Chords Guide

You Can Learn Guitar Easy

Guitar-Player — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 18:15:05 +0000

I’ve met a lot of people over the years who were intimidated by learning a musical instrument, or frustrated by the tedious nature of traditional instructional methods used in most music lessons so I’ve sort of begun a crusade to let people know that there is an alternative that isn’t hard or frustrating, and with it anyone can learn guitar easy.

The basic idea is that traditional teaching methods focus first on learning all the basics. This makes sense, however doesn’t appeal to the average student who really just wants to start playing and having some fun.

What I’m a fan of, and what I myself have done to learn not only the guitar, but also to play bass, piano and keyboards is to begin with a teach yourself type of course that focuses first on actually playing some simple but familiar songs.

Often a complete newbie can go from never strumming the guitar to being able to play along to several songs in a single sitting, and this provides a sense of accomplishment as well as it’s just plain fun.

A good teach yourself course will gradually progress from simple songs to more challenging ones, and as the student works through them (s)he is actually learning the basic fundamentals that a traditional instructor would have focused on first.

In other words, both methods will take the student to the same goal, but the teach yourself method tends to be more fun for the student and encourages them to stick with it better as a result.

So, if you’ve been wanting to learn how to play the guitar but were intimidated or perhaps tried learning but became frustrated by the traditional style of lessons, then my advice is to pick up a good teach yourself to play type of course and give it another go. You can learn guitar easy and fast, and have fun doing it.

Tags: learn guitar easy

So You Want To Learn Acoustic Guitar

Guitar-Player — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 02:04:14 +0000

The easiest way to learn acoustic guitar is to have some fun and actually learn to play a few easy but familiar songs.

You can usually do this by simply learning how to strum a couple of chords that naturally “go together”.

Chords are nothing more than 3 or more notes played together. There is a lot of theory and mechanics behind how notes make up chords and which chords best fit together, but you don’t need to learn all of that when just starting out.

All you need to learn is 3 or 4 very basic chords–meaning learn the fingering positions for where to place the fingers of your left hand over the strings, and start strumming.

Many full and well known songs can be played with just 4 or fewer chords, for example Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World”, or just about any John Mellencamp song, several Madonna songs and nearly every pop-rock song recorded in the 1950’s and 1960’s…

John Mellencamp playing “Small Town” — a 4 chord song

Whatever your musical tastes there’s no shortage of great tunes you can play and have a good time playing (and learning) with just a couple of chords.

As for which chords to learn and how? My best advice is to pick a decent learn acoustic guitar / teach yourself type course and spend a couple of hours with it.

Once you learn a couple of chords you’ll get used to the pressure on your fingertips and practice switching from 1 chord to the next then you’ll soon find yourself trying to play all of your favorite songs with those chords you know, and in many cases you’ll be able to do it.

Now, get started and learn to play the acoustic guitar, you know you want to!

Tags: learn acoustic guitar

How To Learn The Guitar In My Opinion

Guitar-Player — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 04:30:28 +0000

I’m an advocate for being practical and using what works, often over what’s expected or considered “the norm”; which is why I say that most music programs are not how to learn the guitar in my opinion.

They start with repetitive and often boring focus on the technical, mechanical and theory fundamentals which are very important, but tend to lose the student’s interest in a hurry.

Let’s face it, most kids or even adults who decide they want to learn an instrument aren’t excited over spending countless hours with scales, they’re excited about strumming some strings, playing something close to music and having fun.

And here’s the thing that traditional instruction seems to overlook, when someone is having fun right from the start there’s an increased chance that they’ll stick with the instrument and over time build a desire to go beyond the fun to actually learn to be competent musicians. Why shouldn’t this be the standard model for how to learn the guitar?

This is why I’m such a big fan of teach yourself the guitar courses, because they often start by teaching you how to actually play several familiar and easy to learn guitar tunes within a few hours, which leads to the student having fun as well as feeling successful and encouraged.

Then they build on that sense of accomplishment and progress through learning slightly harder songs in gradual steps.

In a matter of days the student is playing well known and fairly complex songs reasonably well, having fun doing it and typically without realizing it getting a good education in various strands of music theory.

I’ve known a lot of people who used a teach yourself the guitar course and all of them enjoyed the learning process then went on to learn the fundamentals on their own because they wanted to take their “fun playing” to competent playing.

I don’t mean this to sound like an attack on music teachers, I just don’t understand the continued use of methods that encourage as many students to grow bored or give up as they do to succeed and actually learn an instrument.

Just because that’s the way it’s always been done doesn’t mean that’s the way it should be done.

In my opinion, how to learn the guitar is to simply get your hands on a teach yourself the guitar course that seems to actually teach you songs right from the start, and once you complete it decide if learning on your own is working and fun, or if you need traditional lessons to play guitar.

Tags: easy to learn guitar, how to learn the guitar, lessons to play guitar, teach yourself the guitar

It Should Be Fun To Learn Guitar, Easy Too!

Guitar-Player — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 21:35:17 +0000

Like a lot of kids I begged my parents to let me take music lessons when I was 11 years old, and then I quit them within 3 months. Not because I didn’t still love music or want to play, but because after 10 weeks the teacher still had the class playing simple scales…and I got bored. She didn’t make it fun to learn guitar, easy either.

And that’s how most teachers and instructors have approached teaching music to kids based on everything I’ve experienced and everyone I’ve ever talked to about it. Music instruction has been designed so that you learn the basic building blocks through tedious repetition, and then you get to have fun applying what you’ve literally beaten into your head.

And I’ve always thought that was backwards. Music isn’t just a skill to be drilled into your head, it’s also about being artistic and expressive; and the one thing that music should never be is boring.

But I know that if you can have fun with it right from the start then you’ll make it your mission to learn those basic building blocks for yourself as you progress. Just as it becomes easier to quit lessons when they become boring, it also gets harder to stop playing and learning if you’re enjoying it.

I know that because after I quit my formal music lessons where my teacher had almost cured me of my passion and desire to play music, I convinced my parents to buy me a small book of “easy to play” guitar songs from the local guitar shop and I learned to play every song in that book on my own.

I wasn’t very good, I didn’t understand a lot of the mechanics or theory behind what I was doing, but I was playing songs and having a blast with my beat up 6-string.

Today I’m a thirty-something and I play guitar, bass, piano and keys well enough to sit in with any band. I read and compose music, I still have a burning passion to play every day–and I’ve never taken another formal lesson since quitting when I was 11.

I’ve learned each new instrument, and multiple styles of playing on each instrument–all from teach yourself type courses and I strongly believe that for most people those are they way to go rather than formal lessons with a stuffy teacher.

Teach yourself courses let you go at your own pace and most importantly they’re usually designed so that you can have fun actually playing songs right away–and then take time to learn the basics and technicalities of what you’re doing and why as you go along. In other words they make it fun to learn guitar, easy too since it’s always easier to learn guitar when you’re having fun doing it.

Tags: learn guitar easy