How to Select a Starter Guitar

I can’t tell you how many folks decide to learn to play the guitar, but get discouraged, and sometimes even stop, simply because they picked the wrong type of guitar to learn on. If only they had chosen the right guitar for a beginner, they would be enjoying playing today. One of the reasons guitar beginners are tempted to give up is because they have a guitar with hard action. The best way to learn guitar is for the student to have a guitar that is easy to practice on.

Many people stop practicing because it becomes too painful, because they chose a guitar that has a hard or heavy action. This means it is simply too difficult to push the string down to the fretboard, in order to make a chord. This makes the fingers so sore that it hurts to practice. A small amount of soreness is expected until calluses are built up on the ends of the fingers. But extreme soreness discourages good practice habits. The best way to learn guitar is to use a classical guitar or an electric. The classical guitar has a lighter action because it uses nylon strings instead of steel, and the electric guitar uses strings that are smaller in diameter, and therefore easier to play.

One good advantage that the classical guitar has is that it has a wider neck, which makes it less difficult to learn to play chords without the fingers getting in each others way. If you have small hands, however, the electric would be better, as it has a much narrower neck. Keeping these guidelines in mind will aid beginning guitar students to get off to a good start and learn guitar fast.