![Guitar Lesson 1 - Absolute Beginner? Start Here! [Free 10 Day Starter Course]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/BBz-Jyr23M4/hqdefault.jpg "Guitar Lesson 1 - Absolute Beginner? Start Here! [Free 10 Day Starter Course]")
Hi guys, my name is Andy
Crowley. Thank you for joining me on day one of the 10 Day Guitar Challenge. Where we will play the guitar for 10 minutes a day for 10 days. Today is the first lesson for absolute beginners. If you're taking a one-on-one personal lesson with me, and you've never strummed a guitar before, or tried some bits in the past, but that was a long time ago. Then this is the guitar lesson that I was going to show you. In this lesson, I'll show you how to play the easiest Habastin on guitar, and then you can play your first song by the end of this video, in less than 10 minutes. So, if you've never played a song before, this is the perfect place to start. And let's get straight ahead, knowing how to play these two easy chords. So the first chord we're going to learn is the E major chord, also known as the A chord, and this is where we need to put our fingers so we can play it.
Now, if your guitar isn't in tune, it doesn't matter where you put your fingers on the guitar, it won't sound right. There is a video of mine in the description below, where you will find a video showing you exactly how to tune your guitar, with and without a guitar tuner. So check this video first if you suspect something is amiss here. But I'll talk you through a few more guitar picks before we get fully started. So, these metal strips flowing onto the guitar here are the frets. The crossings are the strings. We number the strings to be thicker, so one, two, three, four, five, six. And all the frets, it's the area between the metal strips, that we call the frets, the two frets, and the three frets. Anytime we put a finger on a fret we really want it to be that side of the fret, so the side closest to you, against the metal strip, but not on it.
So, if I want to put my finger on my first toe, the first thing that bothers me is. It will be placed here, instead of in the middle. And we also want to be right on the tip of your finger, like this. For this first string, the E major chord, we need the first finger to be on the third string, at this first fret, and that's just right here.
On the tip of our finger and press between our thumb and first finger. My thumb is right behind where my first finger is on the guitar, just here. The middle finger should be on the second fret, of the fifth string, so the fifth string. One two three four five. The third finger, known as the ring finger, goes here. Directly below it, on the same fret, on the string below. So just one recap. These fingers are placed: the first finger, or the index finger, the middle finger and the third finger here. The little finger, it is better to keep it as close to the third finger as possible, rather than shoot it out and do its own thing. This is where we want to put it here. For this particular chord, we want to strum all six strings. And you're sure to hear them all, so let's do it now.
And strum our E major chord. Now it should sound, and hopefully yours will sound the same. If not, your guitar may be out of tune, so check that video. However, we also want to make sure that all six strings are ringing. Through it we want to choose the thickest to the hardest chain, so the chain is six to one. And if it all sounds like this, then we're doing it right. Maybe, one of the strings looks a little like this. We have little to no buzzing or no buzzing at all, so. There are two common reasons this could be the case. The first thing is you have to be on that side of the fret, like I said at the beginning of the video.
If they are in the middle of the fret, it may not ring. They all want to be on this side of fret. Not on the far side. Then each finger needs to be on top, not level. Now this is common because whenever we hold things, I say if you just hold this guitar neck to pick it up. We were holding it like that. But that's not how we hit notes on an arpeggiator. We need to be right on our toes. And make sure that this joint in our fingers is bent, and kind of screwed so that each tip of the finger is at 90 degrees to the fret. And when those two things are the case, when we're on that side of the fret, and on our fingertips. It's just a case of getting that right amount of pressure, but with the right finger position, it may be a little less than you think. Now even at this point I have some lines at the end of my fingers. This is normal, we have to press down you know, a decent amount to get a note to ring. But try not to press more than you need to.
Try to find that sweet spot. The second chord we'll cover in this video is the major chord. And through this rope, we can play anyone of 10 songs. As I said there will be a song at the end of this particular video. But there are a number of songs, 10 songs, that are played with just these two chords on my website and the link to that is also in the description. So, it's best to play a basic chord, it's best to start on a basic chord that we already know. Now we need to keep that first finger down, but lift the other two away. And this is really important, this will be our finger.
Because when we learn chords, what's hard is not necessarily playing between one chord, it's the change between. What we're going to do is keep this first finger at the bottom, but move it to the second fret. And this time we want to be in the middle of the fret. Because we're going to put our middle finger above it on the same second fret.
The third finger is directly below it. This is the basic chord. You may have seen this chord played like this. However, if this is your first time picking up a guitar before, it will be very difficult to change between any chords, these included. So we make this as easy as possible by maintaining contact with the fretboard at all times. And use this first finger as an anchor point. So this is the basic chord we're going for. Let's put this first finger on the third string, second fret.
One, two middle fingers go directly above it, and the third finger goes below it. And it's best to keep that first finger in the center of the fret this time, and only this time really. So we can fit the other two in. And with this particular chord, we want to chime the fifth string. This is what the basic chord should sound like. To check that all those strings are showing, we again select from thickest to thinnest. But we will start from the fifth series. There are more opportunities for strings not to chant on this one. So try again to make them reach the maximum possible, and keep following the right tips. This is the best way to get ringing. But you may have to put a little pressure on that string to get those strings going.
Once again, guys. Select each series. And decency. So, to change between these chords, we need to keep the first finger down at all times. And it changed between them. So if we go back to the E major chord now. And just give it one single of all six strings. We keep the first finger down, slide to the second fret. Middle finger above, third finger below. And decency. Then to change again. The first finger that stays down slide it back to that first fret. Middle finger above, third finger below. And the decency again, so we're on this first string that we looked at now, the E string. So we keep the first finger down, we bring it down to the second fret of the second string that we looked at. Middle finger above. Third finger below. And the decency to try and play the fifth string, you miss even the thickest string. If you happen to hit this thick string, it's okay for now, we're just learning.
Keeping the first finger down, we move to the first fret of our first string, which is E major. Walstrom, this is our E major. You may want to pause the video here, so you can practice a little longer between these two ropes. Change between E and A chord. Remember to keep your first finger on at all times. And we looked at our first finger at the first finger on the first fret. Then the second string, the second finger string, the middle finger, the middle finger above, the third finger below. And decency. And you want your fingers to take about a second to go to each string. To move to the second part. Which is directly the basis for our first song, which is a song called "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. This song only has these two chords.
And we have to play every chord for every bar. To do this, we need to understand about bars and beats. Beating is all you can tilt your head to when your favorite song comes on. So, when you're kind of grooving to the song, tapping your foot and enjoying it. You tap your feet, or nod your head to the tune. This is an even beat throughout the song. It generally goes to a count of four. So count up from one two three four. This is repeated evenly throughout the entire song. It's the number of four that we call a bar. So, the simplest pattern we can use in any song is to play the note. And we're going to pluck each string in this special song four times. So we close the iron string four times. One two three four. And keep that first finger when we move to the second string, which is the chord. Then he cheated four times. One two three four. Then we need to go back to the E string.
And do this in a loop for a minute. And if you've never heard that particular song we're talking about, the link is in the description to the YouTube video of the song. So you can listen to it quickly, to hear what we're about. And you should hear this rhythm guitar part very clearly throughout the entire song. Now keeping your hand strumming, while changing the chord is undoubtedly the hardest part of learning songs on guitar. However, the anchor finger, keeping the first finger down, makes it a much easier task. It helps us move forward in learning the other chords that we will learn in the coming days. So this change is very important, rather than learning more ropes. A lot of beginners get a book full of ten chords, or a hundred chords and try to learn them. But mastering the change between them will achieve the ultimate goal of being able to play real songs as soon as possible. Hopefully this is what you can play in a few minutes now by following me. So let's start with the E major chord, which is the first chord we covered in this video.
We're going to tempo this four times and once we do that, as soon as we've established the fourth pillar, we want to immediately change to a chord, as quickly as possible. Now, if this takes a few tries, and that's totally fine, because that's the ultimate goal of this first video, from this day one of this guitar for ten days. If it's a little struggle at first, that's understandable because it may be the first thing you've ever done. Go easy on yourself.
Let the hardest part of this, the chord changes, for sleep let you get used to them before you put too much pressure on yourself. So let's play together very slowly now. And let's go through our first song, "For What It's Worth" by Buffalo Springfield. So we prepare on our chord. We press, and we start playing it two three four one two three four then change to the chord and start playing again one two three back to E change back, and one two three four first finger stays down, we change to A one two three four pause there. So, now is the time to evaluate your performance. If you only need to pause the video once to make just a few individual changes. Which will dig that change a little more, to help you get used to it more. Maybe take a quick break to rest your fingers a little. Because you may have large lines and you may be very sore. This is completely understandable and normal at first. And when you feel like that, play this video from that point again, and this time we're going to try to get those spaces between the chord changes as quick as possible.
The goal is just to keep our right playing evenly. No matter what we play. However there is a change or not, we're just going to try to keep this rhythm out of your hand, okay? So from the E chord. Play with me one last time, on one two three four E two three and then to A A two three four E two three four and A two three four E two three four A two three one last time of E E two three four and A two three finish on E E and this is how we play our first song, and this is the end of day one of the ten day guitar challenge. Thank you so much for making it this far. Your homework now is to practice these two chords, which are E major and A major and the changes between them. Then try playing it for four channels of a chord and connect the four four chords.
And we want to maintain this chord sequence for a minute. In total it should be about ten minutes of practice. So if you do so immediately after watching this video, you'll be in a perfect position to join me on Day 2 tomorrow. Where we will learn about a new guitar chord and a new song. And this time the song will have a very easy lead guitar part, which is more of a melody, so we won't just focus on the chords in this session. We will also focus on some individual threads. It will be really cool, it will sound just like the song.
And be really, really recognizable, a great thing to show your friends. I hope you'll join me there. Thanks so much for watching guys. Please subscribe if you enjoy this course, and I'm sure I will see you again in one of my videos. Take care and bye for now..