asked:

Free Guitar Lessons with Jamorama Guitar

Andre Sanchez asked:

So you want to learn to play guitar. Learning guitar is not difficult, and it is not easy, and is basically a matter of degree: how good do you want to be? The higher your goals then the more work you have to do and the more difficult it becomes.

asked:

Play Jazz with your own BLues Back-up Band

Jon Calderbank asked:




Find some good songs to learn on guitar, figure out how to play them and you’ll always have an ace up your sleeve if there’s an acoustic guitar lying around at a party. When the next opportunity arises, you can become a 15 minute hero because it’s easy to add some real ‘crowd pleasers’ to your repertoire, even if you only know 3 chords.

There are so many 3 chord guitar songs to choose from so it doesn’t really matter too much if you’re a beginner guitar player. Just remember that the more famous the song, the more likely people will sing along which means it’s of less importance how good you are! If you like the thought of getting a party going and having a group of people in the palm of your hand, let’s look at some songs.

How to find good songs to learn on guitar?

You’d be surprised how many beginner guitar songs could be classed the most recognized, if not the greatest guitar songs of all time. If you’re a beginner, start looking for tracks right away by making a note of the chords you can play and simply searching online. However, if you know E major, A major and D major, why not try this:

Wild Thing – The Troggs

Chords : This song has 3 basic chords (E major, A major and D major) which are normally the first 3 chords that you would learn in a guitar course. So, you should be able to play this very soon after starting to learn.

Strumming: The strumming is basic and you can manage to play the full song using only downward strokes. Not only that, there’s quite a nice space in between some of the chords so you can get your fingers in the right place, just in time.

Even if this song wouldn’t be your first choice of style, it’s worth knowing it because it’s so simple and one of those good songs to play for people when in the party mood.

If you want something a little more challenging (but not too much) then try:

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – Green Day

Chords: Very simple acoustic rock guitar chords (G, C, E minor & D) nicely blend to make this a classic that seems to be gaining popularity with age.

Strumming: The chord changes are faster and the song is at a higher tempo, but it’s very easy to listen to the original song for guidance as to the guitar parts and timing because it’s a very acoustic track. Weirdly, the song gets easier as it progresses because the strumming gets less intricate as they become fuller downstrokes and upstrokes. Once you get into the rhythm, it all sounds pretty cool though, so don’t worry about being a perfectionist from day one.

These are 2 popular and easy acoustic guitar songs that you can play today and they are fantastic examples of a beginner and a beginner/intermediate skill level.

Danny B asked:




The purists like to shun the idea of guitarists using tabs for learning how to play guitar. So is there anything wrong with them and is there any reason you should not learn to read guitar tabs. In short, it’s a pointless argument. Why? Because the reasons for arguing against them rarely have anything to do with the reason a guitarist might want to use them and to be honest, the reasons aren’t entirely accurate. So what is the reason?

The argument about guitar tabs is that they are missing too much information because they only show you what string and what fret you should play. They lack any kind of timing information and give you no indication of what key the piece of music is written in. While this is true in many cases it’s not actually the case. Guitar tabs can and do indeed contain most of this information, most decent books and guitar magazines always include these things with their tabs and in fact often go one better and place the notation above the tab lines themselves so you get the best of both worlds.

The Internet has changed things slightly however but it’s not necessarily a bad thing. With the growing popularity of things like guitar forums, guitarists figured out they can help each other by being able to create guitar tabs using text, which a few years ago was the only way you could post on many forums. This led to the ASCII tabs which is actually difficult to include anything other than just fret and string information. Although even this is possible but admittedly can get a bit messy. I say so what! Forums are there to help guitarists and the tabs that get posted are meant to give you ideas and examples of things only. What’s wrong with that!

Another argument in defence of guitar tabs is about the people that use them. You don’t find tabs for playing classical guitar or piano etc, in fact you mostly only see guitar tabs written for the kind of musical styles that attract people that would have no interest in learning how to read musical notation in the first place. In this light they are nothing but a good thing. It’s very easy to learn how to use them, they are extremely intuitive at a glance and most guitarists can be on their way to reading them within a few hours (or less) of ever laying eyes on them. So to answer the question, “what’s wrong with learning to read guitar tabs”? The answer is… Nothing!

Jamorama Guitar – Lessons from beginner to advanced