Just need some advice. Any help would be great :)

OK, I'll just tell you guys basically everything. I have just recently turned 14, and I bought a cheapish acoustic guitar to learn on. I have now had this for 2 months. I have learned all the major open position chords and have learnt them to perfection. I can change them smoothly and very quickly and they sound good too. I have just started on barre chords and immediatly was able to play them without any muted notes (I was once a talented cellist) but obviously I can't finger them as fast as I can with the other chords. I haven't had a teacher, just been reading from the guitar book I have purchased. I can strum along very nicely, with upstrums and downtstrums between beats and such, and have just recently started fingerpicking. I can fingerpick to scarborough fair to a fast tempo.

So. To the point. Am I progessing too slow? I don't want people saying you learn at your own pace and stuff I want the honest truth. I think I am progressing a little too slow, although I have learned over 10 songs, even if they are just with simple chords and use simple strumming and fingerpicking techniques.

I also have another question. Where do I go from here? And what's the best way to finger Barre chords quickly and easily?

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

You seem to be progressing very nicely , the next step is to determine which music style you like most and start playing full songs including solos .

Always begin from easy & slow to hard and fast ... I'm sure you've heard that advice when you were playing cello.

BTW, I'm realy thinking of starting out violin,cello or similar instrument ... I love the tone of these instrumental family.

Learn root 5 and 6 barre chords and all the chords that go along with them such as :sus,9,11,sus4,. The irregular chords. This will let you decide on many different tone possibilites. For example:Dsus2..Do I want open, root 6 or 5? Right there, there is 3 different positions that all sound basically the same but with a few differences.

Thanks for the help guys. But one question. What are roots 5 & 6. Completely clueless to that.

BTW Sly, go for the cello if you want the more bassy, mellow effect on an instrument.

I think he means chords which have the root on the 5th (A) string , and chords that have roots on the 6th (E) string.

e.g. :
A maj , root on 6th [577655]
A min , root on 6th [577555]
D maj , root on 5th [x57775]
D min , root on 5th [x57765]

BTW, these shapes (patterns) are the same as open string chords , but you use a barre to play them on higher positions.

The string are in order low to high [EADgbe] , or [654321] .... "x" means to mute the string or not to play it.

[Edited by SLY on 04-20-2003 at 08:47 AM]

Oh right, thanks. I kinda heard that the actual hard part of barre chord is getting the first finger to play all six strings cleanly. I seem to have that worked out though.

I actually use a number of different tools to learn...

1) this forum - I've gotten more good info from this site than I can remember
2) Blues you can use - this book is awesome. gives you basic starting root chords, some theory, solos... all blues based (obviously) =)
3) Building Chords - another book (when I get home i'll post the name) but this was great! shows you how to build all sorts of chords, how to transpose them and variations and substitutions...
4) the internet - sites like this one and http://www.mysongbook.com are good places to get info. http://www.harmonycentral.com is good as well.
5) Guitar pro 4 - this goes back to #4 with mysongbook.com. On there you can pull down gp4 files that show you how to play TONS of songs. In the program are also different scales that you can learn, exercises... you name it.

lastly - play with other people. I went to a buddys last night and I can say that in the 3 hours that we played was worth more than a week of reading and practicing.

hope this helps!