Teaching yourself how to play the guitar is not only fun, but in the long run you will learn a lot more about your instrument, save a lot more cash, and the overall experience of learning on your own will be a lot more rewarding. The downside is that you will need to really stay focused and push yourself to keep moving forward; otherwise, you won't learn a thing.
In this guide I will try to help you to break down your lessons into six easy steps so that you can create your own practice sessions that work best for you. It really isn't that hard, but you have to stick with it. If I taught myself how to play the guitar, then so can you.
1. Buy an affordable guitar
Because who knows how long you will play the guitar. You might just give up within the first month, so why spend $200 on an instrument that will just sit around on display? If you aren't going to play it, don't spend a lot of money on it. My first guitar was under $70, and it was perfect. It didn't have any damage, there was no fret or truss rod problems, and the sound quality was surprisingly very nice. Whoever made my guitar took the time to do it right. The point is that you can buy a good quality guitar for very little money. All of those people out there that say "Buy a guitar for $200 because you get what you pay for" are sadly just saying that to make you waste money. Test some guitars out in store and try to find one you like that has the lowest price tag.
If you stick with playing the guitar, you can always upgrade to a better one in the future. I once heard a professional musician play Flight of the bumblebee on a $1 Recorder, and he made it sound epic. As you get better at playing the guitar you will discover that your first guitar will actually start to sound better over time as you perfect your skills. It's not the instrument that makes a good musician, but the musician that makes the instrument.
2. Learn the basics
When you first start playing the guitar the first thing you will notice is how the strings hurt your fingers. That right there is enough to make a new player stop playing. I sometimes go shopping for guitars over the internet and you have no idea how many guitars will get a one star rating because the new musician will say "I returned my guitar because the strings hurt my fingers too bad". There was really nothing wrong with the guitar they bought, all steel strings will hurt because the average guitarist that is just starting out doesn't have calluses on their fingers to numb the pain. But sadly, the customer decided to return the guitar and gave up playing before they even started. It will be hard to do, but try to ignore the pain in your fingers for the first few weeks of playing so that you can develop calluses to help numb the pain. If you can get passed that, a lot of the following steps will be fairly simple.
The first thing I did after buying my guitar was try to memorize the body parts of my guitar; I did this for two reasons: One, because I had already made up my mind that I was going to do all the maintenance for my own guitar and in order to do that I needed to know what I was working on and where the part was located. Changing your own strings and adjusting your own Truss rod will save you money in the long run if you do it yourself, but make sure you learn how to do it right. I tried to study for about four months before attempting to do any maintenance work.
And two, you should learn all the parts on your guitar so that when reading books or articles you will know exactly what the writer is talking about and where that part is located on your instrument. Learning simple things like- where the Nut is, the Bridge and what a Fret is will help you in the long run in finding your way around your instrument. Most beginner guitar books will walk you through this process.
3. Play easy songs
So instead, I came up with "Every boy goes down a elevator", the first letter of each word represents the open string's music note. The first word "Every" is the bottom thinnest string on the guitar, and the last word is the top thickest string on the guitar. Saying this out loud while plucking each string slowly will help you to memorize all the open strings.
Try to find easy songs to play like Mary had a little lamb (even if you are a heavy metal type of person), and just memorize the single notes first. You can buy an easy recorder book for $10 or less; I highly recommend it. Since the music I was studying was written for the recorder I was only playing one note at a time, normally on the first three frets, which helped me to memorize the strings more efficiently and a whole lot faster. If you know where all of the single notes are located it will also help you to learn chords and scales in the future. No matter which instrument you play all sheet music is the same because they all use the basic language of music theory. You don't have to memorize everything in one day, take your time and learn it slowly. If you follow in my footsteps, you should be able to fluently play easy recorder songs like Ode to joy on your guitar in about a month if you practice every day. I tried to stick with easy songs for at least three months before moving on to harder songs, that way everything I learned really sunk in.
4. Build strong fingers
The caterpillar was an easy exercise that required me to fret one note at a time slowly across the neck, while at the same time it also helped me to build finger muscle strength. I highly recommend that you learn finger practice exercises early on to help perfect your skills. If you do these exercises before each practice session for at least two minutes every day it should help to prevent hand cramping during your lessons.
5. Learn how to Strum
After you learn how to play chords you can then start learning how to combine those chords into songs while strumming. Switching between chords takes a lot of practice and a good way to learn them is to play the chords very very slowly, while strumming the strings in a simple Up and Down pattern. It may take you a few tries to learn how to strum to a rhythm but you will get it in time; don't rush it. I found everyone learns how to strum differently and that it is something that just comes with practice.
I learned how to switch from C major, to A minor, to E minor, to the G major chord. That pattern was fairly easy and as long as I played it very slow I didn't mess up that much. You can then move on to more advanced strumming patterns over time to perfect your skills and try to throw in a barre chord or two. Barre chords in my opinion are extremely difficult, even to this day I have trouble playing them. Every guitarist has something that they struggle with, it is just something that you will have to strive to overcome. However, developing strong fingers will make Barres easier to play in time.
6. Start on Scales
Studying these steps helped me to slowly learn the guitar at my own pace, while really mastering the fundamental basics. There is no right or wrong way to play the guitar and there is no specific order for how you should play. In my opinion the best way to play the guitar is whichever way you feel most comfortable with. Books helped me a little, but I learned the most just from sitting down with my guitar and playing some random notes for several hours, trying to piece them together to write my own music. By doing this I learned by ear how the notes sounded, where they were located and how they fit together. So naturally when it was time to learn scales I had already discovered how a lot of the chords were formed and what they sounded like. It didn't always sound nice, but the point was to learn how to play the guitar at my own pace and to discover chords and scales on my own time. If you want to master the guitar you will have to take the time and do the same thing.
Remember, you have all the time in the world to learn how to play, so don't rush yourself by placing a time limit on how fast you should be learning.
I hope my article about how I learned how to play the guitar will help you in structuring your own practice sessions. The last and final thing I would like to say is: Never give up. There will be times when playing the guitar will seem extremely difficult, but just stick with it and try to have fun. You will see that after about a year and a half worth of practice, you will learn a whole lot more than you realize.
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