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How to Play Guitar

How to Play Guitar

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  1. Get to know your instrument.
  2. Strengthen your hand and fingers.
  3. Establish rhythm.
  4. Buy a tuner and a capo.
  5. In order to learn your basic chords and songs, find some guitar tablature online.
  6. Learn barre chords as well as just open chords.
  7. Practice, practice, practice!

Equipment

A capo is a useful tool that will help you match the key of a song to that of your, or your friend’s, vocal range. It is also required when playing many tabs.
A capo

You should tune your instrument prior to each performance or practice. A good tuner will speed up the time required for preparation. Although there are many tuners on the market, I recommend purchasing one that tunes by picking up your guitars vibrations as this will mean that you can tune it in a noisy environment.
A guitar tuner

How to Play Guitar

Knowing how to play the guitar means you will always have a friend. Music is the international tongue, and one of the most portable and translatable of all instruments, is the guitar. Although it would be impossible for this guide to teach you absolutely everything about how to play the guitar, this how to can most certainly provide you with a solid foundation.

Photo Credit: Designlazy.com

Steps

1- Get to know your instrument. The strings from thickest to thinnest: E,A,D,G,B,E. How does it work? How do you make sound? How do you change the notes? To quickly learn to play the guitar you will inevitably have to cut corners, and most likely this will be in the form of overlooking theory. This is O.K. for now, but if you want to get to a high level, you will have to revisit theory at a later date. At the very least, familiarise yourself with your instrument.

2- Strengthen your hand and fingers. Complaints of having sore hands and fingers, as well as the inability to press hard enough on the strings whilst not accidentally muting other strings, are the main reasons that people give up trying to learn to play the guitar. Rigorous hand exercise, such as walking your fingers up the strings and neck of the guitar like a spider (search the internet for ‘guitar fingering exercises’), will provide you with the strength and dexterity required to learn the guitar. Strengthen both hands, not just the hand used to press on the strings, as having dexterity in your strumming hand allows you to finger pick the strings individually. Finger picking is a great way of creating variation in your approach and making you sound much better than you really are!

3- Establish rhythm. Whether using your fingers or a pick (which should be held firmly, yet with ‘give’, between the forefinger and thumb on your strumming hand), employ a regular stroke to your strumming of the guitar. Your strumming hand should move back and forth and not change rhythm, instead, notes are played, or deliberately missed, by either connecting with the strings or not, on your upward or downward strokes.

4- Buy a tuner and a capo (see above).

5- In order to learn your basic chords and songs, find some guitar tablature online. There are many sites, such as “ultimate-guitar.com”, that have a mass library of guitar tablature. You want to find songs that you enjoy and that have few, simple chords. Use tabs that show you where to place your fingers, rather than just displaying the chord names. Play the tabs along with a CD. Jumping between chords will take you a long time at first, but with practice, aspiring to change chords as quickly as the music on the CD does, your hands will start to find the correct positions naturally.

6- Learn barre chords as well as just open chords. Playing barre chords properly require further strengthening of your fret hand. Learn these as soon as possible in order to increase the number of songs that you will be able to play.

7- Practice practice practice. You wanted advice on how to learn to play the guitar quickly right? Then the above should do it, but you will need to practice!

Tips

Try and play with experienced guitarists. They will be happy to tell you what basic chords to play as it allow them to indulge their own talents by jamming over the top of your music. Watch how they play but do not get frustrated when they try and teach you- this will put them off teaching you in the future.

If you’re left handed, think carefully when choosing a guitar. A lefty guitar will feel more natural to you, however it will limit your ability to pick up someone else’s guitar when out and about. Most left handed musicians learn to play right handed instruments in order to avoid this problem.

Use the correct strings for your guitar and change them every couple of months. The fresh, new, vibrant sounds will encourage you to play more often. Get advice from your local music shop on what strings will be best for you.

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