Beginner Guitar Lessons

Welcome to lesson one of our beginner guitar lessons course on how to play guitar—your journey starts here!

The guitar is one of the best instruments to learn. It’s exciting and expressive—not to mention, lots of fun! It also features in most popular music styles, so there is something for everyone.

We’ve designed this course to take you through your first year of guitar playing, one step at a time.

This first lesson lists some of the things you need to know before you pick up the guitar for the first time. It also explains how to use this course.

Here’s what this course covers:

3 Tips for Success with Beginner guitar lessons

Lots of people start beginner guitar lessons but quickly give up. Here’s how to give yourself the best chance of succeeding:

1. Practice matters

It isn’t that difficult to learn guitar, but it does take time and a lot of regular practice. We recommend that you practice every day for at least 20 minutes but ideally for an hour.

This can be tough to keep up with – especially for adults with busy schedules. But the more you practice, the quicker you’ll improve.

The reason the great guitarists are so good is that they obsessively practice for many hours every day.

2. It takes time

Many people give up learning a musical instrument because they don’t see results quick enough. They then assume that they are ’not musical’.

Even becoming an average guitarist takes many years and it can take months just to master the basics.

Don’t expect to see results immediately, especially if you’re not practicing every day. Be patient, take it slow and enjoy the journey.

3. It doesn’t have to be expensive

The chances are your favorite guitarist plays a £5,000 guitar through a £2,000 amp and has a sea of pedals and modulators at their feet. This leads many budding guitarists to think that they need to spend a lot of money on gear.

The truth is, there are many budget brand guitars that sound great, are good to play but are affordable. There’s also a good market for second-hand guitars at this level. The image below shows a second-hand Squire Stratocaster for sale on Craiglist for just $90. This guitar will sound good and would be suitable for a student or home guitarist.

Or, if you want to get something brand new, something like this Fender Squire SA-150 is perfect for beginners and will last you until you are ready to perform.

You also don’t need that much equipment. Cheap multi-effects pedals like the Zoom G1 FOUR are affordable, fun and will allow you to emulate the sound of your favourite songs. If you can’t afford an amp, get an acoustic guitar.

How to use this Beginner Guitar Lessons course

We’ve created this course so that you can teach yourself the basics by yourself from home. We recommend reading each lesson in order and don’t skip any parts—each section contains vital information for later lessons. We’ve tried to get you playing as quickly as possible, but there are some lessons that involve some reading.

We suggest spending about a month on this course. You can read through the lessons quickly, but spend some time practicing the parts which actually involve playing something.

For example, we suggest spending about a week learning to play the four simple riffs in lesson six.

Have fun!

Playing an instrument should be fun, not stressful. Putting yourself under pressure to learn is a fast track to failure. Take your time, relax and make sure you play guitar in a way that suits you.

Share your learning journey with others—get family members to sing along, learn to play with a friend and set yourself exciting goals like forming a band or performing a song.

Good luck! Remember, if you have any questions along the way, feel free to get in touch.

1: Start your journey with our beginner guitar lessons