First guitar lessons for Beginners acoustic

A lot of guitar music is written down using a chart to represent the neck of the guitar. The six strings above are shown like this:

What do those circles mean at the top?

They tell us to play the open string.

All about frets

Before we learn our first chord, we need to learn about frets. Frets are the vertical metal bars that run across the guitar neck underneath the strings.

The spaces between these are named in numerical order starting from number 1, nearest the neck.

When you put your finger on the string to play a note, you will usually place it just behind the fret.

Remember this later on - if you get the old 'beginner buzzing', chances are, one of your fingers is too far away from the fret.

Your First Chord

The first chord we're going to learn is called D major.

We'll use three fingers to play this chord - the index, middle and ring fingers. We're going to call them fingers 1, 2 and 3 respectively.

Now, place your fingers on the guitar strings as shown and give it a strum :

Things to watch out for

• Notice the 'x' on the low E string. This means when you strum you should try not to play this string.
• Try not to let your ring finger (number 3) collapse. If it does it will touch the E string and deaden the sound.

Jam Session

Now let's put the chord to some use.

Jam along with the track strumming the D chord in time with the music.