If you think about it, people don't learn guitar chords and strums in order to be able to play guitar - they learn them in order to be able to play songs! Very often, the entire motivation for learning guitar is simply to be able to play a favorite song or some icon guitar riff - especially if it's something we can impress our friends with! Most students are itching to be able to play their first acoustic guitar song soon after they begin taking guitar lessons and often, any guitar song will do.
Sometimes however, students rush too quickly into guitar songs for beginners because they have not spent enough time practicing fundamental things like chord changes and maintaining a natural strumming rhythm. This is a mistake which causes a lot of unnecessary frustration. It's understandable that you want to start playing songs on guitar as quickly as possible, just make sure you've put in the required practice first. If you do so, then learning easy acoustic guitar songs will be well... very easy. It's all about your preparation.
Some of the best acoustic guitar songs for beginners to start off include...
- * Wonderful Tonight by Eric Clapton
- * Heart of Gold by Neil Young
- * Knockin' On Heavens Door by Bob Dylan
- * Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison
- * Please Mr. Postman by The Beatles
- * Country Roads by John Denver
Guitar Lessons Songs - Heart Of Gold
These are all classed as easy songs for beginners by guitar teachers as they use just a few open chords and a single strumming pattern which can often be maintained from the start to the very end of the track. A further advantage is that they are all well known and popular songs which most everyone has heard on the radio at some point in their lives. When you are already familiar with the song and can hear it in your head it makes it instantly easier to learn how to play. You'll find that as your skills on guitar progress, being able to hear the music you want to play internally will always result in being able to perform it better.
We must be careful to draw a clear line of distinction between easy guitar songs and songs for intermediates. It's common knowledge among most guitar players what all the 'classic beginner guitar songs' are and you'd be well advised to stick to these when you first start making the transition into being able to strum along to songs. There are plenty of lists available to view online or you could even start by sticking to just one category such as the easiest songs by The Beatles. If not, the following scenario becomes more likely...
- 1. A student spends a month learning open chords, 3 strums and changing between them in progressions
- 2. The first song they attempt to learn is "Norwegian Wood" or "Sweet Home Alabama" or "Tears In Heaven" etc...
- 3. They find the song extremely difficult and become frustrated and de-motivated
"Norwegian Wood" is definitely NOT an easy song to learn, it's very much in the intermediate level and even though it could one of your all-time favorite songs you should resist the urge to tackle it until your technical ability on guitar gives you a realistic chance of success. This example is just to illustrate that you need to classify the songs you wish to learn into clear levels of difficulty and take care to choose your beginner guitar songs wisely. The safest way is simply to follow lists of easy guitar song lessons you'll find online - they are prepared by guitar tutors who know how to separate songs into their respective levels of difficulty.
You'll hear and read a lot about easy guitar tabs along with sheet music and chord sheets. It's best to stick with simple chord sheets as these present the bare basics of what's required to perform the song - usually the chord changes over the lyrics. There are many websites offering free acoustic guitar tabs leave these until you are really ready for them. Luckily for us guitar players, learning how to ready guitar TAB is easy and most are able to master it in a few days. If you don't already know then try searching on YouTube for "how to ready guitar TAB" and you're sure to find helpful videos.
Acoustic Guitar Songs And Lessons
Once you learn how to play easy acoustic guitar songs with chord sheets then try to make the transition into the next level. This normally means being able to use other resources such as downloading easy acoustic guitar tabs and perhaps even trying to learn barre chords. Using a capo it's amazing how so many more advanced guitar songs can be transformed into something suitable for beginners to learn but at some point all students should put the effort into learning new guitar techniques such as barre chords (which we've already mentioned) and finger picking or fingerstyle guitar. Each time you expand your technical capacity on the instrument the number of songs you'll be able to play will increase 10 fold.
So long as you practice new techniques slowly and aren't in a rush to master them or artificially force your natural rate of improvement then you should find that you're able to add new styles to your guitar playing quite regularly.
Personally I would not advise any student to waste time on learning guitar songs without having video guitar lessons to guide them. Although there are many guitar song books you simply cannot beat the teaching power of video guitar lessons where an instructor is showing you the chords and strums to play the song. The main fault with many guitar song books is that they they will only give you the chords and neglect to indicate a strumming pattern, and even if they do include one you're going to need to understand some traditional music notation in order to be able to understand and read the rhythm as it's written correctly. Video lessons are just a far more immediate and simple way to learn guitar songs.
