For music lovers, there’s nothing quite like the Grammy awards, and last night certainly didn’t disappoint.  But it was one simple quote from Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl that really made an impression on us. In his acceptance speech for Best Rock Performance, Grohl said humbly, “To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s most important.  Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do.  It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in the computer, it’s about what goes on in [your heart] and it’s about what goes on in [your head].”

We couldn’t have said it better. Passion, inspiration, motivation – that’s what it’s all about.  Forget flashy performances and shock value – you can do great things with just an acoustic guitar and well-crafted lyrics.  Yet for some reason, many of us out there still think up excuses for not picking up the guitar.  We say we’re too busy, it’s too hard, we don’t have any other musical training, and it hurts our fingers.  In actuality, it’s really quite simple.  If you want to learn the guitar, do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re ten years old or sixty years old – anyone can learn to play, and anyone can make time to practice.

As Grohl said, you don’t have to be perfect.  Just start simply.  Take it one step at a time.  And for a little extra guidance, here are 10 guitar tips for the absolute beginner:

1 – Make sure you choose the right guitar for your size. Guitars come in different sizes from classic to jumbo. It is very important that you find a guitar size that you are comfortable playing.
2 – Learn how to change your guitar strings.  The dirt and oil on your fingers and hands builds up on your strings over time and will ruin their sound. It is therefore extremely important that you learn how to change your strings.  How often you change them will depend on how often you play.
3 – Build up those calluses. Many beginners complain of pain in their fingertips when first starting out. This is normal and will go away after you have been playing for a little while and start to form calluses. The more often you practice the faster you will build up calluses.
4 – Learn how to tune your guitar. Make sure your guitar is in tune before you start every practice session. Tuning your guitar is really quite easy. You can either purchase one of those small battery powered guitar tuners, or you can easily find a tuner online.
5 – Find a good guitar teacher. While it is possible to learn at your own pace at home using free guitar lessons online, books and guitar home study courses, nothing can really replace a guitar teacher. A guitar teacher will help keep you from forming bad guitar playing habits and praise you when you are making progress.
6 – Stretch and warm up your hands and fingers before each playing session. This is important. Proper warm up and stretching exercises are essential in helping you avoid injury and improving your guitar playing.
7 – Learn about the parts of your guitar. Spend as much time as possible familiarizing yourself with all the various parts of your guitar and how it is constructed.
8 – Don’t overdo it. If you are experiencing any pain or discomfort during your playing or practice session, stop and take a break.
9 – Try and learn something new. If you continually do the same thing, day after day, then your guitar playing will become stagnant and you will not progress.
10 – Go to live performances. This will give you a chance to get up close and personal with the musicians, enabling you to see first-hand how a professional plays.

See what we mean?  Start out simple, and pretty soon you’ll be working your way up to the more complicated chords and songs.  Do you have your own tips to share?  Stop by our Facebook page and share them with the TakeLessons community!

You might also like…

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Photo by Jono Colliver.

Former Beatles bandmember Paul McCartney is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the “most successful musician and composer in popular music history,” and now he finally has the Hollywood mark of success – a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

McCartney has had 32 number-one hits in the US, 24 in the UK, and was even named the Greatest Composer of the Millenium by BBC Online News readers.  Let’s see today’s top artists rack up a list of accomplishments like that!

With the growing popularity of dance music on the charts these days, rock seems to have been pushed a bit to the side.  The Grammy Awards will even be featuring a dance-focused segment this year, for the first time ever.  But there’s nothing like the feeling of picking up a shiny new guitar and strumming your first chord.  Rock music isn’t dead – we promise.

Yesterday we discussed some common beginner instruments for children, and guitar is definitely a popular choice.  But one issue that young beginners and many adults run into is learning to play the guitar with small hands.  If you’ve experienced the frustration of not quite reaching a certain finger placement, it doesn’t mean you need to give up your future star on the Walk of Fame.  These tips for playing guitar with small hands should help:

Choose a Guitar with a Comfortable Neck
Every guitar is different. Some have broad necks, others have narrow necks. If you have small hands, a guitar with a narrow neck will make playing more natural and more enjoyable. Some guitars even come in 3/4- or short-scale models, making the instrument more compact and accessible to those with smaller hands.

Get Your Thumb in Position
Many players let the thumb of their fretting hand go lazy when playing chords or individual lines. Try positioning your thumb directly center under the fretboard and use it as a guide as you play.

Stretch Those Fingers
Even guitar players with large hands can benefit from “stretching out” and working on exercises to increase one’s span across the fretboard. Work on stretching your fingers by incorporating into your practice routine exercises that demand distance leaps. Start on the low E-string and play an F (first fret) with your index finger, then play a G# (fourth fret) with your ring or pinky finger – whatever works best – and follow this pattern across all six strings.

Don’t Fret over Barre Chords
Without question, the most difficult chords to play for folks with small hands are barre chords, where the index finger is required to fret sometimes all six guitar strings, acting as an anchor for the placement of other fingers to fill out the chord. If your hands are too small to span the entire fretboard, try using your thumb to hold down the low bass string to form a barre chord. To play an F-major chord this way, you’ll bring your hand around the neck, almost wrapping it. Then, get the fingers in position: Fret the high E- and B-strings (first fret) with your index finger; place your middle finger on the second fret of the G-string; your pinky on the third fret of the D-string; your ring finger on the third fret of the A-string; lastly, put your thumb on the first fret of the low E-string and strum.

Do you have your own tips to share?  We want to hear them!  Leave a comment on our Facebook page to join the discussion.  Like these tips?  Don’t forget to share it with your friends!

Photo by Roblawol.

Kenny Chesney led the Academy of Country Music (ACM) nominations last week with a total of 9 categories covered, including Male Vocalist of the Year, Album of the Year, and fan-voted Entertainer of the Year award.

If country is your top genre, you know that your guitar is your best weapon.  For beginners, however, there are often a few things that might hold you back.  First, the painful process of building calluses can drive many to stop practicing.  Second, there’s always that awkward stage of learning to seamlessly transition to different chords.  You know the drill -  practice makes perfect.  But here are some additional tips from Teachstreet.com to help with switching chords:

1. Keep your fingers as close to the fret board as possible.  When that pinkie and third finger start flying out in space it takes longer for them to come back down.

2. Build your chords from the bottom string up.  For some reason a lot of us get in the habit of building our chords from the top down.  Like in an open C major chord, starting with the 2nd string, then 4th, then 5th.  The problem with that is your pick is going to hit the bottom strings first, so get those notes placed first.  That extra split second will give you a chance to get the last top bits of the chord in place.  I know it seems like a negligible amount of time, but you’ll be surprised how it can improve your guitar playing.

3. When moving from one chord to the next, move the finger that has the farthest to go first.  For instance, in moving from G major to C major in the open position, your first finger has to move all the way from the 5th string to the second.  Lead with that finger and you’ll find that your other fingers naturally pull along behind to end up close to their intended frets as well.

4.  Stay relaxed and let the natural movement of your hands help you get to the chord.  Believe it or not, the guitar is actually designed very well to accommodate the natural movement of the human hand.  When you use tip #3 and lead with the farthest finger, your other fingers will follow along behind it naturally and you can get them to settle in the right place.  If you tighten up they won’t move as naturally, so stay loose.

5. Keep your right hand moving.  The way your brain works has a lot to do with how your hands react.  As a beginner, your brain is giving you permission to stop in between chords and rationalizes it as “we’ll get it eventually.”  It’s normal and happens on a subconscious level.  You can easily change that by setting up a dissonance in your brain.  That means presenting your brain with a problem it needs to fix.  Here’s the way it works:  You brain loves when your hands are moving together.  So if you force your right hand to keep strumming, no matter what happens in your left, your brain will want to solve that dissonance by making your left hand move faster to keep up with your right.  Exactly what we’re looking for.

Did these tips help?  What other advice can you give to the beginner guitarist?  Leave a comment on our Facebook page and share your expertise!  Like this article?  Don’t forget to share on your favorite social network!

Photo by lemuelinchrist.

Former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher can now add “Godlike Genius” to his resume.  NME, a UK-based music publication, gives the award to one musician each year, to be presented at the annual NME awards gala in February.

What makes a guitarist a genius, exactly?  With previous winners like Dave Grohl, the Clash, and the Cure, Gallagher has some big shoes to fill.

Don’t have hours upon hours to commit to practicing?  That’s ok.  In fact, there are ways of practicing your guitar skills without actually having your guitar with you.  Check out these great tips from Jemsite.com about how to practice sans guitar:

1. Learn The Fretboard
The better you know your fretboard, the better you know your instrument and the more easily you can move around it. Here’s one technique to try: slip a small fretboard diagram into your wallet so you’ll carry it around with you everywhere. When you have two spare minutes, you can pull out your chart and name notes to help memorize them. If you don’t have the slip of paper handy, you can use visualization exercises. Picture a fretboard in your mind, pick some notes, and “see” where they occur on the fretboard image.

2. Learn About Chords
No matter how long you’ve been playing, there is always something new to learn about chords. Look around for sources of new ideas or information, find yourself some chord theory books, or study the chords used by great songwriters.

3. Visualization
Use visualization to work on all kinds of guitar skills. Visualization is the process of picturing a situation in your mind as if it were real. It has been proven that visualization stimulates the same nerve paths as actually performing actions, so it helps to reinforce your learning.  Use visualization to practice chord changes and progressions, scales and licks, picking patterns, and whole songs.

4. Develop Your Ears
As you listen to music and other sounds in the street, try to pick out the sound of certain intervals or notes. For example, you can designate a “major thirds day” where you try to spot major third sounds around you.

5. Study Music Notation
Many self-taught guitarists neglect music reading and writing skills. Carry around some sheet music and you can practice reading it during your lunch break or on the bus.

And there you have it – now having a “day job” is no excuse to forgo practicing!  Even if you’re strained for time, you can find a way to make it work.  What do you think of these tips? Anything you’d like to add?  Sound off on our Facebook page – and don’t forget to share with your friends if you liked these ideas!

Photo by Anirudh Koul.