Best Way To Learn Guitar At Home 2024 – Step By Step

You might be asking yourself… “Is it even possible to learn the guitar from home?”

And the answer is “absolutely, yes,” but chances are you’re going to need some help along the way.

Well, you’re in the right place at the right time, because we’re going to show you, step by step, the best way to learn guitar from home.

While at the core of it you'll need to get low-cost, convenient online lessons from world-class guitar teachers, there are other things you'll need to consider… Which we outline below.

Are you ready to start your guitar journey? Then let’s get going!

1. Get To Know Your Instrument & Develop Your Comfort Level

I always start my students off on guitar anatomy.

That’s a complex way of saying “the different parts of the guitar.”

The only tool required for this step is your guitar.

The guitar might seem a confusing and intimidating instrument at first, but you’ll find it helpful to identify its various parts.

Starting at the thinner end of the guitar, we have the headstock (or head). The headstock is home to your tuning pegs.

Just below the headstock, there should be a small piece of ebony, ivory, cowbone, brass, Corian or plastic with string grooves in it. This is known as the nut.

Next up is the neck of the guitar. The flat side is known as the fretboard or fingerboard, and is home to thin, metallic strips called frets (or fret wires). Frets, by the way, are usually made of 18% nickel, 80% copper, and small amounts of zinc, lead, or cadmium.

The thicker end of the guitar is known as the body and is also home to the bridge (this is usually where the strings terminate on the body end of the guitar).

If you have an acoustic guitar, you should also have a soundhole, and if you have an electric guitar, you’ll have a pickup or several pickups in its place. Electric guitars may also come with a pickup switch, volume knobs, tone knobs, etc.

If you have a standard guitar (and it’s fully stringed), then your guitar should have six strings total – thinner strings at the bottom (if you were holding the guitar upright), and thicker strings at the top.

Do I Have An Acoustic Or Electric Guitar?

Acoustic and electric guitars are relatively easy to tell apart, but it’s always a good idea to know which you’re working with.

Acoustic guitars typically have thicker bodies and soundholes. Some electric guitars have soundholes too, but they always have pickups.

Although some acoustic guitars come with electronics as well, they are considered acoustic-electrics and not electrics.

Electric guitars come with a pickup (or multiple pickups) in place of a soundhole. Pickups can be different colors (typically white or black) and can have different appearances, but often have six metallic pieces (lined up with the strings) sticking out of them.

Key Learnings From Step 1:

• Memorize your guitar’s anatomy – it’s easy!
• Identify whether you have an acoustic or electric guitar
• There are three types of electric guitar pickups – single coil, double coil (humbucker), and P90s
• Learn how to hold your guitar with proper posture (method books can help with this – we offer a couple of recommendations later in the guide)

2. Start Off With A Finger Exercise

Next, I have my students play through a finger exercise. The only tool required for this step is your guitar, and a guitar pick (or plectrum).

Once you’ve mastered this exercise, you’ll be able to start playing a lot of simple exercises, scales, melodies, and songs!

As noted earlier, you have six strings on your guitar. From thickest to thinnest, these are: E, A, D, G, B, E. We also number them: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 from thickest to thinnest. We will be using all strings for this exercise.

Now, we need to turn our attention to the guitar pick.

A pick should be held between your thumb and index finger for maximum efficiency. Your thumb should be pointed in the direction of your headstock, while your index finger is pointed towards the body of the guitar.

I suggest holding the pick close to the tip (sharp end) versus at the middle or at the thicker end. It’s easier to get started with picking and strumming when you hold the pick “short.”

Now we need to talk about your “fretting hand.” If the hand holding the pick is the “picking” or “strumming” hand, then the other hand would be your fretting hand.

You will be using the fingers on your fretting hand to “fret” notes. We need to cover what that looks like, because there are some subtleties that make it work.

When fretting a note, you need to place your finger close to the fret, but not on top of it. You will also need to apply some pressure to the string (towards the fretboard), or the note will come out buzzing or muted.

Now for the exercise.

Starting at the sixth string, I want you to play fret one with your index finger, fret two with your middle finger, fret three with your ring finger, and fret four with your pinky. You will need to play one note at a time.

With your picking hand, alternate. Pick the first note using a downstroke. Pick the second note with an upstroke. Then down, then up. Rinse, repeat.

Then, do the same thing for all strings – 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1.

Once you’ve gotten the hang of that, try it backwards. Start at the fourth fret of the first string, and play fret four with your pinky, fret three with your ring finger, fret two with your middle finger, and fret one with your index finger.

Then do the same thing for all strings – 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Key Learnings From Step 2:

• Know your strings – E (6), A (5), D (4), G (3), B (2), E (1)
• You learned how to hold a pick – instill good habits early
• Your fretting hand – index, middle, ring, pinky
• Fretting notes (practice plenty until you can get a clear sound out of every note – place your finger close to the fret and apply pressure towards the fretboard)
• Alternate picking (downstroke, upstroke, down, up, etc.)

Try This!

Now that you know the names of your strings (E, A, D, G, B, E), it would also be a promising idea to learn how to tune your guitar.

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Using a guitar tuner (or reference pitch, like piano) is generally wise.
• Turn your tuning pegs clockwise to tighten the string and take the pitch up. Turn them counterclockwise to loosen and take the pitch down (this may be different depending on how your guitar was set up).
• It can take a while to train your ear but try to listen for the notes as you’re tuning up (but don’t worry about trying to tune by ear yet).
• Remember – your sixth string is supposed to be the lowest or deepest note. The first string is the highest note.

3. Get A Guitar Method Book & Work On The First Few Pages

As noted earlier, once you’ve gone through the finger exercise a few dozen times (practice makes perfect, right?), you’ll be more than ready to start picking up simple songs, melodies, scales, riffs, and more.

Guitar method books tend to contain a lot of simple examples you’ll likely be able to work through without much hassle.

Here are a couple of tried and true (if boring) method books that take a “one string at a time” style approach:

• Hal Leonard Guitar Method Book 1
• Belwin’s 21st Century Guitar Method 1

In these books (and ones like them), you will discover:

• The staff
• Rhythm notation (whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, etc.)
• Time signatures
• Tied notes
• Pickup notes
• Dotted notes
• Repeat signs
• Basic chords – C, G, G7, D, D7, E, C, Am, Dm, Em
• Strumming
• Rests

Now, the expectation here isn’t necessarily that you will work your way through the entire book all on your own.

See, the method book works well for a certain type of student. Not all.

If you’re able to figure out notes on the first, second, and third strings (in standard notation), you’re doing better than most!

But every guitarist should have a method book at the ready, especially if they are learning from home.

You can work on an exercise or two here and there and make it part of your practice routine. Instead of making it your entire routine. That’s honestly more than enough torture (sight reading isn’t always fun for a guitarist!).

Key Learnings From Step 3:

• When learning from home, a guitar method book is essential
• Method books can teach you the basics of standard notation and sight reading
• Method books work well for some students – others shouldn’t worry about spending too much time inside them
• If you make it through the first book, most publishers have a second and third volume you can purchase to take your playing and sight reading further

4. Learn How Guitar Tab Works

Learning to read guitar tab (or tablature) is going to open a ton of options for you in terms of what you can learn.

It probably wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say most guitarists rely on tabs when it comes to learning songs.

Here we’ll offer a basic explanation of how to read tabs, but there are a ton of resources available to supplement what you learn here.

We’ll also look at a few techniques you should learn at this stage, and some songs you can start working on right away.

The Basics Of Guitar Tab

Guitar tablature is a form of guitar music notation that’s significantly easier than standard notation to read. That might explain why it’s so heavily used by guitarists at every skill level.

Guitar tab is represented by six horizontal lines. What does the number six remind you of? Six guitar strings, right? So, naturally, the six lines signify your strings.

What may take a little getting used to is how the lines are arranged. The line at the top is supposed to be your first string, while the line at the bottom is your sixth string.

1|--------|E
2|--------|B
3|--------|G
4|--------|D
5|--------|A
6|--------|E

The numbers printed on top of the lines represent fret numbers (the above tab is blank, but all tabs have fret number indications). So, if you saw a “2” on the bottom line, for example, you would play the second fret on your sixth string.

As well, it’s important to note that tab is meant to be read left to right. So, if you saw something like this:

|-0-2-3-0-5-0-|

It means you would play open, second, third, open, fifth, and open, in that order (not in the reverse order). In the above example, the string is not specified, but if it were on the third line from the top, you would play that on your third string.

(By the way, “open” refers to any notes that aren’t fretted).

One other thing worth mentioning now is when you see numbers stacked on top of each other. Like this:

|-2-3-2-3-2-3-|
|-3-3-3-3-3-3-|

The technical term for this would be a “double stop” or “dyad,” as we see two notes stacked together. Of course, in guitar tab, you can have up to six notes stacked on top of each other simultaneously. You probably shouldn’t be tackling anything with that level of complexity yet, but just so you know.

Anyway, if you saw the above, it would basically mean to play the two notes together. Let’s say those numbers appeared on the top two lines of the tab. That means you would fret those notes on the first and second strings, and play (or strum) them together.

Those are the basics of guitar tab. We could go into a lot more detail, but as noted, there are many resources you can refer to, and the above is more than enough to get you started.

A Few Techniques To Master

At this step, it would be worth working on the following techniques (I usually work on these over the course of three to four lessons):

• Single note riffs. This means stringing together a sequence of notes (one note at a time) to create a riff. You don’t necessarily need to be able to produce your own riff yet, but you should learn to play simple ones like “Day Tripper.” If you can play the finger exercise from earlier, you’ve got the essence of this already.
• Power chords. To play a power chord you’ll need to place your index finger on a bass note (on the sixth, fifth, or fourth string), and your ring finger on the string below it, two frets apart. This creates a movable shape you can take up and down the neck.
• Double stops. A power chord is a form of a double stop. A double stop (or dyad) is any two notes on the guitar played together. You should get this technique under your fingers if you want to be able to play songs like “Smoke On The Water” and “Brown Eyed Girl.”
• Triads. A triad is a chord. And on the guitar, it’s basically the steppingstone onto open chords. Three distinct notes played together makes a triad. Be sure to work on this so you can play “Sunday Bloody Sunday” with more ease.

Palm Muting

This step is getting quite long already, but one more technique that’s worthy of your attention (especially as we’ve gotten into power chords), is palm muting.

Technically, it doesn’t use the palm at all – more like the fleshy part of the side of your strumming hand.

You would lightly place this part of your hand on the strings (as close to the bridge as possible) and slightly “deaden” the strings to produce a short, staccato “chug.”

This technique is used a lot by rock, punk rock, and metal players alike.

Here are a few songs featuring power chords and palm muting that are worth a look:

• Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
• Green Day – “When I Come Around”
• Scorpions – “Rock You Like A Hurricane”

Song Recommendations For Beginners:

Try looking up the following songs on:

• Ultimate Guitar
• Songsterr

These are among the best tab and interactive tab sites available.

In some cases, you may not be able to learn entire songs, but work on the parts that makes sense to you now and return to the ones that don’t make sense to you later.

• The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army” (main riff)
• Steve Miller Band – “The Joker” (main riff)
• The Beatles – “Day Tripper” (main riff)
• Roy Orbison – “Oh, Pretty Woman” (main riff)
• 54-40 – “Ocean Pearl” (main riff)
• Michael Jackson – “Beat It” (main riff)
• Deep Purple – “Smoke On The Water” (main riff)
• Van Morrison – “Brown Eyed Girl” (intro riff)
• U2 – “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (main riff)

Key Learnings From Step 4:

• You learned how to read tab (congratulations!)
• You discovered some new techniques – single note riffs, power chords, double stops, and triads
• The palm muting technique along with song recommendations
• Take advantage of Ultimate Guitar and Songsterr for your guitar tab needs
• You were given several songs to work on – go and try those riffs (you’ll learn entire songs later!)

5. Learn Your Chords (It’s Bootcamp Time!)

Okay, so I’m not going to lie – some students come ready to work on chords out of the box. They don’t mess around with any of the above, they just go straight to chords!

And there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve just found from experience that most students stand a much better chance learning a few riffs like “Ocean Pearl” or “Beat It” first as opposed to jumping straight into fretting and strumming chords.

By now, you’re probably starting to see that guitar is all about the coordination between your two hands – your “fretting” hand, and your “picking” or “strumming” hand, as it were.

Chording is where it all comes together, because once you get the fretting hand part down, it starts to become all about creating rhythms with your strumming hand.

Here are the main chords you should be working on at this stage:

A, C, D, E, G, Am, Dm, Em

And there are a few “special” chords you can work on if you want to earn some bonus points (but don’t feel obligated to):

A7, D7, E7, G7

These chords are known as “open chords,” because they utilize some open (unfretted) notes.

I also sometimes call them “three-finger chords,” because most of them (except for Em, A7, and E7), require three fingers to play.

Here are a few tips to help you master these chord shapes:

• Ideally, all your fingers would be right up against the fret wires. This can be a little challenging with chord shapes, so you can go easy on yourself. No need to strain.
• “Make it, break it, make it…” Holding down a chord and strumming it a bunch of times is not practicing the fretting of the chord. To practice the fretting, make the chord shape with your fretting hand, strum it, break it, then make it again. Rinse, repeat.
• Practice switching between various chords. Most if not all songs require you being able to play through chord changes on the fly. So, spend plenty of time working on this.

Now we need to work on your strumming hand.

Your wrist should be nice and loose, and as far as holding a pick is concerned, refer to what was said earlier.

You need to be able to play both downstrokes and upstrokes and alternate between the two. It should be noted, though, that not all strumming patterns constantly alternate between down and upstrokes (for instance, there are patterns that are more along the lines of “down, down, up, down, up, down”).

Once you’ve gotten the hang of that, it’s all about strumming patterns.

This is where your work inside guitar method books can pay off big time, because you understand note values.

Here are some simple strumming patterns to try:

• One whole note strum followed by two half note strums (two bars)
• Constant quarter note strums
• Constant eighth note strums
• A bar of quarter note strums followed by a bar of eighth note strums
• A bar of eighth note strums followed by a bar of quarter note strums
• And so on

Just so you know, any rhythm can be turned into a strumming pattern (try it out for yourself!).

Using Dynamics To Enhance Your Playing

Playing dynamically gives you more “range” as a guitar player.

If you can only play at one volume, all your playing starts to sound alike.

But if you can use a softer touch during intimate moments, “build” into choruses, go full-out when emotional intensity is needed, you’ll become a much better player overall.

Most of this, as you might expect, comes down to your strumming hand. So, work on your right-hand technique and try different approaches so you can create more interest (dynamics) in your rhythmic playing.

You Can Arpeggiate Too!

Arpeggiating means to pick notes out of a chord. We could simply call this “picking” as well.

Strumming is a great technique, and an essential one, but you should also learn to pick. This can certainly help with your dynamics as well.

Here are a few songs with riffs that lean heavily on picking:

• Boston – “More Than A Feeling” (intro and verse riff)
• The Police – “Every Breath You Take” (this might be a tough one!)
• Harem Scarem – “Slowly Slipping Away” (intro)

Song Recommendations:

• Traveling Wilburys – “End Of The Line” (some straight up, methodical strumming here – easy in theory, but hard to keep consistent!)
• Tom Petty – “Free Fallin’”
• Eagles – “Tequila Sunrise”
• Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Bad Moon Rising”
• Deep Blue Something – “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”
• Bob Dylan – “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”
• Eagle-Eye Cherry – “Save Tonight”

Key Learnings From Step 5:

• You learned about open chords and which ones you need to work on
• How to fret chords
• How to practice chords
• Strumming hand technique and patterns
• Dynamics
• Arpeggiating/picking
• Songs you can work on (only move onto the next step when you feel like you’ve got a handle on these – after all, this is chording bootcamp!)

6. Get Those Scales Under Your Fingers

To this point, we’ve looked at a variety of techniques, riffs, and songs, and you should be starting to develop a bit of a comfort level on your instrument.

And chances are, if you’ve followed the steps to this point, you’ve already encountered scales, either directly or indirectly.

A scale is a sequence of notes that sound good together. And most scales, like the major or minor scale, or even the modes of the major scale, are all “diatonic” scales (meaning they have seven notes in them).

At this point, the most essential scales to learn are:

• The C major scale (C, D, E, F, G, A, B)
• The A minor scale (A, B, C, D, E, F, G)
• The A minor pentatonic scale (A, C, D, E, G)
• The A blues scale (A, C, D, Eb, E, G)

You could also work on the modes of the major scale if you wanted to earn some bonus points.

Now, you may have noticed that the minor pentatonic scale only has five notes in it. Well, that’s the very definition of “penta,” which means five!

As for the blues scale, it could technically be considered a “hexatonic” scale with six notes, but some guitarists refer to it as the pentatonic scale “with the blues notes thrown in.”

In any case, the great thing about learning scales on the guitar is that the shapes are movable. So, you can easily play the same scales in different keys just by moving the entire shape up or down the fretboard.

Now, when I say shape, “pattern” is another suitable word for it. A scale is not a chord. The notes within a scale are meant to be played one at a time.

Regardless, your goal here should be to work on the above scales. You should learn how to play them forwards and backwards, with alternate picking of course!

If you’ve got an iOS device, then it might be worth checking out Guitar Gravitas. It’s an extensive chord, arpeggio, and scale library that will show you exactly how to play all your scale patterns. If you’re using an Android phone, you could check out Guitar Scales & Patterns.

Key Learnings From Step 6:

• A scale is a sequence of notes that sound good together (usually seven notes, but sometimes fewer, sometimes more)
• The major scale, minor scale, minor pentatonic scale, and blues scale
• Scale patterns are movable/transferrable to different parts of the neck
• Work on your scale patterns forwards and backwards using alternate picking (practice often)
• Take advantage of apps like Guitar Gravitas or Guitar Scales & Patterns to learn your scale patterns

Try This!

Using the minor pentatonic scale (also known as the “box pattern”), produce your first solo.

The trick here is to mix up the notes instead of just playing them forwards and backwards.

Don’t overthink this. Start messing around with notes, rhythms, and dynamics to come up with a simple solo using the minor pentatonic scale.

Also, Google techniques like:

• Hammer-ons
• Pull-offs
• Slides

And start working on these too!

7. It’s Time To Mix It Up With Fingerpicking

There are many ways of playing the guitar. And it’s time to start expanding your horizons a little.

So far, we’ve focused on playing your guitar with a pick. But you can also pick and “pluck” notes with your fingers.

This is called “fingerpicking,” and it’s a popular way of creating variety in one’s playing.

And before you knock it and call it “soft,” you might be surprised to discover that everyone from Jimmy Page and Mark Knopfler to Lyndsey Buckingham and Eric Clapton simply wouldn’t be what they are if they didn’t fingerpick on occasion.

And of course, there are some stellar fingerstyle guitarists out there dedicated to the craft, be it Chet Atkins, Tommy Emmanuel, Michael Hedges, Phil Keaggy, Andy McKee, Igor Presnyakov, or otherwise.

So, here are the basics:

Fingerpicking is generally done with your thumb, index, middle, and ring fingers. These are labeled p, i, m, and a respectively (derived from the Spanish terms for the same fingers). Though when it comes to masters like Doyle Dykes, they use their pinkies too.

The thumb plays the lower bass notes while the upper three strings are played with your index, middle, and ring fingers.

There are plenty of variations on this, of course, but it’s always good to start with the basics.

Song Recommendations:

At this point, the songs are starting to get a little more difficult. You might not even be ready for some of these, which is okay. You can always come back to them when you’re ready.

That said, these are some excellent songs to listen to and study. Don’t forget – you can take advantage of YouTube to watch your heroes play these to perfection:

• Fleetwood Mac – “Landslide”
• Tracy Chapman – “Fast Car”
• Kansas – “Dust In The Wind”
• The Beatles – “Blackbird”
• Metallica – “Nothing Else Matters” (every player should at least learn the first few bars)
• Led Zeppelin – “Stairway To Heaven” (helps if you know barre chords, which we haven’t covered yet)
• Eric Clapton – “Tears In Heaven” (also helps if you know barre chords)

Key Learnings From Step 7:

• Fingerpicking expands your horizons as a guitarist
• Some of the best songs of all time, including “Stairway To Heaven,” feature fingerpicked sections
• Use your thumb (p) to pick bass notes and use your index (i), middle (m), and ring (a) to play treble notes
• There are many famous fingerpicking songs you can learn

8. Put Your Shades On & Play The Blues

The blues is a great genre for every player to jam on. Its 12-bar structure makes it an obvious choice for beginners, and while there is a near infinite number of ways to play within that structure, at its core, it’s a simple genre.

The biggest difference between blues and other genres is the time signature. Most songs are in 4/4, but the blues is in 12/8 time. This is what results in that stereotypical “chuga-chuga” sort of rhythm.

The first thing to work on is the rhythmic aspect of playing the blues.

You can start with basic chord shapes like E, A, and B but usually blues rhythms are even simpler than that, where you play a simple drone on the bass string while moving your fingers between the second, fourth, and fifth fret a string above, like this:

A|-2-2-4-4-5-5-4-4-|
E|-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-|

As for lead guitar, so long as you know your minor pentatonic and blues scales, you should be alright!

Of course, you do need to know what key you’re playing in, as well as what position you should be playing in to accommodate that key (refer to the previous section on scales). Either way, that’s going to be part of your journey at this step.

The best resource for finding blues lessons is YouTube. Whether you’re looking for examples of rhythm playing, lead playing, or even jam tracks, I suggest taking full advantage of YouTube to deepen your knowledge of the blues.

Key Learnings From Step 8:

• The blues follows a 12-bar structure
• This 12-bar structure forms the foundation of many rock and roll and country songs
• Most blues songs are in 12/8 time – once you get the feel for it, it’s easy!
• Take advantage of YouTube for additional lessons and jam tracks

9. Play The Bars With Barre Chords

Having made it to this step, you’ve been exposed to a mix of theory, technique, playing styles, songs, and resources to help you with learning from home.

Chances are some of the materials to this point have been easy for you to pick up, while some has proven a little too difficult. And that’s not a problem.

A whole new world opens when you learn how to play barre chords. Additionally, if you’ve gone through everything to this point with a fine-toothed comb, by the time you’ve learned how to play barre chords, you will graduate from a beginner to intermediate player!

A barre chord is simply this – a chord where one finger “barres” across a single fret, while your other fingers form the rest of the chord shape.

The reason barre chords are so effective is because it’s basically taking all the chord shapes you already know and translating them to another part of the fretboard.

“Barring” is the hardest part, though, so take your time with this. I struggled with it myself, and I just kept playing “Wild Thing” in front of my TV over and over until I finally got the hang of it.

Guitar requires some perseverance. Things don’t always come together in a hurry, and you shouldn’t rush through the steps outlined above either. It’s best to take your time and work your way through every technique, chord, scale, and song, so your skill level continually increases.

A good resource to help you with barre chords is Chordbook’s Guitar Chords (it’s basically a chord generator). I recommend starting with the F chord (especially since it’s movable). You can also try: C#, F#, G#, A#, and B, as well as their minor counterparts.

Key Learnings From Step 9:

• Barre chords aren’t easy – but they do open new doors for guitarists
• Memorize the notes on your sixth (E) string – this helps with finding the “root” note of every barre chord
• Take advantage of Chordbook’s Guitar Chords to figure out how to play various barre chords (start with F)

What Else Should I Focus On Learning?

We’ve covered most of what you need to know to become a full-fledged intermediate guitar player (and the mindset required to continue learning from home), but there are a few more things worthy of exploration before you go out and call yourself an “intermediate.”

Here are the key areas we suggest focusing on to keep expanding your horizons:

Drop D Tuning & Alternate Tunings

“Standard tuning” is E-A-D-G-B-E.

But did you know what you can also tune your guitar in other ways?

And can you see how that might change your entire approach to the instrument?

A good place to start is “drop D” tuning, which involves taking your E string down to a D (same note as your fourth string, except an octave lower).

There are plenty of rock and alt-rock songs in this tuning you can learn, like:

• Foo Fighters – “Monkey Wrench”
• Creed – “Higher”
• Led Zeppelin – “Moby Dick”

SUS Chords

We haven’t spelled out exactly what these are in the above steps, but they are called “suspended” chords and they tend to show up a lot in The Police songs (and even worship music, if that’s your thing).

They usually aren’t hard to play. Most times, you just need to take a standard chord and move a finger up a fret or add a finger to that fret.

But suspended chords do offer a nice break from the standard cowboy chords you hear everywhere.

Slash Chords

Slash chords tend to show up in a lot of songs too.

If you’re playing in a band, you don’t necessarily need to play them as written. You can usually get away with playing whatever chord is on the left side of the slash (without the bass note).

That said, slash chords can add a lot of color to your playing (and open new doors), which makes them worthwhile.

Best Way To Learn Guitar At Home, Final Thoughts

In closing, if you ever get stuck, lose inspiration, or aren’t sure where to turn next, I suggest:

• Getting a subscription to Guitar Tricks
• Working with a qualified guitar instructor
• Exposing yourself to more artists, guitarists, and different types of music (Spotify and YouTube are always good places to look)
• Purchasing additional tab books

I did all this myself. I took advantage of every resource that showed up in my space.

Most importantly – have fun! Regardless of where you learn from, learning an instrument can take time. Enjoy the journey.