The Best Way to Begin Learning to Play Guitar

There must be over a million books on how to play guitar. The thing to keep in mind is that books are on the market, not to teach you to play guitar, but to make money for the people selling those books. This would be all fine and good, if the books actually showed you the best way to get started. Unfortunately, very few if any, really do.

The thing is, picking up a guitar and trying to play it, is very much like picking up a new diet and trying to apply it to your lifestyle. It's good for a few days, weeks or even months, but after awhile, you start to lose interest and will power.

If you truly have a burning desire to learn to play guitar, than just fellow these simple steps.

First, find a song you really like a lot that has only three chords in it. And I don't mean the stripped down kind of song you find in beginner guitar books. I mean, listen to songs on your Ipod, or on the radio. Go through your old collections. Do whatever it takes to find a song you really like, and that has only three chords in it. Old sixties songs had a lot of three chord songs, especially folk music. So did a lot of acid rock. Quite often simple sounding songs have simple chords. Check them out.

So, how do you know if there are only three chords in a song? Well, usually it's pretty easy to tell if you listen very carefully, to just the rhythm guitar. Sometimes this is easier by turning up either the left or right speaker, or by adjusting the tone. Mostly what you'll hear is two chords, followed up by a third when they go into the chorus. Listen for the changes in sound, that's when they are changing to a different chord.

If you have to, go to a music store where they sell sheet music and tell them what you want. I've never yet be disappointed when doing it this way.

Once you have your song picked out, you need to figure out what the three chords in your particular song are. The easiest way to do this, is to use Google. Type in something like: "Name of Song" tab. The word "tab" here, is an abbreviation of the word tablature. It's a diagrammatic way of showing how a song is played on a guitar. What you will see is something like this: