Trevor Greenfield asked:

tarted to learn guitar is no different to learning anything else. The sooner we can start to sound half-way decent the better. All we want to do is go from that point of knowing little or nothing to becoming very familiar with the subject in the shortest time possible.

People get into playing guitar in lots of different ways and sometimes the way that you are introduced to guitar playing can have a big influence on the style you choose and how successful you become.

So let’s look at some of those processes and maybe give you some useful pointers to assist your guitar playing.

I guess quite a few of us get introduced to playing an instrument at school these days and have a reasonably open choice as to what style of guitar we choose.

Many adults, however, having decided to play end up buying a second hand instrument from a local classified ad without any real understanding of the different types of instrument and whether the one they have chosen is best suited to the style they want to play.

Choosing a guitar

There are many different types of guitar but they basically break down into acoustic or electric.

The Spanish or classical guitar is the oldest type of guitar and is an acoustic instrument. This means that it creates its sound by the vibrations of the string which are amplified inside the hollow body. It has nylon strings and has a smaller body than the other types that we will look at. It also has a much wider neck than the other types of guitar. This has some advantages when you are just starting out in that it makes it easier to play chords without the annoying buzzing or touching the wrong strings that are a real pain at first. The wider neck does also mean that you have to stretch your fingers wider to form the chords which can be difficult for children.

I personally think it is a good idea for everyone to start out on a classical guitar and learn the basics of chords, how to form them, some music theory and how to play melodies with both the fingers and a pick.

However, for those of you that want to play rock guitar with all kinds of electronic effects, starting out with a classical guitar will probably not be very appealing. All I will say here is that if you study the great rock guitar players as I have you will find that almost without exception they started out learning the basics on a classical guitar.

The steel strung guitar is also an acoustic guitar which is generally bigger in the body and has a longer neck. This is the style of guitar that folk singers and country singers tend to use. The strings are closer together making it harder to form clean chords and push down on the neck. When you are starting out you will get very sore fingers playing with these steel strings while the ends of your fingers harden off.

Finally we have the many types of electric guitar which generally have sold bodies and rely almost entirely on the electrification to create the sound which is pushed out through an electric amplifier.

I said that often the type of guitar we choose has an effect on our playing experience and this is true. As a guitar teacher, I often found that a child would come to me for lessons with a classical guitar that his or her parents had bought them and would get discouraged when it didn’t sound like Eric Clapton.

I had to explain that you can only play a certain style on a classical guitar but that learning the basics would set them up for life. Some of them accepted this and worked hard to improve but the majority who were impatient like most of us or didn’t really have a passion for it would quit.

The choice of guitar for you is really down to the style you want to play and the budget you have to spend. I would recommend that when you are starting out, you visit a large guitar store with lots of choice and knowledgeable staff to help you.

In the specialist music stores you will always find that the staff are not only very helpful but that most of them are good players too and will be able to demonstrate what the instrument is capable of in the hands of someone that really can play.

Go along, take your time to try some out and don’t worry that you sound like a beginner. We were all beginners once and the guys in the store won’t laugh at you.

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Peter Edvinsson asked:

A fake book can really help you a lot in developing your improvisational skills. If you choose just one of the songs you will find a source to many exercises that will help you become a much better guitarist.

Do you know what a fake book is?

A fake book is made in a very compact format containing a lot of songs. This is possible because you will usually only find the melody of a song and the chords of a song.

The melody is written out with sheet music notation and maybe guitar tablature and if it is a song you can find the lyrics beneath the melody. The chords to play you will find above the notes.
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Because this is a compact way of writing down songs a fake book can contain more than 500 songs.

This very rudimentary way to write down the songs gives you as a guitarist an opportunity to use your own musical taste when you interpret the songs.

The songs will usually only contain very basic chord progressions. When you hear these songs played the songs are often spiced up with more interesting chords. Often there are also more chords used which will make the chord progressions more interesting and exciting musically.

The act of trying to find more chords to use in a song and to spice up existing chords is an excellent exercise in chord theory. As you are working with a song you are interested in and also will use the exercise in you actual guitar playing you will be more motivated to do a good job.

You can now practice the new chords in the song. Concentrate on one chord at a time. There are many ways to practice a chord by for example playing the chord in various positions and with different voicings.

You can now take the chord practice a step further by using your new chord progressions in the song and practice changing chords. Take a few bars of the song and practice to play the progressions on your guitar as you vary the chord voicings.

When you have decided which chords you will use in a song you can use these chords to find suitable scales to use in your guitar improvisation. You can find many scale books on the net with suggestions on which scale to use for various chord progressions.

We will use the first chord of the song you are working on to show how you can find out which scale to use. If your first chord is a C-major chord you can choose between for example a C-major scale or a C-major pentatonic scale. The principle is to find a scale that contains the notes in the chord.

Now it is time to actually practice playing the scales on your guitar. Start with the first chord in the song and continue the same way with the other chords. First, strum the chord on your guitar and practice playing the suitable scale up and down in various positions and patterns.

Actually it is very common that you can use the same scale to many chords in a song. For example, the C-major scale will work together with the chords C-major, G7, Dm, Am and so on.

Now when you have mastered playing the suitable scales to the chords you can start to work on improving your improvisational skills by taking the previous method a little bit further. Strum a chord and use the scale you have chosen to create your own patterns, melodies and licks.

You are now prepared to improvise over the chord progressions you have written down using the scales you have chosen. The exciting part is when you come to a bar with a new scale to use. If you find it hard to change scale during your improvisation it might be a good idea to concentrate working on this skill for a while.

That means, use two scales and try to alternate between them as you continue to improvise maybe a couple of bars over each scale.

You can use a song in many other ways developing your skills in guitar improvisation. This should of course be a positive exercise leading you towards the goal to be able to play the song from start to end with melody and improvisation as you would like to play it in public.

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Paul Schmitt asked:


So you have finally decided to learn guitar. You have come to the right place. I will be offering advice and give reviews on good places were you can get guitar lessons. Learning guitar can be fun and easy. You can even learn how to play guitar right in the comfort of your own home. There are so many different programs that help you learn guitar.

Some people learn how to play guitar on their own, however the majority of people are not able to learn guitar on their own without any help. At the top of this site I have posted a link that will take you step by step in learning the guitar. I have found many of my students say the guitar lessons really excelled them in their ability to learn guitar.

In the beginning it is good to have patience. Start out learning a few cords and then practice them. Weather you want to play country or rock knowing simple cords is the key to getting started.

Once you have mastered a few cords keep learning more and more. Then you can begin to use variations of these cords to play songs you know or write new ones. This is some of the steps in learning how to play guitar.

I have had my students try different course programs that help them to learn guitar. One good thing about the courses you can take from home is that you decide when you want to take you guitar lessons. You can also decide how many times you want to repeat a guitar lessons.

This gives you flexibility and now time is on your side and learning guitar fits into any schedule. Most of my new students learn guitar basics and are already playing songs by the end of a weekend. Learning guitar is always easer than the person thinks. People of all ages can achieve many different levels when they decide to learn how to play guitar.

Click on the above link to check out the course. You can learn electric and acoustic guitar with this course. I am will reviewing another course for those people who really want to get the most out of their guitar lessons. For now I have found at least one very good course. I will post the next course in the same place at the top of this page.

So remember you can learn guitar and knowing how to play guitar is easy. Just work on those guitar lessons a few times a week to improve on your skills.

Please visit some of my web sites at Learn Guitar and Guitar Lessons



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Steve Robinson asked:


You can learn the guitar fast if you understand a few easily absorbed steps. Now to be clear becoming expert takes time but you can be quickly enjoying your favorite songs quickly. After all isn’t that what we all want to learn to do?

The first step is to check is that the action on your guitar is set properly for you. A good guitar shop will do this for you but if you have purchased a new or used guitar the action may be too high and cause sore fingers and stress in your hands.

**Note – The ‘action’ is the distance between the underside of the guitar string and the guitar fingerboard. Not having this set properly can result in sore fingers and that will definitely result in less practice and playing.

The second step is to understand that the music is in you and no amount of spending on fancy equipment will overcome what you put in to it. Your effort should be put into technique not the latest equipment. You are the reason your playing works or it does not. A good guitar player can still create great music on inferior equipment. Great equipment can’t make a bad player sound good.

The third step is to concentrate on your rhythm. Keep the pace with your foot so that you have a consistent flow in your playing. Spend more time and effort in developing rhythm when playing as that is the most important item when people are listening. Once this becomes second nature then you can start to expand your other techniques.

The fourth step to learning guitar fast is to use simple chords first..If you are trying to master complex chords before you have the rhythm down to being an automatic reflex you will stop the rhythm because you are concentrating so hard on where to place your fingers that you lose the pace.

The fifth step is again to stay with basics in your strumming pattern. This will help you in two ways. You won’t lose the rhythm because you are using just a basic strum on the first beat of the measure. You also will begin to memorize the sound of the chord. This will allow you to easily start to play by ear down the line because you will recognize the chord automatically in the songs you are copying.

The final concept to learn to play guitar fast is to stick to two chord songs initially..Again by keeping it simple you build up your confidence and your abilities much more quickly. After all when you were an infant you crawled berfore you walked and you mastered walking before you could run.

Getting up and going when learning guitar fast can be easy and quick but…

Staying to the very basic until they become second nature will allow you to improve your playing much quicker than trying to gather complex items all at once. That tends to teach you bad habits that will be exceedingly hard to correct to get you playing from the beginner level to expert.



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Robert asked:


s think we would like to play guitar, but thinking about it and actually trying to do it are two very different things. You can choose a guitar to buy, but once you are holding this instrument in your hand it is difficult to know how to play it – or even how to hold it properly. The good news is that there are plenty of resources available to learn how to play guitar, and some don’t even require that you leave the comfort of home to take advantage of them. There are many great websites that will teach you the basics of learning guitar so you can be strumming tunes before you ever even schedule your first private lesson.

The Basics

The first step in learning guitar is to collect all of the necessary supplies. Of course, the guitar is the first component to this process, but you will also need a guitar pick and a willingness to learn this craft. Keep in mind that your fingers will get sore when you first begin, so take a break between sessions and know that the discomfort will go away the more you play. To make the first few lessons a little easier, keep your fingernails trimmed down to make it easier for you play the notes and strum the strings.

The next step will be to learn some basic guitar terms, so that when you go online to take your lessons you will understand what the virtual instructor is talking about. Strings are strung across the guitar, and these are the elements you will use to get sounds out of your instrument. Frets are the small metal bars that divide the neck of the guitar into sections. When you go higher on the frets, you will go higher on the sounds.

Finding an Online Tutor

Once you’ve got the basics down, you can begin to shop for a video tutor that will get you started playing your instrument. The easiest way to find instruction is on the Internet, although you can find instructional DVD’s as well. Some of the websites you find will be free, while others will charge you for the instruction. You will need to decide for yourself whether you can find quality instruction without paying for it.

Many of these websites will also offer you reviews of guitar products that will help you find the best equipment and software for your needs. When you do find the best online tutorial, make sure that you follow the process step by step to ensure that you don’t miss any of the vital information in the early stages. Work at your own pace and make sure you completely master one lesson before you move onto the next. This will ensure your success in your guitar playing endeavor and help you make the most of your new hobby.

Guitar playing can be a fun pastime if you take the time to learn how to do it properly. With the right equipment and a good online tutorial, you will be strumming tunes in no time at all.

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Roland Jefferson III asked:


It is a very popular desire in that many people all over the world want to learn guitar and don’t always have a teacher or the financial means at their disposal to hire a teacher that can help you. In fact, in a society where music is not even considered as an imperative subject in school, guitar teachers are becoming more and more scarce. The ones that you can find are extremely expensive and often far too booked up to even consider taking new clients that wish to learn guitar-playing techniques. There are many things that you need to consider when looking for a teacher and even more options for you to explore on your own especially if you are driven and have the desire to learn guitar.

Guitar Playing On The Net

One of your main options in today’s busy rat race is to grab your guitar and have a seat in front of your computer. The online presence offers more resources for you to learn guitar than any book or other archive you could possibly locate. If you wish to learn to play a specific guitar like an acoustic or maybe you’re interested in learning the steel guitar, it is all available online. In fact, there are so many outlets to learn guitar online that most of them are free in the way of online guitar lessons. It is even possible to download a program that is like an instant tutor with the hands and the guitar fret board so that you are able to mimic the tutor’s actions on your own guitar.

There are also many programs and lessons that are available online that claim to make you learn guitar like Jimi Hendrix and be producing licks in no time mainly geared at the electric guitar fanatics however, with experience like anything else is the most achievable way to learn guitar like a pro. These “become a killer guitarist overnight” systems might work for some but they typically cost an arm and a leg and success is not guaranteed. You must believe that to learn guitar effectively, you are going to need a ton of practice and there is no short cut around that.

If you are particularly interested in the electric guitar, it will be extremely important for you to either learn to read music, unless you already can and implement the notes according to the notes on the guitar fret board. This is often a very exhausting and frustrating thing to do because there are many notes on the keyboard and it is a very long process. However, there is a cheater way to learn music notes if you don’t know how to read music and that is through a system called guitar tablature. You will need to learn guitar tablature in order to successfully pick out a song on the guitar. Guitarists who don’t read music invented this system in order to benefit all those guitarists out there who can’t read music and there are many!



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James Brown asked:


It is sometimes too tough to learn guitar when you are honestly not inclined to the instrument or even music per se. You will face many set backs and troubles while doing so. However if you successfully hurdle through it, there is no doubt that you will succeed in learning how to play the instrument. Erase the idea of failing from your mind because if you start learning guitar with this kind of outlook most probably you will really fail for sure. It is time to give yourself some strong convictions so that you could achieve something that you could be proud of. Let us see some few things you can do to ensure your success.

One, you search for motivation and inspiration. People, your loved ones or maybe even just listening to acoustic music will keep you motivated. If you hear one song that is totally captivating, do not ignore the fact that you would want to play the same and this is already a good start. You can motivate yourself for that matter without depending on anyone to motivate you. But it is all too well if you have someone who encourages you in doing just as that.

Two, you stay in an enlightened manner where you believe you can. The power of positive thinking will really work if you keep it that way. The stronger your belief that you can do it, the more you can achieve even the unachievable. That is direct way of saying that there is really nothing impossible if you just keep telling yourself that you can. Always remind yourself that guitar learning is just an easy challenge that you will conquer sooner or later depending on how slow or fast your learning pace is.

Three, devise a time table for you to regularly practice what you already know and will yet to know. In other words, just like a baseball player keep exercising for his game and even without game, it is similar time table for you too. You have to keep exercising and doing until you come to a point where you have already mastered one aspect of guitar player and once you achieve this then it is now time to go up into the next level. Believe me, no one can take your there except yourself.

Four, always imagine yourself succeeding this hurdle and eventually you will be because sometimes our outlook will lead us to success. You just have to keep looking forward and see to it that you are not distracted. Keep focusing in achieving your pre-set goal and your outlook will see to it that you will arrive there. Do not give up half-way there because the time you spend thinking and thinking without doing is a time wasted when you could have spent it on learning.

Five, other people will tend to be better than you. Do not be discouraged when you see someone who can play beautifully like a pro. Instead, use this as a tool for you to achieve success.



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