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The Best Way to Begin Learning to Play Guitar

Beginner Guitar, How to Play Guitar, Learn to Play Guitar, Play Guitar

There must be over a million books on how to play guitar. The thing to keep in mind is that books are on the market, not to teach you to play guitar, but to make money for the people selling those books. This would be all fine and good, if the books actually showed you the best way to get started. Unfortunately, very few if any, really do.

The thing is, picking up a guitar and trying to play it, is very much like picking up a new diet and trying to apply it to your lifestyle. It’s good for a few days, weeks or even months, but after awhile, you start to lose interest and will power.

If you truly have a burning desire to learn to play guitar, than just fellow these simple steps.

First, find a song you really like a lot that has only three chords in it. And I don’t mean the stripped down kind of song you find in beginner guitar books. I mean, listen to songs on your Ipod, or on the radio. Go through your old collections. Do whatever it takes to find a song you really like, and that has only three chords in it. Old sixties songs had a lot of three chord songs, especially folk music. So did a lot of acid rock. Quite often simple sounding songs have simple chords. Check them out.

So, how do you know if there are only three chords in a song? Well, usually it’s pretty easy to tell if you listen very carefully, to just the rhythm guitar. Sometimes this is easier by turning up either the left or right speaker, or by adjusting the tone. Mostly what you’ll hear is two chords, followed up by a third when they go into the chorus. Listen for the changes in sound, that’s when they are changing to a different chord.

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If you have to, go to a music store where they sell sheet music and tell them what you want. I’ve never yet be disappointed when doing it this way.

Once you have your song picked out, you need to figure out what the three chords in your particular song are. The easiest way to do this, is to use Google. Type in something like: “Name of Song” tab. The word “tab” here, is an abbreviation of the word tablature. It’s a diagrammatic way of showing how a song is played on a guitar. What you will see is something like this:

||———–|————-|—————
||———–|———-X-|—————
||———–|———-X-|—————
||———–|———-X-|—————
||———–|————-|—————
||———–|————-|—————

This is a visual representation of the neck of your guitar if you were to hold it sideways to your body with the tuning pegs to your left. The lines going left to right are the strings, and the lines going up and down are the frets (thin strips of metal embedded in the neck), and the X’s indicate where you place your fingertips to form certain chords. The one above is a diagram for the A chord. The tab you find online will continue on towards the right as other chords are to be struck.

Once you have the song you want, and the chords that are used to play it, sit down with your guitar and figure out how the chord is actually fingered. Once again, if you have trouble, you can find out by going online and looking up the name of the chord. None of the major chords are very difficult to finger. It’s not till you get to the fancy stuff that anything gets hard.

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Keep in mind, at this stage, when you listen to your song there is bound to be a lot more sound than just the rhythm guitar. In fact, their might be two rhythm guitars. Or one rhythm and one solo. There might be piano or keyboards, or a saxophone. The point is, almost all songs have other elements that comprise a single song. Your job is to learn just the one rhythm part.

Finally, once you have the fingering correct, listen to the way the guitarist on the recording hits the strings. The kind of rhythm they use. Try to replicate that with your own guitar. Certainly it won’t be easy at first, but the more you try the more you’ll start to “hear” things you hadn’t before. This is how most professional guitarists learned to play. By first following their ears.

Keep in mind, that the guitar is not an easy instrument to learn to play. The strings will feel awkward. Holding the guitar might feel strange. Your fingers will get sore. A lot of physically uncomfortable things will happen. After a while, you might start to convince yourself that you are just not cut out to play. This is quite common. But the actual fact is, there are very few people that cannot learn to play the guitar. Playing well, however, is probably another thing. But not everyone picks up a guitar and learns to play only because they have visions of becoming the next rock star. Playing guitar is a very personal experience.

At any rate, once you get so you can play along with your chosen song reasonably well, go out and find another song. That’s the key. You need to make sure you always have something new in the works. That’s how you keep from feeling like things are getting stale. If possible, also try to find someone else to play with; either another guitarist, a bass player, drummer or whatever. There’s always something new to learn with guitar, no matter how long you play. So, even if you never make a dime off it, it surely is worth learning, even if nobody else ever hears you play a note.

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Good luck.