These two pages will be helpful for anyone who wants to learn the basics of playing a guitar. My first advice is to get a low cost guitar to learn. Your practice guitar should be a good but low priced acoustic model that you can use without electricity. Some new guitars are available for about $30. Some used guitars would be about the same. The used guitar is often already in tune.

If you know someone who plays guitar it would help to have that person help you when you go to buy a guitar. That person will also be able to give you some assistance when you are trying to tune the instrument. Even if you are doing it all by yourself, you will be able to master the guitar. It will seem difficult at first.

If you practice about an hour or two each day for a couple of months you might be able to play some chords well enough to be able to entertain at a party or camp outing. It took me about two years to learn well enough to play with a garage band. I was a slow learner who was past 30 at the time. I did show one young man a few chords on guitar. Within two months he was very good. He could do some leads in the instrumental breaks. He was very determined to learn and he spent most of his spare time fingering his guitar.

What I am showing you here is chords. Guitar chords and how to use them in songs. Many famous singer/guitarists of music history play basic chords and sing the song over their strumming. After you have learned a few basics, you will notice how the famous singers on TV and in movies are doing just chords as they perform.

The fret area of a guitar is just under the tuning area when the guitar is standing upright. Look at the neck with the strings and frets. The guitar chord charts represent this part of the guitar.

The strings and frets nearest the tuning area is what we will be using in the graphs below. The top horizontal line in the graph represents the nut (See the nomenclature drawing above.) of the guitar.

The best way to tune a guitar when you are beginning to play, is to have a friend tune it for you. The second best way is to buy a guitar tuner at any music store. The tuner is an electronic device into which you can plug a guitar cord or you can play the guitar while holding it near the tuner's built in microphone. As you tighten and loosen each string, a meter tells you when the guitar is in tune. The third way to tune a guitar is to use an electronic piano type keyboard. The correct notes for each string are shown below.

The dots on the strings show where to put your fingertips on each string when you are making a chord.

E Chord is the first chord to learn.

A Chord is our second challenge.

B Chord This is an often used B chord.

If you are right handed, make the chords by putting the fingertips of your left hand on the strings just behind the frets that are shown in the graph for each chord. Strum with your right hand. For left handed players, use a mirror image of everything shown here. Some left handed players actually learn to make chords upside down and play right handed guitars. There is an old saying for guitar beginners. "Concentrate on your fretting hand and the strumming hand will learn by itself." When you are beginning, just strum downward from the top string to the bottom with a one-two-three-four count while you make the chords with your fretting hand.