Recently (like yesterday), I noticed on Gfam a picture of Niels holding a guitar. My very rational and immediate response was, “He thinks he's better than me!”

Remarkably, this GIF accurately portrays how all my guitar lessons usually end...

I then proceeded to read the caption under his picture,and it stated that he is picking up the guitar. Phew, I've got one or two weeks before he matches my skill level, I thought to myself.

Seeing as it's only a matter of time before Niels is making crazy guitar videos on Cinnamon where he's playing so fast that smoke arises from the fret board, I figured I could give him one or two pointers before he surpasses me. That way when he becomes a rock star, I can ride on his coattails of fame.

One of the best ways to start learning an instrument is to learn an easy song with not a lot of chord changes. Yes, technique is important, but I've found when too much technique is introduced to a new student, it kills their moral or drive to learn and desire to play. With a simple song, it gets the student's fingers on the fret board, and motivates them to play. With all that said, here is one of the first songs I like to show to new students.

Free Falling by Tom Petty

This is such a great song for beginners because it's basically a three chord progression, for most of the song. On top of that, the three chords that are used are extremely similar. This song is a great selection to perform at an open mic, or sitting around a campfire. Regardless of where you perform it, people will sing along. Let's get to the chords, eh?

What the Sus?

This song uses the D chord, and two Dsus chords. Sus stands for suspended. I could totally go in to why it's called that because I'm like super smart, but it's not important at this time. All you need to know is that a sus chord only has one note changed from the original chord. Let's look at the chords we'll be playing.

Take your time and really make sure you are playing each chord correctly. A great tip for learning new chords is, play each string that is in the chord one at a time. A beginner mistake is to just strum the chord as you're learning it. If you just strum the chord, you might have a dead note that gets buried under all the notes that are sounding. I had a guitar instructor say to me once, “Learn it correctly the first time, so you don't have to go back and unlearn the bad habit, and reteach yourself the right way.”

The Progression

For the last part of this lesson, I want to go over the progression of the chords. Progression in music means the order in which the chords are played. Once you can play all three chords decently, practice them in this order:

• D
• Dsus4
• Dsus4
• D
• Dsus2

Don't worry about the rhythm just yet, I'll be covering that in the next lesson. Another common mistake for beginners is to take on too much when learning, get discouraged, and quit. That brings me to my last point.

Practice in Many Short Bursts!

Ten to twenty minute practice sessions at the beginning. Keep the session to something you can obtain in that session alone. I've also found that when most beginners go with long practice sessions, their brain goes on auto pilot.

NickelNDime Out!

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