Your First Easiest Guitar Exercise: Basic Guitar Lessons

It is time, friends. It is time for you to play your first note on the guitar. Every rock star had to begin somewhere. It’s your turn now. Take a plunge into the deep wide ocean of guitar-learning.

How to Read Notes

Let’s first see how you are going to read the guitar notes. As you can see in the pic below, this is how the guitar’s fretboard will look like when you will hold the guitar and look at it from the above:

The frets have been numbered 1, 2, 3, 4… and so on (fretnotes). If I say “Play the 1st fret of E-string” you’ll press the following note:

Similarly, if I say “Play the 3rd fret of B-string” you’ll press the following note:

How to Press a Note

If you press a string on a fret with your left hand and pluck it with your right hand, you produce a sound. You can change the sound by changing the frets. This will get clearer in the exercise give below. Make sure that when you press a note, you press only that note & with the tip of your finger. The note must also be pressed tightly and your fingers should avoid touching other strings at the same time, which can mute some strings.

Important: Whenever you press a fretnote, make sure that you place your finger a bit towards the metal strip of the fret. As you can see in the pic below, I am pressing the fretnote not in the middle of the space, but rather a bit on the left, i.e. a bit on the inside. This is the correct way to press a note and this way it will produce the best sound without any buzz. (see pic)

Naming the fingers

The fingers that you will use to press the fretnotes are termed as shown in the pic below.

Your First Exercise

We will begin with the 1st string (skinniest one), i.e. E string, and we will use only one finger for this first exercise. Use your Index Finger (also called first finger) and play SaReGaMa on E string by playing the following fretnotes:

E|–0–2–4–5–7–9–11–12–
B|—————————-
G|—————————-
D|—————————-
A|—————————-
E|—————————-

As you can see in the video, your first finger (or the index finger) shall remain on the first string throughout the sargam, only the fretnotes shall change in a linear way starting from ZERO (0)-Sa till 12th note-Sa and back.

Practice playing this exercise at least 1 hour for the next 3 days.

Variables to this Exercise

When you have mastered the above exercise, you can extend it in multiple ways to practice harder:

1. Strike twice on each note. Sa-Sa- Re-Re- Ga-Ga- Ma-Ma- Pa-Pa- Dha-Dha- Ni-Ni- Sa-Sa. You may extend it to playing each note thrice or even four times.
2. Play the above exercise using other fingers individually. e.g. Play the entire exercise using the Middle Finger. Then, using the Ring Finger. Finally, using the Pinky Finger. This will strengthen all your fingers.
3. Play the Sargam on all six strings, with all four fingers one by one. (See the video below)
4. Create variations in playing Sargam. e.g. Sa-Re-Ga- Re-Ga-Ma- Ga-Ma-Pa- Ma-Pa-Dha- Pa-Dha-Ni- Dha-Ni-Sa, and other such variations to the Sargam. This will keep you interested and you will be able to produce beautiful sounds.

Fundamentals to a Rock Star’s Mindset:

Practice is the Key

If I have to give you one single tip that can help you learn guitar quicker than anyone else, it will be this: Practice. There is no substitute to practice. There is no other alternative. If you must learn guitar, you must practice, the more the better.

In the beginning it won’t be easy to practice for long hours as you are not able to play much. Still, push yourself. Trust me. If you can push yourself everyday in the initial days of your learning guitar, the later days will be fulfilling and all the hard work and patience will be rewarded.

A lot many students give up easily in the beginning itself. Don’t be one of them. Remember your dream to be a rock star one day, and I assure you if you practice everyday, no matter how you feel, you will be rocking very soon. Just eat the frog for now.

Patience

It is not going to be a happy, pleasant, joyful practice. In the initial days, it’s going to be very frustrating when the desired sound wouldn’t come out, when the fingers wouldn’t fall in the right places or when the fingers would pain after a long practice session.  In all these moments, you would want to quit learning guitar. These are some of the reasons why most people quit. And these are the very moments when PATIENCE will help you. You will have to tell yourself that it’s just for a while that you suffer and that time will bring the fruits.

A very popular Sanskrit Shloka says this about how we learn and grow:

AchAryAt pAdamAdatte, pAdam shiShyaH swamedhayA |
sa-brahmachAribhyaH pAdam, pAdam kAlakrameNa cha ||

one fourth from the teacher, one fourth from own intelligence,
one fourth from classmates, and one fourth only with time.

So give yourself time, rock star. Time will set things straight for you. Just keep working and never give up. Never ever give up! See you in the next class! Rock on! \\nn//