You can’t play without tuning unless you have a very bad ear. Learning to tune will familiarize you with the sounds of the strings. To remember the names of the strings, you can memorise a useful mnemonic “Every Bunny Gets Drunk After Easter” E B G D A E, these are the names of [...]

Guitarists have their own system of music notation or tablature called “guitar tabs” . The tabulature represents the fret board of the guitar and you look at it in the same way that you would at the fret board. Each line corresponds to a guitar string and each number tells you which fret to hold [...]

Place your fingers correctly and firmly on the frets. Right-handed players hold the fret board in their left hand left handers the other way. To play a note or a chord you must press the string firmly between the perpendicular metal lines, close to the metal line towards you to get a good sound. When [...]

Strumming consists of rhythmic up and down strokes in various combinations depending on the beat being played. Every beat is divided equally into a beat and an off-beat which you count as “1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and; every “and” is an offbeat. Each beat or offbeat can be an upstroke, a downstroke, [...]

A chord is a group of notes played together. They are played together because of an underlying music theory. But for now, you must learn to play them and switch between them without loosing your rhythm. Practise the main commonly used chords until you are comfortable with them. There are 5 basic chords and you [...]

Start off with the easier ones that have a simple chord arrangement. Listen with a keen ear to the song being played and the guitar accompaniment so you know what kind of sound and rhythm should be produced.
Start off slowly and when you can play without loosing the beat, speed up gradually. Sing along so [...]

• A good book about how to play the guitar is a must. Most of them have instructions with diagrams and illustrations.
• Although price is not always an indicator of quality, most inexpensive guitars will have some issues that can make playing more difficult. For example, frets can be raised too high resulting in a buzz as [...]