How To Play Acoustic Guitar

Whether you are going to be playing classical or popular guitar, I think it's crucial to start off with basic strumming (getting the rhythm right may be hard but with practice will start to sound right) and a few simple chords. So what sort of chords do we want to be learning? First of all we want to be playing what is fun to us, we don't want to be playing "London Bridge Is Falling Down" to the ladies do we? No my advice is learn to play the songs you like by simply typing the following into google

"Band Name" "Song Name" guitar chords.

There is a system of notation for the guitar that is called tab. For beginner guitar playing we want to steer clear of this. I'm assuming that you are a complete beginner and this probably sounds a bit intimidating, fear not I'll get back to the less scary stuff now.

Some easy chords I'd advise you learn are these, searching these chords online will give you a detailed position of the chord and what fingers to play them with.

Chord Dictionary

I'd advise you learn these and practice, practice, practice them.

C, G, D, E7, A, E

So here's a song That I learnt when I was first learning guitar that uses three of those chords above. A lot of songs you hear use beginner guitar chords and are actually quite simple to play. It's just initailly figuring them out and practicing to prefect them.

I Walk The Line - Johnny Cash

It may be boring at first but it's a good one to practice.

So practice your chords and I advise you to try learning some cool songs. Some will seem hard and unplayable at first, trust me leave them until you are more experienced, know more chords and are ready to put some more time towards them. Until then play something old and crusty like "Row your boat" :D

Easy guitar songs you may like (can be a bit hard for super beginners)

Well I've stressed it earlier on in the lens that you should play the songs you enjoy playing. So this as an outro module I'd just like to say, get learning some nice easy songs that have a chord or two you don't know so you can research it and further your guitar knowledge. As always practice, practice, practice! You won't be Jimmy Hendrix over night but with practice you'll be near him in no time.

As for whether you choose to pursue classical or popular guitar I think that learning to play these basic chords will definitely help you towards either.

Another article I wrote awhile ago on guitar learning (might be helpful)

have a look at that and mainly have fun learning!