When we go to concerts, listen to CD’s or get interested in a band its always fun to look up their biographies. But the one thing you usually don’t find in a band’s bio is how they learned how to play the instruments that they play. In this post we’re going to tell you about how we first picked up the guitar and taught ourselves to play.
Like we mentioned in our about us, or first post, we bought our first guitar at the end of Sophomore year in high school. We promised our parents we would learn how to play, and although they were skeptical, we ended up learning pretty quickly. It was a black Fender Squire Stratocaster that came in a package with a small amplifier, guitar case, tuner, some picks, and a basics video all for only $200 at The Guitar Center. The package is $250 now. The good thing about this electric guitar is it has a relatively thin neck and the strings are not hard to press, so it’s ideal for learning. The video ended up being pretty useful and from it we quickly realized the first most important thing to learn are the basic open chords. The song that motivated us to learn was “Time of Your Life,” by Greenday. At first this song seemed impossible to learn, but after learning the open chords it turned out to be pretty easy since the same chords are repeated throughout, and only some picking is required.
The process of learning the open chords correctly took a while. The hardest thing to get used to when you first start playing guitar is how hard to press the strings. And well, basically, you have to push as hard as you can until none of the strings are muted and they sound clear when strummed (It will hurt a bit). After you learn the correct finger positioning and strumming techniques you have to learn how to switch from chord to chord as fast as possible. The best way to practice switching fast is to learn 3 chords at a time and switch from one to the other in every combination. The song “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” for example has only 3 chords, D G and A. You can literally learn how to play the entire song and many others just by knowing those 3 chords. Most songs really only use 3 to 4 chords, so you can see how important it is to learn these open chords.
The more songs we wanted to learn the more we realized that learning barre chords was crucial. Certain bands such as Jack Johnson use barre chords for basically all their songs. These chords are difficult because they involve barreing or placing your index finger across an entire fret and then using the other 3 fingers to make chords. This way you can play any chord up and down the neck. We didn’t start learning that until about 1 to 2 years into playing the guitar and by that time the calices on our fingers have long since developed. We are still working on perfecting our barre chords, and its probably going to take a while to get really good at them.
Other things we learned after about a year were scales, but we’ll go into more detail about Barre chords and scales later. The best tip we can give you about learning how to play the guitar is find a few songs that sound simple enough that you really want to learn. This will keep you motivated in learning the basics quickly so that you can play more and more. Also learn how to read tabs. It makes learning songs a lot easier.
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