Now that the guitar heroes of the 1970's are quaint old men who never went bald, we should ask ourselves what we are trying to gain by taking guitar lessons. You see, the advent of the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll era added an extra dimension to music. For many years now it's been considered a silly idea to take up the guitar merely because you want to play music. It's all about the lifestyle now. Keith Moon and Kurt Cobain are great examples of mediocre musicians who enjoyed the rock and roll lifestyle so much they died of it! So what does the beginner guitar player have in his head when he dreams of being a fully fledged guitarist?
Let's say we admit up front that we want fame and fortune as a musician really quickly, how do we get it? I'm going to describe a way of learning the guitar by making use of free lessons available on the internet. You use only the most basic lessons because we are cutting through the bullshit here. No musical theory and mind numbing notation for us!
Okay, we are going to learn some well known songs and basic chords and to go with them.
Here is a ready made list of really cool songs to start with:
Horse With No Name by America
Rock And Roll Ain't Noise Pollution by AC/DC
Leaving On A Jet Plane by John Denver
House of the Rising Sun by The Animals
Nowhere Man by The Beatles
No Rain by Blind Melon
Iron Man by Black Sabbath
Every Rose Has It's Thorns by Poison
Knockin' On Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan
Sunshine of Your Love by Cream
One by U2
Four Strong Winds by Neil Young
I Remember You by Skid Row
Riders on the Storm The Doors
Come As You Are by Nirvana
Take It Easy by The Eagles
Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton
You Really Got Me by The Kinks
Come As You Are by Nirvana
Californication by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Everybody Hurts by REM
If you type the names of these songs together with the word "tabs" or "tablature" into a search engine you will get a big bunch of sites featuring tablature and maybe chord diagrams. If you can't find the diagrams for the chords, do another dearch for "basic guitar chords" You might even find some free video guitar lessons featuring these songs on one of the sites like YouTube. The thing about guitar tabs is they don't give you much help with what to do with your right hand. You may need to go exploring some more for written or video lessons on strumming patterns. Fortunately, if you type "strumming patterns" into Google you will get thousands of helpful results.
If you give yourself an hour or two a day for a couple of weeks working on learning the left hand fingering for the chords and experimenting with the strumming patterns you have found you will see that you have aquired a small measure of guitar playing skill. Free guitar lessons will not give you the motivation to keep up your daily practice. Your determination to be a legend and the admiration expressed by your growing circle of friends will keep you going.
What happens if you awaken a small creature within yourself who actually wants to play music for the personal pleasure it gives? What a thought! My advice is to use your knowledge of your chords to begin to play around with arpeggios and scales. Just play the notes in your chords separately. Play around with making melodies. Do more Google searches. Good luck!
