You know, there's such a enormous range of acoustic guitar songs to learn for every beginner out there, it's one of the reasons why learning how to play songs on guitar is such fun! Once you've learned the basic guitar chords (about 10 open chords) and some universal strumming rhythms (about 3 -5 patterns) you'll be simply amazed at the sheer range of songs for acoustic guitar that become available for you to learn. Many of you will already have a list of all time favorite songs from your albums or MP3s so knowing that you are on your way to actually being able to play them yourself is hugely motivating. If you wanted you could even take things a step further and learn to write your own music or songs - you don't even have to be able to sing. In fact, many of the greatest song writers in history couldn't sing to save their lives.
When you're making the transition out of merely learning guitar and into playing guitar songs you do have to be a little careful. What we're looking for here is principally classic beginner guitar songs many of which were written in past decades such as "Hotel California" by The Eagles, "Take It Easy" by Jackson Browne and "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd but equally we do have modern easy acoustic guitar songs such as...
Good Acoustic Guitar Songs
- Time Of Your Life - Green Day
- Wake Me Up When September Ends - Green Day
- Hey There Delilah - Plain White Ts
- Tears In Heaven - Eric Clapton
- You're Beautiful - James Blunt
- Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
- I'm Yours - Jason Mraz
- More Than Words - Extreme
You don't have to be a top acoustic guitarist to be able to play 1000s of guitar songs as the majority of pop and classic rock songs are actually quite easy to learn. All the top acoustic guitar songs are simple in their structure which is one of the reasons why they are easy to remember and lend themselves so well to radio play in the first place. It's great when the first songs you learn are also known by all your friends.
How To Play Acoustic Guitar Songs
The first thing is to find some really good quality acoustic guitar lessons and let your teacher know your musical goal from the outset. Playing guitar songs for beginners is one of the best ways to start to learn acoustic guitar and your teacher should already have a list of easy guitar songs you can choose from. All you really need to get started are a few chords and strum patterns - it's actually quite easy to learn the shapes of chords and the rhythms of strums however you will need some time to practice putting it all together. The biggest problem beginners run into is always being able to change from chord to the next one fast enough to keep up the song. You need to drill your chord changing each day in order to become fluent enough to play songs on guitar and on this site you'll find specific chord changing techniques to help you.
Begin by looking at the progressions the song uses, normally there will only be 1 for the verse and another for the chorus. Some songs will include a middle eight section too. In general however, easy acoustic songs for beginners will have just 2 chord progressions to master - sometimes even just one! The strumming pattern will normally remain the same from start to finish which is why learning your universal strums is so important, and, empowering. You don't need to keep learning new rhythm patterns for each new song.
Once you're confident that you can play the progressions identify which strum the song uses and try to put the chords and strum together step-by-step. When you create an even learning curve or ladder into learning easy acoustic guitar songs you'll find that they are simpler to master. Problems normally arise when you try to do it all at once especially if they are among the first guitar songs you're learning. Look for song sheets that display just the chords and lyrics as they will be the present the song in its most basic format. Generally, guitar music is written in TAB (tablature) which is a system easier than traditional sheet music to learn how to read but song sheets are even easier again!
If you find that learning even easy guitar songs for beginners is too difficult then it's a sure sign that you've rushed ahead too quickly. The best thing to do is go back and spend more practice time drilling the basic's such as chord changing and strumming. Once you learn to play acoustic guitar with a bit more confidence and fluency songs that seemed very hard before will now be very easy to learn. It's really not that you don't have enough talent to learn guitar but rather than you haven't put in enough practice time yet.
How To Find Easy Songs To Play On Guitar
I would definitely surf the web as the quickest way to get a list of the best acoustic guitar songs to learn. Many of these songs are well known and used time and again among experienced guitar tutors in their guitar lessons - the songs are simple and require the least amount of technical skill from students to perform. Search using Google but also YouTube as there are many great free guitar song tutorials up there to learn from and many from the more premium guitar sites too. Ulitmate-guitar.com is a great site for sourcing easy guitar tabs for beginners - as your playing gets better you'll find that you're able to move more and more away from simple guitar songs and into intermediate guitar styles and riffs. Other techniques such as fingerstyle acoustic guitar songs will open your playing up further - it's all a question of how far you want to take things.
If you wish to take things to the next level then you should be working on mastering barre chords.
