Hey there fellow country guitar players and learners -

Today’s lesson is geared towards beginners that want to get up and running with their first country guitar song.  As they say at Guitar Tricks, it doesn’t matter which song you want to play – you need to learn and practice the essentials so you can be on your way to playing all of your favorite country songs.

Hand and Finger Strength

The first thing you want to practice as a beginner is finger strengthening.  I learned early on that building up your muscles will be a major factor in determining how long you can play for.  I do several exercises every single day to keep my hands and fingers strong and I definitely recommend beginner guitarists to do the same.  Spend about 5 minutes pressing down each string on different frets up and down the guitar with each finger.  This will help strengthen your hands and fingers.

Learning Country Chords

This is pretty essential – you will want to learn the basic chords.  These are essential for guitar playing and can actually get you on your feet playing music for your friends in no time.  The easiest country guitar chords that you are going to want to learn first are the D, G, C, A, and E chords.

Some guitar chords are harder than others so I recommend you start with the easiest ones first.  You may find some chords easier than others so I would recommend that you try playing all of them and decide which ones are easy for you to learn.  When I started, I first learned the E and D chords.  I had most trouble with the C chord because of the stretch you have to do (and I have small hands).

Learning Rhythm

Learning to play rhythm is an essential skill you will need for play country guitar.  It took me quite awhile to learn proper rhythm but eventually it just clicked.  I don’t know how it will be for you.  Some players are great with rhythm and pick it up very quick while others are terrible and take awhile to learn.  If I can offer any advice, it’s to practice strumming both down and up when you play.  The upstroke might feel awkward at first, but eventually you’ll get used to it.

Learning Scales

These are a little more advanced, but if you are serious about being a great guitar player, you are going to want to start practicing scales.  Scales will teach you how and why certain notes are played in certain areas and the patterns that are present on the guitar.  It’s these patterns that guitar players build leads out of.  So, if you plan on playing lead guitar, you will want to learn scales.  I recommend waiting until you’ve mastered a few chords and have your rhythm down before moving on to them.

Any questions or comments?  Feel free to leave them below.

One of the important parts of the guitar is your guitar warm up routine.  I cannot stress to you beginner players how vital it is that you warm up before each play session.  I know that you are excited to get going and learn some songs, but you must understand that the warm up is what’s going to strengthen your fingers, forearms, picking hand and habits.  So always devote some time to warming up, even if it’s only for 5 minutes.

One of my favorite exercises to warm up with is what I will call the 1-2-3-4 step ladder.  I totally just made that up right now because I don’t know the exact name for this warm up.  You can find a similar warm up exercise over at ultimate guitar that I would recommend you try.  But what you do is you start with your fingering hand (the one that holds down the strings) and you place it at the 1st fret (the fret closest to the end of the neck).

You first place your index finger on the 1st fret on the fattest string.  With the string held down, pick that string with your other hand.

Now, the next move is to take your middle finger and place it on the 2nd fret on the same string.  So, you’ll be placing your middle finger next to your index finger, essentially.  Now pick the same string again.  Make sure that the note is ringing clear.  It may hurt to press down, but that’s why you warm up everyday   It is important to get your fingers used to this feeling and to strengthen them.

The next move is to place your ring ringer on the 3rd fret of the same fat string.  Once again, pick the string again making sure that it is ringing clean.  Are you starting to understand the pattern here?  I hope so!  I’m sorry for not providing pictures or videos.  In the future, I will add video.

The next move is the hardest.  You must take your pinky and place it on the 4th fret of the fattest string!  This will be a tough stretch for you, but it is WAY worth practicing.  There are many players that neglect their pinky, which they regret later on.  Do not neglect the pinky.  Learn to love the pain because it will make you a great player

For the next step, you’re going to repeat this whole pattern for the next string.  So take your index finger and place it on the 1st fret on the second fattest string (the 5th string).  Strum it and then move on to your middle finger, ring finger, and then pinky again.

Do this pattern on all of the strings for this warm up.  This is a great warm up that will literally make you a much better guitar player than 95% of beginners out there.  Most beginner guitarists do not practice correctly.  It is important that you do this warm up every day before playing.  I still do this warm up every single day.  I guarantee that you will have great speed and strength within just 1 month of doing this which will make you a great country guitar player.

A lot of guitar players are searching the web for guitar practice exercises.  Unfortunately, many beginner guitarists do not know how to practice correctly.

But this is a common issue and I suffered from it as well when I was first learning how to play.

So, the purpose of this article is to teach you how to practice correctly.

After reading through, you should know exactly how to approach any exercise out there on the internet (I’m not going to provide you with specific guitar exercises).

Alright, with your guitar hand, let’s dive in!

Practice Slowly

What I have noticed among many beginning guitarists is that they try to play strings and chords way too fast without first mastering the fingering technique.

This bad habit leads to developing poor technique such as weak fingering, “flying fingers”, muscle straining, and other bad habits that can develop from practicing incorrectly.

As a solution, it is very important that you approach all chords, tabs, licks, etc. with a practice mindset.

What I mean by this is that you approach your lesson with the idea of learning how to correctly play it instead of just jumping into it and trying to play up to speed.

The solution is to practice slowly.

You want to keep your fingers as close to the fret board as possible when you transition from note to note or chord to chord.

Do this SLOWLY!!!

Always practice slowly.  Have I said it enough?

If you notice, when moving quickly your fingers may “fly out” which is a bad habit that many beginners develop.

I personally had this problem for years…

I had to go back and practice my scales moving very slowly from note to note until I could move quickly while keeping my fingers close to the strings.

If I had practiced this when I first began, this would not have been an issue later on and I would have advanced much more quickly.

Let’s say you have a song with 3 chords that you are trying to learn.  What you want to do is practice getting your fingers on the correct strings so that the chord rings out nicely.

When you are able to play the chord correctly and smoothly, practice moving your fingers to the next chord slowly and efficiently, keeping your fingers close to the strings.

The “flying fingers” is one of the worst guitar bad habits to develop.

The reason is because when you move onto learning fast guitar licks, you are going to have a lot of trouble playing fast when your fingers are 2 inches away from the strings.

This habit took me a few months to crush because I developed it over the first couple of years when I was a beginner.

Don’t make this same mistake as I did!

Practice correctly and you will be able to correctly play any lesson out there while improving faster than 95% of all beginners.

If you’re looking for plenty of exercises to practice, I recommend Guitar Tricks as THE place to learn guitar.  Try it out.

Jeff

I got an e-mail last week from a visitor and he asks:

Hi Jeff, I really enjoy your site and have learned some good exercises.  I especially like the advice about the warm-up.  I’m brand new and haven’t tried anything like that at all so it’s great stuff.

I also watched the video on the right about Guitar Tricks and it really got me thinking about joining.  But I want to hear your opinion about the site before I throw down $15 per month to join.  I’m only in high school and I don’t have that much money lol.  -Abel S.

I gave Abel a long and detailed e-mail about why I like Guitar Tricks and he has since joined upon my recommendation.  I decided that it would be a good idea for me to tell the rest of you all about it.

I have personally been a member of Guitar Tricks for over 2 years now and I have found much use for it for learning Country Guitar.

Here’s what I like about Guitar Tricks: I’m currently logged in and looking at the Country Music section.  There’s at least 100 high quality video lessons here about everything from the basics to advance stuff like chicken picking.  There are also over 20 instructors just in the country category.

I am also a fan of metal music (country and metal – weird right?) and I especially enjoy the guitar lessons they have on metal music.  There are also a bunch of other categories and I think the site is up to around 1600 video lessons now which is very impressive.

Here’s What I Don’t Like: It’s a video lesson site so in order to use it, you have got to be on the computer to access the information (you can’t print off a video.  But that would be awesome if that technology exists in the future!).

You also should have a good internet connection so you can watch the videos in high quality format.  They are great in high quality and very easy to follow, but they are only decent in the low quality version.

Overall Feeling: I have a good internet connection at my school and a laptop that I can setup anywhere with my wireless connection.  Therefore, I really enjoy Guitar Tricks.  I like to put my laptop on the table in my apartment, sit down on the couch with my guitar, and learn from the video lessons on the site.  Therefore, it’s worth the $15 per month price tag for me and I let my roommates use it as well when they want.

It’s great for practicing your scales and warming up as well.  I have learned a bunch of different warm-ups from the teachers at Guitar Tricks and you know that I’m big on the warm-up.  There’s also a lot of videos that teach different picking techniques.  I’ve been practicing my finger picking lately and the videos they have on that are great.

So there you have it.  It’s been worth it for me and I’ve been able to watch it grow from it’s infancy of only 200 video lessons at $8 per month to the Juggernaut that it’s become today.

Click Here to Check Out Guitar Tricks

Feel free to leave comments on this post with any questions about the site or feel free to email me and I’ll get back to you asap.

Jeff