Beginner Guitar Lessons Online

Sitting Positions

There are two kinds of sitting positions for holding any guitar. They are classical and casual.

1. Hold the guitar and make sure that the main part of the guitar (body) is held up by your leg.
2. Scoot your butt to the edge of your chair.
3. Straighten your back, but make sure you're relaxed.

1. Pick up the guitar and put the strap over your head so that it rests on your shoulder. Adjust the strap so that the guitar is positioned at about the middle of your body.
2. Use your left hand to support the neck of the guitar.
3. Rest your right hand over the bridge of the guitar.

Make sure you relax your hands when holding the guitar. By tensing your hands up, they will begin to cramp and you could injure yourself.

When you play guitar (if you're right handed. If you're left handed, just reverse this process), you use your left hand fingers to press down the strings on the fret board, and use your right hand to pick or strum the stings at the bridge end of the guitar. Using your left hand to press the strings on the fret board is called fretting. Here are a few pointers that are good to know:

1. Short fingernails are essential.
2. Only the tips of your fingers to press the strings.
3. When making a chord, be sure that each fingertip is placed directly behind the fret.
We will cover chords in lesson one.
4. Check each string that it rings clearly and is not muted or buzzing.

As a beginner guitarist, it will probably hurt your fingers to play. This is normal. Every guitarist starts this way. With practice, you will develop calluses (hard skin on your fingertips). Some professional guitarists have even said that they used to play until their fingers bled!

Hold the pick between thumb and index fingers.

The guitar neck is divided into about 20frets, making the fret board. In this first lesson, we will focus only on the first four, also known as the first position. We'll move beyond the first position in another lesson. Notice that we number each fret starting at 1 at the head of the guitar.

Each string on the guitar is numbered, the 1st string is at the bottom and the 6th string is at the top.

Notice also the term, 'Tuning' at the bottom of the diagram. Tuning refers to the notes that the guitar strings are tuned to. In the diagram, I have given a very common tuning called standard E tuning that consists of the notes E, A, D, G and B. Strings 1 and 6 are both tuned to the note E. The open 6th string is called low E. The open 1st string is called high E as it is two octaves higher than the 6th string open E. I will explain notes and octaves to you in a later lesson, but for now, you only need to know the names of the notes in standard open E tuning.

Now we are going to look at guitar chords. Guitarists can use many different chords to make progressions or riffs that can then be used to create songs. If you are not familiar with some of these terms, it's ok. We'll cover more of this in the near future.

A chord is defined as a combination of 3 or more notes played together. To the Chord diagrams are used to illustrate how a chord is played. Most diagramas are very easy to use because they look very much like the neck of the guitar.

In this diagram is the A major chord. The A major chord is constructed of the notes A, C# and E.