Beginner Guitar Lessons - check out our Facebook page for more info on our ebooks. https://www.facebook.com/guitarebooksonline/

1. GEO - Guitar E-Books Online
Volume 1 - Introduction to Guitar
Authors – Chris Volbrecht & Warren Thomas
Website – www.guitarebooksonline.ecwid.com/
Facebook – www.facebook.com/Guitar-E-Books-Online-1693718464054358/
Email - guitarebooksonline@gmail.com

2. Section 1 – Introduction
You get three common types of Guitars. Nylon string or classical, steel string or acoustic and electric
guitars that have no sound hole and need to be played through an amplifier. You also get a type of
guitar called a bass guitar, these normally have 4 strings, but they could have more, and they also
come in electric and acoustic models.

3. How to hold the guitar
Important points:
1. Always warm up before playing!
2. Always relax, no tension in hands, neck or shoulders
3. Don’t hold the guitar too tight
4. Remember the GAP
5. Fingers like nails into the fretboard
6. Never tilt the guitar
7. Sit straight up
8. Thumb in the middle of the neck of the guitar
Left hand (for a right-handed guitarist)

4. Tuning
To keep your guitar sounding good, you will have to tune the guitar before playing. This also helps
people playing music together to sound good or “in tune” because they will all tune their
instruments to each other.
There are many ways to tune a guitar
• You can tune by ear, this is the least accurate way of tuning
• You could tune to another instrument for eg a piano or another guitar that is in tune.
• You could use a pitch pipe
• The best method and most accurate way is to buy an electronic tuner, they are cheap and
will save you lots of time and effort.
• You will tune each string to the note of that string as per the string names below
The names of the strings
Some easy rhymes to remember the names of the strings
1.E - Easter (thinnest string)
2.B – Bunny
3.G – Gets
4.D - Dizzy
5.A – At
6.E – Easter (thickest string)
Tune each string to the note shown above, if you want to tune to another instrument, find the same
note on that instrument and tune to that note like the piano example below.

5. Tuning to a piano (the guitar string notes on a piano)
Musical Alphabet & notes on the guitar neck
There are 7 natural notes in music A,B,C,D,E,F,G, and then it goes back to A and repeats the same
notes. These natural notes are the white keys on the piano.
All notes have sharps and flats between them EXCEPT between B and C, and E and F (the black keys
on the piano – you will see 2 are missing between the white keys), this means there are 12 notes in
total. At the 12th
fret these notes repeat themselves.
Going up the guitar neck if we started at the A note, it would go up as follows
A, A#, B, C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A
Going Down the neck
G, Gb, F, E, Eb, D, Db, C, B, Bb, A, Ab, G
You will see that for example A# and Gb are the same note, the black key on the piano takes its
name from the previous white key. So going up the piano it would be A# as the previous white key
was A, and going down the piano it would take the name from the previous white key which was G,
so it would be called Gb (G flat) but in fact A3 and Gb are exactly the same key and therefor the
same note.

6. CHORDS
Chords are 3 or more notes played together. You get many types of chords, but we will start with
Major chords. Major chords are happy sounding chords. The Major chords are built from the major
scale which is the basis for all western music. If you see a chord symbol like D – which doesn’t state if
it’s a major chord, we can assume it is major unless we are told otherwise.To play chords on a guitar
we have chord diagrams that explain how to play each chord.
A sample chord diagram is below, it is like you are looking at the guitar neck and the headstock is
upright like the guitar picture I used for the names of the strings in the previous section.
The diagram is drawn from the nut of the guitar down the neck.
How to read the chord diagrams:
• The vertical lines are the strings and the horizontal lines are the fret wires
• The numbers in the circles are your fingers
• The bold numbers on the left of the diagram are the frets
• The thick, black line at the top of the diagram is the “NUT” of the guitar
• The letters above each string are the names (note) of that string
• If the string has an “X” above it, don’t play that string

7. Below is your first 3 chords to learn – A, D and E.
Tips for playing chords
• Make sure you are holding the strings down with your fingertips and not the pads of your
fingers
• Play each string once you have made the shape, make sure each string rings clearly. If not
correct the finger that is not ringing clearly
• Make sure there is a gap between your hand and the high e string (1st
string) – it will buzz if
your hand is touching it
• Make the shape, make sure it rings clear or adjust if need be. Then remove your fingers and
make the shape again. This is called Stamping and will stamp the shape into your muscle
memory
• Make sure you play the chord from the correct string down for eg a A major is played from
the 5th
string down, and a D major is played from the 4th
string down and a E Major you play
all 6 strings.

8. CHORD CHANGES
To be able to play guitar you will need to move easily between the chords without missing a beat. To
build this skill we have a series of exercises that will get you moving between chords with ease. Each
bar will consist of 4 down strums, which means strumming the guitar strings down towards the floor.
A down strum symbol looks like this
A bar of music would be the distance between the bold lines like the below picture
Exercise 1

9. Exercise 2
Exercise 3

10. Exercise 4
Exercise 5

11. Exercise 6