Newbie Guitar

Our love for guitar starts with something simple: strumming the strings and hearing them resonate with the wood. I've played guitar for over 50 years, and I know exactly what’s needed when you’re first starting out.

The first few months are the hardest. That's the window of time where most new players get frustrated, and some even quit—usually because they're overwhelmed before they ever feel success. Newbie Guitar is built to get you past those first hurdles without piling on more than you can handle.

Newbie Guitar Level 1 focuses on the two skills that matter most when you're starting out:

• How to play a few open chords
• How to strum in rhythm

The chord challenge. We tackle the three biggest obstacles head-on:

1. Pressing the right strings cleanly, without muting notes.
2. Managing fingertip soreness while your calluses build.
3. Switching from one chord to another smoothly—this is the big one.

The strumming challenge.

1. Using the pick to make a pleasing sound.
2. Keeping a steady beat.

How the program works. You start with a single chord. Once you've added a second, you'll learn to switch between the two using our core rhythm technique—because changing chords on the beat is the real hurdle early on. From there, you'll gradually grow your chord vocabulary while adding more strumming patterns. That's the moment you start sounding like you're playing real songs.

Everything else, fingerpicking, barre chords, scales, builds on these basic skills. First, you need a solid foundation.

Newbie Guitar gives you that foundation.