How to Learn to Play Guitar

If you wish to learn to play guitar, it is easy as long as you put much time and dedication to it. When you watch a pro play a guitar effortlessly, that is because he or she had mastered it already. There is really nothing you can do but practice if you are not one of those people who pick up a guitar for the first time and learn the basics just by listening to a song.

Worry not, because even the greatest of guitar players started out with the desire to learn to play guitar, just like you. The key to playing a song is mastering the basics — learn to play guitar chords. Every song is basically composed of a few chords repeated all throughout its duration. What you need to do is learn and memorize as much chord patterns as possible until you become very familiar with them. Learning how to play the instrument big time starts out with a little step at a time. Watch this video:

How to Hold the Guitar

However, before you start plucking the strings and play chords, the very first thing you need to know when you want to learn to play guitar is how to hold a guitar the right way. Place the body of the guitar under the crook of your right arm. Your right hand should end up over the hole of the body. Your left hand goes to the neck of the instrument, that long part where the frets are located. The best way to position your left hand here is make sure your thumb rests over the fret bars, so the rest of your fingers can easily place themselves on the strings. Practice holding the guitar this way. Now try to pluck the strings with the fingers of your right hand. This is how holding and playing a guitar feels like.

Tuning the Instrument

No matter how well you have memorized chords, they will not sound properly if your guitar is out of tune. It is best that before you play your guitar you check out whether it is in tune or not. Other people give up because although they watch instructional videos attentively while they learn to play guitar and they place their fingers correctly on the strings, still they end up with chord sounds that are entirely different than what the coach on the video came up with. Such people think that there must be something wrong with them, and that guitar playing is not for them. Little did they know that it’s the guitar itself that’s wrong. When you learn to play guitar, it involves learning how to tune it. You can ask a friend to teach you, or buy an electric tuner. An electric tuner will tell you if each string is properly attuned each time you pluck them.

It takes time to learn to play guitar, but once you can play chords effortlessly, you can go on taking more advanced lessons, and soon enough you will be able to play any song of your choice with much ease and flair.

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