Written by How to Play Acoustic Guitar for Beginners
Article by Gyorgy Huba
Many people dream of playing the acoustic guitar and the good news is that it’s not that difficult. The reason a lot of people don’t succeed at playing acoustic guitar is they give up too soon. Some people say they don’t have time to practice, others say they can’t handle the sore fingers. So here is some tips on learning how to play acoustic guitar for beginners who want to go beyond the first few days.
Many people complain of sore fingertips when they begin to play acoustic guitar one way around this is to simply let nature take its course. After a few weeks of regular practice your fingers will develop calluses and the soreness will stop. It might help during the first few weeks of guitar practice to press as hard as you can on the strings. To build up the muscles in your fretting hand, keep a tennis ball handy and squeeze it for a few minutes several times a day.
If you do a little searching on the internet it might be hard to find some basic instruction for acoustic guitar. There are hundreds of websites specializing in free acoustic guitar lessons. Another good idea is to join acoustic guitar forums. Most forum members are experienced guitarists who are only too willing to help beginners.
Once you’ve been playing acoustic guitar for a few months it will be quite embarrassing if somebody says, “what are those knob things at the top of the neck?” and you can’t answer them. So get to know the parts of the guitar. There’s not much to understand, half an hour’s reading will give you a basic idea of the names of the parts of the guitar and their functions.
One of your first jobs as an acoustic guitarist will be to learn to play chords. You will be starting with open chords in the first position on the guitar. Don’t stop there, every chord you learn in the first position can be played in other places on the guitar’s neck. Learn a couple of these other positions every time you learn a new open chord. This entails learning bar chords which you will not be able to play perfectly at first, but your muscles will get used to them after a while.
One of the advantages of the acoustic guitar over the electric guitar is that you can practice the acoustic guitar anywhere. Providing you’re not disturbing other people in your house you can even practice while you watch TV. This doesn’t mean you substitute a bunch of random practice times for a set disciplined practice session, it just means that you have the flexibility to practice any time you feel like it. This applies to repetitive practice of chords or scales that you have already learnt. You need your full attention to actually learn chord positions and how to play scales initially.
Even right from the very beginning of playing acoustic guitar you will benefit by jamming with a friend. Of course you won’t have the expertise to play much at first but the situation of playing guitar with somebody else will give your learning a special stimulus. And if you’re embarrassed about playing in front of somebody with more skill than you have, just remember that they had to start somewhere too.
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