Easiest songs to learn guitar with?

[skypilot]

I'd like to learn to strum, but I guess picked songs are OK too, anyone have any ideas? I'm a really slow learner, so EASY is very important ;-)

My favorite types of music are:
1. Country
2. Christian
3. Alternative/Rock
4. Anything else

 

[iamme]

i'd like to know as well

 

[SWScorch]

Here comes the ubiquitous suggestion:

Greenday - Good Riddance
Metallica - Enter Sandman is easy (even for me, and I suck)
Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water
Eric Johnson - Cliffs of Dover

 

[skypilot]

thanks scorch, any more?

 

[Mean MrMustard]

DMB - Stream

 

[skypilot]

really i thought dmb would be tough

 

[Rastus]

The best way is to have someone to play with whether they are better than you or not. It's really hard to do on your own.

 

[Qacer]

Semisonic - Closing Time

I think it's just G, D, Am, and C over and over. Standard tuning.

 

[Muck]

Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
Oasis - Live Forever
Nickelback - Leader of Men

"Teen Spirit" is just 4 power chords. "Live Forever" is a steady progression of basic chords (verse = G, D, Am, C, D.....chorus = Em, D, Am, C, D). For "Leader of Men", just tune your low E string down to D (this is "Drop D" tuning) and play the 3 bar chords.

Here's a good site for tabs: OLGA

.....and a good site for chords: Chordfind

 

[breakit23]

I wouldn't qualify cliffs of dover as easy its pretty difficult.

 

[hdeck]

pretty much anything by Nirvana or Bush, most Collective Soul, etc. etc.

 

[KingNothing]

Originally posted by: hdeck
pretty much anything by Nirvana or Bush, most Collective Soul, etc. etc.

Yeah, learn Collective Soul's "World I Know". It'll teach you to slide a position around and it sounds really good. The chords in the chorus are really simple too.

When you're ready for something harder learn "The Down Town" by Days of the New.

 

[yellowperil]

REM's Everybody Hurts. Great song too

 

[silverpig]

Okay, when you say learn guitar do you mean learn guitar or make something sound decent?

If you just want to make it sound like you're playing a song, then learn any nirvana, blink, punk, or any band where the members are all under 21. Guaranteed you'll be playing their songs in 10 minutes.


If you really want to learn the guitar and play most of the music out there then do 2 things first, and then go looking for some tabs.

1. Learn the blues minor pentatonic scale (used in virtually every rock/blues song ever made, and most country too I think). It's simple. Start at the bottom and go up the strings:

e---------------------------------------------0--3--0-----------------------------------------------
B--------------------------------------0--3-------------3--0---------------------------------------
G---------------------------0--2--3----------------------------3--2--0----------------------------
D--------------------0--2-------------------------------------------------2--0---------------------
A---------0--1--2----------------------------------------------------------------2--1--0----------
E--0--3--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3--0--

This is in E as your first note is an E. You can play the A minor pentatonic scale by starting at fret 5 and going 5,8,5,6,7.... etc. The positions are relative. The cool thing is once you nail down the key of a song, you can mess around in that scale and it'll sound good.

2. Learn the 12 bar I IV V progression. This is huge in country and blues, and much of classic rock.

I IV I I
IV IV I I
V IV I V -- each I, IV, or V indicates one bar of playing

That's it. Let's say you are playing a song in the key of E (99% of the time the first chord of any country/rock/blues song gives you the key of the song). Your I chord is then E, your IV is A, and your V is D. So your progression would look like:

E A E E
A A E E
D A E D

Upshot here: If you can figure out the first chord of the song, chances are you know the key of the song and can mess around with some solo stuff while it's playing. You can also now figure out what the rest of the chords of the song are by using this progression.

 

[silverpig]

Aw c'mon... I didn't type all that out for nothin'

 

[Masas]

if you like Christian songs...really good to start with praise songs...

usually simple chords, short, and no fancy strumming at all.
and once you have chords and chord changes down, you can move on to other songs

 

[datalink7]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Aw c'mon... I didn't type all that out for nothin'

No you didn't... you copy/pasted.



Anyway, for my suggestions:

1. Mary Had A Little Lamb
2. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

 

[PrincessGuard]

You Never Get What You Want - Patty Griffin

Doesn't get any easier than Em, C, D

 

[Cycad]

I don't know how to play a single chord but I can play:

Iron Man
Smoke on the Water

 

[datalink7]

Or how about:

Led Zeppelin - Over The Hills And Far Away

 

[Ernieb]

possbile to learn basic guiter on-line?

 

[silverpig]

Originally posted by: datalink7

Originally posted by: silverpig
Aw c'mon... I didn't type all that out for nothin'

No you didn't... you copy/pasted.



Anyway, for my suggestions:

1. Mary Had A Little Lamb
2. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Nope. I typed. And I didn't copy it from anywhere either

 

[Aceshigh]

Deep Purple - Smoke on the Water
Dokken - Dream Warriors
Guns N Roses - Sweet Child of Mine


Also try playing some simple reggae songs, thats how Slash (GNR) learned to play guitar.

 

Silverpig is right on. I started about a year ago and played a bunch of punk and popular rock. All I really learned was power chords.

Now I am trying to play The Beatles and such and it's a bitch. So I am focusing on really learning this time.

Here's a good PDF if the minor pentatonic scale. Actually that site has a ton of useful PDFs to download and print.

Get a metronome and bang out the scales on time. Start REALLY slow and get accurate, not fast. Speed will come in good time. The important part is to a) know the notes you are hitting and b) to hit them clean. Don't stop at pentatonic, go on to the standard major and minor scales as well. It's the only way you can really understand music.

I also bought a couple of these Gripmaster thingies in extra-light and light. They help build finger strength and more importantly finger independance when you are not playing the guitar.

The bottom line is, if you learn just tabs you are just aping around. It's like speaking the words to a book when you don't understand the language.

 

[Parrotheader]

If you're just strumming, pretty much anything by the Eagles is a great place to start plus it's kind of countryish which you'd probably like.