Learning the Electric Guitar Part 2

As you will have read in my previous Hub called Electric Guitar Tips, I started learning the electric guitar from a professional teacher which was the best way for me to learn at the time because I wasn't able to teach myself.

Many people are able to teach themselves and if you are on of these people, then great. But still try to play in front of someone who can honestly tell you if there are any chords or notes that do not quite sound right. It will also help with your confidence if you can play in front of people.

The first thing I would recommend you doing is to learn the basic three chords or D, A and G. Do not move onto any other chords until you have mastered each of these and how to change from one chord to the next smootly, speed of change isn't essential right now it is more important that you concentrate on technique than speed.

Also take this chance to have a play with arranging the chords, feel free to play what feels and sounds good. The sooner you can start being creative the better. But try not to get into a pattern on making a certain chord change too much, if you find changing from D to A easy, by all means carry on and be creative. But don't forget changing back to D or to G. You need to feel comfortable changing from chord to chord no matter in what order.

Something you can do which will show that you have mastered a chord is to pick each string one at a time whilst holding a chord down. By this I mean to pick each string EADGBE and each one should ring out clearly if you are holding the chord down correctly. Please note though that for chords A and D you do not play the low E (top) string anyway.

A trick to not playing this string is to stretch your thumb over the neck of the guitar so that it slightly touches the E string which will mute it. This means that when you strike the string it will not make a sound. This method is much easier than trying to just not hit the string with the pick.

That is all I'd like you to do for now, just master these three chords and make them sound perfect. Practice your own strum patterns and combine this with a bit of picking to see what sounds you can come up with.