by Rachelle de Bretagne

Created on: January 20, 2011   Last Updated: January 23, 2011

Going out and buying that first guitar is exciting. With the potential of making music, the enthusiast then has to come to grips with the basics of playing the guitar. It's an interesting journey, and the best method is to learn with a teacher, although this isn't always practical for everyone. Teachers are in short supply and often that guitar will sit unused until a potential player gets a little confidence together to pick it up and try their hands in place.

The left hand on the right handed player holds the neck of the guitar and the thumb should be placed at the middle of the back of the neck, leaving the fingers free to hold down the strings which form chords. Websites have a lot of information on chord placement. There are simple chords to learn first, as these help to get accustomed to finger position. On a standard six stringed guitar, the different fingers hold down strings with the left hand, while the right hand strums the chord.

At this stage, it won't be possible to pick tunes, as getting together a batch of chords is more important. This is an extremely good diagram which shows the position of the fingers on basic chords. The reason it is so good is that it doesn't just show the strings and the fingers, but explains which way the strings are counted from top to bottom, rather than leaving the guitarist to figure this out for themselves.

Place the fingers over the strings where the black dots are shown. Try to form the finger so that it faced downward and the tip of the finger holds the string in place on each of the strings required to make a chord. As you can see from the diagram, the A7 is one of the easiest, using two fingers alone. This isn't a bad chord to try. Hold down the strings and then strum with the right hand in an up down up motion.

Test the chord.

To test how accurate that finger placement is, hold down the chord and then play each one of the six notes from top to bottom separately with the right hand. You will hear fuzz and this indicates that the fingers are not yet hard enough to give the string sufficient grip. This may be because of hand position as well, so try different hand position until clarity is obtained.

Try other chords.

The next chords to learn are D, G, C, and A as these are relatively simple. The Am is also used a lot in basic guitar work, so try to set aside a little time each day to learn these chords by heart.

Putting the chords together

For practice, try making a random sequence such as D, G, A, C, or G, C,

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