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-5.23.04-

Thie is a chapter from my up coming book on how to play the guitar. Hopefully if you are a beginner, you will find this info to be usefull. Some of this stuff is very basic, but it's important. Hopefully as we move along, this page will help a wide variety of players.

The first thing you want to do is become comfortable. I want to break down playing guitar in an easy, fun way. Holding the guitar- One of the things you will read in this book quite often is how I want you to be creative in the way you approach this instrument. I truly believe there is no one true way to play the guitar. If you watch guitar players that you admire, the one thing that they all have in common is that they all have their own style. Having your own style is vital to your growth as a guitar player. In this first chapter we are going to go over a couple different ways to hold the guitar as well as finger placement. The pictures will act as a guide to help you get a better idea of some of the different ways you can hold the guitar and basic finger placements.

Holding the guitar:

There are a couple of different ways to hold the guitar and in this section i am going to take some time out to show you some different ways to hold the guitar.

Figure one: this is the way i like to hold the guitar. I make a broken v with my legs and i scoot up a bit in my chair. I let the guitar rest between my chests and legs. I personally like holding the guitar this way for a couple of reasons. First off, i have a good view of the fretboard from this angle, i also like how my elbow is off of my leg and is at an angle this is important to me because it makes it much easier to fret chords and i have more freedom to move around the neck.

Figure two: this is another way you can hold the guitar. I have the guitar on my right leg. The guitar balances well this way because of the way the body of the guitar is cut. This is another popular way to play the guitar.

Both methods work well. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable. Take some time in figuring out which way is most comfortable to you. The nice thing is once you start getting a good grasp of the instrument, you can play both ways with ease.