Posted on 03/28/2026 7:46:08 AM PDT by BEJ
I'm looking for good ideas on playing the guitar for beginners. Any suggestions?
Starting to Play the Guitar: Chords and Notes
1. Start by learning the chords at the foot of the neck or open position. There are a limited number of chords – roughly about 12 -- but you can eventually play many songs just using these chords.
2. Get to know the names of the strings.
3. Start to play notes up the strings. The C scale is good. Start of the low E string and play the natural notes from E up to G on the high E string. See if you can memorize these notes. (show how it is done). Keep fingers hovering close to the fretboard. Beginners often pull their hand away too far, which makes the next note harder to hit. Eventually you want to play melodies like Ode to Joy.
4. When showing them the C scale mention it has no sharps or flats (no black keys on a piano), which makes it the best scale for understanding how music is built 5. Get a chord chart with the fingerings for chords at the foot of the neck.
6. The first chord to play should be the easiest and that is E minor. Strum Em minor with down strokes. Hear how beautiful it sounds.
7. The second chord is the G chord. Watch how you only have to move one finger from the Em chord to play this new G chord. Keep the one finger as an anchor. Try not to move your hand off the strings. And keep you fingers near the strings.
8. Eventually get to finger all the chords. Pick each string one by one after forming a chord. This helps to identify which finger is accidentally muting a string.
9. Go from one chord to another and keep the fingers that don’t need moving in place as you change chords.
10. Good progression is G, Em, C, D or G, C, D. Do 4 down strums for each chord and then change. Eventually you will include up strums as well.
11. Fingers will take time to move but go slow and see it you can get to another chord on the beat. The chords can be played with different fingering: for example, the A chord can have 3 fingers pushing down the strings or 1 finger across the strings. Beginners should start with 3 fingers.
12. If you are good at getting to the other chords on time, then try up and down stroke for every beat.
13. Once you can get to the next chord easily and on time try going through all the chords. New progressions are C, F, G, F or D, G, A, G or E, A, B7, A.
14. It takes a while before you can move from one chord to another easily. Your hands will adjust, and it will be easier because of muscle memory. Keep things relaxed and even if there is a pause to get the grip of a new chord that will eventually disappear, and your hands will mover fluently. Try to switch chords without stopping your right-hand strumming, even if the chord isn't perfectly clear yet. Keeping the rhythm is more important than a perfect grip.
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Pick your favorite, acoustic or electric, but play both. The experiences are different.
“All Along the Watchtower, Stairway to Heaven and other Led Zeppelin songs...”
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Led Zeppelin is not beginner-level stuff.
The original All Along The Watchtower by Dylan is actually fairly simple. The easiest key to play it in uses the chords Em-D-C-D-Em over and over again. Those chords are as simple as they get.
https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/bob-dylan/all-along-the-watchtower-chords-152504
Use the “Tr.” button at the top to transpose until the chords are all Em, D, and C. Learn those chords, then play the song. Start slow. Speed will come.
If you’re talking the Hendrix version with the fabulous solo break in the middle, that’s not newbie stuff. Don’t try to learn that until you put years into learning a WHOLE lot more about guitar. You will just get frustrated, hate it, and never learn the guitar at all.
These YT lesson sources helped me a lot!:
Uncle Mark's Cigar Box Guitar Lessons
Shane Speal - How to Play Cigar Box Guitar playlist
Enjoy!
Plenty of guitar tutorial videos on youtube along with beginner guitar books at your local music store or amazon online.
Much easier than when I first started in the 1960s.
There are stickers you can put on the fingerboard to label the notes. Some will call it cheating but who cares. Go to the local thrift stores. There are always “learn guitar” books. Youtube has endless free videos of any style guitar you want to learn. Don’t worry about buying the guitar of your dreams for a while. Get a used one, they are always for sale because so many people quit. You are in for a long and somewhat painful forces while your hands adjust and you build up your callouses. If you have a community center, senior center, community or adult education center they usually have guitar classes or ukulele (close but could be good to get your hands exercised and learn a few chords and music theory). I found guitar easy to self learn so didn’t take lessons. Just every time I was sitting around watching tv I would keep it by the couch and strum and pick for a while going up and down scales.
For finger exercises you can find some neat little chord exercise fingerboard tools on Amazon so you don’t keep the rest of the house awake.
1. Don’t skimp on your first guitar. Get the best you can afford. Beginning with a poor guitar will not reward your efforts. Learn a few chords and then hit the guitar shops and play many different ones.
2. Have it properly set up.
3. Learn how to change strings and change often. With daily play I change every 2-4 weeks.
4. Learn music theory. It will greatly expand your horizon and speed your development. I found Tom Kolb’s book Music Theory to be excellent.
5. Steel or nylon? Listen to both then pick one. I find it hard to go from one to the other because of the neck differences, so I’ve played only one for a few years and then the other.
6. Before you commit to electric rock, hear some good acoustic players. Tommy Emmanuel is a good example. I like that I can pick mine up and play without having to plug in and operate a bunch of buttons and knobs to get going.
7. There is nothing like good guitar music. Welcome to my world!
Yes, take lessons from somebody who knows how to teach guitar.
If you want to learn barre chords learn to play an A chord laying flat your ring finger and learn to play an E chord WITHOUT your index finger.
Then move those two chord shapes up and down the neck but with adding a laid down index finger and you can play major bare chords up and down the whole neck. (Your index finger becomes the nut)
Those are the two easiest chord shapes to learn for barre chords.
You don’t have to play them in a bar either….church is a good place for them too!
The reason for learning chord shapes at the first position (by the nut) is so you can see how this works with many chords.
Best book I recommend is Chord Chemistry by Ted Green.
It teaches you how to spell chords. (create chords) and how to move voices among the chords.
So you can learn how to weedle weedle dee like your favorite guitar idol.
A friend once told me to learn this - CAGED.
Why not an oboe? Sure - it’s harder to play but much easier to transport.
Honestly not a fan of nylon.. at least if you aren’t playing classical guitar.
Pain is part of the process, if you want to play steel string you have to go through the pain.
What o found was I could play for maybe 10 minutes before pain would be bad. But if I put it down for a few hours I could play for another 10 minutes. I was committed to learning at least to the point of strumming some songs around the campfire, so I would do this probably 4 or 5 times a day or more. Didnt take too long before I could go 15 before it became intolerable, but same hour or two break Ana I could go another 15. Kept this up and I’m a few weeks I was going quite long without insufferable pain.
Then the next big hurdle was the barre chords, first being able to lay it down and come out consistently and then being able to transition in and out of them while keeping tempo/rhythm. That took me way longer than getting past the initial finger pain. Then it was building up the wrist and forearm muscles to be able to play songs using nothing but barre shapes etc….
I’ve taught guitar for almost twenty years.
I use the CAGED system as the basis. I start by teaching the five most important variants of each of those chords - major, minor, 7th, m7, and maj7. From there, I introduce barre chords starting with the E shape. During that process, just to mix it up a bit, I’ll teach the natural notes on the first five frets. I don’t bother with incidentals because if you know where the C and D are, you can pretty easily figure out a C# or Db.
When we get to barre chords, the big thing is making them understand that guitar is SHAPE based, not “knowing the notes” based. For example, once you know the E major-shaped barre chord, you can move it up and down the neck to make ANY major chord, and you don’t need to know the individual notes in the chord. Especially if you have someone who learned music in high school or plays piano, that’s a HUGE mental adjustment.
Eventually, I’ll teach barre chords in all five basic shapes - C, A, G, E, and D. After that we get into triads, lead guitar, etc., but by that point they’re not beginners anymore.
Start with as good a guitar that you can afford, and have it set up properly. Or start on an electric (easier to play). Using a bargain basement guitar or a decent one not set up correctly will discourage you. I have been playing for over 60 years and was fortunate to be able to start with my Dad’s guitar while he was deployed. My son began with one of my electrics and he is far more advanced than I was at his age.
My fingertips have never gotten raw from playing. Only ever got calluses.
There’s a tuba on Weird Al Yankovic’s “Smells Like Nirvana”.
What's your goal? Backing up your own vocals with simple songs? Billy Gibbons (lead guitarist/vocalist for ZZ Top) joked about entertaining audiences with the same 3 chords for 30 years.
You also can go to youtube and search: "tips for learning guitar." Peruse their suggestions, maybe?
It's a fluid process. Keith Richards discovered he played better if he removed the sixth string, an 'E.'
They all have their own techniques. Many play with their fret hand thumb hanging over the neck. Many think that thumb should be on the back of the neck for greater finger range. Etc. You have to find your own groove.
“Just looking for new ideas.”
Start with a smaller guitar - “orchestra size.” A classical 6-string guitar would be perfect. USE NYLON STRINGS .. . be MERCIFUL to the person learning to play.
Get an “EASY PLAY” Beatles song book. GREAT place to start - songs are familiar, which greatly facilitates musical progress because you KNOW what it SHOULD sound like.
What you need to understand about Rock and Roll music is the, “One, Four, Five” chord progression theory. It’s the GLUE that holds everything together! Master this and you will be on your way!
Let’s ROCK!
good advice.
I’d suggest a $500 Epiphone Les Paul to start. Quality instrument that is largely
indistinguishable from the $3500 Gibson it is based on.
If you’re thinking acoustic, you can look forward to your first Martin D0018 or Taylor,
but for now, buy a $500 Yamaha. You will never regret that choice.
At first you think 'why play that tiny bit when I can play the whole thing' but you can play triad shapes (there aren't that many) all over the place to get different sounds, and when you are ready to think about solos, those three notes are essential to making it sound melodic. A lot of the licks in "Sultans Of Swing" are just him using triads, for example.
List of sign in guitar stars forbidding customers to try these on guitars:
🎸🎶
Stairway To Heaven (number one).
Then...
“Smoke on the Water” – Deep Purple
“Sweet Child o’ Mine” – Guns N’ Roses
“Wonderwall” – Oasis
“Enter Sandman” – Metallica
“Back in Black” – AC/DC
“Seven Nation Army” – The White Stripes
“Tears in Heaven” – Eric Clapton
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