There is a piece of software out there called ‘Learn and Master Guitar’, and if you want to use that program… it will teach you what you need to know for very little money. Their home page is http://www.learnandmaster.com/guitar/ and they get five star ratings as being the best out there.

OK, lets say that you have decided that you wanted to play guitar. Next, you decided between whether you wanted to play acoustic (classical) or electronic guitar and you decided upon classical. Next, you got a music tutor by going to your music teacher at school and asking who lives nearby that might give guitar lessons; and you bought yourself a $150 – $300 guitar. What should you do, next?

Then, you started learning scales, tablature, and fret fingering for chords. Now, you know enough to want to learn and master guitar. The next step has to do with taking lots of time repetitiously trying songs. Learn one song, first. Memorize what the chords you’re playing are called. Memorize whether you should strike your hand downwards when you begin, and memorize the proper number of up/down/down movements you use for each chord.

Learn what ‘key’ means. When they say ‘The Key of G-Minor” do you know what that means, yet?

Can you read music sheets at all, or are you staying with tablature because it’s easier to play. After all, it shows you where you put your fingers. A music sheet doesn’t do anything at all that helps you. But, most music is going to be in the form of music sheets, not tabs. Tablature is sort of like for the beginner. Yes, you’re still a beginner, too; but the way you make it that leap between beginner and amateur is learning new things. Music can take many years to master.

Mastering music…  if you want to learn and master guitar, you have to be patient. You must be willing to wait on the more difficult fingering until you’re starting to be able to have the rest of the information inside you. Once it’s not just something you’re trying to remember, and its gone deep within, that’s when music will become your friend instead of be like a separate thing.

So, you get there in steps. In the end, what you want is to have someone give you some sheet music, you place it on your music stand, and you play the music. That certainly won’t occur just by you playing only tablature pieces.

If you have gotten to that point where you want to be able to read sheet music, then as usual, you’ll have to get a book out on ‘how to read sheet music’. In the article on ‘advanced guitar lessons’, I’ll be showing a bit of how you read sheet music, but you certainly can’t learn just by knowing what a clef is.

Once you’ve learned sheet music, you’ll be a much better musician, and it’ll let you be able to tell exactly what they’re doing. You need to start with simple songs.

So, you set your metronome, and then you start playing simple songs from the sheet music just like you did when you were first starting to learn tablature. One of the problems is, they always figure that you’re going to be using piano, not guitar.

So, if you might now know BCD and EFG on the guitar. From there, you can at least learn where those are on the musical staff. Go to YouTube and look up ‘Learning guitar sheet music’. Remember that you will need to put in the word ‘guitar’ because they are figuring that you are going to be taking piano lessons, otherwise. If you want to learn and master guitar, you’ll have to practice, a lot. The more that you learn about such things as sheet music, the better you’ll do.

So, look into the program called, ‘Learn and Master Guitar’. It’s the best one out there, and gets raving reviews. Go to http://www.learnandmaster.com/guitar/ . Remember, they get five star ratings as being the best out there, that’s because they are.

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How to play the guitar… you’ve seen someone play the guitar before, whether they’re on stage, or it was your brother just learning how… and it looked difficult. However, even kids can learn guitar, so it’s really not that difficult. First, those people didn’t just pick up a guitar one day and POOF, they played the guitar. Even though it’s possible that you could learn how to play the guitar by downloading instructions and tablature sheets, it’s very difficult to learn any musical instrument unless you have a good music teacher to tell you what you’re doing wrong.

My friend, Mike, from Boston taught himself how to play classical piano; but he didn’t even use a book to show him the process. He just started playing until he got pretty good at it. Nobody does that, though, and particularly with a guitar. You would never be able to learn the guitar unless someone teaches you.

Thus, the process of learning how to play a guitar is very similar to the process one uses when one learns to play the piano. The first step is to find a good music teacher. One place to look is your music class in school. If you go to your schools’ music teacher, they’ll be very helpful, and oftentimes will already have lists of musicians in the neighborhood that are teaching particular instruments. They’ll also have suggestions as to where you should go to buy your musical instrument.

Realize that there’s not just one kind of guitar. You’re really deciding whether you want to play a Classical or ‘Nylon String’ guitar, or an electronic guitar. A classical guitar is in the family called ‘chordophones’, and it’s obvious that it’s made out of wood. It almost always has plain-grained wood that’s very visible on the front and back, with a darker stain around the edge of the guitar.

An electronic guitar, on the other hand, is shaped strange, usually. The shape can vary, wildly, because it doesn’t need to be a deep resonant shape in order for the sound to work. In fact, if you play an electronic guitar with no amplifier, you’ll hear almost complete silence because there is no way for the strings to amplify without the amp, itself.

On a classical guitar, the resonating chamber is what causes the note to play loud. It goes into the body of the guitar and comes out the hole. This amplifies the sound, thus allowing you to play a classical guitar without an electronic amplifier.

With an electronic guitar, you use what’s termed a ‘guitar pickup’ which takes the vibrations it feels and translates those vibrations into electrical signals which are then fed to an amplifier. An amplifier has what are called ‘Operational Amplifier’ integrated circuit chips in them which take that small signal that comes from the electric guitar and it makes them bigger. As the tiny waves come out of the output from the OP Amp, they’re much bigger. That’s called the ‘pre-amp’.

After the guitar’s note has gone through the pre-amp, it’s now big enough to be passed to the main power amplifier section on the amplifier’s circuit board. It uses a second Operational Amplifier which raises the power of the guitar to what are called ‘line-input’ levels. Then it sends the signal to the output section and its’ ready to be fed into a power amp.

Sometimes the amp also has a small built-in power amp with a small speaker just so you don’t have to have that external power amp. In that way, you don’t get incredible power that can blast down a building, but you can at least hear your guitar. Sometimes they just let you plug in a pair of headphones, and they let you send the output to another power amplifier.

A beginner would do well to get a complete stand-alone amp which not-only can raise the power levels to line-level output to be fed to a bigger power amp; but you’d have the ability to play your guitar and hear it, or listen to headphones. Just go the music store and tell them what you want to do. If you want to now how to play the guitar, you’ll first need a guitar.

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You’re going to need guitar instruction. Few people have the fortitude to just pick up an instruction book that explains how to play a guitar, and learn how to play it. It’s just to daunting for even people who are used to doing such things. I learned touch-typing on my own and electronics, and many other things, but never tried to learn guitar by myself.

Therefore, you need to find someone that knows how to teach people of your age how to play the guitar. Certainly, if you’re 40 years old, you won’t go to the same music teacher that you would if you were 7.

If you’re any age between Kindergarten and twelfth grade, you should go ask your music teacher. They’re the one who will probably instantly have a list of tutors who are raring to teach you. Why? Well, because people in the neighborhood who teach musical instruments are going to understand that they can get many more pupils if they let the teacher of the school know about them. Nobody is as well-connected as the school’s music teacher would be. They also should be consulted when you’re wanting to purchase a guitar. They would be able to lead you to reputable dealers in your area, and would possibly even have used guitars which had hardly been used at all if they taught children in that school, themselves.

How much should you pay when purchasing your first guitar? Well, you’re certainly not going to buy one of the top guitars. They go for between $3000 and $20,000. And, at the low end, you shouldn’t get anything less than $100. It’ll just be junk. There are many guitars out there between the $150 – $300 range which would make a very good beginner guitar.

Also, if you don’t get a case for your guitar, it will get damaged. However, as long as your guitar fits in the case, even the very cheapest case would do you. What do you care what it looks like.

You must never store a guitar in damp areas that are either high heat, or high humidity. This will destroy it. You can also destroy a guitar by leaving it in the car or putting in direct sunlight. A guitar that has sustained damage might have a warped soundboard, or the glue which holds the bridge might come unglued.

So, you’ve now got your guitar, you need guitar instruction. You’ve asked your teacher and they gave you a name, Now… it’s up to you to have courage. Call that number, ask how much lessons cost, then write it down. Next, go to your parents and tell them that you bought a guitar, or you’re interested in buying a guitar and it costs $150, this is where you’d get it. And you tell them that guitar lessons are $x amount of money. No matter how little money they have in the world, if you take it that far… they’ll, most likely, buy you a guitar. However, if you really want to play the guitar, you’ll need guitar instruction.

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When you start with a guitar, make sure you’re using beginner guitar lessons. One problem that a lot of people have is, they start getting cocky. They say, “Hey, I know how to play now,” when they really don’t. If you do that, then you’re going to be unable to continue because you won’t have the basic skills needed to go on to the more advanced skills.

At first you’ll just want to practice scales. You will want to print out

Open Position Scales:

E-Minor Pentatonic Scale is widely used. In each case you should look up the tablature for that scale, then see if you can do it.

You start with an open 6 string, 3rd  Fret 6th String, Open 5th , 2nd fret 5th String, Open 4th string , second fret 4th String, Open 3rd String, 2nd fret 2nd String, Open 1st String, 2nd Fret 1st String.

E-Blue Scale is a 6-note scale. It’s basically one of the first scales that you’ll learn. You will also use alternating picks. You pick down, then up, down, then up.

When on the tablature you see a zero, that means you touch the strings at all with your left hand.

G-Major Scale is a 7-note scale.

When you’re first doing beginner guitar lessons you learn each of these scales, you practice them forwards, then backwards. You go forwards, then backwards.

You have to alternate pick with each note you play. Strum a string down, then move your left hand, strum

A-Minor starts on the open 6 th string. Look up the tablature for an A-Minor scale.

Doing scales is a good way to start. Get your metronome clicking for a 4/4 beat and play each note, doing the scales one note at a time until your five minutes of practice on that scale is done. Then go to the next scale practice, then the next, then the next. If you keep doing that every day for a week, then you’ll be ready to start learning simple songs.

Don’t jump forward too fast. Do scales and until you’ve mastered scales, don’t move on.

Barre chords are played by placing the first finger presses down either a bunch of strings, or all the strings. The other fingers will be placed first. Then, after you’ve done that, you place the others down.

The first finger is parallel to the fret line with the pin-side even with the line of the fret. Your music teacher will teach you the right placement.

These are the three you learn first when doing Barre Chords.

G-Major Barre Chord

G-Minor (lifts the second string)

C-Major

C-Minor

Once you have learned those four, you’ll move on. You have to learn them regularly until your hand gets strong enough. It might take weeks doing these chords before you can move on. Don’t be impatient. When you begin playing a guitar, the ones who won’t continue will be the ones who haven’t had the courage to just do weeks-worth of scales and chord placement first. You need to get your arm strengthened and your fingers toughened.

Beginner guitar lessons aren’t too hard. They just tend to be rather boring. You’ll want to move forward… “But gee, I’m not playing any songs!” is what you’ll say. Well, don’t worry about that. If you want to play the guitar, you have to be patient.

They won’t actually get you playing a real song for a while. They’ll first teach fingering, simple scales, and then they’ll lead you into more intricate songs. Once your beginner guitar lessons are done, that’s when you can start playing actual songs.

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Rest your finger on the string, then pull the string backwards, letting it stroke; then get your finger out of the way so it can vibrate.

Open Strings – Open notes are when you look at sheet music and you go between your first and second finger and skipping strings.

Basic C means 4/4 time, the top four means there are four beats to the bar, and the bottom means that a quarter note receives one beat. A whole note is worth four beats. A half note is worth two beats each. Quarter notes are worth one beat, four are in 4/4. An eighth note
Triplets are three notes for every beat. Then there are 16th notes.

The right hand has to coordinate between each of these types of notes.

Try doing the following notes with whole notes.

E, A, B, G, E, A, B, G

If you have a metronome, then you can set it to beat to whole notes, or quarter notes, or whatever you’d like… however, setting it equal to quarter notes is generally done at the beginning. This way, one beat of the metronome would be equal to quarter notes. If you are doing eighth notes, then you’d play two twangs for each tick.

Three notes per beat would be triplets. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go to ‘Beginner bass’ on You Tube. Sixteenth notes would mean you are doing four notes for every tick of the metronome.

Half notes would be twice as many one beat per beat for quarter notes, so set a metronome to be beating equal to a quarter beat when you’re learning.

So, when you’re playing bass, you get two different sounds. You use the fingers to pop the bass and thumb slaps the bass. You can play with your finger, or a pick, or your thumb. All can give you different sounds. When you’re using your thumb, you use the side of the top your thumb above where it bends, not the end of the thumb. You strike the side of the string. You strum by rotating your wrist. You hit the string with the side of the thumb, then get away from it so the string can ring. This is the same technique you would use if you were doing bongos.

To strum with your finger, you pull the strings but you keep the fingers straight. First finger on the D string, middle finger on the G string. Get the finger under the string, Don’t actually touch the body, get finger under the string, then pull your wrist over. You need to build calluses on your fingers, so at the beginning you must not do it too much or they’ll bleed and get raw.

Funk – Funk oftentimes will use half notes. E-Minor is used with Funk music. Always make sure you get your finger out of the way after you’ve pulled a string so the sound is good. Keep your hand loose as you strike it, make sure it’s not tight, it should rotate at  the wrist. Don’t tense up and get your fingers out of the way so they can vibrate. Those are the main things you should remember when your picking with your fingers.

Straight Eights Rock – basic pulse which are all eighth notes. Used in Surf Rock, Rockabilly. Straight eighth notes. Not a lot of syncopation. You just play the roots, which makes a good foundation. C Blues would be an example. All of it will be eighth notes. Generally each finger of the left hand will be strumming individual strings rather than strumming whole chords. The left hand will be picking notes on the frets.

Arepeggios – Uses major minor thirds and major triads. Sometimes minor triads. Sometimes you start in a key such as the key of G. Arpeggiios use Major Triads, or Minor Triads such as G-Minor. R

So, there are your first bass guitar lessons. To learn more, go to YouTube, or have your music teacher show you.

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