5 Easy Steps to Teach Yourself Guitar
Most people want to learn how to play the guitar, but they assume that they need to go out and start taking expensive lessons.
This really isn't the only way, so I would like to give you five major tips on how you can learn the wonderful instrument of guitar on your own.
1.
Learning The Parts Of The Guitar.
You can go out and buy a beginner's guitar book, but the easiest method naturally is to use a search engine like Google to find the information that you need.
You'll want to do a search for "parts of the guitar".
If you do this, you'll probably end up finding a visual representation of the guitar body, with all of the parts listed.
You may want to print it off for future use, but the most important thing here is to locate the tuning keys.
You can find these on your own at the end of the guitar neck, away from the guitar body.
You'll see three on each side of what's called the "headstock".
2.
Tuning Your Guitar.
The second thing that you will need to know how to do is tune your guitar.
What you'll want to search for are 2 things.
One, do a search for guitar string names.
You will need to know the key that each string needs to be tuned to, and it is recommended that you try to find a diagram of the strings, so that you can get a more visual perspective of the fretboard.
After you have a good idea of the string names, you will have to learn how to tune your own guitar strings to these pitches.
There is practically and infinite number of free online guitar tuners that you can use.
It may take some experimenting, but simply try your best to get your guitar strings in tune with the pitches of the metronome.
The more that you tune your guitar the better you get at doing this, and pretty soon it won't be an issue at all.
3.
Your First Chords.
Now you'll want to learn a few guitar chords.
There are tons of guitar chords available to work with, so let me help you refine this a bit.
Do a search for these chords - "How to play the G chord on guitar", "How to play the C chord on guitar", and "How to play the D chord on guitar".
Fingering is important, so you'll want to look for a source of information that shows you what fingers to use.
Developing your memory so that you can recall how to play guitar chords can take time, so don't be too hard on yourself.
The chords of G, C, and D are some of the most commonly used chords, and collectively they are one of the most commonly used chord progressions.
Once you get these chords down, look for other major and minor chords, but I seriously recommend learning no more than three chords at a time.
If you keep this up you will be a walking chord dictionary.
4.
Strumming Your Chords.
First of all, you can play the chords G, C, and D in any order that you like and they will sound really good together, so don't be afraid to experiment a little.
When it comes to producing sounds on the guitar, you can either use a guitar pick or your fingers.
Eventually you will want to try both, but you may find that a guitar pick works best.
You'll want to start off with what I would call "alternate strumming".
This is where you take the guitar pick and brush through all the strings towards the ground.
After this you come back up through all of the guitar strings towards the ceiling.
Start this off slow and keep cycling through the strumming.
Down, Up, Down, Up, etc.
If you decide to use your fingers for this, keep your right hand relaxed and the tips of your fingers together.
The looser your right hand is, the better your strumming will be.
5.
Learn guitar tablature.
Tablature, or "tab", is a numbered notation that can represent practically anything that can be played on the guitar.
Most people can't read standard notation, or find it difficult to read all together.
That's ok, because if you learn tab, then you can pretty much learn any song that you like, as well as new approaches to guitar playing.
Tab is easy to learn, easy to understand, and even the most advanced guitar players tend to prefer it.