Where to start with playing guitar

There’s such a big gap between picking up a guitar for the first time and playing your first song. Don’t worry about finger tapping or playing with your teeth just yet, you just want to string some chords together. There’s lots of videos on YouTube teaching which chords are in a song, but no one tells you where to start with playing guitar before that.

You need to build your muscle memory before you play a song

Playing guitar is all about muscle memory.

Muscle memory is the ability to perform an action without looking or really thinking about it. An action like holding a chord.

When you change gear in a car you don’t always look down at the gearstick to remind yourself where it is. You know where it is, how to move your hand until it’s resting on the gearstick without looking at it or thinking about it.

You know this because you’ve done it so many times. Mindless repetition means it has become instinct. That’s muscle memory. Please do keep thinking when you’re driving though. It’s important.

Playing the guitar is the same. You need to be able to mindlessly move your fingers from the position of one chord to hold another chord without thinking.

No one stops mid song and says “WAIT, WAIT… next is D … give me a second … the middle finger needs to go on this fret… OK DRUMMER GO. WAIT, WAIT… next is Em, so my index finger comes up here…”.

Where to start with playing the guitar

Hold the G chord. It’s the G chord. The answer is to start learning the G chord first.

It’s extremely common and slightly challenging. Nail this and the rest is all downhill from here.

• Your index finger is on the A string, second fret
• Your middle finger is on the low E string, third fret
• Your ring finger is on the B string, third fret
• Your little finger is on the high E string, third fret

After holding the chord take your hand away from the guitar. Then hold the G chord again. Keep lifting your hand off the fretboard then holding the G chord hundreds of times over and over until it becomes instinctive muscle memory.

The second chord to learn is the E minor (Em) chord. G and Em go together in a lot of songs and you don’t need to lift off all your fingers to change them.

• Keep your index finger on the A string, second fret
• Lift all other fingers off
• Move your middle finger to the D string, second fret

Keep switching between G and Em, strumming once after each change. Over and over and over and over. Backwards and forwards.

The idea is to build up speed and familiarity. After a week of doing this you’ll be able to switch between the two chords fairly quickly.

You can sit watching TV next to someone and alternate between the chords without strumming them, so they can continue watching TV.

You’ve also learned the chorus chords of Nirvana – About A Girl. Bring on that campfire.

Learn the chords in the same key

Learn D next. Trust me on this one, D goes with both G and Em in loads of songs. D is:

• Your index finger on the high E string, second fret
• Your middle finger on the G string, second fret
• Your ring finger on the B string, third fret
• Don’t include the low E and A strings when you strum! You only use four strings in this chord

Strum G twice, Em once then D once. Keep cycling through G, Em, D; G, Em, D. Over and over until changing between the three chords becomes mindless muscle memory. If you’re a masochist you can now play Snow Patrol – Chasing Cars using these chords.

Pick a song that has the chords you want in it

Mindlessly alternating between chords doesn’t sound like fun. That’s because it isn’t.

Learning the guitar should be fun.

When I was learning the chords I sought out songs that had one new chord in it. When I knew G, C and D I tried to learn Bad Religion – Heaven is Falling because it also has Am in it. The Ataris did a good acoustic cover version of this.

By only learning chords through finding new songs I was playing and learning at the same time. I had an instant end result and I was still practicing the chords I had previously learned.

Now you know where to start with playing the guitar.