Welcome back! Today I’m gonna share a few tips for guitar beginners. Before moving to the U.S to pursue my career as a musician, I was a private instructor and hadmany students ranging from 6 to 45 years old; most of them were beginners and had never evertouched a guitar in their life at all.
For the most part, I had no clue of what I was doing; I meanwho would blame me? It’s not like I was a senior instructor with years of experience; sure I hadbeen playing guitarfor almost 6 years but teaching is a complete different world. So anyway, allof the students had one similar enemy: Chords. It was a love and hate relationship; they wereso passionate about learning them but at the same timethey struggled so hard to play with thechanges. There was one particular method that had them sweating, but it sure did work like a charm. The concept was very simple: DON’T STOP!
The basic idea is to set up a metronome, let the chord ring for its full value and when it’s time to
change to the next chord, don’t rush it or delay it. Play the next chord on the beat, no matter
what, and most importantly position your fingers all at once ; yes you heard me, all of your
fingers at once. This a huge issue with beginners; they tend to place one finger at a time which
just won’t help at all. Let’s say you have the following chords:
You are gonna set up a metronome and strum each chord once every for 4 beats. So if you play
an Em on beat one, you will let it ring for the full bar (1, 2, 3, 4) and just before arriving to the
next Beat 1, you will basically jump from the Em to the G; you will jump, you will not position one
finger at a time. You will jump and try to position all your fingers at once. You will do this on Beat
one, not on beat 2 or a little bit after Beat 1; it has to be done on Beat 1. Yes for sure, you will
miss a couple of times. You will play some funky chords that don’t sound right, but eventually
you will nail it.
When you feel more comfortable you can try a rhythm like this one:
That is all for today! I hope you enjoyed this lesson. For more beginner’s lessons check out:
guitarcontrol.com/category/beginners/
