Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners: Round Two

By | Guitar Chords, Practice Tips | 12 Comments

This is a continuation of last week’s post of 10 easy guitar songs for beginners. Check those out if you haven’t already. Chords, lyrics, and videos of each songs are included so you can play them!

The best thing a beginning guitar player can do is to apply all the new chords they are learning to playing an actual song. After all, isn’t that why you’re learning how to play guitar in the first place?

So again, here’s my picks of some easy guitar songs for beginners that you should be able to pick up right when you are first beginning guitar (or even if you’ve been playing awhile! These are good songs still!). There’s a mix of some new pop songs and older classics in this list.

Click on the song title to view chords, lyrics, and a video.

Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners

1.) House of the Rising Sun by The Animals
2.) I’m Yours by Jason Mraz
3.) Keep Holding On by Avril Lavigne
4.) I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash
5.) Viva La Vida by Coldplay

What would you add to this list?

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10 Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners with Guitar Chords

By | Guitar Chords, Practice Tips | 73 Comments

When you’re first learning how to play the guitar, the best thing you can do is practice learning a new song. However, it can be hard to find easy guitar songs for beginners when you’re first starting because you don’t know which songs are easy to learn on guitar and which ones aren’t.

Here’s my collection of some easy guitar songs for beginners that you can pick up right away when you are learning how to play the guitar. There’s a mix of some new pop songs and older classics in this list.

I’ve also written up the chords and lyrics. Click on a song to see the video, chords, and lyrics.

Top 5 Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners

1.) Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver
2.) Free Falling by Tom Petty
3.) Yellow by Coldplay
4.) Come On Get Higher by Matt Nathanson
5.) Sweet Home Alabama by Lynyrd Skynard

More Easy Guitar Songs for Beginners

6.) Clocks by Coldplay
7.) Teardrops On My Guitar by Taylor Swift
8.) Lost by Coldplay
9.) Realize by Colbie Caillat
10.) You’re Beautiful by James Blunt

What songs are you learning how to play? What easy guitar songs for beginners would you add to this list?

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Engaging Your Mind in Guitar Practice

By | Practice Tips | Leave a Comment

I have had some real difficulty lately motivating myself to learn new material on guitar. I’ve also had a hard time figuring out how to go about making progress with what I’ve already learned. As a practicing guitar player, it’s important to have a sense that you are progressing–but I’m not feeling that lately! It seems like whenever I sit down and practice I’m playing the same old licks, chord progressions, or scales. Maybe you can relate? What’s one to do?

Fortunately, I’ve been able to put into practice something that’s really helped me to have a sense of progress. I’ve talked before about how to practice guitar and get the most out of it, and those are all very good tips, but something I failed to mention was the importance of engaging your mind in your practice times.

What do I mean by this?

Just recently, I was practicing some scales and triads up and down the fretboard. I found it to be really easy to play a scale pattern or a triad pattern without much thought. And this is good in a certain regard because you are committing these scales and triads to muscle memory, but what I’ve been wary of is [...]

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Tension: a Guitar Player’s Worst Enemy

By | Practice Tips | 4 Comments

If your a guitarist who fingerpicks, solos, or just strums, tension can be your worst enemy. I’m talking about the tension in your hands, arms, fingers, shoulders, or anywhere else! It’s important that as guitar players we are aware of tension and how it affects our guitar playing.

Why Tension is Bad
Tension can have a lot of negative effects on your guitar playing. One of the most noticeable effects is that it can tremendously slow down your fingerpicking speed or how fast you execute a riff or lead line. Tension can also really limit the amount of time you can play your instrument in one sitting without experiencing soreness.

If you’re having a hard time with strumming, tension in the hand and the wrist can prevent you from strumming smoothly. It can also give you a hard time when it comes to playing a really fast strumming pattern.

What to do about Tension
There a lot of ways you can prevent and all together eliminate tension from your guitar playing. The more tension you can remove the better. Here are some things you can try.

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A Great Way to Develop Better Rhythm and Time

By | Beginner Guitar Lessons, Practice Tips | 1 Comment

When it comes to playing guitar, and playing it well, an unsteady rhythm and tempo just won’t fly.

Perhaps, you remember the video lessons on strumming patterns where I stressed over and over again (probably more than you had hoped for!) the importance of playing with consistent tempo and rhythm. You might know the sickest guitar riff or the most rockin’ strumming pattern, but if you’re timing is all off, then what good is that guitar riff or strumming pattern?

For some, a good sense of timing and rhythm comes very naturally to them. For others, this isn’t the case. However, no matter who are, we can all improve at keeping good time. Let’s look at some exercises we can do to improve our timing.

Meet the Metronome

First off, in case you don’t already know, a metronome is a nifty little device that sets a straight tempo to a click or a tick-tock. The picture on the left is an old-school metronome. Now days you can get an electronic metronome that looks just like guitar tuner. In fact, there are some guitars tuners that have built in metronomes.

Harnessing the Power of the Metronome

This might seem obvious, but simply setting the metronome to the tempo of a song you want to practice, and then playing along with the metronome, will definitely help you [...]

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How to Practice Guitar and Get the Most Out of It

By | Practice Tips | 1 Comment

I think everyone has heard the phrase, “Practice makes perfect.”

Let’s be real. If you want to become a better guitar player (or better ‘anything’ for that matter), you must practice! While this is really important to understand, I’d say it’s equally important that we have productive practices. Here are some ideas for the way you approach practicing guitar:

1.) Schedule it

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that the busyness of life won’t be sensitive to my music. In other words, if you don’t schedule a time to practice guitar, it probably won’t happen! Try to find consistent times in your week (half hour or hour blocks) that you can dedicate to practicing guitar. Personally, I’ve found that if I do this, I end up practicing a lot more than if I would otherwise.

2.) Create a practice space

Don’t just find a time to practice, but also find a place to practice. Get away from distractions. Lock yourself away. Get to a place where you won’t feel self-conscious about making mistakes or [...]

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Thoughts on Practice from a Wise, Old Guitarist

By | Musings, Practice Tips | 9 Comments

Just recently, I found a guy in my local newspaper selling quite a few quality, vintage guitars for a ridiculously cheap amount of money. In my interest, I called him and arranged a time to go over to see the guitars he was selling. He had a lot of guitars listed in the paper, but WOW, when I walked into the house there were high quality guitars everywhere! Hung on the walls, stored in cases behind the couch–everywhere!

His reason for selling his guitars was simply, “I’m just getting too old.” Bill was 81 years old. In talking to him, I found out that he actually played professionally all throughout his life. He ended up showing me some of his recordings, and man, they were impressive! Bill played guitar at lightning speeds with flawlessness.

So I said to him [...]

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