Guitar Tips for Beginners

One of the first challenges a guitarist faces is switching smoothly from one chord to another. Here are two techniques that you may find helpful as a beginning player:

4x4 Practice

Whenever I teach my beginning students a new song, I start by listing each of the required chord changes. Sometimes students get overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once (strumming, left-hand fingering, optionally singing) and trying to do it at the same tempo as the original artist. Isolating the chord changes and just doing down strums allows students to first focus on the basics and then tackle the other elements of the song.

If a song has 4 chord changes (e.g., G D Em C) I write these chord changes at the top of the page like this:

G G G G
D D D D
Em Em Em Em
C C C C

and then I tell my student to play this pattern, using a single down strum for each chord symbol, 4 times (thus the name 4x4, meaning that each chord gets played 4 times and then the whole pattern is repeated 4 times). This exercise should be played slowly enough to allow chord changes to occur smoothly (without any pauses). You should be able to tap your foot to the rhythm (or, even better, play along with a metronome).


Hand-position Technique

I learned this technique from a talented lead guitarist in a local band. For this exercise, choose a single chord to work on (e.g., D). Play the chord once, then move your left hand away from the guitar strings about a half inch, keeping your hand in the same shape it was in when you were playing the chord. Return your hand to the strings and play the chord again. Repeat several times.

Variation 1: Perform the same exercise described above with your eyes closed. Repeat several times.

Variation 2: Move your hand several inches away from the guitar (while keeping it in the appropriate shape for the chord you are playing), then "land" it back on the strings and play the chord. Repeat several times.

Variation 3: Relax your left hand after removing it from the strings. Then, prior to putting your hand back on the strings, form it into the shape it needs to be in to play the chosen chord. Then play the chord. Repeat several times.

Learning to Play the Guitar

Recently someone asked me how to get started playing guitar, so I thought I'd share a few thoughts about the first steps every new guitar student should take:

1) Get a guitar (see my previous blog entry on buying your first guitar for more information about finding the right instrument for you)

2) Get a guitar instructor
Whether you are young or old, whether you want to learn to play hard rock or smooth jazz, there's simply no substitute for a good teacher. You can't get your black-belt in karate by watching YouTube videos, and you can't learn to dance by reading a book about it. So why should guitar--a similar physical skill--be any different? I used to think that being self-taught was a badge of honor, but on my own I was only able to master the skill of making mistakes. Hiring a teacher to save me from my own misguidance was one of the best decisions I've ever made.

3) Learn how to read chord diagrams. They look something like this:

The letter at the top represents the chord name. All chord names have a letter (A through G with an optional sharp or flat) to indicate the root note of the chord, and they may also have additional modifiers such as "7" or "m" to indicating the type of chord to be played. The dark line at the top of the diagram represents the "nut" at the top of the guitar neck (the picture next to the chord diagram below shows the correct orientation for a guitar chord diagram relative to the guitar itself; the white horizontal band between the guitar head and fretboard is the "nut"):

  

The vertical lines in the chord diagram represent strings (with the lowest/thickest string on the left and the highest/thinnest on the right). The XX's at the top (just under the chord name) indicate that these particular strings should not be played as part of the chord. The O indicates that the string should be played "open," meaning that no finger should be placed on the string. The black dots represent finger positions, and the numbers at the bottom represent left-hand finger numbers (1=index finger, 2=middle, 3=ring, 4=pinky).

4) Learn how to change quickly and smoothly from one chord to another. This can take a lot of practice, and to make it more interesting I recommend choosing simple songs (such as Christmas songs, hymns or folk songs) and try to get to the point where you can change chords without having to pause your strumming. Here are some useful chords for beginners: D, G, Em, C, D7, A, A7, Am, G7. While playing, pay attention to the position of your finger relative to the frets. Too far back (toward the head of the guitar) and you could end up have to press quite hard to avoid string buzz. Too far forward (toward the body of the guitar) and you could end up on top of the fret itself, which produces an unsatisfactory muted sound. Here is the ideal position (just behind the fret):

Curl your fingers around the guitar so they only touch one string at a time, and use the tips of your fingers to play. This is the most sensitive part of your fingers, and it may hurt at first until you build up calluses. Be patient, it will get better with time and practice. When switching from one chord to another, look for opportunities to use "anchor fingers," which are fingers that don't have to be moved during a chord change. For example, when switching from C to D7 the first finger doesn't have to move at all. This makes it easier to get your other fingers in the right place. If you don't have an anchor finger, look for a "guide finger" that can be slid along the same string to a different fret when making a chord change. For example, when switching from a D to an A chord the third finger can remain on the second string and be slid from the third fret to the second. This makes it a little easier to "land" the chord in rhythm.

5) Practice, practice, practice
There's no substitute for practice. A high IQ may help you retain theoretical musical knowledge, but learning to play a musical instrument requires physical learning that can only be gained through frequent, consistent practice.

6) Don't give up
Many people don't realize how much time it can take to learn a new instrument. In the beginning the effort is great and the rewards are few, but if you stick with it then you'll be richly rewarded for your hard work. As someone who has traveled that road, I can promise that great things await you if you persevere.

Learning to Play Piano as an Adult

When I was 26 years old I started learning to play the piano. For several months I toiled on my own, thinking that being "self-taught" would be so much cooler than learning from a piano teacher. Then one day my 7 year old daughter asked if she could take piano lessons, so I signed her up with a local instructor. After about two lessons she was already ahead of me, and I realized that being "self-taught" was for the birds. I decided to take piano lessons, too (from the same teacher as my daughter), and that's when I started to make real progress.

I began by learning the basics of note reading and fingering while playing songs out of children's method books. It was okay at first, because I didn't expect to be a virtuoso right away. But after about two years I started to get pretty frustrated. I thought that after spending so much time at the piano I should be a lot better than I was, and I wanted to play songs that were more musically satisfying. I got a new job around this time and was pretty busy, so I quit taking lessons and probably would have stopped playing altogether were it not for my music-loving daughter who asked me to play piano for her every night when I tucked her into bed.

I was still progressing, but at a very slow rate, and I was still very frustrated. That was when I decided to learn another instrument, and I picked up a low-priced guitar at a local music store. While learning to play guitar I started to make connections about chords and the piano. I had always felt that playing chord-style piano was "cheating," and I didn't find it very musically satisfying to simply play a block chord (like C-E-G) at the beginning of each measure. Sure, it filled in the harmony part, but it left a lot to be desired (and some songs, particularly classical compositions, didn't lend themselves to chord-style playing at all). One night after a frustrating practice session I did an Internet search for "adult piano lessons" and ended up purchasing an ebook written by Dan Starr called "How to Win at Piano Lessons" (www.danstarr.com). This helpful book dispelled many of the incorrect beliefs I held about learning to play the piano.

Soon afterward I attended a piano concert, and as I exited the performance hall and entered the lobby I heard someone playing the piano just as well as the performer I had just paid to see. I walked up and asked him what he was playing, and he said it was an improvisation. I was amazed and asked if he would be willing to teach me.

I began my first lesson with him by playing a song I had learned while studying with my previous piano teacher. There were a lot of hesitations and missed notes (partly due to performance anxiety and partly due to my limited abilities). After such a performance, most teachers probably would have coughed politely and said something like, "Well, it looks like we have a lot of work to do!" But he looked at me after I finished and said, "I think you're better than that."

I only had four lessons with him, but they lasted three hours each. At each of these lessons we spent about thirty minutes on piano instruction (he taught me how to improvise and compose and how to play more interesting chord-style piano with arpeggios and inversions and octaves). Then we spent the rest of the time working through the emotional baggage I had accumulated surrounding the piano (he was a motivational literature buff and aspiring public speaker, so this was an area in which he excelled). Chief among my erroneous beliefs was that I would never be a competent pianist because I hadn't taken lessons as a child.

With the tools he gave me and much of my emotional baggage behind me, I began to excel. I played chord-style songs, composed my own music, improvised, studied music theory and even started taking traditional lessons again to improved my site reading capabilities. I played everything from hymns and jazz to new age and classical. I spent about an hour a day at the piano and began to perform more frequently for audiences, slowly overcoming my performance anxiety as my confidence and skills and experience expanded. I spent a lot of "quality" time with a metronome (learning to play "2 against 3" was particularly difficult for me) and took a very cerebral approach to piano. I'm still not very good at playing difficult classical music, and faster songs can be quite challenging. But at the age of 35 I am an intermediate/late intermediate player and am continuing to progress. A few years ago I even started teaching piano lessons.

While I was busy developing my skills, my daughter continued to take traditional piano lessons. I didn't realize it at the time, but as she got older she began to resent the inane music in her method books and probably would have quit playing altogether if her studies hadn't been supplemented by more enjoyable songs (some of which came from me as I searched for more satisfying music to play). When her teacher got a full-time job and had to close her studio, my daughter asked me to instruct her. I was amazed, because I had been expecting her to zoom past me at some point since she had started playing at age 7 and I had started playing at age 26, but there she was asking me to teach her after only taking 4 years of lessons when she had taken 7 or 8. Learning as an adult, in spite of my emotional baggage, had actually allowed me to develop more quickly than her and it helped me understand things such as music theory at a much deeper level. It also helped that I already knew how to learn and how to overcome obstacles. My daughter plays well instinctively and is an excellent site reader, whereas I tend to approach problems more academically and can usually work through them with the help of Google, a metronome, and frequent repetition. We each excel in the areas of music we have studied (for example, I am better at playing hymns and jazz and ballads than she is, but she is better at playing movie music and faster songs). But I am thoroughly convinced that the only disadvantages to learning music as an adult were psychological--because I held an erroneous belief, reinforced by incorrect societal views about early development, that music was something that could only be learned in childhood. I am grateful that I never gave up, and as a reward for my perseverance I've gained a lifelong skill and thoroughly enjoyable hobby.