Horse With No Name

Now... it's song time. Like a real song.

The first song I learned how to play was America'a Horse With no Name. This song requires the use of two chords (that's my kinda song!) Some versions are a bit more complicated than others, so as you progress, you can throw some extra pizzazz in there!

Here are the two notes that you will need to know:

http://guitar.freemovies.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/A-Horse-With-No-Name-Chords.png

I have been getting all my information from a YouTube-er named Marty Schwartz, who has almost 1000 videos on YouTube of tutorials on guitar. 

His YouTube account is: http://www.youtube.com/user/martyzsongs

I chose Horse With no Name initially because I love the song, but I'm really glad I did because it was really easy to learn and great to practice strumming. Here is a video on how to play and what I did was paused it on the part where the strum pattern was up on the screen and just kept running through that.

One way to make it a little more accurate (for lack of better words) is to add a little extra to it. Here is an example:

And here is the actual song! Enjoy!!

A Little Intro to Picking

The first (part of a) song I attempted to learn was the beginning to Jack Johnson's Banana Pancakes because it was an easy way to get introduced to picking.

If you don't know the song, here it is in all of its glory!

Just listen to the beginning part of the song. The picking of that was shown to me like this:

This is a layout o the progression of the intro to the song. It is done on the first two strings (the bigger stings). The numerical value represents the fret that you pick on and if there is a forward slash, that represents a slide, where you slide your finger from one fret (the first number listed) to another fret (the other number listed). Super easy. For the song, you repeat this twice. The first time ends with a slide and the second time ends with just picking the largest string on the third fret. Easy!

Guitar 101

Here is the basic anatomy of a guitar:

http://media.wbur.org/wordpress/12/files/2010/11/guitar6.jpg

First of all, I would like to point out that the "side" is labeled. I think that is quite hilarious. Anyways, it is good to know the different parts of the guitar just to be familiar with what you're dealing with.

It's also important to mention the different strings on a guitar and how they are labeled:

http://guitarteacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/namingguitarstrings.jpg

And also how the frets are labeled:

http://d1df5tpemqge08.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/how-to-read-guitar-tab.jpg

You count the frets as you go down the neck of the guitar and the strings can be labeled by their notes, or by a numerical value.

The Super Basics!

So, I'm taking this class where we are graded to do what is being called a "personal quest" where we have to do something that isn't related to the class, but where we grow as people to benefit ourselves and hopefully others will gain from our endeavors as well. Hopefully. Anyways, I saw it as a perfect opportunity to learn to play the guitar. I have always wanted to learn and my boyfriend is AMAZING at it and I'd love to have something, like music, in common with him and he has already expressed his up-most joy in my attempt in learning this thing.

I had downloaded an app to help tune the guitar, which was super handy! I definitely recommend it! It worked fine (apparently) and took all of 1 minute to download.

The first tid-bit of knowledge I was taught about playing was a couple different chords. I currently have them up on a whiteboard in my room, but there are a bunch online that you can access that are a lot less messy, but it is really nice having them where I can see them everyday. I don't have them all up there, but just the basics!

This is what I have in my room right at this very moment:

There are also different versions online, like.....

http://mos.musicradar.com/images/Guitar%20Techniques/162/open-chords.jpg

This is obviously much prettier than what I have on my wall and with a little more info, but I like having something a little simpler so it's less overwhelming!

What I did initially was just try playing these chords, not worrying about my strumming, but just trying to get it to sound like its supposed to. Its also really helpful to play each string individually when doing this, at least a couple times so you can pick up if one of your fingers isn;'t holding down the string enough or whatnot.

Happy strumming!