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.

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.

When you’re first learning guitar, you have to have a metronome. Now, don’t think you need to buy a metronome. This is the age of electronics and the internet. You can download free software which will give you a metronome, or you can go on-line and find a javascript version of a metronome.

www.TabGuitarLessons.com has a free metronome that’s simple and has a real metronome sound. Download it, then install. There are no adware that he installs, so you don’t have to worry. Then you just go to the Start menu and look for ‘Free Metronome’.

Click ‘Start’ and it will begin. It doesn’t let you pick your settings as it’s going, so you’ll have to click ‘STOP’ to reset the tempo. It lets you pick either 3/4 or 4/4, it lets you pick the number of ticks per minute. It lets you emphasize the beat, it can ‘stay on top’ in case you have some other music program which shows tablature that you want to not make the metronome go away when you click on it.

A metronome will let you start getting the rhythm of quarter notes. Try playing a quarter not on each beat. If you don’t know what to set it at, go to YouTube and listen to one of the guys who teach guitar lessons on YouTube. They might have a metronome ticking. Try and synchronize your ticking with their ticking. Then you’ll see what they’re doing.

It does let you choose between 3/4 and 4/4, so try listening to the difference. When set to 1 for Emphasize beat, you will hear the beginning be a bit louder, then less loud ticks. When you have it set to 3/4 , you will hear TICK, tick, tick, TICK, tick, tick, TICK, tick, tick.

When you set it to 4/4, you’ll hear it go TICK, tick, tick, tick, TICK, tick, tick, tick,
TICK, tick, tick, tick.

So, there you go. In 4/4 time, each of those ticks would be quarter notes. The louder TICK is saying that’s where you start the bar. The next loud TICK would be the beginning of the next bar on the sheet music page.

So, if your sheet music says 4/4, then you choose 4/4 on your metronome. Then, when you are playing the notes, and you see quarter notes, the quarter notes will receive one beat every time the metronome ticks. If you see eighth notes on the sheet music, then you’ll play two notes every time you hear it tick. If they are sixteenth notes, you play four notes every time you hear it tick.

In the other direction, when you see half notes, you strum at the beginning of one tick, then you wait for one more tick to go by, then you strum on the third tick, then you wait for the next loud tick again signifying that the next bar has arrived.

If it is a whole note, you would only play a note every time you hear the loudest TICK out of the four ticks. TICK, tick, tick, tick,

So, now you’re learning guitar. See, it’s not that hard!

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So, you want to learn to play guitar. Realize that, even though it seems so difficult when you begin, it’s really not that hard to pick up. If you get some ‘beginner guitar’books and print some guitar tablature sheets off the internet, then, with a guitar, you could start doing a guitar in one day.

One advantage of using guitars to learn music is tablature. Guitar tabs are a way of representing the fret-board of your guitar, the place where you press your fingers down to strum the notes. Each separation is called a ‘fret’. The tabs are drawings of the fret- board. Because it’s such a simple thing to represent tabluture, people on-line create just about every song in the world (if it’s simple enough that it can be played on a guitar) as tablature sheets. They’re drawn using simple ASCII characters in a text file. This means that you can just store the song as a TXT, DOC or RTF file and it’ll be easily understandable.

Thus, this would be a six-string guitar and the tablature for a C Major chord would look like this:

C
e |—–0——|
B |—–1——|
G |—–0——|
D |—–2——|
A |—–3——|
E |—–x——|

The number is showing how many frets down from the top of the guitar’s neck you’d place your finger. It goes from the high-to-the-low and the left-to-the-right.

The bottom line on the tablature is the low-E string. In this case, the x indicates that it’s not played when you strum a C Major chord.

You’ll just have to get a book on tablature, or look on-line to see more about how tabs work.

http://www.guitar-players-toolbox.com/guitar-tabs.html

Since with a guitar, you’re generally playing chords rather than plucking individual notes, tablature has to represent that somehow. They put the chord above the staff

In this case, this would be a D Major and G Major chord when you look at it in tablature format:

D G
e |—2——-3—|
B |—3——-3—|
G |—2——-0—|
D |—0——-0—|
A |—x——-2—|
E |—x——-3—|

Open Google and type ‘guitar tab fundamentals’ into the gadget, then click ‘Search’.

Or, type ‘How to read guitar tablature’.

The top line is called the first string, the bottom is called the sixth string. So, the six lines are equivalent to the six strings on the guitar. So, the second line from the bottom is an A.

The number is the fret number. That means the number down from the top of your guitar’s neck that you will place your finger on. If there is a zero, then that means that the open string will be played.

So, at the very least, you’ll see this:

|——0——|
|——0——|
|——1——|
|——2——|
|——2——|
|——0——|

That is the tablature for an E Major chord, and they’re all to be played at once because the other lines have a zero on them. So, when numbers are right above each other, then that means that you play all the notes at the same time.

However, generally the chord name would be placed above the tablature statf so guitarists will understand that it’s referring to an E-Major chord.

If the notes are staggered, then that means you will play them one-at-a-time rather than all-at-once.

Here is the same E Major chord, but you would play each note one-at-a-time

|——0——|
|—–0——-|
|—-1——–|
|—2———|
|–1———-|
|-0———–|

So, see? You, too, could play the guitar.

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Flamenco guitar is a beautiful way to play a guitar. If you learn learn spanish guitar, you can play in such a way. The Gypsy Kings (also the Gipsy Kings is another band in the same tradition) do amazing things, also. It’s a tradition that’s come all the way from the late 19th century. Flamenco guitars are made of cypress from Spain or sycamore, so it’s not the same as a regular guitar. Because of differences in the way that they’re made, a flamenco guitar sounds different than a classical guitar would. It’s constructed different, too.

Cypress, cedar and the tops of spruce trees are added to darker woods like rosewood and mahogany which are used in the backs and sides. This enhances the sustain qualities of the guitar, making the notes last for a longer duration.

However, it’s not just the way the guitar is made that makes the difference, a Flamenco guitar player will use different postures, it utilizes different techniques, and you use different strumming patterns when you play it.

When a classical guitarist holds the guitar on his left leg, the Flamenco guitarist crosses his legs, supporting the guitar on the top one.

The Flamenco guitarist uses a thing called a capo, or cejilla, which creates a brilliant sound that almost sounds like a drum. A cejilla lets the guitarist change the guitar’s key to suit that particular singer’s voice.

The neck of the guitar is held nearly parallel to the plane of the floor.

There are many different ways they use techniques, as well, such as Golpe – which is when they tap their fingers like a drum on the sounboard. Alzapua, which is where they take their thumb an strum it across a lot of strings at once. Picado is when they scale passages in a single-line while they alternate the index finger with the thumb while the other fingers are supported on the string.

There are many different styles, as well. Toque sobrio means the sober way of doing it. Whereas toque airoso means it’ll be graceful music – however it’s also very quick and almost sounds like metallic clacking.

If you decide to learn spanish guitar, you should learn it from a master. It’s not as simple was learning to play Classical guitar; but it can be rewarding.

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For the first time, ever, there’s an amazing possibility. You can learn guitar online, for free. There are literally thousands of resources out there which can help you learn. All you need do is know how to use a search engine properly. Google is the one that I use.

If you type “free guitar lessons”, that’s generally not the way to do it. There are thousands out there who want to sell guitar lessons, and they’ll try and fool people to have you go to their site if they can. One way you can find things is go to YouTube and type ‘free guitar’ or ‘learn tablature’ or ‘guitar lesson’. Many of the YouTube videos will use particular songs to try teach you how to use a guitar.

Another good way is go to Google Images. Type things like “fretboards”. in google images; and then the pictures will help sort out those who are giving away information from those who want something from you. Generally, the pictures which have diagrams such as fretboards will be trying to help you.

There are also, of course, websites which can teach you guitar at a very minimal fee. They might even have a way of you connecting up a cam to your computer, linking into a networking program like netmeeting, and then they might play on their end, and watch you play on your end.

Netmeeting also allows you to see instructions written on the whiteboard. When you learn guitar online, you don’t have to leave the house, you don’t have to spend time looking for a teacher and you can do it at your leisure.

Some of the hardest things, at the beginning, the thing that it’s very hard to get out of a book, is how exactly one uses their fingers or thumb to strum the strings. Many of the videos will show close-up images of their hands, and they’ll show the exact angles that you should take when you’re strumming or plucking.

Also, when you’re doing Barre techniques, just how hard you hold down the strings, and which strings you hold down are very important. Also, if the inside joint of your finger is on a string, that will tend to mute the string. Such things as that can be gotten via particular questions.

There are times when just the asking of one question could save you weeks of unnecessary work and aggravation. If you learn guitar online, you’ll save lots of money and get the tips that could help when you get stuck.

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So, you want to learn guitar. Let’s say you’ve decided that you’ve made your decision between whether you’re going to play a classical guitar, or you’re going to play an electronic guitar. The next step is, where do you purchase the guitar?

Well, if you happen to live near one of the cities that Craigslist supports, then you’re in luck. Just go to the section and do a search to see if anybody is selling a classical guitar. Remember, though, that a cheap guitar, bought new, might be as inexpensive as a better guitar that they’re selling on Craigslist. Remember that if you’re a kid, ask your parents before you ever call someone who’s offering a guitar on Craigslist. They certainly won’t want you to be meeting some stranger, and they won’t want you inviting that person to your house.

Your music teacher might have good suggestions on where to purchase a guitar. They might also lead you to purchase an electronic guitar, instead, by asking you exactly what you’d like to do with the guitar afterwards. Realize that an ‘acoustical’ or classic guitar is much cheaper than an electronic guitar would be; so generally people always start with an ‘acoustic’ guitar. What if it turns out that you don’t really like playing guitar?

Originally, a classical guitar had strings which were made out of ‘catgut’. This didn’t literally mean that they took the skin off a cat, and used its hide to make the strings. This meant it was made from an animal’s intestines. Oops, you thought it was made out of a cat, and then you saw it was made out of intestines. They’re usually either sheep or goat intestines, and you can still buy catgut strings. They think it’s an abbreviation of the word ‘cattlegut’, which makes more sense.

It’s best not to buy the cheapest guitar that you can. They make severe tradeoffs in order to make the cheapest guitar, and it would sound so bad that you’d end up quitting the guitar.

However, be careful, a salesman will try and sell you a $700 guitar. At the beginning you don’t have to worry about whether it has expensive Turning Heads. If you are purchasing an older guitar, be aware that a guitar takes between 75 and 90 pounds of stress when you crank up the knobs to tighten it. This means that, after a few years, and particularly if there has been high humidity, the soundboard might be warped or some structural damage might have occurred. It might even be why the person is selling it. So, check before you buy and have someone who knows guitars look at it for you.

Before you can learn guitar, you need to have a guitar. How can you practice, otherwise?

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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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