Learn To Play Electric Guitar

By Dwayne Jenkins

Learn To Play Electric Guitar is a comprehensive course for beginners to get started enjoying the fun of playing the electric guitar. It will lead you on a path to electric guitar mastery.  It will show you in a very simple method of how to get started playing electric guitar.  Learn parts of the guitar, how to properly hold it, what

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tritone Publishing
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781736639382

Dwayne Jenkins

Dwayne Jenkins is an independent author, private instructor, accomplished musician, and entrepreneur. He has been an accomplished musician for 35 years and has authored many books on how to play guitar. He runs a very successful guitar-teaching business out of Denver, Colorado, and has been in business for over 20 years. Dwayne's has a unique teaching style that gets students of all ages and skill levels to have fun playing guitar quickly. His passion for music and teaching shines through with every lesson plan, book, and online course that he creates. So if you'd like to learn to play the guitar, no matter if it's electric or acoustic, be sure to get involved with Dwayne's Guitar Lessons, where more can be found at his website @dwaynesguitarlessons.com.

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Chapter 1 Getting Started

Lesson 1: Electric guitar parts

When it comes to getting started playing electric guitar nothing fancy is needed. Although I recommend you start with a quality entry level guitar or a pre-owned upgraded version of one. This will make learning easier and allow you to progress faster.

An electric guitar is very similar to an acoustic guitar, as far as some of the guitar parts, but where they differ is in the solid body. This allows for easier pickup installation & creativity options in body shapes and styles.

Once you find that guitar you really like, it motivates you to practice. That’s why it’s a good idea to get familiar with the guitar itself. All the parts of the guitar, how they function, and how you can use that to boost your inspiration.

The more you know about the guitar and how it works, the more appreciation you’ll begin to develop for this wonderful instrument. The guitar is the best instrument in the whole musical instrument family, and it is for this reason I choose to teach it.

So let’s look at the electric guitar and get familiar with the parts:

In the picture above we have the two most common types of electric guitars. The Fender Strat, and the Gibson Les Paul. So I will use these as a guideline. Although they are designed a bit differently, they are built very similar.

Headstock: This is the top of the guitar where the machine heads are located.

Machine Heads: These are what hold the strings on and get the guitar in tune.

Nut: This is what holds the guitar strings in place so that you can form chords.

Fretboard: This is the top of the guitar neck. It is where you will form and play your chords and scales.

Frets: The metal wires that separate the fretboard into playing positions.

Inlays: These are dots that represent where you are on the fretboard.

Strap Button: Where you apply a strap for playing standing up.

Pick Guard: This keeps the body of the guitar from getting scratched by the guitar pick when strumming chords.

Pickup Selector: This is what allows you to select different pickups for more tone diversity.

Pickups: These are what allow the electric guitar to be amplified and thus volume controlled to be louder.

Bridge: This is where the strings are held in place on the body of the guitar.

Volume & Tone Knobs: These are what allow you to control the volume & type of guitar tone.

Output Jack: This is for the cable that goes to the amplifier or effects pedals. This allows for more volume & tone options.

Almost all electric guitars are built like this with these features. It is such features as the pickups and output jack that allow the electric guitar to sound the way we know it today. They are what allow us to enhance the guitar tone with pedals.

We will get into guitar pedals a bit later in the training, but for now we want to just get familiar with the guitar itself. The more you know about your instrument and the components associated with it (amplifier included) the more you’ll be able to get out of it.

Pickups are very important because they produce different sounds for the guitar. In the Fender style guitar you have single coil pickups that produce a clear, crisp sound great for playing both rhythm & lead.

The Les Paul style guitar uses what’s known as humbuckers. Basically two single coil pickups together that produce a fatter more chunkier sound than single coil pickups. These can also be great for playing rhythm and lead guitar.

Both of these are great choices and provide a wide variety of guitar creativity for a number of different styles of music. The single coil pickups work great for certain styles and the dual coil (humbuckers) work great for others.

Some guitars out there have a combination of both single & dual pickups in them. These give you the best of both worlds. So that might be an option to consider as well. Just make sure it is of at least entry level quality if not better.

Depending on your style of musical inspiration, you want to choose the one that fits accordingly. Most guitar players eventually get both. Kind of like an apple and an orange. Similar fruits, but also very different.

Lesson 2: Learning guitar posture

When it comes to playing the guitar you can do it in two positions, sitting down or standing up. For our purposes here I recommend you learn the instrument sitting down. Later you can work at playing it standing up.

The electric guitar (acoustic also) is designed specifically for this purpose. To feel comfortable when playing it sitting down. The body shape is curved in such a way that you can play it sitting down and be comfortable.

This is how the electric guitar was originally played when it was just a backup instrument. As the years went by and the guitar started to get the spotlight, people started standing up to play it. This allowed for more radical guitar shapes to be created.

No matter if you sit down or stand up, you want to make sure the guitar feels comfortable. Sitting down, it should rest on your leg like the picture below.

If you choose to stand up to play it while you learn, that’s ok too. You just need to get you a guitar strap so that the guitar can hang comfortably when you play it. This will hook on two ends of the guitar like the picture below.

When playing the guitar standing up, you want to make sure that the guitar is well balanced. So some adjustment might need to be made. But ultimately it should look something like this:

If you choose to play standing up, get a good guitar strap.

Lesson 3: Positioning of both hands

Playing the guitar is a combination of both mental and physical activity. Especially the hands. One hand is doing one thing, while the other is doing something completely different. This is what can make the instrument a bit challenging at first.

But not to worry, this method book will make learning to play the electric guitar as easy as possible. That way you’ll spend more time learning and playing, and less time scratching your head trying to figure it all out.

One hand will be your fretboard hand where you will learn to form guitar chords and switch between them. Your other hand will be your picking hand where you will learn to create rhythm and melody. By strumming and picking the strings.

Your fretboard hand

With this hand you will form and play the guitar chords. These will be the foundation for the song progression. Development of this hand is crucial and