1. Buy an electric guitar. They are easier to play than an acoustic as generally have thinner strings and a lower action (this means you don’t have to press down on the strings as hard). You can get a decent beginners kit with amp, lead, spare strings, bag and a tuner for under £130.
2. Use YouTube and JustinGuitar.com to learn the basics – how to hold the guitar, how to hold the plectrum, how to play your first chords – D, A and E. Your fingers will hurt a lot at first but keep playing and you’ll develop harder skin and it won’t hurt any more. You’ll soon get bored of strumming the same chords, so learn some more – G, C, A minor and E minor. Keep practising strumming and chord changes. Add some up strokes in between the beats.
3. Learn guitar tab. Go on UltimateGuitar.com and look up a simple song you know. Tab is very easy – 0 means play the string open, x or nothing means don’t play the string, 1 means play the string on the first fret, 2 means play it on the second fret, etc.
4. Learn a tune – it’s a great feeling being able to play a tune that someone can recognise. Use JustinGuitar.com to learn a beginner’s song with the chords you’ve learnt, or go on UltimateGuitar.com and look up traditional and children’s songs. Three Blind Mice was the first tune I learnt.
5. Make a note of your progress – like this blog or an old fashioned piece of paper. By doing this I can keep track of my development and it has helped learning the guitar to become a large part of my life.
6. Your guitar is a musical instrument, not a toy – keep it in tune and clean. It will sound much better if you do. Have fun but don’t mess around by strumming aimlessly – you want to learn!
7. Think about music when you’re not playing the guitar. The pressures of modern life mean that you probably won’t have as much time to practise as you’d like, so spend as much time as you can listening to and thinking about music. Try and work out the chords or notes in your favourite song, for example.
8. Get a teacher. I think it’s probably a waste of money to get a teacher when you first pick up the guitar, as a lot of the basics can be learnt online for free. But once you can play a few chords then it is definitely worthwhile. Having weekly lessons gives me the motivation to keep practising every day so that I improve every week.
9. Practise every day. It is very important that you practise every day. 10 minutes a day, every day, is much better for leaning than 2 hours once a week. The ideal setup for practising is sitting on a straight back armless chair in a room on your own. If you are reading from a book or sheet music while you’re playing then buy a music stand. They are cheap and it’s much easier to practise than balancing the book on your lap. Learning the guitar is a solitary exercise, so shut yourself away. Basically you want to remove or at least minimise all distractions.
10. Keep practising! Learning the guitar is painful, frustrating, time-consuming and solitary. It is also very relaxing, enjoyable, fun and rewarding. The only way to get better at the guitar is to keep practising. It is often very frustrating as a beginner and it is very easy to give up. I gave up many times in the last 18 years.
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