Wednesday, July 24, 2013

How can I learn to play the acoustic guitar?

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Liz


I have been wanting to learn how to play the acoustic guitar however I don't have the money to pay for classes. So how can I begin? How can I learn to tune my guitar( i own a guitar)? Do you have any suggested youtube channels, anything? Thanks:)


Answer
As much as I think the other answer is great, I honestly think he could have been more specific, so I'll try to do so.

So being a beginner in the 'music world' is always difficult, with dedicated practice, you'll get much better. Like Jesus stated, or whatever his SN is, you need to start with your basic chords. He wasn't very specific as to what those were. Basic chords mean your open-position chords, or in other words, chords that aren't being barred. Barre chords are chords that you place one finger over more than one string at one time. Avoid those for maybe a month because you need to build finger strength and get calluses so you don't feel pain when you play anymore. (It's normal, don't worry about it.) Your basic, open-position chords will be chords like: A Major, A Minor, C Major, D Major, D Minor, E Major, E Minor, G Major, and some variations like Dsus4 or stuff like that, but those are chords you can learn on the side when you learn songs. When you see chords on chord charts or tabs, they'll probably just say A, Am, C, D, Dm, E, Em, and G. Obviously the 'm's' stand for minor. So that's that for you. Once you learn those and feel confident on those, then learn barre chords: F, B, Bm, etc. You'll see the difference and there are different ways to play each chord on the guitar. Some guitarists just use barre chords and some open-position and some use a variation of some power chords. You pick what you like.

To tune your guitar, you will need to know what notes to tune your guitar to, obviously. Standard tuning for a guitar is EBGDAE or EADGBE, however you want to look at it. EBGDAE would the strings listed from highest in pitch to lowest in pitch. In other words, if you were to think about this for position on the guitar, the strings that are lowest on the guitar/the strings that are closest to the ground are the ones you would tune first. EADGBE would be the opposite and if you are confused by explanation, I apologize greatly and I'm sure you can look up on google or YouTube 'standard tuning on a guitar' and someone will be able to explain it better than me. If you need to learn to tune your guitar, I would either buy an app on your iPod Touch/Smart Phone/iPhone. Don't get any free ones. Those are really bad and they're slow and they're honestly very annoying. If you buy an ultimate-guitar tools app, it has a tuner and even a chord chart and it's a very helpful app for guitarists. Anyway, if you don't want to do that, then buy a chromatic tuner. Some tuners are 10 dollars and some can be up to 40 dollars depending on what features the tuners have. 10 dollars is fine but I'd recommend maybe something between 20 and 30. Tuners break so it's nice to have a nicer one so they can last longer. In addition, there are tuners for guitars that you can clip onto the headstock, but you decide what you want.

If I were you, I'd start with a book and start with YouTube and maybe even charts that you can find. When I started, I started with a song because I was way too eager, but I actually started with a book and I learned how to play a basic song by picking the notes and not learning chords, but you can choose. Books are a great tool and so is the internet. If you need tabs, I'd use ultimate-guitar.com. If you need to learn songs and you don't want tabs, then I'd use either Marty Schwartz or yourguitarsage (just YouTube them). youguitarsage has MANY beginner acoustic guitar tutorials on songs that you may want to learn and Marty Schwartz has both acoustic and electric tutorials and some are more challenging and he even has tutorials on some scales. Mahalo.dom or just Mahalo has tutorials for both acoustic and electric guitars and they have different teachers for their company and you can switch between all of them and decide which one of them you like most and see which teaching style helps you.

I hope I've been some sort of help! Good luck and have fun and don't forget to practice! You don't need to learn any instrument during summer, by the way. I learned guitar during spring break and still played during school. Just keep practicing and don't get discouraged. Everyone has troubles. I know, I did and gave up for like. . . a month or two.



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