How To Play Guitar

If you want to learn how to play guitar the Internet is probably the greatest resource you could possible have. There are countless free guitar lesson website to teach you how to play guitar. But how can you chose a good one?

First let me say that in this particular field most how to play guitar websites are pretty good. The free guitar lessons generally contain correct information and will steer you in the right direction. The area that lacks is that students don't always know what they should be learning on guitar. Do you just want to know how to play your favorite song on guitar or do you truly want to know how to play guitar?

If you actually want to learn how to play guitar and not just mess around with it there are a few things that you must learn. The names of guitar chords and how they are played of course, basic music theory which includes learning how scales are formed and how to build chords from scales, and advance scale and chord work, such as learning how alternative scales and chords are created by using mathematical formulas. All music theory is actually math, by the way, don't let that term scare you.

Just knowing how to play a particular song is not enough and knowing how to read music has absolutely nothing to do with knowing how to play guitar, how to play chords, how scales work or even music theory. All these things can be learned without ever knowing how to read music. It like saying you have to know how to read in order to be able to talk.

If you're choosing an online guitar course you need to find one that is going to teach you everything you need to know about playing guitar.From the simplest thing like how to hold your guitar pick to complicated theory. To be truly great guitar player you will need to know how a scale determines the song's key, then how that key determines what the natural chords would be in the key, and then how that scale determine which notes make up those chords, and finally how that scales teaches you what notes will sound great in your guitar lead. It's all related and once you have that guitar theory down, you then can do just about anything you want on guitar.

Does learning all of that guitar theory take long? Absolutely not, and it's really not even that complicated once you tie it all together. But many free guitar lessons will skim over the theory just to get you playing some songs. Which is great but you will at some point have to learn how to play guitar using everything and believe it or not getting that theory in the beginning will actually speed up your progress learning your favorite songs, not slow it down.

So where should you go to learn how to play guitar? When I have one site in particular I'd like to recommend. It's simply called How To Play Guitar.

The site is not very big and there's a lot of information crammed into those pages including just about all the basic guitar information you could want. I find some of the pages a bit hard to follow, but upon rereading them it all makes sense. The site is totally focused on learning to play guitar as a beginner and doesn't cover much in the way of any guitar solo work. Hopefully they will add some of that info soon. Plenty of chord diagrams, audio and video tracks and once you've mastered all the free guitar lessons there is a page to recommend which pay lessons are the best. You can find that here Reviews Of Guitar Lessons

Also if you want some free information on guitar picking visit my Squidoo page here:How-to-Play-Guitar.

Before you learn how to play guitar you've got to get a guitar. Here are a few tips on buying a guitar.

1. Take someone with you who already plays guitar. I would be willing to bet that almost all first guitar purchases are a mistake. Wrong style guitar, too cheap of a guitar, paid too much for the guitar, you get the idea. Take someone with you who knows something about guitars.

2. Never pay the asking price in a guitar shop. There are 3 prices in a guitar shop: the price on the tag, the price the saleman will generally offer to sell it for out of the blue and the real lowest price the guitar shop will take. Start by offering 60% of the list price and work your way up. If you can't get the price down get them to throw something else in for free.

3. Find out beforehand what kind of guitars are mainly used in the style of music you want to play. There are basically 4 guitar sounds. The fat Les Paul sound, the thin Fender sound, the rich jazz sound, and of course the acoustic sound. Buy a guitar that is naturally going to sound like the style of music you want to play.