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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Ricky Sharples asked:

So you have finally decided to learn to play guitar. Have you decided to learn online or are you going for face to face lessons? Your average guitar teacher will wind up costing you about eighty to one hundred dollars every month. That is just for one lesson per week. On the other hand a nifty set of videos cannot give you personal advice based on the observation of your playing by a seasoned professional guitar player.

A live guitar teacher might offer you the chance to take a free lesson to help you decide whether to commit yourself to a course of lessons. You could sit down with your teacher during your free lesson and tell him how you want to progress with the guitar. He can tell you if your goals are realistic or if you need to rethink your dreams of the future. This will let you get an idea of how committed your teacher is to turning students into guitar players. A good guitar teacher will be listen to your plans for your guitar playing and his teaching methods and advice will be tailored to your specific needs. He can watch you play and see where you are going wrong and what you need to do to fix it.

If you lead a busy life it might not be practical for you to get to a guitar teacher once a week and devote half an hour, an hour or more per day to practicing the guitar as well as performing your professional and family duties. If you are one of these busy people the prospect of saving money on guitar tuition fees and transport fares or fuel costs you might want to think seriously about learning guitar online. If you decide to go for an online course then how do you know which one to choose?
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The internet has archives of guitar tabs, sites containing free lessons, thousands of free videos and countless opportunities for us to watch videos of the best guitarists in the world, past or present, dead or alive. There are many forums with guys who have been playing the guitar for many years waiting for a chance to pass on their expertise and love of guitar playing to beginners. If you save a few of these guitar forums to your bookmarks in your browser you can visit a few every day and copy and paste any advice or tabs that you find useful.

There are guitar lesson websites that have the lessons set out in the correct sequence for a beginner guitar player’s progress. The formulators of these guitar courses are experienced guitar players who have extensive experience teaching the guitar and playing in bands. These online lessons are great for people who need a basic understanding of the guitar, how to hold it and play chords for easy songs. Free online guitar lessons get these people playing the guitar fast.

Here is a great way to make use of free guitar tools and tabs you find on the internet. You could organize your basic tools into groups like tabs, chord charts, songs, scales, articles and tools such as online guitar tuners. You create some folders on your computer for each of these groups so that you can get to your learning material easily during your guitar practice time.

Online guitar lessons also go a long way towards saving your dignity as well as your money. You can work quietly in your own room at any difficulties or misunderstanding about guitar playing without exposing your shortcomings to another person. You can do this at your own pace, seeking more advice from forums to help you with your problems. If you have only a little time to spend on guitar practice online lessons will accommodate you, and if you find that you have some extra time you will always find something new and interesting to learn.

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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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Kevin Sinclair asked:

Here are some of the more common ways to learn to play the guitar. Try each method to see what works best for you.

Group Lessons: Learning guitar in a group setting can be less intimidating for the beginning musician. You not only get the benefit of having a teacher to help you along you can often judge your progress by where the other students are in the class. The worst part about taking guitar lessons in a group setting is the teachers time is divided so you may not get as much attention as you might need.
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Private Lessons: This is the best way to learn to play the guitar if you can find the right teacher. The instructor can gauge your progress each week and custom design your lessons for you. You have your teachers’ undivided attention and you can ask anything you feel is not clear.

CD Lessons: There are many instruction CDs available in nearly any style you can think of. The advantage of this style of learning is you can listen to the CD as many times as you want. Any part that is not clear can be replayed as many times as needed. The disadvantages include the songs may not be the ones you desire to learn and the instruction is more general without any way of knowing where you are in your musical journey.

DVD Lessons: Instruction on DVD includes all the good and bad points of the CD instruction. The number one advantage to learning guitar by watching DVD video is you can see what the instructor is doing. Visual learning goes a long way toward answering the questions burning in your mind.

Music Books: Music books are a time-honored way to learn how to play the guitar. You can find more books on more different styles than most any other way to learn. You need to be proficient in reading music if you do not know the song you are learning. Most folks have a hard time getting the song right if they do not know the song they are learning.

Internet: In these modern times the Internet is a wonderful resource in learning to play the guitar. There are many websites that will show you how to play the exact notes your guitar hero plays. Membership sights are plentiful where for a small monthly fee you can learn most any style you choose.

Friends: Do not overlook your guitar playing buddies. Most guitar pickers are a friendly bunch who will be more than happy to help you along.

Slowing Down Recordings: You can purchase software that slows down your favorite recordings. This allows you to hear each phrase at a speed where you can pick out the different notes. This is a great way to learn to play.

Playing With Other People: The very best way to learn to play the guitar is to get together with other people and play. This is the fastest way to learn. You will learn more by getting out and playing with other people than you ever will sitting at home playing by yourself.

The method you decide to use to learn to play guitar is up to you. Try to practice four or five times a week for 30 minutes at a time and you will be playing guitar before you know it.

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Bernice Eker asked:

One of the best ways to practice the guitar is through the use of a guitar tablature or the guitar sheet music.

Guitar tablatures are the most effective guide in learning and playing the guitar. Today people can find variety of resources from books and especially the World Wide Web. Reading the guitar music requires patience and knowledge, and with practice you can strum along to your favorite song without hassle.

Guitar sheet music or tablatures are easy to understand and read once you’ve known the basics.

First you need to know its parts and purposes. Some guitar tablatures also include the musical staff, which indicates the notes and the tempo timing of the song, but it is mostly for advance musicians who can read notes. Beginners should start by learning to read the tablature sheet.
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The guitar sheet music is made up of 6 lines, which act as the guitar strings. The upper line is the high pitch E string while the lowest is the bass E string. There are numbers written on the line, which indicates the finger positions on the fret bar. Also you can find letters on the tab like “p” which means pull (the pulling of fingers from the strings) and “h” for hammer (hammering the string with fingers). The strumming patterns though indicated with a symbol would be learned easily if you play along with the song.

You can find guitar sheet music of your favorite songs from music books and websites that offer free tablatures submitted by fellow musicians. There is also computer software, which shows you not only the tablature but plays it as well together with sound for easy learning.

There are lots of effective ways of learning the guitar and learning how to read guitar music is a good thing to learn and practice.

Learning the guitar requires a lot of skills and dedication to excel and guitar sheet music is indeed the best help for learning the instrument. It will require a lot of time and effort but once you get used to it, you’ll see that you can play any song as long as there’s a tablature to read.

Some people say that using guitar tablatures is the same as cheating, but most people and musicians who also devote time writing sheet music thinks that it’s just to speed things up for beginning musicians.

Some may not be a fan. Some may prefer learning by ear, but for beginners and for those who want to save themselves from the hassle of learning the song by listening to it over and over, reading guitar sheet music is a shortcut.

Using tablatures is not bad but if you want to excel further you might as well teach yourself music theories and practice learning by ear. After all, guitar tablature is one of the many methods to practice and learn guitar. It is also a great help to satisfy yourself when you’re playing a song you have always wanted to play.

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Ricky Sharples asked:


The age-old question, “how long does it take to learn guitar?”. It’s natural when starting on a course of learning to ask how long it will take. If you are starting to learn guitar you will be undergoing some changes in the way you spend your time, the way your muscles feel and the way you feel about learning how to play guitar. Right at the start of the course the boring and painful bits are making themselves felt and the rewards are not appearing yet. So how long does it take?

To some degree it depends on how old you are when you start to learn guitar. If you start in your late teens, as many people do, it could take some weeks before you are able to play a few chords and begin to play some easy guitar-accompanied songs. At this age you will possibly have friends who can help you with guitar tips if you don’t actually have a teacher. Once you are over the first hump of learning chords you will start to feel that you are developing your own individual understanding of the guitar.

Some people will learn guitar at music school for a couple of years. This will mean taking the guitar a little more seriously and learning a great number of chords and some music theory. You will be learning the guitar from books and DVDs, maybe augmented by some online guitar lessons. You will realize that the guitar is a fairly difficult instrument to learn if you are planning on really mastering it. Playing a few chords for some easy songs is okay but it could take years to get your head around reading sheet music and understanding guitar music theory.

You could speed up your progress by taking advantage f the enormous number of guitar lesson videos and written tutorials available on line. But no matter how much help you have your progress is not going to be rapid. There’s no magic bullet, you will learn guitar at your own pace, whatever that happens to be.

Some people concentrate on learning the notes on the guitar fretboard – where all the notes are located. If you use this approach you could stick with learning where all the natural notes are because once you know those, the sharps and flats will be obvious. Once you have an understanding of the major and minor scales and how their intervals work, you should be able to play in all keys.

You will also learn about barre chords. This is a technically demanding part of your quest to learn guitar and many people tend to shy away from it, but once you get the idea of the basic chord shapes that you can move up and down the fretboard, it will not be so daunting.

For many, many guitar players the minor pentatonic scale is the beginning, middle and end of learning guitar. If you know the root note of your song or chord you can match it with a minor pentatonic scale. So you are using five notes to compose and improvise guitar solos. What this means is that inside of a year you should have a reasonable mastery of the guitar and the question of how long does it take to learn guitar has changed for you because you know that every time you play you learn something new.



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Fame Ahmed asked:


With the increasing popularity of rock music during the last few decades, playing the guitar has become very appealing for many people. While there are many teenagers out there who dream of becoming rock superstars, there are also many people that want to learn how to play the guitar just for the sake of it. However, many of them don’t find the best way to learn guitar and after a few unsuccessful attempts, they finally give up.

Different people have different learning needs. In addition, we also have different resources, different jobs, different errands to run and different schedules. If you’re not at the level you want, maybe it’s because you haven’t found the best way to learn guitar yet. There are several ways to learn how to play the guitar. Listed below are only a few of them.

Theory Books

There are thousands of theory books on the market that teach you how to play the guitar. Some of them are even very good and can provide you with all the information you need. Books are an inexpensive and comfortable strategy to learn how to play the guitar. Unfortunately, experience shows that for many of us they just don’t work. However, if you are a very patient person, a theory book might be the best way to learn guitar.

Video Lessons

Video guitar lessons are available on DVDs and video tapes in almost any music store, as well as on virtual shops. In addition, there are also some video lessons available online. Some of them are even free. Video lessons are more dynamic and have a better chance of keeping you focused. They have the advantage of allowing you to practice at home whenever you find the time to do it. However, the inconvenience is that you can’t benefit from the personalized attention and useful feedback a teacher could provide.

Private Lessons

If you are willing to dedicate a lot of time as well as some money to this, private lessons are definitely the best way to learn guitar. A good teacher can design a customized teaching program to suit your learning style and provide you with individualized attention and positive feedback to get you motivated. In addition, he/she can also spot and correct your mistakes very fast.

Learning by Ear

Learning the guitar by ear can be very fun, especially if you have some sort of musical bone in your body, and that bone is humming with lots of vibration, you might find that this is the best way to learn guitar for you. With the modern slowing down technology, it is much easier now than it used to be for our parents’ generation.

You should always keep in mind that playing the guitar should be fun. If you find it difficult or stressing, your learning strategy might have a lot to do with it. Sometimes you need to try several learning methods before finding the one that works best for you. However, if you really want to play the guitar like a pro and have enough time and money, taking up private lessons is probably the best way to go.



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Ricky Sharples asked:


Now you have your guitar and you have found that if you are going to get any music coming out of it, you will be needing some basic guitar lessons – sooner rather than later. But you do not want to go signing up with a guitar teacher or buying a packaged course on the internet without having some idea of what’s in a guitar lesson, so here is a general overview.

The very basic thing you need in your first guitar lesson is to learn how to hold your guitar. Playing the guitar is a physically demanding activity and if you do not learn to hold your guitar properly you could be making your guitar practice a dreary and painful routine. You also need to learn the basics of how to hold your plectrum and how to strum the guitar.

Any guitar course is structured to teach you how to read some form of written musical notation, either tablature or sheet music. Tablature, or tab, is based on a picture of the guitar neck with the frets you have to finger to get the appropriate notes marked on it. It takes a few minutes to get the basic idea behind tab and maybe half an hour’s playing around to make sure you have got the principle well enough to start reading tabs for your favorite songs.

Sheet music is the conventional music notation that has been around for hundreds of years and is used for all musical instruments. The advantage with sheet music is that you can pick up any piece of music written for any instrument and pick out at least the basic melody on the guitar. The downside of sheet music is that it takes a little time and effort to learn because it entails learning some musical theory. If you are anxious to start playing your guitar real quick you probably think learning music is a bad idea, and many guitarists will tell you they do not miss knowing musical notation. But at the same time alot of guitarists will tell you that they are glad they took the little extra time and effort to learn theory and sheet music.

Basic guitar lessons are all about playing chords. Chords are written in the form of chord charts which tell you where to put your fingers to play the notes, and which strings are included in the chord. Some chord charts even tell you which fingers to use to fret the chord’s notes. Chords can also be written in tabs or in sheet music notes. If you want to play accompaniment for songs, you will probably only need to learn your basic chords and how they relate to each other. This info will enable you to get together a collection of chords which will let you play thousands of songs. You will also learn about chord progressions which is how chords interact with each other in songs.

So that is it. The guitar is a chord-oriented instrument and if you are taught chords and how to read them, that gives you the basic lesson content for the guitar. Of course, the guitar has alot more to offer than just basic chord playing but once you learn chords and strumming you can decide where you want to go from there.



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timespiral asked:


I’ve been playing guitar for a couple of decades and I’ve developed a pain on the fingertip of my index finger (fretboard hand). It is not the calous stuff. It’s deeper. Seems to be bone or nerve. Any suggestions on how to heal?

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Mark Andrews asked:


To play, learn guitar is perhaps one of the most rewarding hobbies, pasttimes that you could take up.

Playing guitar, learn to play guitar well and not only could it give you years of great pleasure but could even with enough practice, send you on your way into a new found career which will give you everything that you desire out of life.

The great beauty of learning to play guitar is the sheer number of options open to you.  Perhaps no other musical instrument in the world is able to offer such an incredible diversity of sound, capturing just about every possible human mood and emotion as the violao, as it was traditionally know as.

The guitar, violao has been around for at least 5000 years, one can only imagine the mindboggling number of beautiful songs and sounds that have been created by the guitar in that span of time.

The guitar also give you a great number of choices, there is the classical guitar, the acoustic guitar, the electric guitar to name just three, each with their own unique sound.

Some famous brands of guitar include Gibson, Epiphone, Yamaha, listed in order of expensive guitar, middle of the range guitar and for a guitar on a budget suitable for a begginner, the Yamaha guitar.

Guitar styles and looks also vary a great deal, it is simply amazing the sheer number of guitar styles that you can choose from, truly there is a guitar suitable for everyone, no matter your gender, age or guitar playing experience.

Guitar prices range from just a few dollars to many hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Typically, for the guitar beginner, you don’t have to spend a great deal of money to buy a guitar suitable for your needs, anything from $20-25 upwards should do it, depending on where you buy a guitar from.  It pays to ask around your family and friends plus your work colleagues.

Learning to play guitar does take time, as with anything, learning to play the guitar does have it’s own learning curve.  The main things to remember are that persistence does pay off, so if you have the patience to learn the guitar, the dividend, payoff for you will be not only giving huge amounts of enjoyment to yourself but also maybe, to thousands of other people around you, throughout the course of your life.  One of the great beauties of the guitar is that it can literally be played anywhere and it’s a great conversation ice breaker, when meeting up with other people perhaps for the first time.

Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that many a great lifetime friendship has started off by simply playing a guitar song in front of other people, guitar jamming together.

So why not pick up a guitar today and start a life of guitar music guaranteed to bring you years of pleasure and huge amounts of enjoyment?



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