Learning How to Play Guitar

One of the most popular and iconic instruments of all time is the guitar. The guitar has been around in various forms for thousands of years and has been the basis for various forms of music throughout the ages.

I’ve been playing the guitar for around 15 years and can honestly say that it’s one of the most rewarding (and occasionally frustrating) instruments to play. I’ve created this website to encourage you to give the guitar a go – I can say without a doubt that you’ll never look back.

Within the website I’ll cover everything from learning how to play guitar, how to tune an acoustic guitar, how to play the guitar fast, and learning guitar chords through to reviews of best guitar lessons.

Click Here For The Ultimate Guitar Lessons   

I’ll hopefully be able to cover everything within learning how to play the guitar in a stepped fashion so that the basics are covered to get you up to speed.

Learning how to play guitar will involve dedication because you’ll find in the beginning you’ll simply be making a racquet with no structure or melody. Trust me, over time you’ll all of a sudden have the realisation that you’re actually playing a song and then it progresses rapidly from there.

If you're really serious about learning how to play guitar, I’d like to encourage you to get your hands on a proper course to give you structure and specific lessons so that you approach learning how to play the guitar in a worthwhile way that keeps you interested. There is only so much that you’ll be able to gain from a website like mine. A course that I’d highly recommend to get you on the road to jamming quickly is Jamorama. I can’t find enough good things to say about this course.

Types of Guitar

Right, if you’re first starting out there are a few things that you’ll need to know.
There are various types of guitar (loads in fact) but in short your options will be between an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar or a semi-acoustic which is a combination of both.

An acoustic guitar is hollow bodied to amplify the sound of the vibrating strings.
An electric guitar is solid bodied which doesn’t allow for loud amplification of the sound that the strings produce so is fitted with pickups. Pickups use electromagnetism to convert the vibration of the metal strings to an electronic signal which is then fed to an amplifier to produce sound out of a speaker.

When I was learning how to play guitar, I learnt on an acoustic. It’s a cheap option that doesn’t require you to buy loads of additional equipment and is perfect for getting you started. There is no reason why you couldn’t use an electric guitar to learn – it’s just a bit more pricey.

The choice between acoustic and electric is a personal one depending on the type of music that you want to play. The acoustic guitar will give that mellow classic country sound whereas the electric is well known for having played a huge part in rock music. Take a look around online to find out what your favourite band plays to get an idea of what you’d like to sound like.

When learning how to play guitar the first place to start is to understand the makeup and various parts of the guitar as a lot of the terminology moving forward while learning rely on an understanding of the mechanics of the instrument.

Have a look at our section on identifying the parts of a guitar.

Hopefully this has given a good overview of what a guitar is about and that you have a better understanding and start point to move forward with learning how to play guitar.

Next to be covered will be a section on the basics on how to teach yourself to play guitar. This will cover how to hold a guitar, how to strum and then onto playing chords etc.