Teach Yourself How To Play Guitar: Part 2
Note: This is page 2 of our Teach Yourself How To Play Guitar guide. For page one, go to: Teach Yourself To Play Guitar
Hand Positions
The next stage to teach yourself how to play guitar is ensuring that you have the correct hand position so you are able to form chords properly. You need to make sure that you relax your hands and wrists. If you don’t do this it’s possible to strain them and injure yourself. I’ve included some examples below of exactly how to hold your hand and how to not hold your hands.
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This is how you should position your hand:
Make sure that you never position your hand in the following way:
Make sure you don’t place your thumb as low as this on the neck of the guitar. Doing this will put needless strain on your wrist and thumb.
Fretting
Right, now we are getting to the technicalities of playing the guitar. The next stage to teach yourself how to play guitar is to get a broad feel for the instrument. The definition of fretting is using your fingers to push down the strings on to the fret board.
Sound is created through vibrations from a guitar’s string, and each note you play is completely dependent on the way you use your finger on the guitar. You should try to only use the tips of your fingers when pressing on the strings because using too much of your fingers can create a muted or muffled sound when the notes come out. The same principle applies to strumming. The broad idea of music is to play the correct notes at the correct time. This can only happen when you can hit the strings at the correct place and at the correct time. When you are first start learning and you don’t yet have the technical skill to play advanced pieces, you should make this your main focus when trying to teach yourself how to play guitar. Don’t worry too much about your hands and fingers. Competence in those areas can only be achieved over time by lots of practice.
When you play the guitar, your left hand fingers (if you are right handed) will be used to push down the strings on the fret board and your right hand will be used to strum or pluck the stings at the bridge end of the guitar.
Try the following things when teaching yourself how to play guitar to make things a bit simpler:
- Ensure that your fingernails are cut short
- Ensure that only the tips of your fingers are used to press down on the strings.
- Ensure that each string sounds clearly and that the sound is not buzzing or muted.
- When forming a chord, make sure that each fingertip is placed exactly behind the fret.
Don’t worry about what chords are at this moment in time as this will be covered further on.
You will notice that when you initially begin your fingers will hurt. You don’t need to worry about this or let it upset you as this is usual. When first starting to teach yourself how to play guitar this will carry on for the first few weeks and then as you practice more, you will develop calluses of hard skin on your fingertips , often called “guitar fingers” .
Holding the Pick
You can either strum the strings with your thumb or you can use a pick (sometimes called a plectrum). There are different types of pick. Some are more flexible and there are different shapes. To find out what you’re most comfortable with buy a number of different types and test them out – they are cheap.
Follow the diagram below holding the pick between thumb and index finger:
Right, you should now hopefully be in a position where you are comfortable with your guitar and understand the basics of how to play. The next stage to teach yourself how to play guitar will be to move onto learning guitar chords.
