Acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses acoustic technique. There are several kinds of acoustic guitars. But for basic and uniform discussion, let us refer to the regular acoustic guitar that most people use, one that has 6 strings.
There are 5 most important things that you must know before learning how to play acoustic guitar.
Understand What Acoustic Guitar Is And How it Functions.
Before you begin studying the tabs and chords, you will need to have an understanding of the basic parts of your guitar and its functions. But let us discuss the most important components.
Tuning keys - They are placed on the headstock and is used in tuning a guitar. This is actually the most sensitive portion of the guitar and you should refrain from holding it unless you are tuning the guitar strings.
Bridge - This is located at the top portion of your guitar. This is where the head of the strings are fastened to be attached to the tuning keys.
Body - The upper portion of the guitar body where the guitar rosette and sound hole is located.
Frets - They are spaces between vertical "metallic lines" found at guitar's neck. It is actually the place you put your fingers and hand for the guitar chords.
Strings - They are the bendable metallic wires that are attached in the Bridge and Tuning Keys. These are the one that produces the sound when played or plucked.
Understanding Guitar Tabs
Guitar tabs are used in learning the guitar chords and reading guitar notes. These are extremely helpful to guitarists when they are learning songs. Therefore, as a way to proficiently learn and read notes, you must first understand what guitar tab is.
To begin with, guitar tabs consists of six lines, each representing a string in the guitar. Normally, the line is organized as if you are right-handed and you are also playing the guitar. The vertical lines are the bars in the actual guitar and each bar is one measure.
You will find a lot of instructions with regards to guitar tabs. We will cover them later in the future articles. But at least you know what it is exactly and how it represent in the acoustic guitar.
Changing From One Chord to Another
It is a common struggle for guitar learners how to change one chord to another by quickly transferring their hand and finger location.
Smooth chord change is possible by practice. Just realize that it isn't something that can't be overcome. You could start by understanding the hand and finger position in every guitar chord. If you get use to each and every placement, it will not be too hard to quickly switch from one chord to another.
Secondly, practice your strumming. Strumming a guitar and getting the perfect beat for each song is quite difficult to do, especially that each song has different beat and various styles. But this again will be achieved by frequent practice.
Even the skilled guitarists seek to learn the beat and styles of each song that they're trying to play. As soon as you have the beat and also the style, all you need to do is to combine your skill of quick chord transition with the beat and style of strumming. Give a little grace in hand changes, and you will have a smooth chord transition.
Basic Strumming
As I described earlier, learning how to strum is quite hard to accomplished. But again, it is not something that cannot be overcome. To improve your skill on this, start by learning the beat and style of every song. For starters, a simple up and down strumming will do. After a week when you are familiar with up and down hand movements, put in a little beat variation until you have learned how to add some styles.
But the primary secret of strumming better is listening to the songs carefully. Putting yourself on the beat itself while gradually following it will really help your hands to get along with the song.
Learn How To Play Songs and Adding It All Up
Now you can follow the beat and can now easily change from one type of strumming to another. You also have learned how to do chord transition properly. It is now time to put it all up.
Select simple songs first (slower ones). Those songs will be the first few songs that you're going to master. Attempt to add one song per week until you are used to slower tempo. Then as time passes, add some faster tempo in your collection and so on and so forth.
Conclusions
Playing acoustic guitar is a great hobby and skill to develop. It really is something that is extremely useful and is a powerful way to express yourself. Learning to play guitar will not be an easy task, but it is achievable through practice.
Practice makes perfect. As you continue to practice, your ability continues to rise and will also be enhanced. This might require sometime to achieve, but you will find out that you will get better and better once you put your hands on your guitar and play.
A.J. Dean is a music lover and he wants to share what he learned. Why not visit his site to Learn Acoustic Guitar and start playing it with your family and friends!!!
