A Guide On Learning To Play The Guitar

1. Study and learn a new guitar skill every day

You should choose one particular guitar skill to learn every day. This can be as simple as a chord, riff, scale or even a song, strum pattern etc. You can even learn riffs or parts of songs that you never learned before due to the transitions. This includes songs or parts of songs that you find boring since there is a lot to learn, even in the “boring” parts. 

By doing this every day, it will improve your guitar playing skills by improving muscle memory and honing your musical instincts. This will eventually enable you to play just about anything on the guitar and express yourself musically. Martin Guitars are a great one to learn your skills on.

If you learn at least one new thing every day, over time, you’ll find yourself learning more than one skill per day. Soon, you will be learning as much as you can every day which will greatly advance your skills. In a very short time, you will find out that your everyday practices brought you to the point where you mastered all essential elements to play acoustic guitar like a pro.

2. Major scale intervals

Improve your guitar playing with these 6 easy guidelines

Next, you’ll need to learn to play the major scale since this is necessary to learn how to play essential chords and scales.

Once you understand how the major scale is made up, you can then start to harmonize it to make extended chords, triads, seventh chords and more. 

It should be noted that the major scale is made up of 7 intervals. They have an intervallic distance and pattern: W-W-H-W-W-W-H. The “H” represents a half step and the “W” represents a whole step. The 7 intervals of the major scale includes the root, major second and third, perfect forth and fifth, major sixth and seventh. 

3. Chords

There are many ways that you can play the major C chord. Due to the CAGED system, it is possible to play this chord in 5 places on the fret board. You should practice playing this chord on different places as well as other chords such as A9, E, B7 etc. With that said, it is best to start learning with the C chord. 

4. Play all the chords you already know

According to Joe Satriani, the only reason why your fingers don’t go in particular places is because you haven’t tested them. So, one day many years ago, I attempted to learn every chord written inside of the Joe Pass chord book. Of course, it took me more than a day to learn, but I worked towards learning all of those chords every day through repetition. 

Once you do this, it will teach your fingers how to seamlessly move from one chord to the next. This is priceless and will result in much greater skill in playing the guitar. 

5. Learn each part of the guitar solos you love

You can learn a lot by copying other great guitarists and trying to play their songs and solos. Even the great Eddie Van Halen did this at the start of his career. He used to play records and play along with them and he did so until he sounded exactly like the recording..

Once you do this it will drastically improve how you deliver songs. It will increase your vocabulary as well as give your playing a greater sense of style and showmanship.