Equipment Needed to Start Learning Guitar

YouTube video of this lesson

Ok, so you decided on a guitar or you have one and you are almost ready.  But not yet.  If you are serious about learning you need a few more pieces of equipment.

First, a guitar tuner.  If you get no other piece of equipment, a tuner is a must.  Before you ever pluck a note, you need to make sure your guitar is perfectly in tune.  The more you practice, the more you need to tune.  It is important that you always hear your instrument in tune.  This is not only to assure that you don’t drive others nuts, but so that your ear gets trained along with your fingers.

Next, I would recommend a pick.  There are different sizes and it’s best to get a few different thicknesses and play around with them and see what feels and sounds good to you.  But they are cheap, which is great because you will lose most of them and five years later they will start to reappear in strange places, like between sofa cushions and in the backseat of your car, or at friend’s houses.  No one knows why they go wandering, but soon they will be littered around your house like cat hairs.

Finally, I highly recommend a metronome.  Now you can download metronomes on iPhone, Android or Windows Phone for free.  A decent metronome can also be found online at http://www.webmetronome.com/.  Really, the only thing that is important is that the metronome can keep a steady beat, and you can change how frequently (how many beats per minute, or BPM) it beeps.  A good metronome can also sound for eight or sixteenth notes or triplets.  But if it can click it will do.

Now that we have our equipment, we are almost ready.  Next lesson we will discuss the parts of the guitar and music notation that will be used on this site.