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If You Want to Be a Guitarist …

Once you have fallen in love with the guitar and what it can do, there is really no single
correct way to learn to play. Some of the most famous guitar players taught themselves, by
listening to their favourite guitarists. How do you do that? How can you just pick up a guitar
and learn how to play it?

Here are five tips for the beginner guitar player:

Tip No. 1. Learn About the Instrument First.

The guitar has a long history of development, with some scholars saying that the modern
guitar is an ancestor of the Lute or the Greek Kithara. Others say that the modern guitar
developed from the Egyptian Tanbur. Whatever the truth is about the guitar’s history, there
are many types of guitar. Acoustic guitars, classical guitars, steel string guitars, flamenco
guitars, electric guitars. There is a type of guitar for almost every type of music that can be
played.

It is important to learn about the instrument that you are going to play. Beginner players may
need to learn about the parts of the guitar from the head-stock to the sound-hole to the
bridge. It’s necessary to learn how to string and re-string a guitar and to learn which kind of
strings your new guitar will need.

Beginner players also need to learn how to keep their guitar in its best condition. This means
learning how to clean it and where to keep when it is not in use.

Tip No. 2. Learn the Chords.

It is said that there are 2,341 chords in total that can be played up and down the neck of the
guitar. For beginners, the most important chords to learn may be the open chords. These are
the chords from C to B that can be played without the need to barre the strings. By learning
to play some chord combinations in varying keys, the beginner player will get a sense of how
songs can be create. They will also learn some of wonderful songs that have already been
written. A sense of rhythm starts to develop naturally as the beginner player strums the
chords.

Tip No. 3. Learn Some Strumming and Finger-picking Techniques.

Most guitar players develop their own sense of rhythm and a strumming style. This is part of
the creativity that grows as a person learns to play any musical instrument. The beginner
guitar player needs to learn coordination, or how to fit the chords he/she has learned into the
rhythm of the music. This means fitting chord changes into a key signature such as 2/4
timing, 4/4 timing, 3/4 timing, 6/8 timing. There are many timing patterns that music is played
in. It’s a good idea to learn some simple finger picking patterns early on as well. This can
give the beginner another way of hearing timing, as well as extending their technique and
flexibility.

Tip No. 4. Learn Some Songs and Easy Pieces of Classical Music.

Learning songs is a good way to bring all the techniques together.It makes all of the more
technical learning worthwhile. As the beginner player learns how chords become songs, it is
also a good idea to learn the individual notes of each string up to the first three frets at least.
By doing this the guitar player learns which notes are in each chord. The first barre chords
that the guitar player will learn are usually the barred F Chord and the barred G chord. These
chords are played on the first and third frets respectively. This ties in with learning the notes
of the first three frets.

Tip No.5. Practise Every Day.

For people who love playing the guitar this will not be difficult. Practice is important, not so
much because practice makes perfect, but because practice leads the guitar player forward.
There are many songs and many pieces of music that can be played on the first three frets of
the guitar. Frequent practice opens the keyboard up to the player. Suddenly, you understand
that riff by one of your favourite guitarists. Suddenly you can play some licks that you never
thought you would be able to play. Unless you actually dislike playing the guitar, which is
highly unlikely, practice is not a chore. It is the time when you sit down and have fun with a
guitar. Well, maybe practising scales is not a lot of fun.

So those are my top five tips for beginner guitar players. Going through the five stages of
learning could take up to two years. In those two years a beginner player will be well on the
way to being a good player. My last tip is to listen to great guitar music as often as possible.

About the website

http://guitarreviewed.com is site that offers lots of information about acoustic guitars to those
who wish to buy a first or even a second instrument. The review of each guitar includes a
photograph of the guitar, followed by a description of the guitar’s features, its price and the
things about the guitar that were either Liked or Not Liked.

About the Author

Hi, my name’s Joe. I was born in the 1980’s and was inspired by rock musicians such as Eric
Clapton, Jeff Beck and Carlos Santana. I also like the sounds of Classical Guitarists such as
John Williams. I write the acoustic guitar reviews on Guitar Reviewed and I sit down to play
the guitar every day, because I love the guitar.

How to Learn to Play the Guitar: for Beginners from MyRareGuitars.com

Whatever the reason, if you’re interested in learning to play and improve, consider the following ten tips to help smooth out the process!

1. Guitar Maintenance

This should, in my opinion, be the top priority when it comes to playing or learning to play. If you’re just starting to learn, having a guitar that gets fret buzz all over the neck, plays out of tune, and just isn’t functioning the way it should won’t exactly encourage you to play. You’ll constantly be thinking “what am I doing wrong?”, when you may in fact be playing just fine. Besides that, the sooner you understand the importance of taking care of your instrument the better.

For someone who has been playing longer, having a guitar setup to your liking will make a huge difference in your playing. The thickness of your strings, your action, intonation, pickup height… even the cleanliness of your guitar all affect how it feels when you play. If you’re looking to improve, it only makes sense for your guitar to feel comfortable. After all, you play because it’s enjoyable, right? Keep it that way!

2. Use a Metronome

Timing is everything. It’s natural to want to speed up when you get excited, or slow down too much to compensate. While sometimes this can make for a cool sounding effect, at the end of the day you want to be able to play along with a steady beat. Using a metronome prepares you for this – it isn’t human; the speed you set it to is what it’s going to stay at. You can experiment with a metronome in different ways. As a beginner, try using it to simply keep the beat for you while you strum. Later on, try using it to play around with trickier rhythms and phrasing. Whichever way you use it, try tapping your foot along with the metronome while you play. Doing so will help teach you to “lock in” to a beat despite how complicated a rhythm or strumming pattern may be.

3. Start Slow

You have to learn to walk before you can learn to run! Always approach a new song or riff slowly at first. In many cases you need to train yourself to make the proper movements necessary to play it before you can attack it at full speed. It’s all about muscle memory – if your hands and fingers know what to do and in what order they should do them, everything will happen more naturally. A good way to keep track of your progress is by using a metronome. Set it to a slow pace and try playing the riff you’re working on. Once you can play it smoothly, increase the pace a bit. Rinse and repeat.

4. Record Yourself

When you’re focused on playing, sometimes it’s hard to hear what you actually sound like. One example is “rushing the beat” – it’s easy to play ahead of the beat and not even realize it until you hear a recording. Other times, you might not like your guitar tone if you heard it without playing it. When I listen to some of my older recordings, the guitar tone I had makes me gag! Think of it this way: to not go back and listen to what you’ve played would be like a painter not looking at a painting they’ve just finished. For them, it’s impossible. They can immediately see what they’ve created and decide if they like it, and what they can improve upon. We can get the same benefit, we just need to hit record!

5. Read

Countless books and articles have been written for guitar players by guitar players. If you’re looking for something specific, it’s most likely just a google search away. Simply knowing a variety of different chord shapes, for example is a great foundation for playing later on. If you love the way a certain artist plays and sounds, learn about them! Reading a biography of your favourite artist will help you understand where they’re coming from, and could give you a closer look into how they approach playing. You’ll also pick up on their influences and what they like to hear in a player, leading you to check out other players. Knowledge is power, after all!

6. Sing Melodies

If you can hear a tune in your head, then you can recreate it on the guitar. Try to sing or hum what you want to hear before you play it, and then keep singing it as you play it. Ultimately, you want the guitar to be your voice. Using this method can help you learn intervals, and where they appear on the guitar neck without having to delve too deep into musical theory to know them.

7. Learn the Fret board

To go along with tip #6, learning your fret board is the most important “theory” you can know as a guitar player. Knowing scales and their extensions, knowing where shapes and patterns occur / re-occur, and knowing how to get from one note to the other efficiently are all fantastic tools to have when structuring riffs and songs. Knowing what you want to play is a great start, but having a strong knowledge of how to make it happen is just as important.

8. Train your Ears

Being able to hear a chord or riff and play it back is a great skill to have when it comes to learning songs and jamming with other musicians. The more songs you learn, and the more you play, you will by default pick up on similar patterns and ideas that re-appear all over the place. Instead of just reading and playing back a strumming pattern, try to really listen to a chord and associate it with a different song. For example, take the “C” and “G” chords and start strumming along with the verse to “Have You Ever Seen the Rain” by CCR. Stop the song, and play the two chords one after the other on your own. Now throw on “Hey Joe” by Jimi Hendrix. The first two chords here are also C and G, just set to a different tempo and pattern. Soon enough you’ll start to know what a “C” chord sounds like, then later on you’ll be able to tell if it’s a C in the open position or if it’s a barre chord.

Image courtesy of www.easyeartraining.com

9. Experiment

It’s very easy to become comfortable with a guitar, playing style, or genre of music. Of course being comfortable is a good thing, but there’s a downside: you might lose some of the desire to progress as you begin to feel like you’ve already “conquered” it. If you want to truly learn something new, you have to try and put yourself in the same shoes you were in when you first picked up the guitar. Try learning a song that you would never see yourself listening to. Try listening to some music you’ve never heard before. Your musical mind subconsciously absorbs anything you put into it, and it will come out in your playing and song writing whether you want it to or not!

Aside from that, you can try playing another similar instrument. Twelve string guitars, bass guitars, baritone guitars, tenor guitars, and mandolins are all examples of stringed instruments that bear a lot of resemblance to the 6-string you’re used to. That said, there’s enough that’s different about them that you will be forced to play differently, consequently teaching you something new.

10. Emulate

Before you ever picked up the guitar, something or someone inspired you to play music. There are hundreds of thousands of artists out there now, each of whom could be inspiring someone else to play the guitar. The reason is because there’s something about the way they play or the music they make that makes people just want to do what they’re doing. By “emulating” these players; learning their riffs, note choices, play style etc. you can pick up on things that separate different guitarists from each other. Everyone has a certain “something” about the way they play, and through identifying what that thing is in other players, you’ll figure out what it is about your playing that makes you unique.

Happy playing!

Ten Tips to Improve your Playing from MyRareGuitars.com