You've always wanted to learn how to play guitar, but now you feel it's time. You've listened to the records of Hendrix and Clapton over and over, and now you want to aim to be as good a guitar player as them.
Maybe you've already bought yourself a beginner guitar and are ready to track down a good guitar teacher. But do you know what you need to do to learn how to play the guitar? Do you know the difference between barre chords and power chords? Do you know the difference between alternate picking and fingerpicking? Do you know what tablature is and how it corresponds to the fretboard?
These are all things you’ll learn eventually, along with things like the difference between lead and rhythm guitar, and between a chord progression and a solo. The world of making music is truly wonderful and magical, but it can be quite intimidating at first!
Don’t worry if you’re finding it intimidating, though, as with a guitar lesson or two and an understanding of the guitar basics you’ll be shredding with the best of them sooner than you think. Here, we will run through some very basic guitar ideas to help you go from the person with a guitar for decoration to a bona fide musician.
How to begin playing the guitar?
Every single person playing guitar at any level for any reason had to start somewhere. However, as a result of this, it’s very easy to not get off to a good start. It’s easy to see someone playing guitar and just pick one up and try and imitate them, but this will very quickly lead you to problems.
It sounds boring, but complete comfort with the fundamentals of even just how to hold your instrument, position your hands, and so on are more important than anything else, especially when you are starting out.
The first thing you will need to do is get a guitar, and get familiar with it. We will talk more about getting the right guitar for you down below. Once you have your instrument, the first thing is literally just to get comfortable with it.
How you hold it, how the weight feels, what each part feels to touch, and what each part is called. Learn to identify the headstock from the fretboard, and the neck from the body.
The next thing to do is take some sort of lessons on the basics of guitar. Things like reading music, finger placement, and playing strings. There are plenty of ways to go about this. Guitar lessons with a tutor, courses with a music school, or online guitar lessons with an app like Yousician.
What are the next steps in learning guitar?
Once you have a good knowledge of these fundamentals of guitar, you can move on to actually playing. This will involve learning the main techniques of guitar. Fingerstyle, the placement of your fingers and thumb, and basic chords.
This is also where it’s useful to start getting knowledge of guitar theory for beginners, the importance of which cannot be overstated. Quite literally, all the improvised and composed guitar playing you see is based on theory of some kind to sound good.
Things like the major and pentatonic scale, chord progressions, intervals, and the likes are things you will use and reference all throughout your musical career on any instrument. They form the very basis of how musicians communicate.
This step is where a tutor will really have the most value, as having these things explained to you by someone who already lives and breathes music will make it seem much clearer than trying to puzzle through it on your own.
The early parts of learning an instrument are always the hardest, and having someone who can coach you one on one is beyond invaluable. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced player, guitar lessons can help you refine your skills.
What do you play a guitar with?
Something you may hear from a lot of guitarists is the endless gear they buy. It’s not uncommon for guitarists to own several guitars, multiple amplifiers, and a seemingly infinite number of pedals.
However, much of this is actually superfluous stuff that you don’t need to start learning at all. In order to start learning, the only thing you strictly need is a guitar and a smartphone.
A smartphone? Why would you need a smartphone?
The reason for this is that there are some pieces of hardware that you can avoid buying if you install a few apps on your phone, most notably a metronome and a tuner. Tuning your guitar is vitally important, as is having a metronome to keep time when you are learning.
However, there are plenty of free apps that do both of these things, so you can avoid having to buy a physical tuner or metronome.
How do you tune a guitar?
Tuning your guitar strings is very important, as otherwise it simply won’t produce the sound you want it to. I personally tune mine every time I pick it up to play it, and cannot recommend this strongly enough. There are many ways to tune a guitar, but the two most common by far are tuning it using an app and tuning it using adjacent strings.
With an app, you can simply select the tuning you want, then play each string and turn the tuning pegs until the app tells you the string is tuned properly. Standard tuning is EADGBE, although there are others that are commonly used in various types of music, such as drop D.
Using adjacent strings is a little more complex. All you require is a single point of reference for your bottom string, usually E. From there, the fifth fret on the E string will be the same sound as what the A string will be tuned to in standard tuning.
This repeats for every string with the exception of the B string, where it is the same as the fourth fret on the G string. This method forgoes the need for a tuner, but does require you to have a good ear to be able to recognise the sounds properly.
You will quickly learn that being able to identify intervals like this is an invaluable skill for a musician!
How do you choose a guitar?
There are a seemingly endless number of guitars out there to select from. The upside of this is a lot of choice and variety to get exactly the instrument you want, but the downside is that it can be rather overwhelming. The first thing you will need to decide when picking a guitar is if you want acoustic or electric.
An acoustic guitar does not require an amplifier, and will usually have a thicker and shorter neck. An electric guitar requires an amp, but is more versatile thanks to the longer and thinner neck. There are plenty of both types on the market though, and you can easily find both new and used guitars in all sorts of places. I bought my first guitar second hand on Gumtree, and recommend this to anyone thinking about learning guitar.
The most important thing for beginners to look out for on a used guitar (or a new guitar for that matter) is the smoothness, quality, and finish of the neck. All the other parts can be replaced with relative ease if they aren’t up to your standards, but the neck is more of a challenge, and also the most significant part to have be high quality. This is because it is the part of the guitar where most of the work happens!
How do you play electric guitar?
There is no real difference between playing acoustic guitar and electric guitar, fundamentally. The biggest difference is that you now have an amplifier, and a whole host more advanced techniques that you might struggle to replicate on an acoustic guitar, such as tapping.
Electric guitar is very popular as it is the instrument of choice for a lot of rock musicians, and the focal point of most of the crazy solos you hear from the likes of Van Halen, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and so on.
How do you play guitar faster?
The inevitable question! We’ve all heard that one awesome solo we just wish we could play just like the record. Sadly, playing at the speed of Herman Li or Joe Dart is no mean feat, although not impossible to learn.
The key is annoyingly to play it slowly at first. Slow down your metronome, and play the solo with precision at a slower tempo focusing on minimising your hand movement and placing your fingers accurately.
Then increase the tempo very slightly when you can play it perfectly at that speed, even if just by five or ten beats per minute, and repeat. In this manner you can gradually build up speed.
Ultimately, it’s all just practise, as with all things musical.
Learning to play guitar, or any instrument for that matter, is magical. Music is the ultimate form of expression, and playing it is one of the most rewarding feelings in the world. That said, you still need to learn the language of music to be able to communicate with it.
That’s where Superprof can come in. With a huge range of guitarists of varying backgrounds and specialisms to choose from, you can easily find the right guitar tutor for you no matter your level to take your guitar playing to the next level.
Tutoring is the best way to learn an instrument, as it allows you to get specific feedback on how to improve your skills, the kind no YouTube video or app can ever offer.
So contact one of our wonderful tutors, and discover the magic of playing guitar!
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