Before you open your guitar case

Playing guitar is not difficult but it requires some dedication. It is as simple as understanding that the more time you spend practicing, the more comfortable you will feel when you play.

However, if you do not know how to start, you can spend a lot of time before you are able to play even a single song. At this point, you can get bored and every minute you spend playing guitar becomes a sort of obligation.

guitarPlayerBox is a sort of box that contains some tips so that you can learn some chords - surprisingly quickly - to be able to play songs, a lot of songs in fact. Learning to play at the same time as you are already playing is the best way to enjoy your practice time.

You are probably wondering if “surprisingly quickly” means that you are going to be able to play a song on the first day you take up a guitar.

Well, “surprisingly quickly” means that, with not much effort, you can learn some easy chords and we will guide you through groups of songs that use these chords so that you can start playing known and current pop, rock, country or R&B songs very soon.

In the next section we will start with timing, and there you will find a trick to play two chords with only one finger and a list of interesting songs, so yes, you can play some songs on the first day.

The other question you might have is whether the songs you are going to start with are Twinkle, twinkle little star and Jingle bells.

Remember that on the first day you will start with timing, using simplified chords, but the answer is no, we will not use songs like these. The idea is to play cool songs from the very beginning, and you will learn real chords to open the Box and play great songs within a few days.

We might start by noticing that your guitar has a main body and a neck that projects from the body and contains a certain numbers of frets.

Depending upon the fret and the string you are pressing down, you will obtain different notes. And finally, a combination of notes played at the same time will give you a chord.

You need to number the strings of your guitar. We will start from the thinnest one, which has the highest tone: this will be string number one.

All the strings can be tuned in different ways, depending upon your interests and taste, but in this tutorial we will use the standard tuning, so the first string will be tuned as an E.

The second string is the one immediately above, which is tuned as a B.

The next strings are tuned as follows (each one above the previous): the third string is tuned as a G, the fourth string as a D, the fifth as an A, and finally, the sixth string, the lowest one, will be tuned as a low E.

Now we have to number your fingers. You will see a lot of diagrams and pictures with the positions of your fingers for playing a chord or a note. It is important to copy the proposed shape so you can play in the easiest way.

Some people use their thumb to play, basically to press the low E string, but we are not going to use the thumb for playing at this point. Your thumb will only hold the guitar on the back of the neck.

So, for our purposes, we are only going to talk about four fingers, numbered as follows:

1. Index finger
2. Middle finger
3. Ring finger
4. Pinky

The stuff you will need includes a tuner, a pick and a capo.

You can buy a specific tuner, or you can use a mobile app or computer software. You will find hundreds of them.

Many guitar players do not use a pick, but if you want to avoid using one you will need to grow your nails. If your partner has no problem with this, you can go ahead without a pick.

You can also play without a capo, but it will make it easier to play some songs because it allows you to play the same chord in a different shape. We will try to look for a capo position to play the easiest chords possible.