The basic's to learning to play the guitar.

Content
1.The basics to a guitar
2.How to read tablature
3.Finger placement and positions
4.Basic ways to increase your speed and precision
5.10 songs for beginners
6.Bonus

1.The basics to a guitar

Alright, first let me start by saying this. It takes approximately 1 year to learn a guitar fully The rest of the time playing is just getting better. With that being said, lets begin.

First we will start with the acoustic guitar.


secondly an electric guitar.


Alright, now as you can see, an acoustic and a electric guitar are quite similar but sound completely different. I suggest you look up some of your favorite songs and listen to some that use electric and some that use acoustic and see what you like better to pick your first guitar, or if you can afford it buy one of each.

A good starter acoustic guitar.

Fender CD-140S Dreadnought Acoustic Guitar is another great and cheap beginner guitar, You can but it for about 300 bucks it may sound like a bit compared to the 100 dollar first act one's you can get at stores such as wall-mart but in my opinion it's worth the extra 200 dollars.
A good starter electric guitar.

For a inexpensive starter guitar I would and did get a fender squier as they are fairly cheap and sound excellent for there price. The pack right here you can pick up for about 250-300 usd at any music shop really. or they can most likely order it for you.

OK so now that that is out of the way it's time to show you how to tune your guitar. I personally picked up my own guitar tuner when I first started for about 10 bucks (back before you could do much on the net if there even was one back then lol but anyways I did some looking and found you can download one from here. http://www.online-guitar-tuner.net/

2. How to read tablature
It is very simple to read tablature, or tabs if you will. the tabs are setup like so.



OK so basically what you do is you flip it upside down. and on the top portion of the picture above you see how it goes ---5--8 at the bottom think of it as the top string (the thickest string) and the ----5---8 at the top of the picture would be the bottom string (the thinest string) So all you do is flip it around for that, now the 5-- 8 represents the number of the fret you go up from 0-24 depending on your type of guitar. 0 being open and 24 being the furthest and smallest fret on the fretboard. so if you want to play a 8 you would count up the fret board on the correct string to 8, hold it down and strum it.

Now there are dots on the board if you notice, starting on the 3rd fret moving up and skips everyone till the one from 9 to 12, which has an extra space then it goes double space again to 15 and then goes back to how it was 3-9, this is because the 12th fret is the median in frequencies of the pitches sound. and it also will help beginners quickly find the fret they are looking for instead of counting each fret.

3.finger placement and positions

First lets start with the pick you should hold it like so.


Next sitting down


This picture tells you everything you need to know

Standing up.



Playing standing up will feel totally different than when sitting down so I suggest if you plan on playing standing up to practice while standing up often. 2 things you don't want to do when playing standing up is. 1. make your strap hang down too far so the guitar is too low, This will lead to poor quality of your skills, and cause wrist problems if repeated for too long. and 2. don't slouch your back or it will to cause problems.

4.Basic ways to increase your speed and precision

really the best way to do this is to simply play scales and once you get them down then work on playing them faster and faster.

This is just one of the scales and I believe will be the easiest for you all to play it is called the Chromatic scale.



5.10 songs for beginners

This is 10 simple songs to learn on guitar and should help you get started playing some songs. Keep in mind these are in no specific order.

1."3 doors down - If I could be like that"
2."3 inches of blood - onward to Valhalla"
3."acid bath - bleed me an ocean"
4."all shall perish - Grayson"
5."goldfinger - spokesman"
6."apocalyptica - repressed"
7."the f ups - lazy generation"
8."zz top - la grange"
9."the white stripes - fell in love with a girl"
10."twisted sister - I wanna rock"


Bonus

Here are a few sites you will find quite valuable to beginning to play guitar.

1.http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/
2.http://www.fretjam.com/
3.http://www.power-tab.net

Hope this helps you all get well on your way to being a real guitar god if there is anything you feel I missed or if you don't understand it post here and I will edit it.

 

hmm very nice guide.. currently i play piano and there are some similiar things, but nice use of pics, amazing guide =] for beginners that is

 

This is pretty good for those who have just started. I've been playing for over a year and have learned to play over 15 songs completely. All you need is practice.

 

Very long and detailed guide, great use of picture's, you set it out perfectly, overall you did a fantastic job on this guide! Well Done!

 

I've played guitar for under a year, however I really don't like tabs, i play notes like outta a book, but tabs are straight, i just blow at hammer ons and pull offs lol

 

Well thank you all for the positive responses. I found them fairly hard to learn when I first started playing, hammer-ons tapping etc. can be tricky at first, but if you keep working on it you will get it.

 

Wooohoo nice guide since I started playing electric guitar 5 string.

 

are you on crack? do you mean a bass guitar?

 

LOL, or maybe he is just ghetto and snapped his high E XD lol

 

LMAO wow
i wanna know where you got that "guitar"

 

Crack house.

 

lol really good guide, helped me alot learning
thanks man =]

 

yeah i agree.
i used to play guitar (i was not very good) havent played one in a while but you may have just changed that lol.

 

This is a pretty cool guide i play guitar myself
If any one needs help with playing tabs or whatever let me know xD

 

very nice guide long and detailed and nice piccies included.

I play guitar myself and no for sure, that ultimate-guitar is a great site if you want tabs.