Basic Guitar Lesson

This lesson is for people who have no idea how to play guitar.

After this lesson, you should be able to :

1. know what the different parts of the guitar are

2. Know how to tune a guitar with a piano

3. read and play basic guitar chords

Parts of Guitar

Before you learn how to play, you have to be familiar with different parts of guitar

The one on the left is a electric guitar and the one on the right is a acoustic guitar. Electric guitars are for advance player, we will be focusing on acoustic guitar.

How to hold a guitar

(NOTE: to play the guitar as a lefty would, you will need a left-handed guitar.)

Your left hand should be the "fretting hand" and your right hand should be holding a "guitar pick". If you don't have a guitar pick, you will have to buy one.

Example of how to fret notes with your left hand.

How to hold the guitar pick.

Fretboard

Now you need to learn about the fretboard. Different fret represent different key note as shown below.

By press the right fret, you will be able to produce the sound of note that you like.

Tune a guitar with piano

How to actually play the guitar

To play the guitar, your left hand need to fret the right note while you right hand strike downward from the sixth string with a guitar pick. The note your left hand fret are call chords.

To be able to play chord, you will first have to learn how to read it.

As you can see from above, the chord C major seem like meaningless, however, rotate it to the left 90%, you can see how it look like in your guitar. When your left hand press the correct fret for C major while your right hand strike the string, you should be able to produce the sound of C major.

C major is only one of the very many chords, there are also A major, G minor, Dm# etc. For beginners, I will recommend you learn and practise C major, F major, and G major.

After you thoroughly practised C major, F major and G major, you will be able to sing the following song.

C G F C

Amani Nakupenda

F G C

Nakupenda We We

F G

Tuna Taka We We

C G F C

Amani Nakupenda

F G C

Nakupenda We We

Congradulation!!! You have completed the basic guitar lesson!!