The first lesson

My first attempt at learning the basics of guitar techniques, simple chords and strumming proved to be more difficult than first anticipated. It was however, very successful! I first researched some sites on google that would help me to tune my guitar by ear (I don't own an electronic guitar tuner) and tuned the very out of tune and out of use guitar. It took me a while to tune my ear to which way each string needed to be turned but I think I tuned it reasonably well in the end.
I then found another site- guitarlessons.com that had some great reviews from people that had used it to teach themselves, like me. It provided twelve short video clips on the basics of the guitar including how to hold the guitar properly, parts of the guitar, strumming technique and four basic chords (G major, D major, A minor 7 and C major). I made my way through these videos, feeling a little disappointed seeing how good the man in the video was compared to me. His fingers seemed to be moving at a hundred miles an hour compared to mine and he said he was playing slowly! I practiced each chord many times over so that my fingers got used to the movements, which helped a lot. Once I had been through all of the videos, I found that I was able to play the chords much easier and my fingers were automatically doing the movements when moving between chords.
Now all I have to do is keep practicing and hopefully I will be able to play the chords one after the other without pausing in between each.
Learning to play the guitar is going to be much harder than expected but I am determined!!

xoxo
rachelandtheguitar