Guitar Essentials for Beginners

In this class, composer Jason Rivera guides you through the essentials of learning to play the guitar (acoustic guitar or electric guitar). The course starts with learning the anatomy of the guitar and ends with playing two simple songs.

This class is designed for absolute beginners with no prior experience playing guitar as well as for folks wanting to brush up on the basics of the instrument.

If you’ve been wanting to learn how to play guitar but have been putting it off because you’re not sure where to start, then this class is for you. The goal of this class is to get you playing songs as quickly as possible. Once you complete this course, you’ll have the basics in place so that you can start learning how to play your favorite songs.

Included in this class are many downloadable resources: tips for tuning your guitar, chord diagrams, strumming patterns and sheet music, as well as audio recordings of the two songs we learn in the course for you to play along with.

In order to take this class, you’ll need a guitar (acoustic or electric) and a tuner (you can use a free tuning app for your phone or tablet).

In this course, you’ll learn:

Basic Guitar Anatomy: The essential parts of the guitar, how to hold the guitar and pick.

How to Tune Your Guitar: How to easily tune your guitar using a free app.

How to Read Chord Diagrams: Clear explanations of what all the symbols on a chord diagram mean.

5 Chords: Em, Am, D, G, C: You’ll learn your first 5 essential chords! We’ll look at the chord diagram for each of them, how to fret the guitar correctly and which strings to strum.

Beats, Bars and Strumming: A little bit of music theory so you can read song charts and strum correctly. This lesson will develop your playing ability and give you a basic understanding of how music is constructed.

How to Play Your First Song: This is where you put everything you’ve learned in the class to the test–changing chords, strumming and counting bars and beats.

How to Play Your Second Song: You should feel a little more confident by this point in the class and ready to dive into learning your second song.

Tips and Tricks: A round up of all my tips and resources to get you learning to play the guitar as quickly and easily as possible!