Hey my name is Herc Magnus ya the guy you see in the pic. I hear about 100 times a week that I look like Dave Grohl, which is actually really cool cause that guy rules! I play in a hard rock band called Hollywood Assassyn, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada but I also love to just pick on my acoustic!
There’s a Youtube video at the bottom of this page with me playing on it. Some ok stuff. And if you wanna see more, use the My Videos link at the top of the page.
Listen…Can I give you any advice regarding learning guitar?
I’ve been playing guitar for almost 20 years now and I’ve learned a lot of things about playing guitar but probably the two biggest pieces of advice I can give you are these
1.) Play what you love!
If you have a song that you know off by heart, like you know every word, and every beat, and you can sing the guitar parts in your head…you are ready to learn to play that song. Start there! You’ll know right away if you are doing it right or wrong, because the ‘memory’ that you have of that song should be extremely STRONG so you’ll know if you are nailing it or not.
Most songs are typically broken down into 3 main parts that just repeat at different times. Verses, Chorus and Bridge. That’s it. Even tho a song is typically 3 to 5 mins long, it’s cycling through only 3 main sections. So you don’t have to learn a 5 min song, you just gotta learn 3 parts.
Now each part (verse, chorus, bridge) is broken down into a CHORD PROGRESSION which is usually only made up of 3 or 4 chords in a sequence. Easy right? Even easier is that the verse and chorus will often use some of the same chords…quite often actually. So in total to learn most songs, you’ll only need to learn like 4-6 chords!
Now just pick a song you like, find out the chord progressions of each part, then play it until it sounds right in your head!
2.) Take some lessons!
Lessons are what’s gonna take you from everyone absolutely hating it when you reach for the guitar, to people asking you to play for them. Now not all people are going to need lessons, some guys and gals are just naturally fast learners…for the rest of us however, lessons are gonna speed up your guitar godness quite a lot faster than trying to learn by ear or something.
Now I have to clear something up! Lessons is a shitty word. I don’t like to use it, but there’s really no other word. So you need to ‘learn to play guitar’ and lessons are the thing that really really helps.
But not like lessons from your local guitar lessons teachers and shit. Those guys are sometimes good, sometimes bad but worst of all, they are ridiculously expensive for what you get. Some of you will like that personal attention they give, but man…you’re gonna pay for it. Most of them charge anywhere from $20 – $50 per hour of guitar instruction.
We’re trying to learn guitar here…not pay off some dudes rent or car or something. Eff that!
The lessons I’m talking about are online lessons. We live in the 2010’s man…there’s great stuff everywhere you go. YouTube is a really cool resource as well, especially when you just wanna learn a song.
But when you wanna go from playing in your bedroom to wowing your buddies at parties, or even hitting a stage, I’d honestly invest in some organized online lessons. There’s a lot of great websites for that as well!
My personal favorite site that I use is called Guitar Tricks.
(check out that link, your whole screen will love you for it! It’s pretty awesome what they do, haven’t seen that anywhere else!)
It’s retarded how much amazing content you get and how well organized it is. If you want to give yourself some structure (I kinda hate it, but I know it’s a really good thing to have) Guitar Tricks has a CORE LEARNING SYSTEM where they take you step by step through a guitar learning system.
There’s lessons for Acoustic, Metal, Blues (my fav) Country, Rock and even Bluegrass, Rockabilly, Funk and Surf! You can
There’s a songs library where they teach you how to play songs, there’s an instructors corner where you can pick an instructor you like the style of, there’s backing tracks so that you can practice shredding in any key you want, there’s a lessons tab. It’s just SICK how much stuff is in there.
Here’s the absolute BEST PART OF ALL
…guitar lessons from the bald dude down the street are $40/hour.
…guitar lessons from Guitar Tricks are Less Than $15/MONTH!
Honestly man…$15 bucks per month is chump change and you know it. Like I said, I’ve been playing guitar for like 2 decades now, and I still think there’s tons of shit in there that’s awesome. Actually…I’m gonna post a video review and take you inside in a few days, but for now just do this.
Get started for free with Guitar Tricks right now.
Oh why did I say free? Cause the first 14 days are FREE… ;0)
Then Pay Only $15/Month For Unlimited Lessons
Ok now as I said waaaay up above…here’s some Youtube Video of me playing acoustic and singing