Guitar Basics Online

Music is something to be shared, and there’s no feeling in the world quite like playing to a crowd.

When you do this for the first time, your fingers will tremble, your stomach will feel empty, and you’ll feel like you’ve forgotten everything you’ve ever learnt. I still remember the first time I played to an audience, whilst it was quite nerve racking it went very well, I will never forget the experience.

This is good! When your fingers hit the strings, everything will come back to you like magic. It’s the ultimate step as a musician.

Good luck!

Once you start being able to roll out a few tunes, it’s very easy to get stuck in habits and just play the same old songs over and over again.

If you want to be an accomplished and versatile guitar player, it’s important to stretch yourself to practice what you have difficulty on. Think about your neighbors at the beginnnig, keep the windows closed if you dont want them to complain about you.

It’s absolutely essential to pick up good rhythm skills when learning to pay a guitar. You can do all the chord practice you want, but unless you learn to play in time, you’ll simply never be a good guitar player.

You can’t always find a drummer to play with, so invest in a metronome, or a cheap keyboard with a drum machine.

As with learning anything, it’s far more effective to keep to a schedule and learn regularly in short bursts rather than trying to cram all your practice in one long session. Your brain can only hold a certain amount in short term memory, which is then processed to memory.

It’s very important to stay disciplined and positive when learning the guitar. It’s easy to get discouraged, especially at first, when you’re not whipping out flaming guitar solos like your favourite musicians.

Give it time though, and the results will speak for themselves. Rome wasn’t built in a day! I practised months to be able to play at my wedding.

If you want to get a crisp sound out of your guitar playing, be sure to get in the habit very early to play on the tips of your fingers.

Spidering across the frets will be painful and awkward at first, but will soon become second nature.

When you start playing the guitar, it’s easy to get nervous and hold on too tight. They key to smooth and fluid finger work with your left hand is to keep your wrists supple and relaxed.

Furthermore when you’re relaxed you’re much less likely to make mistakes, and simply you’ll just enjoy yourself more!

This is the first step into learning to play the guitar, so choose wisely!

Think carefully about what kind of music you want to play. If you’re punk and metal and rock, it’s probably not going to help you very much to get a teacher who will only train you in classical guitar.

Furthermore having a teacher with whom you share mutual interests is going to make the learning process much more involved, active and fun!

When buying a guitar, this is the main choice you’ll be faced with.

Acoustic guitars are generally cheaper, and more flexible. You’ll hear acoustic guitars on just about any album, even death metal, to give the music more texture and depth.

However acoustic guitars are harder on your fingers, and will lead to callouses and sore fingertips until you’ve developed enough layers of dead skin to protect you! Electric guitars will also cause a brief period of discomfort, but with the right setup and low action you’ll barely notice it.

So you want to learn the guitar? Great! It’s an incredibly versatile instrument that’s capable of conveying a variety of moods and textures, from gentle acoustic strumming, to aggressive metal thrashing.

Over the next 8 posts I am going to introduce some quick pointers, which just so happen to be some of the best pieces of advice that have been given to me during my time as a guitarist. These tips have been divulged from a variety of different sources from here to Spain to the sandy beaches of the Caribbean’s island of St Lucia.

Here you go and hopefully this will get you started on the right foot. Good luck, and have fun!