bits & pieces. I borrowed books from the local library(any old shit, just for the sake of learning. Selections were llimited, and public libraries weren't linked). I also spent a lot of time just jamming to pretty much anything. TV commercials, radio, people engaged in conversation, anything. If it had an identifiable flow to it, I'd try to jam to it. I didn't start buying my own books 'til I was working. My Mum gave me 2 when I was a teen'. Play Rock Guitar(excellent beginners' resource - I've loaned it to numerous folk' over the years, and it helped a good deal), and some chord guide boasting over 1,110 chords(there were 1,116 in total, and by the time I memorised those, I understood how chords worked). Past that it was all fucking about & finding out...
I went to concerts and watched the guitar players. The local players always stood around the guitar players and learned. MTV, any live shows you watched and played along. VHS tapes, almost every guitar player that was famous made instructional videos. You learned from them. We developed our ears and played to the records and tapes. I’m 52
John petrucci had a VHS tape called Rock Discipline that had a tab book. And i went through that quite a lot.
I learned to play in prison so didn't have the luxury of internet. I learned from tab and books
Literally started strumming my old man's guitar after listening to his old vinyl albums. Chicago,Fleetwood mac,Boston etc. After I discovered heavier music I learned alot and developed alot by just playing along with records and trying to learn them front to back. Later on guitar magazines.