What are the first 10 things I should learn on guitar?
If you’re interested in playing songs on guitar while you accompany yourself singing, here are the first things that come to mind. In this scenario your voice is singing the melody and lyrics of course and your guitar provides the rhythm.
An alternate- and somewhat more challenging- way to do this is to let the guitar “sing” for you and we’ll be looking at that downstream a little way. For now though:
- C Major scale, first position.
Everything you need is right there and it’s easy to spell. - C Major scale on the the A string,
ditto- and you can start to see how the neck works (incidentally you’ve just played “Joy to the World” backward so that’s a bonus).
Joy to the world tablature and notation - Hand-friendly C chord (the 1 chord for key of C)
You’ve heard of 1, 4 and 5 chords; a ton of folk, rock, country and bluegrass tunes use these chords, and the C is a great place to start. Use your 3rd finger on the 3rd fret of A, 2nd finger on the 2nd fret of D, open G and 1st finger on the first fret of B. If you include the open E on the one string, that chord is spelled CEGCE, so you are repeating the C and the E to good effect. - Hand-friendly F chord (the 4 chord for C).
F is tricky but you can play it in a bunch of ways right at the top of the neck! So no worries if you can’t make a barre chord yet… you can get away with a three-finger F chord by playing F, A and C notes in a diagonal pattern on the D,G and B strings. Keep at it- this is worth knowing. - A couple of strumming patterns
Once you have a few chords you’ll want to string them together so they change in a regular, repeating way- a “strumming” pattern. Try to have a few of those under your hand. Playing different strumming patterns makes your music more interesting to play and to listen to.
- D chord, using the open D string.
You can ignore the 5 and 6 strings, just to get started. - E chord
usually the first chord most of us learn for some reason :-). And even easier, Em (minor) which you can get by lifting your finger off the first fret of the G string. - G chord, also hand friendly.
Now you have the 1,2, 3, 4, 5 and the 6! G at the top of the neck has 3 open strings, so you can get away with 1 finger on the 3rd fret of the 1 string if you have to, just don’t play the 5 & 6 strings. Now you have what you need to play literally hundreds of songs! - Now add a B chord:
like an A only moved towards the body 2 frets, and played the 2,3 and 4 strings). That’s a pretty simple and friendly introduction to moveable chords right there! A chord played on the same fret of adjacent strings can be moved a half step up or down simply by changing which fret you are on.
A chord to B chord
So that makes nine things. For number ten, I’d say:
- Find a song you want to learn and get started!
And also consider the question: how do we eat an elephant? One bite at a time naturally! Don’t try to swallow the whole darn thing at once (unless you are looking for a case of musical indigestion). Regular folks, we take small bites, and of course, after a while, we have eaten a suitcase-sized piece of elephant. By which I mean, the smart money’s on the guitar player who pares the parts of the song down into smaller, more easily manageable chunks and works on those rather than trying to gobble the whole thing at once. Enjoy!
Mainly, don’t worry about what other people tell you about this stuff, including me.
Just have fun and make music how you want, and know that if it sounds good to you, that’s all you really need. Chances are though that it’s gonna sound good to other folks too! And believe me, there is no downside to starting this journey at any point in your life! You are in excellent company! And if you can play guitar while accompanying yourself singing, it’s just another short step to letting the guitar sing for you. More on that later.
Next” some common musical terms for guitarists