Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Learning How To Play Acoustic Guitar

By Chris Lake


It is easy to learn how to play acoustic guitar. You do not have to be an acoustic guitar virtuoso to amuse yourself and have fun jamming with friends. The first day you begin learning guitar you will be able to play easy songs. Most popular songs use simple chord patterns that are easy to pick up quickly.

The guitar, like the piano, is among the few instruments that play chords. A chord is a cluster of notes played simultaneously. There are four types of chords:major, minor, diminished, and augmented. Each chord type produces a distinct sound. Music has three basic elements: melody, rhythm, and harmony. The harmony consists of chords.

It is easy to learn to strum chords on an acoustic guitar. Each type of chord is formed by a certain finger pattern. With a little practice, you can smoothly go from one chord to the next.

Popular songs use standard chord patterns or progressions. When you have been playing for awhile you will recognize standard chord patterns even if it is a song you have never heard before. This makes figuring out new songs by just listening to a recording of them easy.

Learning to play melodies on the guitar is similar to learning to play chords. Melodies are based on standard major and minor scales. Once you become familiar with the standard scales is becomes easier to pick out melodies of songs without using the sheet music. This is the secret of improvising melody lines and soloing over a set of chord progressions.

A good teacher can get you playing the guitar faster than trying to teach yourself. While some people do teach themselves, a teacher will have you playing better and quicker. It is easy to develop bad habits when learning any musical instrument. A teacher will help you not develop those bad habits. A guitar teacher will also show you how to maintain your guitar by teaching you how to change strings, tune, clean and other maintenance tasks. A good teacher can inspire you and you can hear what good guitar playing should sound like.

Find a teacher who plays the style of music that you want to learn. There are many musical genres and styles played on the guitar. Learning how to play the acoustic guitar will involve mostly folk, country blues and low key styles of music. Acoustic guitar is used for playing classical guitar. Classical guitar is much more difficult to play than strumming chords and playing simple riffs. A lot of pop music uses acoustic guitar and so does country western music. The Electric guitar is not that much different than playing acoustic guitar. If you can play one then you can play the other.




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