Originally posted by Lordathestrings
I bought my first guitar for my 16th birthday. It was an old second-hand hollow-body electric with one pickup. I bought it because it was the most playable guitar I could afford.

I played that thing like an obsessed lunatic, thumping away at it every chance I could. I have vivid memories of callouses on my fingertips with blood-blisters under the callouses!

You don't have to be that fanatical about it. Pick one thing, (like changing smoothly from D to G while strumming), and keep at it until you can nail it every time. Then start to add more things, one at a time, until you have a practice routine that you can use for a warm-up exercise.

Good Luck.
L

for the D to G part, im alot past that. I learned how to go smoothly from D to G to A to Am to Em to E to F to Gm to Em7 to Dm to ( well you get the point). i am a fanatic about playing though, i really love playing good old 'roots' music. traditional music, country, bluegrass, phish ( yeah phish is kinda roots music ;), just good ol' songs, ya know? but now im learning extensive guitar theory, i can solo half-decent, and am gettin better all the time. Sometimes i find myself playing for hours on end. One day last week i had to put my fingers under cold water after playing and learning the song "Stash" by Phish. Its one tough son of a #$@#!, very fast played, but after 5 hours of work i got it down. my fingers literally burned to wear i had to wrap them in ice. And I have some callouses too...but for some reason the more i play, the more they peel off. i'll develop a callouse, i'll keep playing, and it will peel off. Kind of makes me angry.
I have another story. Well, when I first started playing guitar i Bought a Squier Strat Pak, which comes with everything you need to start out. 7 months later, for my birthday, i got a Guild D-25 Acoustic Guitar. I absolutely loved it, but right away i noticed a slight crack at the end of the body on the guitar. it was about an inch. Nothing major, i just figured if i was going to spend $740 on it ( i bought it at http://www.guitartrader.com ), i might as well get something thats flawless. We sent it back, then got notification that the D-25 was either being discontinued or Guild halted production, and they couldnt get anymore of them. So they sent our money back, and now im going to either get the Guild DCE-1 Acoustic/Electric guitar, or the Guild D-40 Acoustic Guitar( the one Richie Havens opened woodstock with!). Both end up with a price tag of around $1050. I have a part time job at mcdonalds (yeah im 14:). So far I have $850 saved up, so i need 200 more. So now instead of just saying when you started playing, also if you have an opinion on which one you would suggest, i would appreciate that too. Thanks, you guys rock! in one day, 10 replies!