So you wanna be a guitar hero?

As you may or may not know, I teach and play music for a living. As such, I’ve started to digitize my lesson plans so I don’t have to keep re-doing them year after year and I’ve decided to make them a part of this blog. They’ll probably get more streamlined after I do this for a little bit as my lesson plans are more or less notes for my lectures rather than full blown lessons. I don’t expect that these lessons will put myself or any other teacher out of a job, and in all honesty, there’s no better way to learn than to suck it up and pay for some lessons. But, for you stubborn (and cheap) ones out there, here we go… from the veeery beginning.

There are many different styles of guitar and guitar playing and each one has subtle differences in technique. I teach and play rock guitar, so that is what this blog will focus on although you’ll learn the basics of a whole bunch of different styles.

Before you actually learn any playing, it’s important to know what you’re dealing with (If you don’t care, you can go ahead and skip this “lesson”… and probably the next few as well). You will most likely be playing one of three types of guitars:

1. Steel String Acoustic
   Steel String Acoustic guitars actually use steel or nickel strings wrapped in bronze. They come in various body styles and woods which impact the way your guitar sounds. The neck is a little thinner than the Classical guitar neck which in turn places the strings closer together. This style of acoustic guitar is the most popular for modern rock / pop / country music.

2. Nylon String Acoustic (classical)
   Nylon String acoustic guitars are also known as classical guitars. The body size is smaller than a steel string guitar and the neck is thicker, thereby having the strings set farther apart from one another. The strings are also made of nylon (obviously) so they are softer on your fingers, but also give a mellower tone than the steel string acoustics.

3. Electric
   Electric guitars have the same neck style as steel string acoustics but the similarities end there. Electrics use thinner strings than their acoustic counterparts making them easier to play. The sound is picked up by magnetic pickups and converted into an electric signal that passes into an amplifier. If you don’t have an amp, you ain’t getting no sound!

Are there others? Yes, but most people don’t learn how to play on 12-string guitars and the like. Really, you can’t go wrong with any of these three options. Most beginners will end up getting a relatively cheap guitar anyway so you’ll be upgrading later. By that time you’ll have a better idea of what kind of guitar suits your style.

Next lesson: Getting Started!