Can you teach yourself acoustic guitar? It's a common scenario - you see a guy strumming an acoustic guitar, maybe doing some fingerstyle playing and you think, "How hard can acoustic guitar be?" Maybe you could just teach yourself enough to play some folk songs. It could be just a dream, but there's no harm in trying.

If you want to teach yourself acoustic guitar, it would be very handy to be able to call on a friend to help you with stuff like chord changes or finger picking patterns. Then, if you have the time to practice, you will be able to teach yourself. Working on challenges buy yourself can sometimes be more useful than having somebody show you.

First you need an acoustic guitar. Don't spend too much money on your first one, wait and see how your style and musical preferences develop. If you have money to throw around, start looking at, say, a Takamine for around a thousand dollars. Make the first day of looking at guitars a trip around music stores and secondhand dealers to see what's available.

Wherever you can, try the guitars out. See how the different brands feel and decide whether you want to teach yourself acoustic guitar on a nylon string or steel string guitar. A nylon string will be kinder to your fingers while you are learning but you might find later that you prefer the volume and sound quality of a steel string acoustic guitar.

Where do you go for material to teach yourself acoustic guitar? Some tablature of Bob Dylan songs would be a good start, but there are easy songs by other artists you could learn. There will be suitable songs in the tutor section of a guitar store but you can download guitar tabs and chord charts from the internet for free.

If you are a complete guitar novice, you might want to learn some chords and practice changing them before you start learning songs. Don't get too into learning a mountain of chords and no songs, though. Playing songs will help you learn chord changing and it's encouraging to hear yourself playing a familiar song.

Once you have a song or two that you can play right through, it would help you immensely to start jamming with other people who play acoustic guitar. Apart from the fact that they can give you tips on how to play, the very act of learning to keep up with a singer or another guitarist will flatten the learning curve.

An additional thing to  think about when you teach yourself acoustic guitar is the need for exercises to get your hands working and make your playing more versatile. If you do an internet search for licks, riffs and strumming patterns and use them as part of your regular practice, you will find it will boost your confidence.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/teach-yourself-acoustic-guitar-1172276.html

If you want to learn to play guitar chords you can buy a chord dictionary. These books contain every chord known to man, most of them you will never use. There are two common kinds or chord - the major chord and the minor chord.

All western music is based on the major scale. Let's take a look at the C major scale: C D E F G A B C. On the piano these are the white notes but on the guitar we have to find the note patterns and find ways of remembering them.

The lowest C note on the guitar is at the third fret of the fifth string, the next note, D is the open fourth string and the E is the second fret on the fourth string. The third fret on the fourth string is the F and then we move onto the open third string which sounds the note G. The the second fret of the third string is A, the open second string is the B note and the first fret of the second string gives us C which is the beginning of the next octave.

To play the C major scale using these frets, which is known as playing in the first position, use the first finger for notes that appear on the first fret, the second finger fro notes at the second fret and use the third finger for third fret notes.

Now you know the notes, all you need to do is practice every day. According to its basic definition a chord is a mix of any number of any notes but a major chord is the first, third and fifth note of a major scale. In the case of the C major scale the notes are C, E and G.

To play a C minor chord all you need to do is play the note E flat (written Eb) instead of the E natural note you played in the major chord. This applies to all keys. Always and everywhere, the major chord is the first, third and fifth notes of the scale and the minor chord, which has a sadder sound, contains the flattened third.

You can play scales and notes in all keys in th first position. If you haven't already, download a guitar fretboard diagram to show you where the notes are and some tabs or chord charts for some songs you want to learn. You will be learning open chords like the C major and C minor chords you just learnt and you have already found out how to work out where the notes are for your major and minor chords.

To save you some work you can download a collection of guitar chords but once you know how to find them for yourself, why not use your musical knowledge?

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/easy-learning-guitar-chords-1165373.html

When you buy your first guitar and start fooling around with it, learning songs and making up your own tunes, you kind of wonder about the need to learn guitar scales. If I'm doing okay with my own natural talent, why do I have to spoil the fun by learning a bunch of dry scales?

You need to learn guitar scales because they are your key to understanding the guitar fretboard. You really need to learn your way around the notes on the guitar so that you can give your playing some depth and variety. Take the major scale for example. The do-re-mi-fa-so-la-si-do you learnt when you were a kid. If you can find that scale in any key in any part of the fretboard, you have control over the music and you are not restricted to the basic open chords and the notes in the first position you learnt as novice guitarist.

If you hear a lick on a CD and decide that you want to learn it, you could take the hard road and try to find the notes by ear. Lots of people have learnt to play that way. But if you have taken the trouble to learn guitar scales, you will probably recognize from the sound of the riff which scale is used and in what position. If you have the sound of the scales you will recognize the intervals because your practice has made the scale part of you.

If you have the knowledge that practicing guitar scales gives you, your natural talent will give you the seed of a melody and your knowledge of the scales will allow you to quickly develop your ideas and see how your tune sounds at the first, fifth, tenth or twelfth fret. The basic point to why you need to learn guitar scales is that you can learn in a month of practicing scales what ten years of playing hit and miss might give you. Time is short.

So let's get back to the major scale. The do-re-mi scale is a bunch of notes separated by a certain number of frets. The seven notes are separated by seven intervals. The intervals are of two sizes - tones and semitones. The semitone is the interval between two adjacent frets, the tone is an interval with an empty fret between the notes.

The intervals in the major scale go like this: TONE - TONE - SEMITONE - TONE - TONE - TONE - SEMITONE. If we count each tone as two semitones, you have a total of twelve semitones in an octave. This is the material you work with as a guitar player if you learn guitar scales. You learn scales that make use of these intervals to produce sounds that are capable of producing a range of feelings in your listeners.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/music-articles/reasons-to-learn-guitar-scales-1111419.html