Learn How To Play The Guitar | Online Guitar Lessons

My name is Tennyson Williams. I'm now an online guitar teacher, musician, composer and have been sharing guitar instructional resources with the online community for about 4 years now.

You know what though? I get a lot of questions about my songs and playing, because I play at an advanced level now, but this wasn't always the case. In fact, I struggled for about a good year on my own, and the next year or so was a little better, but still troublesome. It's fair to say that I had a hard time when I wanted to learn how to play the guitar.

I understand all of the intimidating aspects of picking up a guitar and playing, learning chords, getting finger dexterity down, toughening up calluses, memorizing shapes, patterns, notes, theory and developing technique.

I know that it's always been your dream to play the guitar for yourself, your friends, your family and maybe even get involved in a small band. Once you get past some tricky-ness in the beginning, this is by far the most rewarding instrument out there to play, and I'm going to take the stress out of it, and teach you how to play the guitar right here - right now!

There are really only 3 factors that you need to consider when choosing a guitar to buy. Here we will discuss each one.

Size - The size of the guitar is important depending on whether you are a man, woman, young girl, young boy, 65 or 12. Sure, you can play on a guitar of any size, even if it's tiny when you pick it up or even if it completely dwarfs you, but when first learning it's ideal to have one that is just perfect.

If you get a guitar too large for yourself, then it will pinch your armpit area and cut off the circulation in your right arm when trying to strum and pick out notes. If you get a guitar too small on the other hand, then you will probably struggle with trying to keep it steady when holding it.

Note: Guitar size for the most part only applies to acoustics and not electrics.

Strings - there are mainly 3 different types of guitar strings for 3 different types of guitars. There are nylons for nylon acoustics and classical guitars. These strings are the most beginner friendly, because they are easy to press down and won't cut into your finger callus as much. I always recommend that a beginning student start out on a guitar that uses nylon strings, even if it's a classical.

There are steel strings which are your most common. These are for acoustics and although a little brutal on the beginner's finger tips in the beginning, they will definitely toughen up your hands and many guitarists start out on standard acoustics.

Electric guitar strings are kind of the in between. They aren't too difficult to handle for the beginner, and are typically easy to manipulate.

Should I Get An Electric? - Although you might want to start out rocking on an electric with a ton of distortion, I don't recommend this as your first guitar. Playing on an electric/acoustic is a different story. This is an acoustic guitar that can be plugged into an amp.

But, an electric is very challenging for the beginner, mainly because the strings are so close together. It makes it difficult to finger chords, because 1 finger will try and press down on several strings at once in most cases.

If You Could Pick The Ideal Guitar For A Beginner, What Would It Be?

I would say the right body sized classical guitar or nylon string acoustic guitar. If you can find one that is also an electric, go with that!

My top pick!

Check It Out On Amazon

Acoustic



1. Headstock - the headstock is found on all guitars. It sits at the end of the neck and holds the tuning pegs.

2. Tuning Pegs - tuning pegs are also found on all guitars. The strings are looped through them and allow you to decrease or increase the tension, which means changing the pitch of the strings. So you can tune notes down and up.

3. The Nut - this is another part found on all guitars. It sets the height of the strings on the neck, called "action". Action is how far from the neck the strings sit. Too far and they are hard to press down. Too close and you might get buzzing noises.

4. The Neck - the guitar neck can be made of different materials. It also contains the frets. On a classical guitar there will typically be 18 of them. On an electric the number is usually either 22 or 24.

5. Fret Wire - fret wire is the thick bars that run up and down through your guitar neck. You will also notice that the spaces between them are bigger towards the head stock and get narrow further up the guitar neck. This is because they are spaced out scientifically to produce good tones for notes. The space in between 2 pieces of fret wire will produce a note.

6. Fret - a fret is the space between two sections of fret wire. By pressing a string down on this area and plucking the string you can make a note.

7. The body - the body is pretty self explanatory. They can be made of different materials depending on whether they are acoustic or electric. They can also be different sizes, designs and cut styles. A solid body is one that is not hollow. An acoustic is a form of a hollow body.

8. Sound Hole - the sound hole is only found on acoustics, classical or acoustic/electric guitars. Straight electric guitars do not require them because they use pickups to product the sound. However, on an acoustic guitar, the sound hole is what produces the amplified sound of the guitar. It resonates through the hollowed body and is produced from the sound hole.

9. Strings - the strings simply travel the length of the guitar. Because the guitar is designed too create enough tension for the strings, this allows them to become tight enough to pluck, vibrate and produce a note.

10. Saddle - this piece has a very important job. It essentially creates an place for the strings to end and is positioned perfectly to maintain the intonation of the guitar and allow good quality notes.

Electric

Naturally, both acoustics and electrics are going to have the same parts, but electrics have a few extras that we will talk about here.

1. Headstock

2. Nut

3. Tuning Pegs

4. Frets

5. Truss Rod - although you can't see it very well here, the truss rod is found in electrics and is very important. It allows the neck to be adjusted and to correct the curvature of the neck. But, it's extremely delicate, and I do not recommend that any beginner touch the truss rod, because I've watched veteran guitarists get this wrong.

6. Inlays - Inlays are found on both acoustics and electrics and are little designs that mark off particular frets. They can really help you as little landmarks so that you don't get lost. You will almost always find these on the 3rd, 5th. 7th, 9th, 12th, 15th, 17th, 19th and 21st frets.

7. Neck

8. Neck Joint - this is simply a space cut out of the body where the fatter end of the neck connects. Believe it or not, but most of the times a very strong glue is what holds this section together.

9. Body

10. Pickups - Pickups are the most important thing that separates an electric from an acoustic. Non electric guitars have sound holes that helps resonate the sound produced. Because an electric is a solid body, there is no hollowness for the sound to travel around inside the guitar and reverberate.

So a pickup is a magnetically wired device that can "pickup" the sound. An electric is plugged into an amp by way of a patch cable and the signal is fed into an amp, where the sound can be controlled with the knobs of the amp (volume, effects, etc).

11. Electronic Components - Here there are little wooden sections carved out called "Pots". The electric components sit inside these little sections and can be inner-linked to work together. On an electric guitar you will typically have 1 volume and 1 tone knob, but on some such as the one pictured here, you will have 2 tone and 2 volumes.

Why? because on some guitars you have 2 or more pickups, a little switch to change between pickups and controls for each pickup.

12. Bridge - the bridge anchors the tension of the strings high enough into the air and away from the body of the guitar that it allows the right kind of intonation and reverberation. A simple way of look at it is that the nut, found just in front of the headstock, and the bridge are the 2 pieces that maintain the string tension at the right angle.

13. Pickguard - this simply protects the body of the guitar from the pick. A player can get really into strumming those chords, and as a result scrape the body up. Acoustics and electrics can both have these.

Now it's time to learn the strings of the guitar, which is extremely easy. In fact, there are only 6 guitar strings, so memorizing them is just that much easier.

First, if you take a look at your own guitar, you will notice that the strings change in thickness or gauge. They run from the thicker string that sits on top of the guitar neck to the thinnest string that sits on the bottom of the guitar neck. For this diagram we will use lines to represent each string on the guitar.

E --------------------------- (thinnest)
B ---------------------------
G ---------------------------
D ---------------------------
A ---------------------------
E --------------------------- (thickest)

So we have two E strings, a high one an a low one. To memorize these strings is pretty simple, and one method is to use a little saying to make it stick, something along the lines of..

Every Avid Dentist Gives Back Enamel

The first thing that any person who is interested in learning how to play guitar assumes, is that you must know how to read music in order to play the guitar. This isn't true, and in fact many guitar players can't read music. Although I had 9 years of piano, standard notation still doesn't come so naturally to me.

Indeed, many world famous guitar players only know how to read guitar tablature. What is tab? it's a numbered system for understanding music, and it's so incredibly easy that you will know how to use it in just a few moments. You can then go to guitar tab directories, search for your favorite songs and learn how to play them.

OK, let's get started...

First, remember when I was showing you the string names? I used 6 lines to illustrate the strings. That's the first step of guitar tab. SIX lines with each one representing a guitar string.

-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------

Now, remember when we were going over the parts of the guitar? think back to guitar frets. A fret is the space that sits between 2 pieces of fret wire. When you push a string firmly down between 2 pieces of fret wire and onto the fret space, against the guitar neck, you will change the pitch of the string and get a specific note.

Each guitar has a different amount of frets. Some have 18, 22, and 24, but you can count them as in 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.

Well, in guitar tab we can explain what note to play by using a number. This tells us which fret to play. When we put the number on a specific string, this tells us which note to play and on what string.

E ---------------------------------
B ---------------------------------
G ---------------------------------
D ---------------------------------
A ---------------------------------
E ----------------2---------------

This tells us to play the 2nd fret on the low E string

The order in which the numbers appear is also important, and they should be played from left to right, just like when you read.

E -------------------------------------
B -------------------------------------
G -------------------------------------
D -------------------------------------
A -------------------------2------4---
E ---------2------4-------------------

Guitar Chords In Tab

To read chords in tablature is just as easy. When you play a chord, you are playing several notes at the same time, so with chords we take the numbers and stack them like this....

E ---------------0------------------
B ---------------0------------------
G ---------------0-----------------
D ---------------2-----------------
A ---------------2------------------
E ---------------0------------------

That's an E minor chord in fact!

But wait? what about all of those zeros? When you see the number 0, it means that you play the string as is, and you don't have to fret it or put your finger on it. This is called an open string or playing a note open.

Now, I wrote that tab with my keyboard, and you can do the same as well! there are also many symbols that represent how to play notes, specific techniques, tricks and so forth, but for now this will get you started.

You can learn chords through tab as mentioned above, but you'll probably want to get a chord book to learn lots of them. These will no doubt teach you chords through chord charts, which are just as easy to understand and are a great way to learn how to play guitar. Here's how you make sense of them.

On the right you see an example of a chord chart explaining how to play the C major guitar chord. Guitar tab shows the strings running horizontally, but charts show them running vertically. Note the string names at the bottom of the box.

The lines running horizontally through the box represent the fret wire. The spaces in between these lines are the frets on the neck. The 3rd number to the left of the box shows a starting point. In this case, the 3rd fret.

At the top of the box you will notice a white circle. This means an open note - remember those? the black dots show where to place your fingers, and which notes need to be fretted to produce the chord sound.

So let's walk through this together, shall we?

1. Note theX at the top of the box. This means not to play this string.
2. The black dot on the A string is sitting on a 3rd fret. So we know to place a finger there.
3. Then you can see a dot on the 2nd fret of the D string.
4. Note the white circle at the top of the box sitting above the G string. This means to play this string open, without fretting it - just as is.
5. Then we can see that there is a black dot on the 1st fret of the B string.
6. Finally, you will see another white circle above the high E string. This means again to play this string open as well.

OK, before I continue I want to explain to you two more little symbols for guitar tab. These are pick stroke slashes. They tell you when to pick down through the strings (down strums), and picking up through the strings (up strums). You can do this with you thumb or a guitar pick by the way.

The symbols used in tab are

^ = down strum or pick note with a down stroke
v = up strum or pick note with an up stroke

I encourage you to actually try this out with your own guitar if you have one handy.

But before we get to that, one more thing that I would like to explain...

Finger Identification

To play your first chord and strum it you will need to know which fingers to use. The fingers are labeled with numbers...

index finger = 1 or 1st finger
middle finger = 2 or 2nd finger
ring finger = 3 or 3rd finger
pinkie finger = 4 or 4th finger

Let's try this with the E Minor chord.

E ----------------0---------------
B ----------------0---------------
G ----------------0---------------
D ----------------2---------------
A -----------------2--------------
E ----------------0---------------

1. Middle finger goes on the 2nd fret of the A string
2. Ring finger goes on the 2nd fret of the D string
3. Keep your hand nicely arched so that you don't accidentally touch the open strings
4. Press firmly with your middle and ring fingers
5. Strum down through all of the strings to produce the E minor chord sound

E ---0------0------0------0------------
B ---0------0------0------0------------
G ---0------0------0------0-------------
D ---2------2------2------2-------------
A ---2------2------2------2------------
E ---0------0------0------0------------
       ^       ^        ^        ^

Now I want to teach you 3 more guitar chords that are very beginner friendly, and the best part of all is that many songs use these same chords. Even more, you can rearrange then in any way that you like to create your own songs from scratch!

A Major Chord

The A major guitar chord has a very nice, warm sound. Here's how to play it.

E ----------------0---------------------|
B ----------------2---------------------|
G ----------------2---------------------|
D ----------------2---------------------|
A ----------------0---------------------|
E ----------------x---------------------|

Finger Assignment:

1. 1st finger on the D string
2. 2nd finger on the G string
3. 3rd finger on the B string

But wait! what's up with that little x there? That's simple. Whenever you see an x in a chord chart or guitar tab, it means that you don't play that string at all. It's not played open and you don't fret it, so you do your best not to pick it out.

G Major Chord

The G major chord is just a little trickier, but with some repetition and practice you will be doing it flawlessly. Here's what to do.

E ---------------3------------------|
B ---------------0------------------|
G ---------------0------------------|
D ---------------0------------------|
A ---------------2------------------|
E ---------------3------------------|

Finger Assignment:

1. 2nd finger on the low E string
2. 1st finger on the A string
3. 4th finger on the high E string

Tip: Remember to keep your hand nice and arched so that you don't touch the open strings (0's).

D Major Chord

The D major chord is also a little tricky, but not too bad and it has a great sound! Here's how to play that one

E -------------2----------------|
B -------------3----------------|
G -------------2----------------|
D -------------0----------------|
A -------------x-----------------|
E -------------x-----------------|

Finger Assignment:

1.1st finger on the G string
2. 2nd finger on the B string
3. 3rd finger on the high E string

Tuning a guitar can be a little overwhelming in the beginning, but it's seriously not as bad as you might think. There are several ways to tune a guitar, but the easiest is to use a guitar tuner. You can either buy one in physical form at your local instrument dealer, or use a digital online guitar tuner.

Here's a good guitar tuner

You can also tune your guitar to a keyboard. Find the middle E note for your 1st e string. Make sure that you don't use a piano, because that might not be in tune.

If you don't want to visit the page with the tuner, the video below is very accurate, can be used for both electrics and acoustics and you can simply bookmark it and come back to it whenever you need to tune a guitar.

Note: Turn the tuning pegs away from you to tune the strings up. Turn the pegs towards you to tune a string pitch down.

This is a very understandable question that many beginning students might wonder. You know in your heart that what I say next is true. It depends on the individual, how quick you apply yourself, how much your choose to apply yourself, how passionate about it you are and how much you decide to practice.

However, you are always learning, so the question of how long to learn guitar is an odd one. How long to become good at playing guitar is another though. At the very least, if you practiced for an hour a day, you could see great results within a year, and I mean really good things going on with your playing.

But you must allow a good 6 weeks of commitment to get some muscle memory, dexterity and callus strength down pat.

1. Remember to take your time when playing. Give yourself time to set up your chord shapes.

2. Do your best to memorize one thing at a time. Try not to jump around too much, and make sure that you really have something down before moving on.

3. Make sure that your fretting hand posture is good so that you don't accidentally brush any strings you don't want to play.