Advice On Learning The Guitar Quickly

by nikteller

posted on 05/20/2009

Guitar is in some ways harder than piano (which is the basic of instruments). Harder because there's a million notes everywhere, and easier because of the of strict rules of scales and chords. In this advice we will be assuming that you've had no music theory and have never played an instrument.

A standard guitar, wheather electric or acoustic, is constructed pretty much the same. You have six strings, a headstock ( the part of the guitar with the six tuning machines that are top of the guitar furthest away from you when your playing ), a body ( bulk of the guitar where you strum ), and either a soundhole on acoustic or pick-ups for an electric.

The six strings on your guitar have different thickness to them. In order of thickest to thinnest is this. E A D G B E . I've heard everything from " Even A Dog Gets Bored Eventually" to "Every Adult Dog Growls, Barks, Eats". What ever gets you to remember is fine, as long as you remember. If you have a tuner, you may need to tune you guitar at this time. If you don't that's okay, just Google the words "online guitar tuner" and you should be able to find one easily.

*** Note: Not all guitars have their guitar strings strung the same. Be very careful when tuning your guitar, it's not uncommon for someone to get hurt. Give each tuning key a slight turn while strumming it to see what way you turn to make the sound go down or up. Down is going down the alphabet and up is going up the alphabet. If you feel that your string is getting harder to turn stop and reevaluate the situation.

Now for the body parts of your guitar, there are websites for that. This is one that I like.
http://buyusedguitar.com/parts-guitar/. Everything you can possible know about each part is on this site. Take a moment to familiarize yourself with the terms, I'll be using them later in the lessons.

Musically speaking, there are only 7 letter in the alphabet. A B C D E F G. Now you may have heard of "flats" and "sharps". These are terms of in between these letters. The reason there are two names for these is different instruments use either one. Wind instruments usually use flats where brass instruments use sharps. To make this easy for now, let's just call the in between "sharps".

So from start to finish with "all" the possible notes in the alphabet is this. I've bolded every other one to not make them look like a misspelled word.

A --- A#--- B--- C--- C# --- D --- D# --- E --- F --- F# --- G --- G#

Notice that there isn't a sharp between B & C as well as E & F. There never is, nor will there ever will be anything in between those letters. No matter what instrument you play, there will never be a B# or a E#. The next step up is C and F.

With that in mind let's remember the strings on our guitar. This is where these two lessons mix in. With the second to thickest string on your guitar tune to "A", it's the perfect place to start. When you strum the string with no fingers on the fretboard that is called an "Open A", open meaning that there's nothing touching the frets. Now put your index finger on your left hand ( right hand if you're playing a left-handed guitar. ) and press down on the first fret. Press hard to make a good sustain sound, otherwise you'll most likely get a buzzing sound. If you can hear the note, that's a A# . If you basically move over the first "metal bar" to the next fret which is the second fret, you'll get a B . The third fret ( which has the first dot you'll run into ) is a C . You get the idea of what comes next and so forth.


Now what happens after G# ? That's a good question. The next fret after G# has TWO DOTS. This means you start all over to A . Now this doesn't mean that the "two dots" is A on every string. If you started on the thickest string which is an E , that means that you start over on the fifth fret and that the "two dots" is an E. The "two dots" is whatever note the string is when strummed open.

The only thing to teach you is the holiest of guitar chords. The Major and Minor Barre Chords. The reason they are called barre chords is because you have to press your enitre index finget over all the strings and add more notes with your other fingers. In the image that I've uploaded at the bottom, it shows the two shapes. These graphs are what your guitar would look like if you stood it upright. The thickest string is on the left and the thinnest is on the right. It shows you an "Open" variation of the E major and E minor barre chord. The two on the bottom are movable. Whatever note is on the thickest string is, is the name of the chord. For example, fifth fret is the note A on the thickest string, so if I make the "Major" chord shape with the lowest sounding note on the fifth fret on the thickest string it would be called A Major. Pretty much just move the shape up and down the neck and you can play every musical alphabet letter's Major and Minor chord.

All this information is enough work to take a beginner months to absorb. Remember to practice making your notes clear, making the fingertips stronger, and to learn the name of every note you play. These tips will help you work with other musicians in the long run. Music is not a quick learning experience, it takes a whole lifetime to understand everything about it.

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tcollins says:

(184d 18h 15min ago)