I don’t really understand how to play guitar or even how to approach learning.
Do you just memorize chords? When do you play individual strings instead of a full strum? Are certain notes and chords assigned to different keys?
It seems way above my head lol.
Help.
In: Other
for huge swaths of popular music you’re really only going to be playing a few different chords. A, Am, sometimes B or Bm (less common, but not unheard of), C, D, Dm, E, Em, F and G will encompass the vast majority of music on the radio. You’re probably going to memorize them in what’s called the open position, which is when at least one string is played without putting a finger down at any fret first (technically B and Bm don’t have open positions in normal usage but this is ELI5, so just stick with me). Those are relatively simple, and over the course of learning you’ll memorize those open position chords and learn how to transfer between them relatively quickly. It’s just a matter of practice.
As far as when to play individual strings vs full strums, you’ll have to listen to the song you’re trying to play. A lot of people get caught up in learning to read sheet music, and you don’t actually need to, at least not right away. What you can do is learn to read tablature (often just called “tabs”). It’s super simple to read: it just shows a line for each string, a number for which fret you should hold down when you play that string, and you play left to right. [Here](https://www.wikihow.com/Read-Guitar-Tabs) is a quick, basic lesson on how to read guitar tab. Once you have a basic idea of the notation, go to [ultimate-guitar.com](https://ultimate-guitar.com) and start looking up songs that you would like to play and practice, practice, practice.
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