Hey,

I promised to give a buddy a few pointers on how to play the guitar. Nothing fancy, no real lessons either, just a few tips and show something now and then.

Now, I dunno, seems I have very little patience with this, however. For the first task I showed him and gave a tab of simplified Smells Like Teen Spirit, I mean basically just the bass line first, then explained how to play it with 2-finger power chords and the 'ding ding' high up E,B string when he'll feel like it later, over the bassline.

He's not getting it down after a week for some reason, especially the break part.

Now...I just don't get it. What more could I explain to him. I just sort of told him to get drums if you can't learn how to play that in a week...but he still wants to try. I tried to show him picking and how to hold the guitar, but...well it seems to me that if a guy can't learn how to play such a simple riff in a week, he's never gonna be able to play much guitar really. I gave him some other real simple songs to work on and after another week he can barely muster a just-about-recognizable version of Smoke On The Water.

When I and my friends started out, it was like first week we learned how to play Smoke On The Water and based on that 2-string idea I figured out how to facsimile half a dozen simple songs on my own, and the 2nd week a buddy showed the F barre chord and said next week you'll play AC DC songs with full barres or he won't bother teaching me more. So I had to get the fingers bent that way. And the third thing he taught me was 'Still of The Night' by Whitesnake, and then almost at the same time 'Paranoid' and 'Heaven and Hell' and 'Sanitarium' complete with solos. That was the end of any teaching we eve got also, after that it was our own doing.

I mean, it's not like I / we could play the songs anywhere well after a month of playing guitar, or with great rhythm, more like stumbled thru them, but still quite recognizaly and so on...it didn't seem _impossible_ to learn most any song _somehow_ at least.

So, quite frankly, it just seems to me that in the case of my friend, am I wrong or not in assuming that he'd better try another instrument entirely, based on how hard it seems to be for him to achieve any real progress?