The following basic guitar information is designed to give you the fundamental building blocks required to advance as a guitarist. Each of these sections will introduce you to several aspects of understanding and playing the guitar.
Regardless of whether you prefer the electric or acoustic, you will need to learn the information in these lessons. These fundamentals will allow you to build on and advance to the many different disciplines of guitar mastery. Each lesson builds and adds from the one before it. Be sure to go through them in order to be most effective.
"I started out doing a lot of the stuff that I think any guitar player that’s concerned about the craft needs to do.It’s basic practicing of the basic elements."
-John Petrucci
Learn the parts of the guitar and what they are for. Every part has a purpose, and knowing this is very beneficial.
Proper posture, hand positions, sitting or standing. All of these will play a part in how well you hold, fret, and strum your guitar.
You will eventually determine the best way to hold a pick for your playing technique. This gives you a good starting point.
You don't want to play out of tune do you? Several methods of tuning are discussed here. Let's check them out and get tuned up!
Frets, fret markers, open strings, string names, where are the notes on the guitar? All of your questions and more are answered here.
If you want to play your favorite songs, you've got to know some basic chords and how to properly interpret and fret them.
Chord changes, playing in time, strum patterns. Let's get you rocking on your favorite tunes and impress your friends!
Guitar tablature is a great way to learn your favorite songs and riffs without having to know any music theory! Winning!
A little music theory never hurt anyone. A deep understanding is not necessary at this point, so we'll just cover the basics.
Harmony in Western music would not exist without chord progressions – much of Western music is built on sequences of chords.