When you begin learning your first major and minor chords a great revelation happens - it's the realization that there are lots and lots of easy songs to play on acoustic guitar using just a handful of those chords and 1 or 2 simple strumming patterns. While many guitar methods will concentrate on using 'golden oldies' which are songs now so old that they belong to the public domain this is not the best way to take your first steps into playing your first easy guitar songs! All guitar players simply learn to play better and faster when the songs are modern and something they can relate to. This is why I have never been an advocate of teaching the likes of "Kumbaya" for example, especially when there are so many simple guitar songs which are more up to date and well known for this generation.
The best key in which to begin learning easy acoustic guitar songs is in either C or G. This is because both those keys utilize more open type guitar chords than any of the others. Open chords are the easiest for beginners to start learning and include chords like E minor, C major, G major, D major, A minor and so on. As you travel deeper into the cycle of 5ths and different keys you'll find that they gradually become more remote and include an ever increasing number of barre chords. Since barre chords represent a considerable challenge to most beginners, learning to play songs in the keys of C and G offer the best way forward for your first guitar lessons.
If you find it too hard to play the role of guitarist and singer at the same time then revert to doing only a single strum on each chord while you sing the lyrics. What's happening is you haven't yet acquired enough skill on guitar yet to be able to play it automatically and too much of your mental energy is being channeled to the guitar side of things leaving not enough resources for the vocal/lyrical side - hope that makes sense! Until your ability to strum acoustic beginner guitar songs becomes more natural and second nature you'll continue to struggle to sing along with even the easiest of simple guitar songs. Be patient with yourself during this important transition and avoid the temptation to rush ahead too quickly, it will only frustrate you.
Free Acoustic Guitar TABS and Sheet Music
We are very fortunate to have so many easy acoustic guitar tabs for beginners and song sheets available for free to download off the internet. Never before in the history of learning guitar has this been made so readily available and I know for a fact that countless students have benefited greatly from these kinds of online resources. Learning how to read guitar tab takes only a day or two and fluency will come within a month, that's incredible when compared to trying to achieve the same results with traditional music notation.
You can dig deeper and find guitar tabs for practically any genre of music you're into, for example, do a Google search for...
- Free country guitar tabs
- Country songs for guitar
- Easy Christian guitar songs
- Easy rock guitar songs
- Folk guitar songs
- Acoustic country songs
And let's not forget about the best acoustic guitar songs video lessons from youtube! This is quite simply the biggest free warehouse of guitar song tutorials you'll find anywhere online and you can search through thousands of good acoustic guitar songs picking and choosing new ones to learn each day. Many sites also exist where you can perform chords and lyrics downloads so not only do you have the instructional video but also the sheet music too. All that's missing is practice.
Guitar songs for beginners need not be limited to only pop music, many of you are more into easy country guitar songs and while the strumming patterns will be a little different there's no reason why you can't have a great time learning how to play guitar in this genre of music and using songs you already know and love from your albums and off the radio. As I said in the beginning of this page, there are tons of easy songs for beginners out there in every genre so don't be fooled by thinking that you have no choice but to start off with "Row, Row Row Your Boat" or "Kumbaya"! Good acoustic guitar songs are everywhere for novices to learn and any guitar teacher worth his salt will be able to taken even intermediate or advanced songs and turn them into beginner acoustic songs within minutes. Try these for example...
- A Horse With No Name - America
- Brown Eyed Girl - Van Morrison
- Knockin' On Heavens Door - Bob Dylan guitar songs
- Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
- Hey There Delilah - Plain White T's
- Take It Easy - The Eagles guitar songs
- Mr Tambourine Man - Bob Dylan
- Losing My Religion - REM
You can also search by artist such as "John Lennon Songs", "Simon and Garfunkel Songs" etc... You'll find easy guitar tabs for all of this and more to help you learn acoustic guitar in the most enjoyable way possible. Learning to play a guitar is incredibly rewarding. Keep changing what you learn, keep trying new and different songs, learn songs from different genres of music - it's all part of having a healthy musical diet! Over time and with consistent practice you'll find that your list of easy songs to play on acoustic guitar will grow into a massive library of tunes you can play and even... teach others how to play as well.
