How to play guitar

If you never played the guitar before, here is a little introduction to explain to you the most basic concepts.

Playing guitar comes down to the coordination between the right hand and left hand.

Usually the right hand plucks the strings and the left hand pushes down the strings to the fretboard. This can also be inversed for left handers.

You can also use a guitar pick for plucking the strings with the right hand.

If you want to play a melody, you only pick one note at a time and hold down the same string with your fretting hand. Or you play an open string, which means that no string is pressed down, while plucking a string.

When trying to play something with tabulature, the upper line represents the geographically lowest string, but the highest SOUNDING string, which is also the thinnest string.

On the fretboard there are several compartments and each compartment represent one fret. We start counting with 0, when there is no string pressed down. Then the first fret is the first compartment.

Then simply continue counting upwards, until the end of the fretboard is reached.

Now play this simple melody:

It starts with an open, high e-String, which is at the bottom of the strings.

Pay attention to the string change at the end of the second bar.

Press the string down to the fretboard at the fret, that is indicated in the bottom row, just follow the numbers. Then pluck the same string that you are pressing down.

Did it sound a little bit like this?

Then you did it right. If not, don’t be discourage. Simply try a few more times. This might be totally new to you, so you might need some time to get used to the feeling.

Now let us look at some basic chords.

This is a different view on the fretboard. On the left we have the lower sounding (thicker) strings and on the right, we have the higher sounding (thinner) strings. The numbers indicate which finger to use, starting to count with the index finger as the first finger and the position of the number indicates where to put your finger.

Here is your first chord. It is called the G-Chord:

This is a 3-string version of the G-chord, it sounds like this:

To play this chord, simply put your pinky finger on the third fret of the first string. We use the pinky, because we need the other fingers later on to grip an extended version of this chord.

Here is the C-chord:

Put your first finger (the index finger, we start to count with that finger) on the first fret of the second string and try not to touch any other strings. Now play the bottom three strings with your right hand.

Did it sound a bit like this?

If yes, well done! If no: Do you maybe need to tune your guitar? If it is in tune, try to analyse what could be wrong.

If not all strings rang out, you might not press the string down hard enough, or you are touching the high e-string with your left (or: fretboard) index finger.

Just do not be discouraged and experiment a little bit, eventually you will get it right.

Now try the next two chords:

This is the A-Minor-chord or Am in short. It sounds like this:

And finally the E-Minor-chord, or Em in short. And this one sounds like this:

And is really super easy to play:

Simply let the bottom three strings ring without pressing any note on the fretboard.

Now you can do something really cool with these chords. Just put them in any random order and play them. Either play all strings at the same time or pick the strings separately in different orders and switch to the next chord.

After some time you will be able to switch between those chords smoothly and then it will start to sound pretty awesome already!

About the author:

Michael Korte is a professional guitarist and composer in Finland and also teaches kitaratunnit in Tampere. Highly recommended if you are interested in learning how to compose or if you just want to learn the essential skills to be able to join a band.