And this is where I decide to learn a different song. 
Thanks to both of you though for your responses.
To be fair, this is one of the most basic chord shapes on a guitar. Sooner or later, you're going to learn it. I see your point, it SOUNDS daunting, certainly. As with anything else you'll read in this thread and stumble upon in your practicing, this is NOT an insurmountable task. It will take some time for it to feel right and familiar to your fingers. Your hands and fingers are not used to being positioned in the ways that you're now trying to make them be. Muscle memory will eventually take over and it'll be second nature for you and you likely won't even have to think about it anymore.
Ok one more question...
I understand that you are supposed to use alternate picking in most, but are you supposed to do that with chords, or are they all downstrokes? I ask because when I try to play chords with an upstroke, the pick gets "snagged," so I suspect that is not the way I'm supposed to play them.
I see acoustic players using alternate strumming cause it sounds pretty, but when I try it with a distorted guitar, it just doesn't sound right.
For me, I would use the term alternate picking, in reference to single note lines. For instance, say you've got several four note-per-string sequences, one on each string. I would use alternate (down-up-down-up) picking for efficiency's sake. Alternate picking is generally used to execute fast sequences most efficiently (economy of motion).
As far as chords go, how you wanna strum it depends on different things. Pick thickness is one thing. If you're strumming the chords to "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", you'll be able to strum up and down, but you might best be served by having a thinner pick with which to do this (something like a .73 mm or something).
If you're playing the riff to Metallica's "Leper Messiah", something thicker may be better suited (1 mm to 1.14 mm) and would likely sound better with all downstrokes, for added heaviness.
This makes for another point. It'd be wise to have several different pick thicknesses on hand to experiment with. My tastes in pick thicknesses has changed MANY times over the years. Started out with flimsy ones, then the big triangular flimsy ones, to a 2 mm pick, back to 1.14mm, now I'm usng polished brass picks. So try out different picks from time to time, to see what works best for you in different situations.
As you learn chords, you'll eventually find ways to play the chords without makng extra noise. Take cthru's example above. The second chord (4-5-4). You're thinking "How am I supposed to pick that, when there's three other strings there I'll likely hit accidentally. There's no hard and fast answer, except that in time, you'll find your own personal comfort in how to mute those extra strings, or pick/strum precisely enough to not hit the extra strings. "I will learn how to strum three strings on their own?" Yes, you will.
I know that the very last thing you want to hear as a new guitar player is "it will take time", but unfortunately, that's the one thing you MOST have to keep in mind. Be patient and eventually, if you keep practicing, these things WILL come to you.
Playing chords with an imperfect harmony (3rd, 7th etc - anything except 4th & 5th) you'll probably get rubbish sounds on dist. Especially if you keep strumming.
Yeah, especially if you're only playing those two notes. I find though, that if you're doing a full major chord that even with distortion, it sounds pretty decent. Minor chords will sound slightly dissonant with distortion, but I think using the A minor shape that uses the A string as the root note sounds better through distortion than the full E string root minor chords. Could be just me, though.
Topic: I want to learn guitar. (Read 9423 times)
