A Beginner's Guide To The Guitar 

By Christopher Sauter

This guide will help anyone who is interested in learning how to play the guitar. It provides you with answers to the most common questions a beginner has, and it also includes a list of common bad habits that guitarists tend to develop over time in their technique. I've taken pictures of my guitar collection to illustrate examples too!

(P.S. - Please don't forget to vote for me at the bottom of this page if you've found this guide helpful!)

TOP 10 BEGINNER GUITARIST QUESTIONS:

1. "What's a guitar?" 

• Just a carved out tree with metal strings stretched across it.  =)

2. "Why does my guitar have a huge hole in the middle of it?!"

•  Well if your guitar is Acoustic, then that's normal! But if your guitar is Electric and has a hole in it, you should definitely trade it in for a new one! There are two main types of guitars: Electric guitars and Acoustic guitars:

 Electric guitars need to plug into an "amplifier" to be heard at a normal volume, while Acoustic guitars naturally amplify the sound via the "huge hole" in the middle of the guitar. Electric guitars have been associated with rock music, while acoustic guitars have been associated with folk music, but you can play any song using any type of guitar you like! 

3. "What are those metal knobs at the top of the guitar?"

•       Those metal knobs are called "tuning pegs" and they are what you use to tune the guitar strings. You can make the strings tighter or looser according to which direction you turn the pegs, the tighter your tune the string, the higher the pitch will be, and vice versa.

4. "What are those things on an electric guitar that look like rectangles or long ovals with metal dots in the middle of them?"

•  That's called a "pickup" It's what "picks up" the sound of the strings and sends it out to the amplifier so it can be heard. It's like when somebody sings into a microphone, the microphone picks up their voice and sends it to the speaker, the same is how the pickup picks up the sound of the strings and sends it to the amplifier. There are two major types of pickups used on the electric guitar, the "Humbucker" and the "Single Coil" each producing a different type of unique sound.

"Humbucker"                                   "Single Coil"

5. "Why are there these silver lines on the neck of the guitar? And what are those dots there for?"

•  Well, those lines separate the guitars long neck into sections called "Frets" and each fret is used to seperate all the different notes on the guitar neck. The dots that you see on every other fret or so are there to help you keep track of what fret you're playing on.While you play the guitar, there are so many frets on the neck that sometimes you will forget where you are, or where you want to go next.

 When you read a book, to remember your place, you use a book mark. So those dots are there to be like a road map of the neck and help you remember where you are

Some guitars have as many as 24 frets to play on and it's easy to get lost sometimes! The twelfth fret is always marked with two dots, because it's the center of the neck.

6. "Do I use a pick? Or do I use my fingers to strum the guitar?"

• This is your call! I say..DO BOTH!! If you can practice playing with a pick AND finger picking, you'd be ahead of a lot of people. Most people choose only one way and that's the end of it, but don't be like them, go above and beyond what the ordinary person does. A really great guy once said to me:

 "A Champion will do daily, what an ordinary man will do sparingly."

So true! Take the time out to learn from the masters and practice what they practice! I didn't really get into finger picking until I started seriously playing the bass guitar a few summers ago. Oh what's that?

There's a BASS guitar?!

7. "What's a Bass guitar?"

•  Well I tell you, this is a really fun instrument. It's the SAME thing as a regular guitar, but with much thicker strings. The thicker strings create a deeper more bassy tone than a regular electric or acoustic guitar can. Another thing is that while regular guitars usually have six strings, most bass guitars only have four strings. The reason I say it's a fun instrument is because of a technique called "slap bass". It's a style of playing where you hit the strings with your right hand by slapping and popping them with the ball of your thumb and either your pointer or index finger. It's a little hard to explain, but I'd definitely have a ball showing you!! I LOVE slap bass..

  "4 String Bass Guitar"                "6 String Electric Guitar"

8. "How long till I can play my first song?"

•  That depends on how much effort you put into practicing!

 Garbage in is garbage out.

If you never play, then you'll never be able to play! I say, if you warm up every single day, put in enough hours and do enough finger exercises, you could probably play a song in just two weeks. I'm not talking Jimi Hendrix solos just yet, but a regular basic guitar song. But I remember teaching someone a whole song in just one day! It all depends on your own will to learn too..

9. "What are those things called "calluses" that I heard form on your finger? Do they look ugly?"

•  Well the first time you play a guitar, it will probably be a little hard to hold down the strings because your fingers aren't used to doing something like that. It may also start to hurt and your fingers will have the indentation marks of the strings for a little bit, but don't worry, they go away in a minute. The more sensitive your fingers are, the harder it will be to hold down the strings. But after the short-term pain comes the long term gain! Calluses start to form, and your fingertips become very tough and can withstand holding down the strings easily. The calluses look kinda weird at first, almost like your finger tips got sun burn and they're peeling..but that goes away too and they become invisible, like a shield between your fingers and the strings that you can't see!

10. CHRISTOPHER, I TRIED AND TRIED AND I DON'T THINK I CAN DO THIS!!

•  Come on now, Sure you can! If you have sensitive fingers, the calluses will form to protect them, if you have small hands, your fingers will naturally stretch over time to be able to play the guitar! The only thing that can stop you from doing this is YOU! (or money.. can't play a guitar without a guitar!) But if you have a guitar, then DON'T GIVE UP!! Remember the aforementioned "really great guy" who told me "A Champion will do daily, what an ordinary man will do sparingly"?? Well, he also once said to me:

"Many discouraging moments are present between the initial skill, and the mastering of the skill.."

See that? So true! and I'll always be here on eBay to answer any questions and give you pointers. Even 20 years from now, just write me a message and I'll STILL help you!!

If you plant a seed today, don't expect to see fruit tonight. Time..

Common Bad Habits:

1. Not developing all fingers equally, over-developing the pointer and middle finger and leaving the pinky and the ring in the dust:

•       Most often after you have been playing for a few months, you get the urge to ignore the ring and pinky fingers and spend too much time playing with only the pointer and middle fingers, since they are the strongest and develop the fastest, you feel it's so much easier to play with them instead of the weaker fingers. But this is no good! And here's why:

      When you play a song with only two fingers, it gets twice as hard because now you're trying to stretch those two fingers into difficult and unnecessary patterns to be able to play all the notes that four fingers could play easily! Remember those games at the circus or carnival where you had to hit the snakes that pop up out of holes with a oversized mallet?? You could only use two hands to try and hit six snakes popping up and down like idiots in a box. Now, imagine if you could have used your FEET too!! With the guitar you can!! (But your feet are your ring and pinky finger..stay with me..don't start jumping on your guitar thinking it's a snake..) The snakes are the notes, and you have 4 mallets (fingers) to hit them all. Use ALL your fingers to play!!

It can be discouraging at first because it takes some time to get your ring and pinky finger as strong as your middle and pointer, but once you do, you'll be on a whole new level of playing.

2. Letting your fingers buckle when you play notes:

•  When you play a note on the guitar, no matter what finger you use, 95% of the time, you want to use the tip of your finger to play the note, not your whole finger. (I say 95% because there are some chords that require you to use one finger to play on two strings simultaneously..but hey isn't this the Beginner's Guide??) Sometimes when you play a note with your finger, the joint between your knuckle and your nail will buckle and the note will come out buzzy. It's good to develop the habit of playing every note with your finger tip instead of the entire first portion of your finger. This will allow you to play notes easier, faster, and more accurate as time goes on and you start improving. But you gotta practice to improve! I couldn't even play "Skip To My Loo" when I first started! (That was 11 years ago though! SEE!! TIME...)

   Use your fingertips to play! Like this:

3. Only picking with down strokes:

•  When a person first starts to play the guitar, their first and normal instinct is to pick all the notes downward. There's nothing wrong with picking every note with a down stroke, but it's harder to do, takes longer to do, and is very slow. That's why there's a method called "Alternate Picking" that enables you to play the notes twice as fast as you could with down strokes.

It's the difference between walking with one foot, or two! You can walk a lot smoother and faster with two. It's also the difference between trying to play a drum roll with one hand or two! 10 times easier with two hands!  

      Alternate picking is very easy to learn and just becomes natural over a very short time. Instead of picking every note with a downward pick motion, you simply alternate, and pick the first note down then the second one up then the next one down and then the next one up and so on. This creates an even motion of the pick across the strings, smooth, fast and easy. Picking out chords note by note and fast guitar licks become a breeze with Alternate Picking.

4. Trying to play TOO fast TOO soon:

 It's just like that NYC marathon they do every year! You can't run that fast unless you've practiced running slow..

• Every time I teach a student a finger exercise at a certain tempo, they try and play it twice as fast as I originally showed it to them. Meaning, they take a Toyota Echo (no offense Toyota Echo drivers!) and they try and drive it like a BMW! Sorry, it just doesn't work! But with patience and practice, moderate tempo (tempo means speed) exercises will not strain your fingers, but instead build their strength, and slowly but surely your fingers will be able to handle more and more speed!

Your 4 cylinder fingers can become a V-12, but it takes time and patience and practice to get there. The more you practice, the only thing that can happen is you get better, and every note you play, becomes easier.

      I use a time keeping device called a "Metronome" which makes a click sound once a second, twice a second, ten times a second, or how ever fast you want it to click. The clicking noise is there to help keep me in a steady time while I play. So I'll do a finger exercise at 90 beats per minute, then I'll try 100 and so on until I reach my top speed. AH! I knew I forgot something!:

WHEN YOU FIRST START TO PLAY THE GUITAR, DO NOT WORRY ABOUT SPEED, WORRY ABOUT ACCURACY!

Hitting the notes on time & in time, making them ring out clearly and accurately is your TOP priority! One more time, -Accuracy-  (Did you ever say a word over so many times that it started to loose all meaning and look foreign to you? LOL that just happened to me..) ahem...Accuracy.  ; )

Click Right Here To Start Bidding On Your First Guitar! You Can Do It!! Keep On Playing! and God Bless You!

- Christopher Sauter