The ONLY First Guitar Lesson You NEED To See - Beginner Guitar Lesson

hey guitar enthusiast lauren bateman here we're gonna go over three ways to jump start your guitar playing particularly if you're an absolute beginner to guitar now if you've been popping around on youtube a little bit you still might find this very helpful in jump starting your playing because oftentimes i find most guitar teachers start students a little too far down the path which causes a little bit more frustration in the beginning so there's going to be four important elements that i'm actually going to teach you in this lesson to get you started right away with playing the guitar the first is we're going to focus on your picking hand a little exercise for that then we're going to focus on an exercise for your fretting hand and getting that together third we're going to go over five very important chords that you should learn as a beginner because these five chords alone will help you play hundreds if not thousands of songs and at the very end i'm going to give you a couple really simple strumming patterns that you can start using so that you can play the song so before we get into the actual lesson materials i'm going to assume that your guitar is tuned that you know how to hold it and hold your guitar pick if not i'm going to put a link up here to my guitar basics playlist you can go through that and watch those videos and then come back here and watch the rest of this now the very first exercise we're going to go over is for your picking hand whether you're righty or lefty it's going to work out great and what we want to do is start familiarizing ourselves with the strings on the guitar and the distance between those strings so if you notice the top string is your fat string and on the bottom is the skinny string we're going to start at the top string and all i want you to do at your pick is we're going to do three down picks on the string we're not doing anything with the fretting hand just yet all right so we're going to do three down picks ready it's gonna be one two three that's all i want you to do on that top string okay one two three and then we're going to do the same thing on the string below on that fifth string or the a string one two three we're going to do the same thing on the d string one two three we're going to do the same thing on the g string one two three and then the b string one two three and finally the e string one two three so basically just three downs on each of the strings and then we're gonna come back up one two three on the b string one two three on the g string one two three on the d string one two three on a and then back up to the fat string three now you can see i can do this without looking at my guitar eventually that's the goal for you but in the beginning you're gonna want to watch your fretting hand and all we're gonna do i'm gonna play through this one more time very quickly it's gonna be one two three one two three one two three one two three two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three one two three so here's a close-up on this first exercise and what i'm doing so we've got the top string my pick one two three one two three and that's your first exercise that's all i want you to do is just keep doing that up and down so that you can get used to one how to use the pick get comfortable holding it but also start getting comfortable with the distances between these strings now like i said eventually you'll want to start taking your eyes away from the strings so that you don't have to look at them all the time but in the beginning it's perfectly fine to watch the strings hey guys real quick if you're really enjoying what i'm doing in this video don't forget to subscribe so that you can see when i release other videos on my channel so let's get back into the lesson so now that you've done your first exercise what we're going to do is we're going to go through the second exercise which is going to combine both of these hands but first let's talk about our fretting hand so when we're playing chords and that's the ultimate goal that we're getting to is that we want to be able to play chords but in the beginning our fingers don't move as quickly especially if you're an older guitar player you might find that your fingers don't move as fast which is why the chords i'm going to show you towards the end of this video are going to be fantastic for you so what we're gonna do is we're gonna take our first finger so fingers are numbered one two three and pinky is number four and we're gonna take our first finger and we're gonna put it on that top fat string at the fifth fret all right and each finger is gonna on its own fret but we're just going to use the first three fingers okay i just want to get you starting moving these three because they're going to be the most important in the beginning and we're going to do fingers one two three don't even use your picking hand just fret one two three and if you hit the strings hard enough they'll make a sound one two three one two three one two three so let's start with this exercise first finger is going to own the fifth fret second finger is going to on the sixth fret third finger is going to own the third fret now we'll go in for a close-up at the end so that you can see so we got the first finger on the fifth second finger on the sixth third finger on the seventh fret and the picking hand is just going to do exactly what we did in the last exercise is gonna do three downs on the string so we got five six seven all right and we're just gonna move the fingers down one string to the fifth string five six seven down again five six seven down again five six seven down again five six seven one more time five six seven so all we did was we just went from the top string to the bottom string doing five six seven and now we're gonna come back up so we're gonna go to the second string or the b string five six seven next one five six seven again five six seven again five six seven again five six seven all right so that's the whole exercise so from top to bottom it's gonna sound like this and you just go as slow as you need to in the beginning five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven now come back up five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven now again you can see i don't need to look at my guitar but i've been playing for years in the beginning you're going to want to focus on this fretting hand and when we fret we want to make sure don't go too close to the the front of the fret or you'll get like this buzzing sound try to be somewhere towards the front or the middle of the fret okay and you can lift the fingers as you go and go as slow as you need to this is not a race eventually we want to pick up the speed but go as slow as you need to to start building the flexibility in these fingers and a very important tip do not forget to breathe most people they start the exercise they breathe in they go and then they get to the bottom and then they release when you do that you're just going to build up tension and that's not what we want so tip for you guys remember when you're doing this exercise to breathe all right so here i am on a close-up of my guitar now this hand is just going to be doing that last exercise three downs on each string and this finger's gonna be five six seven okay so let me change my angle here so you can just see my fretting hand since you know what your picking hand is doing so you have five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven five six seven and then back up now my first lesson with my students we'll do these back and forth a few times until you start feeling comfortable and then once we do that we jump into learning our first two chords so i'm going to show you these first two chords they're very important because it's usually the song that i teach most of my students in their first lesson which is a song called horse with no name so when you learn these two chords you'll be able to actually play a song at the end of your first lesson so let's talk about our first chord which is going to be an e minor chord and this is a very important chord because all the other chords we're going to learn in this video are built off of this one chord all right so we're going to start put a little chord diagram up here and we're going to start in the second fret so these little spaces are called frets and we're going to take our first finger and we're going to be on the second fret of the fifth string all right which is our a string so that's what it should sound like you'll notice that the fret my fingers a little towards the middle of the fret because i'm going to shove my second finger right below it on the second fret so fourth string second fret and this is an e minor chord so let's go about finding that again so we're gonna take our first finger go to the second fret on the top string move it down to the fifth string and then take your second finger put it right below on the fourth string second fret and then you get to strum all six strings that's the great thing about this [Music] so that is an e minor chord the next chord we're going to make is a type of a d chord and we're going to move from e minor all we're going to do is we're going to take our first finger move it up a string take our second finger move it down a string that's all we're gonna do okay and that's how that chord sounds now to get back to e minor first finger down a string second finger upper string we're back on e minor all right we're just working in this second fret let's try that one more time and then i'll go in for a close-up so we got first finger up a string second finger down a string [Music] d69 first finger down second finger up e minor here i am in close up for you guys so we're going to find that e minor chord so we're going to take our first finger we have the top string second fret we're going to move it down to so that you're on the fifth string second fret and this second finger is going to go right below it okay on the fourth string second fret so that's our e minor chord let's find that one more time first finger top string fifth string second fret second finger goes right below it on the fourth string second fret that's e minor okay now to get to the d69 chord we're just going to take the first finger move it up one string so now we're on the top string second fret and we're going to take that second finger and move it down so that we're on the third string second fret okay back to e minor first finger down one second finger up one back to d six nine first finger up second finger down last time back to e minor first finger down second finger up [Music] if you guys are finding the content in this video helpful so far i'd really appreciate a like make sure to like the video and let's move on to the next part of the lesson so congratulations on learning your first two chords super easy you can use those to play the song horse with no name i'll put my tutorial up there if you guys want to go check that out afterwards but what i'm going to do is show you a very very simple strumming pattern that you can use with these two chords that you can go and learn that song and it's basically just four down strums so if we place our e minor chords remember first finger on the second fret of the fifth string second finger on the second fret of the fourth string and with your picking hand we're just gonna glide down the strings and do a strum so it's one two three four okay one two three four and then you would switch to the d69 one two three four back to e minor one two three four and then back to d six nine one two three four and that's really the basics and once you get used to it you can pick up the speed [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so you can kind of hear a song in that now so that's what i want you guys to practice once you get through this entire video but that should be the first song that you guys start working on with the chords that we just learned now the next three chords i'm going to show you can be used and found in so many different songs it's amazing and again like i said we're going to be building these off of the e minor chord now before you guys yell at me or someone you know some snob watches this video and tells me that's not a real c chord that's not a real g chord listen this is a beginner lesson and the reason i teach chords this way is because over the years i found that students made more progress and had more fun with the guitar learning chords this way versus starting them off with the full version of the chords so let's start off with e minor okay this is a full chord that is the full e minor chord what we're going to do is we're going to start by playing a mini c chord all right and what we're going to do is we're going to leave our second finger in place and this is why i love teaching it this way because it gives us a pivot point we're going to leave the second finger in place first finger is going to come down to the first fret second string okay and that's going to be c and as best you can try to play only the bottom four strings if you catch the fifth string it happens we're more worried about getting the fingers moving so again the second finger staying here first finger goes to the fifth string back to e minor so hopefully you've gotten to know e minor very well at this point all right so we have e minor first finger is going to come down to the second string first fret we have c major move that first finger back up to the um fifth string second fret e minor one more time move that first finger down to the second string first fret and you have a c four let me go in for a quick close-up so that you can see the c chord so here we are like i said we're starting with e minor which you hopefully know at this point but just in case one more time first finger on the fifth string second fret second finger on the fourth string second fret okay so we have e minor what we're going to do is we're going to leave this second finger in place and this first finger is going to come down to the b string the second string first fret so we kind of got this little diagonal and that's going to be our c chord to go back to e minor we just move the first finger back into place we have e minor and we're going to move the first finger down now something you might notice on this close-up is my fingers are sliding around a little bit to make room for the chords so when i come back to e minor my second finger slides to make room it also helps with the reach because doing this that's quite a stretch so move this finger back a little bit more to the middle the second finger you'll be able to reach that first finger much better so again e minor and c now there's another great song that only uses two chords e minor and c called eleanor rigby by the beatles you might want to go check that out um so so you've only learned three chords and you've learned two songs but eleanor rigby is all e minor and c and you can use these two-fingered versions for that so the next chord i'm going to teach you is a g chord this is technically like a g6 but we're just going to keep it simple and call it our g chord for now so what we're going to do is we're going to start from that e minor again all right that's why that e minor is so important in the beginning so we're starting from e minor and this time we're going to leave the first finger in place and we're going to move the second finger so it's going to be the first finger is going to slide up in the fret a little bit and we're going to move our second finger to the third fret of the top string and we've got kind of a g chord you can strum all six strings on this it's fine back to e minor and then second finger comes up to the top string third fret g okay one more time e minor move the second finger top string third fret and that is your g chord so here's the close-up and again hopefully you know your e minor chord by now we're gonna leave the first finger in place maybe just slide it up a little bit in the fret and we're going to take our second finger and put it in the middle of the third fret on the top string and we have a g chord okay so e minor and second finger up to g bring that second finger down go back to e minor one more time second finger up to the top string third fret we have a g chord back to e all right so so far we've learned how to go from e minor to c e minor to g and the last chord we're going to wrap up is we're going to play um a d chord it's really what we call a d sus2 but it's a type of d chord and any time you see d you can play that chord now the reason i'm teaching you these chords the e minor the c the g and the d the reason i'm teaching you these four chords is because they're very commonly used in a lot of songs so think of something like heart of gold perfect by ed sheeran i mean there's lots of them there's lots of them brown eyed girl is another so we can use these simplified versions in place to play some of these songs so the last chord that we're going to learn the simplified chord is a d sus now this one we're going to get the third finger involved and that's why back earlier i had you do this exercise because those are the three fingers we're going to work with the most so again this one doesn't have a pivot point unfortunately but we're going to start from e minor because that's a great starting point for a lot of chords and what we're going to do is we're going to lift up the second finger and we're going to move the first finger down one two strings so we're on the third string second fret and then this third finger is going to come down on the third fret of the second string and again try and just hit the bottom four strings it's a very open sounding d chord very beautiful beautiful sounding chord now to get back to e we would lift up the third finger or the e minor go up two strings with the first finger second finger comes down and we have e minor so again let's lift up the second finger move the first finger down two strings so we're on the third string second fret third finger comes down on the third fret second string and we strum for beautiful sounding d sus two chord all right so for the close up we have e minor lift up the bottom finger move the first finger down two strings third finger comes to the third fret on that second string we have d sus so lift up the third finger come back up second finger down for your e minor one more time lift the second finger up move the first finger down one two third finger comes to the third fret on that second string and we have d decess so now that you've learned these four chords e minor c the d suspended chord and the g chord the goal is to not be able to just do them from e minor the goal is eventually to go you know from g to c which is also an interesting one because it's the same shape it's the second and first finger at an angle moving to c the second and first finger at an angle all right so you're going to want to practice going in and out of all these chords because you can play a lot of songs with just these four chords and then you might want to change up some of the strumming to give yourself more time so i know i showed you that four strum pattern on the e minor one two three four well you might wanna do what we call a whole note strum which is you just strum one two three four one two three four to see one two three four to d two back to g and one two three four to be minor two three four to c 2 3 4 d 2 3 4. so this is a great way for you to practice switching between chords without you know worrying about speed too much so you'll be able to play along with songs and give yourself enough time to switch between the chords so that is a whole note strumming pattern and all i was doing there was just going g to e minor to c to d now this is my method for teaching beginners guitar i always like to break things down and go step by step if you'd like to learn more i do have a full beginner guitar course i'll put the link up here that you can go check that out youtube's gonna pop up a few more videos on the side here for you guys to go check out i have lots of beginner tutorials some of the songs um that you can use with these four chords one of those might even pop up so don't forget to comment like and subscribe and i hope to see you guys in another lesson video

Channel: Lauren Bateman

Views: 498,468

Keywords: lauren bateman guitar lessons, first guitar lesson, first guitar lesson for beginners, first guitar lesson acoustic, first guitar lesson for absolute beginners, first guitar lesson ever, first guitar lessons for beginners acoustic, first guitar lesson chords, beginner guitar lessons, beginner guitar lessons acoustic, beginner guitar lesson chords, very first acoustic guitar lesson, absolute first beginner acoustic guitar lesson, this should be everyones first guitar lesson

Id: SUrXsAhGu98

Length: 23min 24sec (1404 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 26 2020