John Mayer Queen of California

My Vista

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Strings!

Oh the wonderful world of strings!

There are so many different brands to choose from; and they all say they have the best bells and whistles. “Awesome funky coating makes you play like john petrucci.”

You need to find what gauge of string is confortable for you. For learning acoustic guitar, this will come with come time and trial and error. After a couple months of playing- to a week ( if you play really hard and abuse your instrument) you  may need new strings.

Lighter gauge if you play a lot of fingerpicking, heavier gauge if you like to pound at it (I don’t)

I use Elixers because I don’t like to change my strings often. They have a thin poly coating on them that keeps the oils from your fingers getting caught up in the pits of the metal, and so they last a lot longer.

And I want my strings to last longer than my guitar.

Know your instrument

How to play guitar starts out with knowing what you’re playing.

Take a little bit of time to research and look over all the parts of the instrument you’re holding. What are the tuning pegs? What’s the neck? What’s the bridge? The frets? Headstock? And so on and so forth.

You should be easily familiar with these terms, as they can come in to play when you’re learning acoustic guitar.

Especially when we talk about frets and the neck, because that’s where you’ll be making all those complicated stretching uncomfortable formations with your hand ( Don’t let it put you off.)

Parts of the guitar!

Learn ’em.

Love ’em.

Quickly

Almost forgot this video!

Here is a quick shot of inspiration for anyone who thinks they can’t do it or get discouraged. I watched this man perform a couple months ago, and he is just unbelievable. He uses all aspects of the guitar to produce a truly unique sound.

Happy guitaring!

The first time you pick up the guitar

So you want to learn acoustic guitar? 
You’ve already made a good choice.

Starting acoustic is the best thing to do when beginning the musical journey that is guitar playing. Starting with acoustic allows you to build up callouses and technique, before you ever touch (What I call the cheating) electric guitar. 
Sure electric sounds cool, and it may be extremely easy to start out with, but in the long run it will only hurt your learning.  Learning electric guitar comes after you’ve developed a decent technique and deftness of the fingers from playing acoustic guitar for a time. 

So what is the best way to learn to play guitar? 
I started out online. Just searching through YouTube and finding some instructionals on songs I felt like I wanted to learn.
After that, playing guitar is all about practice. Chords and chord progressions over and over and over again until you feel like you could ( and probably are) doing them in your sleep.

So go grab that acoustic guitar and pull up YouTube;
It’s all waiting for you.