First, before you even attempt to play any music you need to be aware of how you are holding the guitar in your arms and yourself in the chair. Sit towards the front edge of the chair, and while you are playing the guitar resist the temptation to move your butt back in the chair. Moving back puts your body into a posture where you resemble a sack of potatoes held to the ground by gravity. If you maintain your posture with a little discipline, you will have much greater freedom of movement while you are learning to play the guitar.



You must remember to not put too much tension into your left wrist, so before you start playing, check out how it feels to have your thumb held slightly above the center line of the guitar neck with the line of the fingers running parallel to the neck of the guitar. The purpose of this position is to allow your fingers to go anywhere they want on the fretboard without straining your wrist. Your left fingernails need to be kept short so you can place the tips of the fingers squarely behind the frets.

Do not rest your right hand anywhere. If you rest it on the top of the guitar body you are restricting its movement. It is much harder to move your hand from a state of inertia, so put up with any slight discomfort at the beginning, and later you will not even notice it.

Now let us get to tuning your guitar. As you learn more about acoustic guitar playing you will find out about guitar pitch pipes, tuning forks and electronic guitar tuners. These gadgets help you get your guitar to what is called concert pitch. This is just an agreed on tuning so that when a bunch of musicians play together they know what pitch to tune their instruments to. Whether your guitar is at concert pitch or not you can still play it, so you need to learn how to tune the guitar to itself.

If you have your sixth string at the pitch you want it, you get the fifth string in tune by putting a left hand finger on the fifth fret of the sixth string. Play the note. This is what your fifth string should sound like, so as you are listening to the sound of the sixth string, play the open fifth string. Keep sounding these two strings and adjusting the pitch of the fifth string until they sound the same.

Once the sixth and fifth strings are in tune put your finger on the fifth string at the fifth fret and play the note. This is D, the note of the open fourth string. Turn the tuning peg on the fourth string until the open string matches the sound of the fifth string played at the fifth fret.

The next string is the third which is the G. The process for tuning the third string is the same as for the others - the G is tuned to the fifth fret of the fourth string.

Now for a slight change. You will be tuning the second string to B which is the note on the FOURTH fret on the third string. For the final note which is E, you go back to the fifth fret on the second string and tune the open first string to match it.

Tuning the guitar is a bit tricky to start with but practice will show you that your ear has its own intelligence and if you just relax and let your ear do its work tuning your acoustic guitar will not be the chore you think it is.