How To Play Guitar - Free Guitar Lessons

People are always asking me if I will give them lessons on how to play guitar. "Please teach me how to play guitar", they will say. My answer is always the same: "Don't waste your money paying me or anyone else to teach you how to play guitar. The truth is that there are so many free websites out there that you can easy learn on your own.

In fact I've built on myself that teaches you to play from scratch called (oddly enough) "How To Play Guitar". Problem with a lot of free guitar playing websites is that they don't understand that there are 3 crucial things you must learn: 1. guitar basics like where all the notes are, how to tune, how to pick and strum, etc. 2.Chord Basics -how chords are played, how chords are built for scales, different chord types and 3. Music Theory - How scales and chords work together and how that relates to playing any song in any key.

It's vital for the beginner guitarist that you learn all of these 3 things simultaneuosly, not one after the other because learning how to play a chord, while you learn a song, while you learn how that chord was formed makes your overall understanding of guitar playing grow at a much faster rate than if you took 1/2 hour lessons every week.

I've broken my guitar course into different sections, so you can learn all things at the same time. If you want to check them out you can do so here:Free Guitar Lessons

So maybe you're looking over my free lessons, or lessons at another site and you're thinking that you personally need a little more structure to your lessons or you want to learn to play guitar in a particular vein of music. Well ,I have you covered there also. Let's get back to that whole idea of paying for guitar lessons. Rather than pay some chump weekly to teach you how to play "Mary Had A Little Lamb", or "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", wouldn't it be better to pay for a complete guitar lesson package for one lump sum?

Maybe you want to learn to play blues guitar or to play screaming lead guitar, or just become a great all around guitar player. Well, I thought about this long and hard and decided that if my free lessons aren't enough for you at least I can give my opinions on which course are good ad worth your hard earned money. With that in mind I put up a special page called "Reviews Of Online Guitar Courses" I picked out the 4 best guitar courses you can pay for and listed them there with a little description about each one. Also, every course I listed comes with a moneyback guarantee.

While you're there check out my free how to play guitar lessons and let me know what you think. Thanks.

Strumming and Picking are not so much learned but acquired skills. What I will attempt to do in this section is to give you an overall view of different techniques, but a lot of your skill will come from practicing. It is critical that you develop deliberate uses of the pick rather than go at it randomly. Your effectiveness in attacking the strings with your right hand and having control over a pick are just as important as working your left hand on the fretboard.

How To Hold The Guitar Pick

Although different players will have slight variations on how they hold a pick I believe that for the beginner you should hold the pick in the following manner:

Pick is held between the first finger and the thumb

Pick is against the side of the index finger

Pick is held there by the flat part of the thumb so you are looking at the nail straight on.

About one third of the pick (The pointy end) should be showing

Hand should be relaxed with the other fingers open

Wrist and forearm should be loose, loose, loose!

Do not "pinch" the pick between the index finger and the thumb, keep it on the side of the index finger

Striking the Strings Properly

The single most important thing I can tell you about striking the strings with the pick is to keep your wrist loose. If you tense up every time you strike the strings it will sound like you are playing with a hammer. There is no need to strike the strings with all your might either; in fact if you can learn to play with a light touch you will be able to play faster and more expressively. Lightly pick each individual string. You want the pick to be traveling away from the guitar body ever so slightly as you play each string so that it misses the string next to it. When playing one string it is very important that you limit the travel of your pick to only what is necessary to get the job done. As you play each note your pick needs to be close by to play the next one.

Playing more than one guitar string is a little different. You must learn to stop going across and at the right time "pull up " in time to miss the strings that you don't want to play. Practice playing two strings at a time making sure not to touch the next string while at the same time limiting the travel of the pick so that it doesn't go past the two strings you are playing.

Here's the trick to stop strumming guitar strings you don't want to. Always strum in a sweeping motion rather that across the strings. In other words, sweep down to the first string you want to strike, and then up as you strike the last string you want to strum. Imagine your holding a little wisk broom in your hand and your sweeping your guitar strings off. That's the wrist action you need.

The heel of your hand should lightly rest itself on the strings in front of the bridge. You're not actually laying your hand on the strings but you should just be able to feel them. Of course you must not have your hand touching the strings you are playing or the strings will be muted. (Getting confused yet?) Again it is a light , gentle touch that works best here. Some players leave their hands completely off of the strings and anchor their forearms gently on the body of the guitar. Another technique used is to rest your pinky and ring finger of your right hand on the body below the strings.

What's really important here is that you have some sort of "anchor" so you are always aware of where your hand is relative to the strings. More than likely you will find yourself doing what I do: using all three of these techniques to maintain control of my picking hand. Once again I will say to you: keep that hand loose.

Up AND Down We Go!

In order to utilize our picking skills to the maximum level we must become totally comfortable with alternating picking. Alternating picking is simply the task of picking the strings in an upward stroke after each downward stroke. It sounds simple enough but it goes against our natural instincts for most players. I was an unfortunate individual who only picked my strings in a downward motion. When I tried to learn alternating picking I had to spend hours practicing to break my former bad habits. So I must insist that you learn to alternate your picking right from the start.

Here is a simple picking exercise to get you started:

Begin by picking each string (starting on the 6th) 8 times, using up and down strokes(one down, one up, one down , one up, etc.)
Then pick each string 4 times
Continue by picking each string 2 times
Now pick each string two times using the following sequence: 6 - 5 - 6 - 4 - 6 - 3 - 6 - 2 - 6 -1 - 2 - 1 - 3 - 1 - 4 -1 - 5 - 1 - 6
Repeat entire exercise

Do this exercise as slowly as you need to. Never practice exercises faster than you can comfortably do them. It is better to work your speed up gradually than to try and rush and lose your control.

Any guitar player at any skill level eventually runs into problems where they can't seem to improve their guitar playing. Sometimes a beginner just can't get started, sometimes a veteran player finds themselves just rehashing the same old riffs. Lack of creativity sometimes is the driving force in this lack of improvement.

If guitar practice turns into you just playing the same stuff you have already have mastered over and over again because you've tried some things that haven't been successful your playing may not be improving simply because you have the wrong mindset. Many new players find themselves giving up on their guitar playing aspirations because they attempt to copy leads that are perhaps too complicated for their current skill level not realizing that they can work up to it.

My first tip is to plan what you want to learn and then slow down. Most guitar players fail to learn new skills because they try to play every new riff at normal speed when what they should be doing is playing everything slow at first and then work up to the target speed. You need to find your comfort level and start there. If you're really playing over your head than find some songs you want to learn that are more suited to your skill level and start there instead.

Understanding what your guitar playing strengths are will take you far in figuirng out how to overcome your weaknesses. When I first started to play lead guitar my speed skills were less than spectacular, but my ability to phrase and have some style when I played solos was fairly good. Once I stopped trying to play blistering leads and instead focused on more soulful solos my confidence builded. This opened me up more to learning to play faster because I had a positive view of my playing ability.

No matter how advanced you are as a guitar player you can improve your playing by analyzing both what your guitar skills are and what skills you lack. Recognizng that you do have strengths, helps to build confidence that you can learn other skills on the guitar that you may not have mastered.

Let's say you just picked up the guitar and learned a few chords. Think about where you are now and where you would like to be. Are there songs you really want to play? Write a few down. Now listen to those songs closely. Which ones have the least amount of chord changes? Are there any of these songs that I can already find the right chords to? Do any of these songs have just basic guitar strumming that I might be able to master easily? Answer these question and make list of the songs placing them in the order that you believe you can learn them the easiest. Now you have a plan of attack.

You will be able to practice guitar more effectively and improve you playing faster because as you learn each song and move to the next difficult one you will be building on your strengths. When you find a weakness in your playing don't just get frustrated and try to force yourself to learn it. Instead break in down into pieces. Let's say there is a chord change in a song that you just can't seem to finger correctly quick enough. This is common problem with new guitar players. The way to over come that is to first do nothing but practice slowly fingering that chord over and over again. Then practice playing it slowly with the chord that comes before it. Once you get that down, work on the chord change at normal speed and then try the complete song again and it will seem easy.

How about improving your guitar playing speed. Do you want to know the secret to playing fast? It's playing slow and deliberate. Sometimes very slow and very deliberate. The secret to playing guitar fast is control. You can't get control of both your picking hand and your fingering hand by just attacking the guitar and trying to play as fast as possible. The right way to learn is to practice speed exercises by playing them very slowly with as much focus on perfect timing and technique. Did you know that when you see one of guitar heroes playing really fast that they are actually putting very little effort into it? It's all about control.

Any guitar player can improve their playing. It's more about what you practice than how much you practice. It's also about building on your strengths and minimizing your weaknesses. Is there a perfect way to practice? For each player there is. For every skill level there is.