The Best Way to Learn Guitar for Beginners

Congratulations on your decision to learn guitar! It's a rewarding journey that requires patience, desire, and determination. This article provides a structured approach to help you get started and progress effectively.

Introduction: Embarking on Your Guitar Journey

Learning guitar can be an exciting experience. The urge to play your favorite songs can be strong. However, it's important to approach it with the right mindset and tools. This article aims to provide you with the guidance you need to move forward and experience the joys of playing guitar without unnecessary frustration.

Setting the Stage for Success

Choosing Your Learning Path

The first decision you need to make is to decide on your path. You need help to get started on the guitar, and as I said before, there are many resources available for you to take advantage of. Pick the one that is the most comfortable for you.

Free Resources: A popular starting point, especially if you're unsure if guitar is for you. However, the abundance of content can be overwhelming, and it's easy to jump ahead without mastering the fundamentals. Learning the guitar is like building a house. You need to learn certain foundational lessons before you can move on to more advanced things.
Guitar Books and DVDs: Offer structured learning, but lack the ability to ask questions.
One-on-One Lessons: Provide personalized attention and a tailored method. However, the quality of instructors varies, so research is crucial.
Group Lessons: More affordable than private lessons and can create a comfortable learning environment. Small group sizes are most effective.
Online Lesson Sites: Offer well-structured methods, the ability to rewatch videos, and often provide a way to contact the teacher.

My first tip would be to stick to one teacher. If it looks like they have videos or blog posts that can take you where you want to go, stick with them. If you do find some free resources that you like, don’t be afraid to ask a lot of questions. Use the comment section below the video or blog post. I would think that you should get good responses to your questions from either the author or other viewers.

Selecting the Right Guitar

Acoustic Guitars: Great for practice due to their self-amplifying nature. However, the thicker strings can be challenging for beginners.
Electric Guitars: Typically made from solid wood and require an amplifier.
Guitar Size: 1/2 and 3/4 size guitars are generally for kids. The size of full sized guitars vary a lot. There are thicker, thinner, wider, longer, lighter and heavier guitars. With so much to choose from, a trip to your local guitar store is in order. Just go in and try a lot of different types of guitars.
Guitar Setup: Guitars have many adjustments that can make them play a lot easier. You will need help for this step. Find someone local that you know knows a bit about guitars. If you don’t know anyone that knows about guitars, take it to a local music store and ask if they could help you set up your guitar.
String Gauge: Heavy gauge strings are tough to press down and require a good bit of hand strength.There are many different gauges of strings available. For beginners, it is better to start out with light gauge strings. They are much easier on the fingers. An example of light gauge string for an electric guitar would be a pack of 9’s. That would mean that the high E sting would be .009 or 9 thousandths of an inch.

Creating an Ideal Learning Environment

One of the first steps on your path to playing guitar is to set up an environment that makes you want to practice. If you’re learning guitar at home, setting up a comfortable practice space is key to wanting to sit down and play more often. Here are a few things to keep in mind when setting up your practice space:

Keep your guitar prominently displayed. You know the saying: “out of sight, out of mind.” Keeping your guitar in plain sight is a visual cue to prompt you to play more often.
Maintain an optimal temperature. Playing in a well-ventilated room that is at a comfortable temperature can go a long way toward creating a comfortable environment to practice guitar. You might not be as inclined to sit down for a practice session if the room feels like a hot box or if you’re too cold. Additionally, maintaining a comfortable, consistent temperature in your practice room can also help keep your guitar in tune as temperature fluctuations can impact its performance.
The right lighting. Choose a room with either plenty of natural light or be sure that your room is well-lit. Being able to see your fretboard clearly is essential for beginners learning the correct positioning to play a note.
A comfortable chair or practice stool. The right place to sit while practicing is important, too! Be sure you have a chair or stool that encourages good posture. A chair without arms is ideal since they can sometimes get in the way of your own arms when strumming or navigating the fretboard.
Privacy and/or quiet. If possible, set up a space where you won’t be interrupted during a practice session. Using accessories such as headphones while playing can also insure that you’re not a disruption to others (such as neighbors or roommates), too.
Inspirational decor. Making your learning environment comfortable and inviting. Whether you choose to decorate it with colorful plants or paintings, or posters of some of your favorite artists, creating the right atmosphere can go a long way toward prompting you to practice regularly.

Mastering the Fundamentals

The Importance of Basic Skills

The first steps are always the most difficult. But you have to learn to crawl before you can walk -- building up strength and confidence before you can get going. Whether you’re learning to play guitar at home and using the Fender Play curriculum, or if you decide to take weekly guitar lessons with a teacher in-person, learning the basics and practicing them can help you work your way up to more advanced techniques. It may not be as exciting as playing your first solo or strumming the chords to your favorite song, but little things like learning the names of your strings and the different parts of your guitar can help you build greater familiarity with your instrument. Here are just a few guitar basics and why you should learn them:

How to Set Up a Guitar: Keeping your guitar in good working condition is essential to better playing and developing your ear. Learn how to use a guitar tuner and be sure your strings are properly tuned. Learn how to replace a string in case one breaks during a practice session. Understand the different parts of your instrument and how those little things impact the sound of your guitar.
How to Remember Guitar String Order and Names: Learning the names of strings and the order in which they appear on your guitar can help you to identify tones and notes, as well as transfer that knowledge to more advanced practices, such as reading tablature. Get tips and tricks for remembering guitar string order and their names.
How to Hold A Guitar Pick: Holding a pick correctly can help you to create a much more pleasing sound. Understanding more about the different sounds achieved with picks of varying thickness (or thinness) can also help you to hear how the right pick can impact the tone of your guitar.
How to Play Notes On Your Guitar: One of the earliest things you’ll learn as a beginner guitarist is learning where to place your fingers on the fretboard to be sure that note clearly rings out. Hearing notes clearly is key to identifying notes and learning how to play guitar.
How to Strum like a Pro: Little things like keeping your wrist loose while strumming can not only help you to achieve a more fluid style of playing, but it can also help to decrease pain or tightness after a practice session. Get more tips for strumming like a pro!
Guitar Chords 101: Learning to play guitar chords are one of the fundamental building blocks of a guitar education. Even if you’re not able to play a guitar solo (yet!), beginner guitarists can easily learn a few simple chords and strum along to their favorite songs as a rhythm player.

Mastering Chords: The Building Blocks of Music

Learning to play your first chords is probably the most challenging part of learning guitar. This process is tedious and takes repetitive practice. If could find a way to take only enough lessons to learn the correct way to play most of the common chords, you will have a great start. Once you learn to play a particular chord properly, then you can move on to learning the other chords one at a time and then learn the transitions between chords and build from there. You don't need a personal teacher as much for practicing the transitions after you learn the proper fingering and positioning to play the chords.

It's not easy to learn to play chords. It takes dedication and a great deal of practice. While you are in the beginning stages of learning guitar, keep your practice sessions short but practice several times per day. Shorter sessions will give your finger and hand muscles time to rest before they get too tired - and slowly get used to the stress of using your finger muscles to do things they have not previously been required to do. Shorter practice sessions will keep you from getting frustrated and burned out from too much practice. Just remember, the hardest part comes in the very beginning but if you stick with it and understand that it does take dedication and consistent tedious practice, you will soon start making advances very rapidly. If you can just stick with it until you can play a song you enjoy, you will be hooked for life. You can do it!

Learning Songs: Putting Skills into Practice

It is my strong belief that you will be more likely to stick with learning the guitar if you learn by learning to play songs you like. The ability to play a passable rendition of a song that you like will give you inspiration to learn more. If you can learn just three chords that are in the same key, and then master the transition between them, you will be able to play thousands of songs. For example, in Western music in the key of G major, the most commonly used chords will be G, C, D, Em and Am.

Learning to play notes, scales and chords are certainly fundamentals of your musical education. But the best way to learn guitar is to put those techniques into practice while learning a new song. Strumming a chord progression or practicing a hammer-on pull-off can feel much more real when you’re playing it in one of your favorite songs. This makes the experience much more fun instead of practicing the same things over and over without context. Not sure where to get started or what songs are suitable for beginners to learn? Check out some of Fender’s picks for 40 of the easiest songs to learn on guitar. There are tons of songs to choose from and one of them is bound to be a song that can challenge you and inspire you to keep going. From there, explore Fender Play’s collections and see some of the most-played songs favored by beginner guitarists and more seasoned players!

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2-Chord Songs: Don’t bore yourself by trying to memorize the basic shapes all at once! During your first guitar lesson, you CAN learn a complete song! I have a few listed below… they only require 2 easy shapes and some basic counting/rhythm!
Chord Shapes: One of the biggest mistakes I see in newer players, is focusing too much on getting “perfect” chord shapes. With a 2-chord song, there’s only ONE POSSIBLE SWITCH you need to make. You’ll need to start developing two basic skills.
- Chord Hand: We use our non-dominant hand (if you’re right-handed, that means we use our left hand) to play chords. And pressing the shape down is just the start.
- Strumming Hand: Strumming is performed by your dominant hand (if you’re right handed, that means your right hand). It is the most important skill in music - period! To help you, I have a full page dedicated to each of these skills.

Developing Your Ear

Consistent practice and repetition of different notes and chords can help you develop your ear, learning to correctly identify notes and patterns in your playing. Learning to play guitar becomes much easier when you are able to pick out which notes are in a song, what key that song is in, and what chords are involved. Learning which notes -- sharps, flats, and root notes -- comprise a particular scale can help you identify the key of a song. In turn, that can help you narrow down what chords and notes are included in some of your favorite songs and how the artist decided to structure a riff or solo based on those scales.

Although learning to play by ear may seem difficult at first, with continued practice and actively listening to music to apply your musical knowledge, you can better pick up songs by ear over time. Start by applying this to your rhythm guitar playing and identifying which chords make up a specific tune. Over time, as you become more advanced, you can use this knowledge to play guitar solos in your favorite songs, or start crafting guitar solos of your own.

The Importance of Practice and Community

Regular Practice: Consistency is Key

In all of my method books that I supply my students, I have a small schedule page for practice time. If you know that at a certain time each day you watch TV or play video games, you may want to re-purpose that time for your guitar lessons. Some like to practice in the morning, some later in the day. but, do you remember taking a test in school. You have a week to study but you put it off till the night before. You forget all that you have learned. You struggled to keep the information in your short term memory. Now that information is gone. The very act of repetition commits the information to long term memory, It’s there for good. That is what we want for guitar.

It can’t be said enough how important regular practice is to improving as a guitarist. Here are a few tips to help you make the most out of your practice sessions:

Carve out regular time to practice. Setting aside as little as 15 minutes to practice each day can help you to steadily increase your proficiency as a guitarist. Fender Play’s bite-sized video lessons are an ideal way to help structure your practice sessions, guiding you along a specific path and building upon learned skills.
Warm up first. Warming up your fingers and practicing a few scales or finger exercises can help you prepare for a practice session. It can also help you be sure your guitar is in tune.
Record yourself. Sometimes, it can be difficult to hear yourself getting better without having a starting point to compare yourself to. When learning to play guitar, it’s best not to measure your progress against anyone but yourself. Every player learns at a different pace. However, if you record your practice sessions, you can compare your progress from one month ago to where you are now and notice a marked improvement. Recording your practice sessions and reviewing them -- like an instant replay in a sporting event -- can help you not only see what you might be doing wrong, but also hear what you are doing right.
Try new things. Don’t just stick to playing the same scales or chords over and over again. Branch out with learning new scales or try different variations of a chord and see which ones feel or sound best to you. Then, try applying these newfound skills by practicing new songs. Before you know it, you’ll be adding more songs and skills to your own repertoire.
Try playing with others or with a metronome. While you might not feel confident enough (just yet) to play with other musicians, practicing with a metronome or to backing tracks can help you get more comfortable with playing along with a band. Fender Play has a practice mode that allows you to hone your skills by playing with a metronome and staying on-beat, or with backing tracks to simulate jamming with others.

I know that when I started I was more comfortable practicing away from others. You may be the opposite. It’s up to you. Just find a space. Also, what I would recommend is to pick up a guitar stand. Either way, it is important that you don’t keep the guitar in the case. it is very easy to forget. And when you forget about the guitar, It’s easy to forget about practicing. Plus, I think guitars look great. So those are the four decisions I recommend a new guitarist make before diving into learning the guitar. Decide which method you will use to learn. Once you all of this decided, it’s time to start. You are going to need help when starting guitar. But that’s OK. There is a lot of help available to you. Just realize that it is a narrow path that will keep you moving forward on the guitar without much frustration. Leave a comment below or on my contact page at www. playguitarpodcast.com/contact . Have you just started guitar?

The Power of Community

If you’re learning to play guitar at home, you might not necessarily have other new players to chat with about what you’re learning, challenges you face, or breakthroughs in your practice sessions. Having a community of musicians and music lovers to connect with can help keep you more motivated to keep playing, practicing, and cheering one another on.

Fender Play recognizes the importance of community. It allows you to connect with other like-minded musicians who are at a similar point in their learning journey as you, as well as learn from more experienced players and level-up your skill set. Every week, Fender Play LIVE features free YouTube episodes that show players of all skill levels how to play different songs, explore techniques within a variety of musical genres, and broaden their depth of knowledge with experienced players sharing their own stories. Beyond that, Fender Play also has an online community where players can compare notes, victories, and ask questions.

Maintaining a Positive Mindset

Patience and Persistence

Anything worth doing is worth doing well -- and often, that means it takes time, patience, and practice in order to hone a particular skill. Learning to play guitar is no different. While you may wonder what is the easiest way to learn guitar, the truth is, there are no shortcuts or substitutions for developing a regular practice schedule.

One of the most important things beginner guitar players should know is that they should be patient with themselves. Even the best guitarists don’t become great overnight. It’s important to devote time each week -- even if it’s a few minutes every day -- to sit down and practice chords, scales, and techniques involved with playing guitar. Developing good habits is harder than breaking bad ones.

Practice makes perfect… But patience is the key to it all. Every player will have good days or not-so-good days. When you first pick up the guitar, there’s a good chance that you will hit a few sour notes or those chords might not ring out as clearly as you’d like. That’s okay! Rome and Jimi Hendrix weren’t built in a day! Even professional musicians have performances where they didn’t feel they did their best. When you’re first learning to play guitar, don’t let your frustrations overshadow your progress. Take each mistake in stride. Learn from them and keep practicing. Above all, be patient with yourself. When you hear yourself getting better -- Fewer missed notes! Easier transitions between chords! Building up speed and accuracy with your fretting hand! -- you’ll be glad you were kind to yourself and kept going.

Leveraging Technology

The Benefits of Guitar Lesson Apps

For many new players, using an online guitar lesson app can help give you access to the tools you need to learn no matter where you’re at. Fender Play gives new guitarists access to top-notch instructors who have been there, done that, and created an easily-accessible curriculum broken into bite-sized video lessons. The portability of using an app like Fender Play allows you to practice anytime, anywhere -- as often or as you like. If there’s a particular concept of lesson you haven’t quite grasped, simply replay the lesson and practice it until you feel satisfied. Fender Play also gives you access to a library of hundreds of songs that you can learn to play. Learn chords, riffs, or even songs in their entirety to put the skills you learn to practical use.

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