You can learn how to play acoustic guitar and make great music. You do not have to be a musical genius to play nice acoustic guitar. The trick is to keep it simple and clean. Learn how to strum chords, play simple riffs and patterns, and be able to accompany yourself while singing.

The guitar, like the piano, is among the few instruments that play chords. A chord is a cluster of notes played simultaneously. There are four types of chords:major, minor, diminished, and augmented. Each chord type produces a distinct sound. Music has three basic elements: melody, rhythm, and harmony. The harmony consists of chords.

It is easy to strum chords on an acoustic guitar . Each chord type has a finger position on the guitar’s fret board. Going from chord to chord becomes automatic with a little practice.

Popular songs are made up of a melody which uses standard chord progressions. A chord progression is a series of chords that fall into patterns. There are number of standard patterns that your ear probably already would recognize. This is how people play a song they have never heard before without any sheet music in front of them. They simply recognize the standard chord progression.

Learning to play melodies on the guitar is similar to learning to play chords. Melodies are based on standard major and minor scales. Once you become familiar with the standard scales is becomes easier to pick out melodies of songs without using the sheet music. This is the secret of improvising melody lines and soloing over a set of chord progressions.

Even though you can teach yourself you probably will progress faster if you have a good teacher. A teacher can get you started playing right from the beginning before you develop bad habits. When playing a musical instrument bad habits are hard to break once you have them. A guitar teacher can show you how to tune the guitar, change strings, how to keep your guitar in good repair and, of course, how to play it. A good guitar teacher knows a lot of tricks learned from experience that they can pass on to you.

Try to find a guitar teacher that plays a style that you like. There are many different musical styles for the guitar. If you want learn how to play acoustic guitar then you probably will want to learn to play folk or country blues style of guitar. Classical guitar is played on an acoustic guitar but it is much more difficult to play than folk and country blues styles. Country Western guitar often uses acoustic guitars too. Rock music will often use acoustic guitar for the rhythm guitar part while an electric guitar is used for the solo lead guitar parts.