How to Play Guitar for Beginners

Playing guitar is one of the most stress relieving activities I know of. It’s actually so important at toobbox.com that we have made it one of our commandments (See commandment #8 on our ).

You can read this post, or skip straight to the . I would recommend keeping this post open (or bookmarking it) as you watch the playlist. You should find the guitar map we provided below useful when learning how to play the guitar.

Check out this playlist of GREAT guitar tutorials to get you started…

The Traba Methodology

I’ve been playing guitar for about 12 years now. I never took lessons – just learned the basics from some friends and did the tab thing. I’ll write and record a song once in a while, and I have a blast doing it. My philosophy towards learning guitar is more of a soulful one, instead of the strict, regimented instructional version.

Now I’m not saying I’m right and you should never take guitar lessons. I just think that if you let what comes out of you naturally, you’ll end up making great music.

I have this theory, that people who spend so much time learning, practicing what others teach, and reading books – instead of just “doing”, usually get bogged down and frustrated. Then end up quitting and thinking that they are not good enough.

Hogwash! I say jump right in and start making music. Make your own sound. Learn the basic chords and notes – and then dive into writing music.

What follows below is my simple how to guide on how to get started with guitar:

1. Get An Inexpensive Spanish Guitar

Now, I’m sure some of you who already play are saying “What the…? Why not ANY guitar?”. Spanish guitars with nylon strings are a lot easier to play than steel string guitars. Also, they don’t need to be amplified so you end up not bothering everyone in your neighborhood. Finally, the strings are a lot softer and your hands and don’t hurt as much.

Also, the fret boards tend to be spaced out a bit wider, which can be easier for beginners to nail the right notes. On the other hand, this can make it harder for some to play certain chords.

2. Learn The Anatomy Of A Guitar

The above image of guitar anatomy is really basic. We left out a lot for the sake of clarity. For this tutorial, we just want you to pay attention to the fret board and the tuners.

On the fret board you’ll notice little metal bars that divide up the fret board. Those metal bars are called frets. Pretty easy so far! Right?

3. Learn The Difference Between Notes And Chords

If you’re a straight up beginner, you have no idea what chords are. And you might not even know what a note is. So let’s get that hammered out right away. It’s really easy!

• A Musical Note: If you walked up to a piano and tapped any key on the keyboard, you would have played a single “note”. On a guitar if you pluck any string once, you would have played a single note.
• A Chord: Is when you play more than one note at the same time.

If you hold down the top string in between any two frets and then pluck the top string, you will have played a note. If you keep moving your finger along the fret board as you pluck the top string, you will hear notes similar to running your finger down a piano keyboard.

Now a guitar fret board is kind of like a piano keyboard. It’s really like 6 piano keyboards. So, think of each string like a different sounding piano keyboard. This isn’t that important to learning how to play guitar – it’s just if you already know how to play piano, you might find this as a useful insight.

4. Learn How To Play Individual Notes Cleanly

Now that you know what notes are, practice plucking notes until they sound clean. And by “clean” we mean that they sound good and not “messed up”. You will have to figure out how hard to press down on the fret board AND where your finger should be in between two frets. By getting comfortable with clean sounding notes, you’ll be on your way to learning chords and bass lines.

5. Learn The Name Of The Notes You’re Playing

So now that you have learned how to play clean sounding notes – it’s time to know what those notes are called. Later on, this will make life easier – it will be like a map of where you are on the fret board.

I know the image above might seem pretty busy, but take a while to study it. I tried to clean it up a lot to keep it simple. Here are some important things I want to point out about from the above diagram:

• Orientation – The image above is oriented as if you were looking at the guitar from the top. Notice the top string is on the bottom of the diagram. That’s the thickest string on the guitar. So this diagram may “feel” upside down. This just happens to be the typical way they like to display the fret board to people.
• The 6th String – My friend got mad at me for calling the 6th string the “top string”. So below, when I talk about the top string (the thickest string), I’m technically talking about the 6th string. The thinnest string, the furthest from your chin is the 1st string. To me that’s counter-intuitive – but that’s what they call it.
• Open Strings – “Open Strings” are notes that sound when you play a string without pressing down on the fret board. Each string that is played “open” has a specific note. The top string plays the E note when played open.
• Sharps and Flats – The notes with the funny looking number signs (#) are called sharps/flats. They are like the black keys on the piano.

6. Learn How To Tune Your Guitar

Tuning is really important so that you don’t sound bad. Go out to Guitar Center or your local music store and pick up a simple guitar tuner. You can also find tuning apps for mobile phones and tablets. .

7. Learn the Basic Major And Minor Chords

At this point you’re pretty familiar with the guitar, where the notes are etc. Now it’s time to learn some chords.

Again, chords are groups of notes played at the same time. Knowing simple chords will allow you to play most simple rock and pop songs. Getting chords dialed are usually when most people start to have fun with guitar.

At first, fingering chords will be difficult. It’s all about practice. You have to practice switching between different chords while strumming the guitar.

What will happen is you will build “muscle memory”. Your hand and fingers will get stronger and more used to these positions. This is why I recommended a Spanish Classical Guitar – these types of guitars will make it much easier to finger these chords.

To learn the Major and Minor chords, for this post. There are excellent videos that show you where the chords are, what they sound like and how to use the correct fingering technique.

The image below are all the basic chords you should learn to get you going with most rock and pop songs:

Now, don’t be scared by this image. It’s not hard to decode. Our buddy Jeff at says:

“The string on the very left is the 6th string. The number on the dots indicate the finger you should use to hold down the fret with 1 being the index finger and so forth. Learning correct fingering of these chords is important. Learning these chords is key.”

So for each chord in the image above, put your fingers in the positions indicated by the number (1 being the index finger and so forth). Then strum all the strings. Keep strumming and tweaking your fingers until the chord “sounds” right. Keep practicing this until you get all these chords sounding clean and sweet!

8. Learn Guitar Tab

Guitar tab is a much easier format that allows people to quickly learn songs. Now, it’s not the perfect system, but it’s a lot easier than reading sheet music.

The diagram above that we call the “Guitar Map” that shows the notes on the guitar will be quite useful when you start reading guitar tab.

Here are some things to remember when you read tab:

• The top string is the bottom line on tab – This always confused me when I started out reading tab. This is what I meant earlier when I said it seems like it’s upside down.
• Your read guitar tab left to right – Perhaps this is obvious, but when you first stare at tab, I’m sure you’re not quite sure what you’re looking at. Play the first note that appears on the left, then move on to the next one and so forth…..eventually you will hear the song play out.

Here are some sites where you can find tab for popular songs:

9. Pick Some Easy Songs And Learn The Bass Lines From Tab

Instead of diving right into guitar tabs that have chords and all kinds of tricky stuff, search for bass tabs. Most bass lines of popular rock and pop songs are very simple. They are just played one note at a time (usually the root note), and they are easy to single out of a song. I say spend a week or two just learning bass lines before moving on to more complex song. You’ll knock out learning bass while you’re at it

Where can you buy your first guitar?

Well the obvious choices are Craigslist and Guitar Center. On Craigslist, you’ll find some great deals on used guitars – I would just call around and wait until you find someone who is nice and pleasant on the phone and deal with them. I also suggest meeting in a public location for safety reasons.

Years ago, I bought an electric guitar from , which was quite the deal. I recommend checking them out…

Any Suggestions or Questions?

Leave ‘em in the comments below!

About the Author: Sean Traba is the co-founder of ToobBox.com. You can reach him on Twitter here: