Beginner and Chords

[robert cham]

Are there chords with which I should open my learning?

[Barry Daniels]

Start with the easiest. Em and Am, and E and A are the easiest chord progressions that almost sound like a song. After that, learn D, C, and G. That can take you pretty far.

[Bryan Bear]

Barry has you all set. Learn a few chords and practice getting your fingers into the right shapes and all the strings ringing clearly when strummed. Next you will want to practice getting from one to another cleanly (practice changes that are I the same key, look at the chord progressions for simple songs you like). Teaching your left hand to get into position without muting or buzzing other strings can be tedious, just stick with it.

[Patrick Hanna]

Barry and Bryan gave great advice. The only thing I can add is that you'll probably feel very clumsy and slow positioning your fingers at first. It becomes much easier with practice. As you learn more chords, the entire learning process speeds up. It is one of those activities like riding a bicycle--you'll struggle and struggle, but then one day it suddenly starts to work for you!

[Mark Fogleman]

I suggest that first you should learn to tune your strings. Lots of free guitar tuning apps for smartphones. Snark tuners clip on the headstock and are very good for the money. I learned with an A (440hz) tuning fork struck and placed on the bridge and then reference off the A string to tune the other strings (ie: A string, 2nd fret is B, 5th fret is D, etc) so there are alternates to high tech.

[Bob Orr]

Check out this free site. Lots of free lessons from beginner to advanced.

http://www.justinguitar.com/

Cheers, Bob

[Patrick Hanna]

Another thing that worked for me was largely a way to get over a mental hurdle: I started learning to play simple tunes. Learning the chords was sort of abstract and tedious. When I started to think of them as song accompaniments, they started falling into place. Next thing I knew, I needed to add some chords for different tunes. Pretty soon I had a whole bunch of them under my belt.

Eventually, I started learning inversions. Then I realized I could move a lot of those chord shapes up and down the neck and that gave me different chords. It really starts building fast after the first few struggles.

[Hans Bezemer]

For me slow is the way to go.
When practicing I take the thing I find difficult and slow down the tempo until I can play it fluently and build up the tempo again.

[John Dallas]

I agree that learning chords you can use for accompanying songs right from the start is the way to go!

When I started out on guitar (actually the guitar-lute), I had a little song-book with words, melodies and chord names of lots of familiar tunes. In the appendix, there were representations of the chord shapes (you know: those gratings with dots in them). This little book was my first teacher. I worked on songs that I could already sing, so that I would notice if I made a mistake.
I think I started with songs in the key of C, using the C, F and G7 chords. Scan the song, ascertain what chords are needed, look these up in the appendix - and you're all set for your first lesson!

I'm still not a concert guitarist - the banjo takes up most of my practice time - but I can now accompany almost anything ad hoc in a few comfortable keys (and a few more with a capo), and I can find quite neat arrangements if you give me time

Cheers,
John