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.
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Your typical progression is something like:
-Learn the parts of the guitar
-Learn how to tune the guitar
-Learn the string names
-Learn basic strumming and picking
-Learn basic open chords
-Learn a couple simple melodies
-Learn more advanced chords
-etc etc
Best place to start is with a book or online resource. I recommend something like [https://www.justinguitar.com/](https://www.justinguitar.com/)
There are tutorial videos, practice planners, apps to help with tuning and playing along with songs, and other stuff for free.
Having tried to self-teach myself, my first tip is, if at all possible, get some lessons.
My second tip is checking out a youtube lesson from someone like Justinguitar. Watch, try yourself, rinse and repeat. Take it three seconds at a time if that’s what it takes.
Memorizing and honing the basic chord shapes to your muscle memory by doing them lots of times, and then changing quickly between them is a good way of spending time with your guitar. Pay special attention to only touch the strings that are needed, and only strum the strings that are needed.
In general, full chords are often played when [playing a rhythm](https://youtu.be/ezV3hfNOD3Y?si=_JN53pXb02g0TYpa&t=287), and individual springs are plucked when playing a melody or [guitar solo](https://youtu.be/LN0c6IfMkac?si=y6ba50YH9HKYU6Kc&t=80).
If playing an electric guitar, playing it plugged into an amp, an amp simulator, a computer, headphones or anything, is preferable to playing it unplugged: doing the latter, you’ll develop bad habits in terms of not damping the strings you don’t want to ring.
The answer is: when the song calls for it. I’m not sure how else to answer. Some parts will call for full chords, some parts will call for arpeggios, some parts will call for single notes. It depends on how the part is written, or whatever the guitarist feels like doing at the moment.
Full strummed chords might sound more intense than an arpeggiated chord, which might sound more somber. Things like that might tie into why a songwriter might choose to play things a certain way, but there are no rules and there are always exceptions.
There isn’t one way to learn how to play guitar. When you pluck one string, that makes a note. When you strum several strings in rapid succession so that they’re ringing simultaneously, that’s a chord, which is just several notes played together. That applies to more than just guitar.
>Do you just memorize chords?
You should.
>When do you play individual strings instead of a full strum?
This is a really odd question. One answer is when the piece you’re playing demands it for your part in that musical piece. If you’re writing your own music, it’s whenever you want.
>Are certain notes and chords assigned to different keys?
Yes. Again, chords are just notes played together. A key is like a template. Some notes don’t sound as good when played together, so you typically choose 7 out of the 12 tones for a song, but they repeat in each octave so you can use the same 7 an octave higher, if you wanted. If you choose C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, you’re in the C major key. If you choose D, E, F, G, A, Bb, and C, you’re in the key of D minor. Chords in that key would be using those notes. Sometimes you can use a note not in your key and it’s called an “accidental” even though it’s not really an accident. There’s no hard and fast rules in music, just guidelines.
Is it easier to think of a piano? The strings of a guitar are the same as keys on a piano. Each string plays a single note, playing different frets on a string plays different notes, like playing different keys on a piano. With a piano you play a chord by pressing multiple keys at the same time. Strumming multiple strings on a guitar will play multiple notes that can make up a chord.
My advice is to look up tablature of songs you want to learn and start playing them. You’ll understand relatively quickly that:
* The chords at the top of the neck are often used and easy to memorize
* Sometimes you have to strum the whole chord, but other times you don’t, depending on what the song demands
* The same chord can be expressed in many different ways all over the guitar neck, and sometimes a song uses a different version of the chord instead of the one at the top of the neck
* From there, if you want, you can dig into music theory and begin to learn what chords are associated with different keys, why it’s like that, and how scales relate to all of this too.
Ideally start with learning chords after you learn to tune your guitar and knowing which string is the E string, A string, D, G, B, E. It’s going to feel stupid and unnatural. Pick a simple chord where you strum every string like the G chord to start with. Get your fingers placed right. Start strumming up and down. It’s gonna take a while for this to feel and sound natural. Maybe hum a little melody along with it. Once you get to where you can strum up and down and your fingers can press down without other strings buzzing and sounding awful, you can pick another chord. Maybe the D chord. Do the same thing. And once you can do both of those, try strumming the g chord, and then switching to the d chord. Then add another, maybe an A chord. What will happen is your fingers will start remembering shapes for these chords. And then they’ll remember how to go from one shape to another for a different chord.
Once you’ve got these three, you can play surprisingly a shitload of songs. Now we can get into different strumming patterns that aren’t just up down up down up down. From here, it’s up to you. It’s a long long process early on. But if you like it, and need the distraction from your parents yelling at each other all night, lock yourself in that bedroom and get after it. That old guitar can become a real good friend someday.
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.
Thanks for all the answers, everyone. I’ll look into these suggestions, though I really should take a lesson or two haha
Memorizing chords is the best way to start. Start with the E major, A major, E minor, A minor, C major and G major chords. Once you have those shapes down, you can bractice barring and then you’ll be able to play any chords up and down the neck.
Learning scales is very useful too, especially for improvisation, but when you’re just starting out, learning chords is the best thing to work on.
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