This is Aaron from FreeAndEasyGuitar.com. What I’m going to start doing—and this is the first lesson of that is that I want to kind of make a series of lessons for what I’ll call the Extreme Beginner. Well, that can really range from someone who has never touched a guitar or picked a guitar before all the way through those of you who may have taken a few lessons or tried to learn before and hasn’t worked out.
What I want to start to do is, in this lesson, I want to talk about the gear and kind of some of the major accessories that are really vital to learning to play the guitar. So the first one obviously that you’re going to need is your guitar. So I have my Taylor. But one of the main things that you want to take a look when you’re looking for a guitar, you want something that feels good to you. If you have never played a guitar before and it’s your first time, you can always go to a guitar shop and have one of the people who works there play some of the guitars for you and you like to feel for it. One other things that you’re going to realize with a beginner guitar—my personal opinion on beginner guitar is if you have the money, I would try to spend probably over $150 to get a good one by some of the well-known names, you know, Fender, Epiphone, Yamaha, there is a SeaGull. There is too many really to mention. Alvarez which I started with.
And one of those guitars, what you’re going to need to do every time you play it, you just want to make sure it’s in tune. So that starts by the time you get to the guitar shop. You want to make sure that the guitar that you picked up, one of the guys that works there will help you make sure that the guitar is on tune, and then have them play around some notes. You want a guitar that’s appealing to you. Obviously, if you’re going to spend money on it, you want something that you’re not afraid to pay for. And every time you pick it up, you’re going to be glad that you made that purchase. So what I want you to do is, if you have a guitar ready, then great. If you don’t have a guitar, when you go to the guitar shop, you want to make sure that you find the guitar that’s right for you.
Another thing that’s important is, if you are a girl or a young kid or a teenager or you sort of got small hands, there are different options that you can use to get around playing a big guitar. There are different versions of guitars, there are ¾ sized guitars. Martin and Taylor make those, they’re called the big baby for Martin and a Baby Taylor for Taylor. But there are always little guitars. You can get ¾ sized guitars from probably any manufacturer that you want. The necks are shorter, the frets are closer together and the next are smaller. And now, it will make it easier for those who maybe have small hands. So that’s something to consider if you’re interested in picking out a guitar if you don’t have one yet. Go to your local guitar shop or if you want to order online, you can research it. But if you have small hands and you’re afraid of it, and that may be something that you want to look into.
So once you have your guitar picked out, there are a couple of accessories that I think are very vital and that you guys should pick up as soon as you start to play the guitar. I want to show a couple of those to you right now.
The most important thing in the world for you to have is a tuner. One of the biggest things about staying motivated when you play the guitar is you want your guitar to sound right. You could be playing the song perfectly and the chord perfectly or a note perfectly. But if you’re guitar is out of tune, it’s going to sound bad. And one thing that I know from experience that if your guitar is not on tune and you play a song and it doesn’t sound like that, it’s really discouraging if you’re playing it the right way. So I recommend that you get a tuner. It doesn’t matter what kind it is. This is a chord guitar and bass tuner. It’s one that I’ve always used. There are lots of other guitar tuners. You can find guitar tuners online, but that’s the main thing I recommend. If you can only have one accessory, this is what you need. You need a tuner. And every time you pick up your guitar for a practice session, if you’re going to strum the chord or if you’re just going to figure out every time you pick up your guitar, you should tune it. It may be time consuming at first but it’s very important and it will get easier as the time goes on. You’ll start to pick it up. And over a series of months, if you have a good ear or maybe a year or two which is about how long it has taken me, you may be able to start going by ear. So that’s the most important thing with a tuner.
The second most important thing for a beginner that I think is a capo. This is a capo. And the way it goes on your guitar, this actually just fits over the frets. If you don’t know what a fret is, don’t worry. I’m going to talk about that in the next lesson. But what it does is it allows you to avoid bar chords. One of the biggest enemies of beginner guitarists is what’s called bar chords. We hold of the strings down with one finger and then play a position above it.
Those are some of the hardest things to learn for beginners just because you don’t have the finger strength developed yet, so don’t worry about that, but buy a capo. A lot of my lessons that you’re going to find on this site and a lot of other lessons, you’ll find anywhere on the internet, and what tabs you’ll read where it teaches you to play a song on the internet. That’s going to have you play with a capo, most of them. So for a beginner, I would recommend a capo extremely.
So those are really the two main accessories. There are other accessories that are helpful to have like your guitar strap. Obviously, you can see they’re not mandatory or essential because I don’t have one on right now. But it’s great to have especially if you’re ever playing in your future to make you play open mikes or play in the band, it’s really good to get used to play standing up. Because if you’ve had any experience with singing, you sing a lot better, you got a lot better tone and a lot better breath if you’re standing up straight or sitting up straight, and the strap really helps you with that.
So that’s kind of one of the first lessons that I want to give out to you guys so I’m going to leave it at that. So remember, picking out a guitar, you want to go to a guitar shop and find a guitar that’s right for you, you feel comfortable holding. Make sure that the size is right. If you’re a young girl or a young boy, a girl or just a guy that has small hands, anything like that, make sure that you have a guitar that fits you. Make sure that it’s a guitar that you like the way it looks. You want something that every time you pick it up, you’re, “Hi sweetie. Play my guitar.” So you want to do that. Also, make sure that you like the way it sounds even if you can’t play. If you have a friend that plays a guitar or if you know someone in the guitar shop, have them play it. Make sure that you like the way it sounds and make them put it in tune so you’re going to know what it sounds like in tune.
Once you have that, then you get your guitar, make sure that you get your two accessories. Get yourself any kind of tuner that works. The person that you buy from, you can always have them to show you how it works. I’m going to show you how it works in a future video. And get a capo, I’ll show you how this works in a future video too. So those are basic gears and what I think you guys need to get started. So take a look at that. If you need to go get these, go get them and you can move on to the next lesson and we’ll get you started on actually playing the guitar and hold it right. So take care guys.
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