by Hunter Barnes

Created on: October 02, 2010

So you want to play an acoustic guitar? Rock on! I'll show you a couple of useful things to know (things that will make learning to play an acoustic guitar easier!).

The first thing you will want to do is make sure that you have proper posture! (what this means is...)

-Hold the neck of the guitar with your left hand and rest your right arm's elbow on the body (just enough so that if you pivot it then you would strum the 6/12 strings on your acoustic).

-Usually sitting up straight is applied because not only can it make it easier to strum, but after long periods of jamming (playing music!) your back could be upset.

-If you're using a guitar pick for your acoustic make sure that you hold it between your thumb and your index finger at about a 90 degree angle (what this means is that if holding correctly the point will be coming out the bottom of your hand [towards the guitar]). If you're not sure then just play around with it, usually with guitar whatever feels natural is the right way to do it.

-If finger picking make sure that you rotate between all of your fingers! (don't play the last 3 strings with only 1 finger! [unless it's a chord!])

-Good posture is a must if you want to learn right and save yourself countless hours in the future correcting prior mistakes made. This being said, the tips on posture i just said are for RIGHT-handed persons mainly, if you are a LEFTY then rock on! All you need to do is flip everything (so hold the neck with your right hand etc...). Make sure (whatever kind of person you are) that the guitar you have fits you! (to check hold the guitar in the proper way for your hand type, and if it is correct, the thickest strings should be towards you/ up from the ground).

The next thing that i will share are the basic string names and positions!

-Going from the thinnest string, the names of the strings are (high) E, B, G, D, A, (low) E.

-This being said the Lowest string (in pitch) is the low E (the one closest to you).

-Technically speaking the strings have corresponding numbers which are 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (for E, B, G, D, A, E,  they just count up from the high E).

-The strings are called these notes (in standard tuning) because when you strum the "open" string it makes the corresponding note (so if i strummed the B string with nothing pressed down it would produce a B note).

To learn how to be awesome at acoustic guitar all that can be said is practice! This is because you could know all the musical theory and patterns in the world, but it's not until you apply them that it actually does anything. Playing guitar has 2 parts to training/practicing... 1) Training your mind to learn to musical theory in order to figure out and know the notes. 2) Training your body and fingers to reach and play what your mind is thinking, most of the practice you will do is for training your muscles to develop muscle memory! So just keep practicing and rock on little buddy!

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