Great Guitar Chords For Beginners - The C Chord

Many people want to learn how to play guitar but might think that all of those strings and frets are just too much to tackle. Fear not, because with just a few easy guitar chords for beginners, you can be playing many of your favorite songs in a very short amount of time!

Today we're going to discuss the open C chord which is one of the standard guitar chords for any player. Just for review, if you are a beginner, here is the basic layout of the guitar.

Every standard guitar has six strings on it and they are tuned usually (or standard tuning) to the corresponding notes:

E, A, D, G, B, E

Along with normal music notation, you can also use a numbering system known as guitar tabs that will assist you in seeing the finger placements for your chords.

Each guitar string has a number associated with it beginning from the highest sounding string to lowest. The high E string is normally recognized as the #1 string. So the order of string numbers looks like this:

#1 = E (high), #2 = B, #3 = G, #4 = D, #5 = A, #6 - E (low)

Now that we've got our string numbers dialed in, let's start working on playing our open C chord. Here is the most common way to play this chord.

Step 1 - Place your first finger on string #2 (B) on the first fret.Step 2 - Place your middle finger on string #4 (D) on the second fret.Step 3 - Place your ring finger on string #5 (A) on the third fret.

With all three fingers in place, give your guitar a strum. Congratulations! You're playing an open C chord.

It may take a little bending from your fingers to make the curl around the neck of the guitar but keep working on it and you will find it getting easier and easier.

The open C chord is one of the great guitar chords for beginners because it has such a warm and rich sound. Many songs begin with this chord (i.e. Dust In The Wind) so if you continue to practice playing it, you will have a great starting point to launch into other chords that are right near by.

Here are some bonus tips on playing the C chord that will have you impressing all of your friends!

Tip #1 - Start by playing the C chord and then remove your ring finger from the 5th string. You are now playing an A minor 7 chord that makes the sound more haunting and moody. Go back to playing the full C chord and you will notice the sound becoming brighter again. It's a nice contrast.

Tip #2 - Start by playing the C chord and this time take your pinky finger and place in on string #4 (G) on the third fret right next to your ring finger. It makes the chord sound a bit higher as you have just played a C sus (suspended) chord. Now take your pinky finger off and you will be playing the C chord again.

Practicing those fingering moves from the C chord to the Am7 chord to the Csus chord will allow to begin to build a great foundation of chords to work with. As with any guitar chords for beginners, practice will make you a much stronger player. Good luck and enjoy playing!

Scott has been playing guitar for the past 30 years and enjoys sharing the love of playing the guitar with others. If you would like to learn how to sound great playing the guitar, enjoy these free guitar lessons.

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Discover How a Pianist Can Improve Their Sight-Reading With 10 Great Tips

Sight-Reading is one of those skills that you will develop over time as a pianist, and the longer you have played the better you will become at it. It requires discipline to improve your sight-reading, and you need to dedicate at least one practice session a week to doing this to develop your skills. In the long-term it will bring you lots of benefits, and could even open up job opportunities such as accompanying singers or Ballet classes. If you can pick up a piece of music and just play it, then it's an indispensable skill that will reward you in the long-term.

Below are ten useful tips on sight-reading: -

Get yourself a basic sight-reading book. The Associated Board of the Royal School of Music do them and have different abilities, ranging from Grade one which would be a beginner up to grade 8 which would be for the more advanced player.If you don't want to use a sight-reading book, then pick out some songs from song books you have that you haven't already learnt and ones that you are not familiar with.Set yourself a realistic time limit for each piece. If you are choosing songs from normal books, then just do a small section of the song. A suggestion would be half a page.If new to sight-reading, or if you want to improve, then A suggestion would be 2 minutes to look through your piece of music, try bits out and look for patterns e.t.c.When playing a sight-reading piece look out for the following:The Time Signature the piece of music is in, scroll your eyes through it and check for any changes in the rhythm.The Key Signature - Make sure you are familiar with this and how many Sharps or Flats are in the piece of music, look out for natural signs, as these can often be sneaked into songs and catch people out!Look for any reoccurring patterns, most songs are repetitive, so look out for these, play through a couple of these and get use to it.Look at the tempo the music suggests, if it's a fast song, then it's better to do it slowly and accurate than fast and make mistakes.Look at the start and ending of the song, or section you are sight-reading up too, and familiarise yourself with this, you will probably find they are very similar with the start and end on similar notes or chords.

There are some great free courses to teach anyone from complete beginners to advanced pianists to Learn How to Play Piano. A great way for beginners to learn is to start off with some really Easy Piano Songs which will get you started and help build that all important confidence.

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Discover Ten Great Reasons to Learn Piano

If you are fortunate enough to get the opportunity to learn a musical instrument, then do so, as it is very rewarding, and can really add a sparkle into your life.

It is great fun and you never stop learning. There is always a new song you can learn.
Music surrounds you and to actually be able to play and be part of that world it's a great feeling.
It opens up endless opportunities for you, including performing in public places such as pubs, parties and charity work.
There is a great social side to playing piano. You will meet other musicians and you may have some friends that play different instruments. It will help to bring you new confidence, if you are a little shy at times like we all are, and really help boost your confidence. Music simply has a great feel good factor about it.
You could advertise to set up a new band, and share your passion of music with others who you can relate too.
Once you learn one instrument and can read music, you will find it a lot easier to pick up another instrument. With Piano you have two clefs to deal with, so if you were to learn guitar or a woodwind instrument for example, you would only have to contend with one clef, and would find it a lot easier. So you can add to your talents and continue on your musical journey.
Turn your talents to song writing, being able to play piano is a great base for writing songs.
Playing piano will make you feel happy and relaxed. A lot of people use music to express their selves, and if feeling stressed it's a way of releasing that stress and turning negative thoughts into positive vibes, and will help you release the stress that we all incur in our busy lives.
You can take musical exams in piano if you wish to do so; this will be a great sense of achievement and give you a qualification out of something you love to do. The Associated Board of the Royal School of Music and the Trinity Board are both exam boards you could take your piano exams with.
Finally any music makes you feel good. For example if you go to a party and get up and dance and have fun, it just puts a smile on your face. People that play piano or any musical instrument get the same satisfaction out of this.

There are some great free courses to teach anyone from complete beginners to advanced pianists to Learn How to Play Piano.
A great way for beginners to learn is to start off with some really Easy Piano Songs which will get you started and help build that all important confidence.

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1 Easy Way to Stop Spending Thousands on Recording Gear (And Make Great Sounding Records)

Ok, I love toys. Gear of all kinds. From my smart phone to the Mojave Audio tube condenser microphone I use in my project studio. Gear is fun! I love walking into new studios and checking out what gear they have. Pre-amps, compressors, all of it. But, there's a downside too. Keeping up.

One of the most difficult things about having recording equipment these days is the feeling that you must always keep up and keep buying more. Keeping up with software versions, more plug-ins, more outboard gear...... it can get crazy. All we really want to do is make things sound good, right? There have been times when I searched in vain for the one magic plug-in that would make all my tracks sound better. We all know that having good gear helps, and these days you can make some really good low cost buys when it comes to microphones, pre-amps, etc., and so many of us are working entirely "inside the box", that there are plug-ins galore available for all manner of signal processing, but gear isn't everything. If your recordings don't quite sound the way you want them to, it may be time to stop dumping all that money into gear and focus your attention on a tool you already have. One tool that all of us have but many people don't take the time to really learn how to use. Our ears.

Have you ever really thought about training your ears? If you went to music school, you might have taken ear training classes, but that's not what I'm talking about. Formal ear training can be invaluable for musicians, audio engineers and producers alike, but what about training your ears to do the job your using them for? What about spending some time really working to know what you want to hear when you are recording music. Any music. Yours, someone else's. It's funny, I have found in my own experience that it's often more difficult for me to clue into what I want my own music to sound like than when I'm producing another artist. Do you really know what you want to hear when you take on a recording project? Even something as simple as a song demo? More important, do you know how to translate what you want to hear onto the recording itself and recognize when you have it?

These are learnable skills. It takes some time, just like learning the ins and outs of your gear, but it's not rocket surgery. In the world of audio recording and technology, we spend so much time focusing our attention on the gear. Thankfully we have loads of great gear in the world! Even though I love it, all the gear talk can get a bit tedious after awhile. After all, its about music and what we hear and hopefully feel when we listen to it. That's all that matters. So maybe it's time to shift focus. To stop spending so much time and money acquiring toys and the skills to use them and to start more effectively using the tools we already have. Time to improve our skills with the most important piece of gear that any musician, engineer or producer has..... our ears.

Bill Small is a touring musician, producer and coach living in Austin,TX and author of "Use Your Ears," "The Essential Guide to the Non-Tech Sid of Recording." http://www.billsmallmusic.com/useyourears

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The Three Main Characteristics of Great Guitar Players

In this path of finding the best way to practice guitar, of becoming a musician and an outstanding guitarist, there are obstacles down the road sometimes, that might make it seem like it is an impossible task, but then again, if you search for your favorite guitarist, I'm going to say for example Kirk Hammet, what he does on the guitar seems like an impossible task too sometimes, but the important thing here is that if he can do it, then you can do it too; Kirk is a very talented guitar player, no questions there, but my point here that what he does is not impossible.

Now, starting to play guitar can be an incredible experience for you, or it could be just a shot in the dark, it depends on your attitude, on your will to learn something new and ultimately it is up to you step up and make a decision. Of course, you do have to put some effort to see results in the end, and trust me, it is worth it; to learn to play guitar is in many ways the door to a whole new world, the world of music, but more important than that, the world of creating your own music.

Now, you can see and hear how many people "worship" the guitar legends such as Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, Slash or Joe Satriani, and yes, it looks like they are from another world, they make it look so simple when you and me now that it is not simple at all; the truth is that on one hand, they were born with the talent, but on the other hand, behind that talent there are years of guitar classes, courses, lessons and above all, years of practice.

The one thing all of them have in common besides their guitar skills is their will, it is their attitude to make things in a different way and their love for music; you can see for yourself throughout the time that the people who succeed, the famous people are who they are because they made things differently, they did not sit down to see how the world turns around, they wrote their names down into history.

There are three main characteristics that every musician needs to focus on to improve his or her skills and stand out from the crowd:

To Practice as often as you can: This is the most important of all three, by practicing everyday you get an advantage that many people don?t have. You get to improve really fast by taking the time to play guitar every day.

Open mind - Expand your horizons: Think outside the box, try to find new bands to listen to, new music, or maybe older music that you haven?t listened to yet. Our parents had a lot of great bands back in the 60's, 70's and 80's, (I?m in my mid-twenties).

Self Discipline: You need to be motivated and have discipline to practice on your own either if you get lessons from a private tutor, or if you are teaching guitar yourself with online guitar lessons.

By applying these basic principles since the beginning you will be able to cross the line that many other don?t and you will start leaving them behind; remember, learning to play guitar is a never ending process, there is always something new to learn or to create. If you want to, you are capable of making a difference, have a great day my friend.

George Balibrera is an experienced guitarist with over 12 years playing guitar. To Learn to Play Guitar can be fun and exciting when you have the proper method to learn. Discover the Best Way To Practice Guitar and start learning or improve your skills as a musician right away. Remember, practice is the key. Have a great day.

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