Beginner's Luck

Well now looking at being an all-star guitarist someday? Or maybe you just want to play some tunes around a campfire. Whatever your reason is, I am going to give a few little bits of advice for someone who is just picking up a guitar for the first time. First of all, before you can really 'play' you need to get your fingertips used to the wear and tear that those lovely strings provide to your hand. The best way to begin playing I believe would be on a classical, nylon stringed guitar. The strings are loose, thick, smooth, and really easy to get sound out of. An electric guitar would be the next step up, then an acoustic. The thing about electric and acoustic guitars compared to that of a nylon classical is that the stings are steel or some metal, and are wound much tighter than that of a classical. The tight steel strings will shred your fingers down to the meat, which is very unpleasant (I've done this many times). If you don't have access to a classical though, you are just going to have to either take it slow, or play through the pain. Anyway, once you can pick up and play your guitar for a decent amount of time without crying, it is time to start learning some fundamentals. You need to get used to chords and have nice transitions between them, not to mention have a smooth strumming pattern. The easiest chords to learn are G,C,A,D,E,Em,Am and power chords, which you can find tablature/notation for on just about any guitar website. If you master these you can master almost everything off of many artists albums. Take Greenday and Jack Johnson for starters, almost all of their songs are based around these few chords, and once you train your ear by learning the chords, you will recognize more and more from other artists too. So you have your chords, now it is vital that you develope a smooth strum pattern. each string should be plucked through the strum just as evenely as every other. It should be solid and whole, not choppy. Have someone listen to you try some chords and see what they think, because most people can hear a chop, or muted strings. A good way to keep motivated is to learn some of your favorite songs (those containing guitar that is). As soon as you get your first verse correct or even simple riff it is really exciting. Take you time and listen to some of those songs without your guitar in hand. Really memorize the sound, strum pattern, the beat, the transitions with the lyrics and so on. If you know the whole structure to a song before attemtping to play it, things go very smooth. Well I believe that is about enough for now. I will spit out some more hopefully helpful words at another time.