Learn to play guitar, it's a lot of fun ;) and not that hard

Image taken from animals.desktopnexus.com

      Have you ever wanted to start playing guitar but always thought it's too difficult and you don't have money to invest in guitar lessons? Do you have a guitar at home that nobody touch it? 

    Let me tell you this: you can learn by yourself, there are tons of information about it around the web, you just need to take that first step. I am posting this, because I learn to play guitar by myself, watching videos on YouTube and exploring the amazing world of UltimateGuitar. 

   Music is a great part of one's life, think about it, don't you relate certain past moments to specific songs? When your sad or happy you listen to different songs, and one great song can lift up your spirit and prepare you for some task you have to accomplish. 


    What a better way to connect with music that to create and play it? Playing guitar is also a lot of fun, relaxing and motivating activity. You also work on your skills as you engage with a ever developing hobbie.

    So, my work today :P is to motivate you to start playing guitar, eheh. Let's being very small, but also with a lot of fun. Do you like Pearl Jam? Off course, who doesn't? (don't feel bad you don't like it, ahah). One very simple song to play is "Last Kiss", made famous by Pearl Jam but originally from Wayne Cochran. This song has only 4 chords and there order is the same throughout the song. 

   You probably have heard about this "Chord" term, but for you who doesn't know, and explaining in a very simple way as this is your first lesson, eheh, a Chord is a collection of notes playing at the same time and notes are achieved simply when you put one of your fingers in some "space" in one of your strings and you play it. For you who wish to learn more about Chords i recommend you to read Guitar Chord at Wikipedia (but it is a very hard reading though, eheh).  

   In this song the chords are composed of 2 to 3 notes each. The chord sequence with the lyrics are in this Link. As you open it, you will see the lyrics with "strange" letters in from of them. That "strange" note its simply the chord you have to play when you reach that part of the song. So, for this case, you will start with G Chord, and as you begin to sing "baby" you change to Em Chord, and so on. 

   You may me asking, how can i play this chord thing? That's an excellent question and don't worry, that is not so difficult, hehe. Have you realized how the chord above the lyrics are in blue? If you put your cursor upon them, you will see an image appearing. That is just the chord sequence you have to play, representing the strings of your guitar and the places where you have to put your fingers at. 

   This may seem a little bit confusing, but the top chord of your guitar correspond to the last line of the image, where an "E" is displayed. The last string of your guitar correspond to the first line where a small "e" is displayed. So, lets focus on the G chord.

Image taken from www.gchord.net

    To play the first chord of "Last Kiss" you put your index finger in the second string, counting from the top, in the second position, then you put your middle finger in the top string at the third position and finally you put your ring finger at the last string in the third position. 

   You can see at UltimateGuitar some numbers where you should put your finger at. That numbers represent your fingers counting from the index finger (1) until your little finger (4). So there you have it, simple ins't it? 

   So, to be sure if you followed. Let's analyse the second chord of the song, the Em Chord that you begin to play at "baby". You just have to put your index finger in the second string, counting from the top, in the second position and your middle finger right below, at the second position of the third string.

    So, for you to understand the rhythm of the song, i leave you here with "Last Kiss" from Pearl Jam

     I hope by now you feel motivated to play guitar. For those of you who want to start playing more songs, I recommend you this Link, that has a lot of songs, easy to play for beginners, with simple chords just like these I told you about. 

     There is no right moment to start playing a musical instrument and there is no time as "too late" to learn. As I said, there is a lot of information about it in the web, you just have to be persistent. If you really want to start playing guitar, make a habit of playing it just 15 minutes a day for a couple weeks for the habit to stick, eheh.  Feel free to comment and give me feedback about this post ;) Have Fun!!

PS: As I am Portuguese, there can be some grammatical errors in my posts, sorry about that. I am working on it ;) 

Surf Locus Facebook Page