Learn to Play the Guitar

"The Metal Sign,” “Rock Fingers,” “Devil Horns:” whatever you call it, you probably know what I’m talking about. If you don’t know what these phrases refer to then why do you want to play the guitar? There are probably more names, but these will suffice to describe the extended index finger and pinky with middle finger, ring finger, and thumb folded safely into the palm. You see this symbol thrown up at all sorts of shows; sometimes people use it in everyday life. It is used to express a feeling of “rock.” Rock means many things to many people, but that’s not the topic of discussion here. Maybe it is.
If you can make the rock sign, you can play the guitar. That’s all I’m saying. Go ahead, do it now, extend the outside fingers and bring the middle two into your palm. That’s it; you have the proper structure of a power chord. The hand shape also resembles “I love you” in American Sign Language and the way Spiderman holds his hand when he dispenses web from his wrists (speaking of that, does Stan Lee have any idea how Spiders spin web? Perhaps he was just trying to keep it PG for the kids. I can respect that).
I taught myself how to play guitar by looking at guitar tablature. Tablature is a type of notation for guitars. There are six lines running horizontally, much like a treble clef set-up, only six instead of five. Each line of the tablature model represents a string on the guitar. Numbers on the lines correlate with frets on the guitar. Just like sheet music using clefs and notes, tablature runs from left to right. As you scan across the lines, you know what order to play a note or chord. Some tablature even adds notation for how to strum the strings, whether or not palm muting is used, and how long a note is played for. A great web page to visit for tablature is Ultimate Guitar.
Aside from the title of this post, I haven’t mentioned that my purpose here is to teach you to play guitar, so that’s what I am doing now, mentioning that purpose. With an understanding of how tablature works, if that last paragraph was enough, and knowing that the rock sign is equivalent to a chord finger-structure, you are nearly all set to play. Maybe understanding chords and the notes on a guitar will help as well. A chord is a combination of three or more notes. On a guitar this means that you are incorporating three or more strings by either strumming them open, or pressing a finger down at a specific fret. There are the basic chords from A to G, with all sorts of flats, sharps, diminished, minors, and majors mixed in. I probably don’t know more than thirty unique chords, but I can still play pretty much any song I want to (with sufficient practice) by using power chords.
A barre chord is a type of structure where your index finger becomes like a capo (a device that clamps around the neck of a guitar to serve as a new starting point for the string tension). By using a capo you can shorten the length of the string being vibrated, this effectively changes the key of the string and the notes that can be played on it. In a barre chord you use your index finger to press all of the strings within one fret. Your other fingers then form either an Am or Em chord, I believe. I’m not proficient at barre chords, they are too hard, I just stick with power chords, which I will explain shortly. When you bar all of the strings at one fret, the top string indicates what your root note is, meaning, the base of your chord. If you then use an Em or an Am chord structure you have the chord for whatever your root note is.
A power chord is a variation of the barre chord, actually, it is more of an abbreviation. In a barre chord you utilize all of the strings, sometimes, in a power chord it is only the top four strings, and even then it is only three at a time. Using the Em structure you play the root note across the top E string. Some people call it the low E string because on the tonal scale it is the lowest note, but I call it the top because when you are playing a guitar the top E is the highest string vertically speaking. Anyway, the E is the foundation string for the Em structure power chord and the A string is the foundation for the Am structure power chord. With the Em you play the top three strings; with the Am you play the next three strings, muting the E.
This “how-to” guide seems convoluted and drawn out. How about some pictures?

In these pictures you can see a little bit of what I explained above. Having put this all together I am beginning to think that the best format for a guitar lesson online is video. But the primary purpose of this blog is to complete a class assignment, so the pictures and jumbled thoughts typed out are all you will get. If you get nothing else from this post (and likely you won't) I hope you realize that playing the guitar can be as easy as saying "I love you" (in ASL). That's a joke. You know, because people think it is hard to say they love someone. It's a joke. I'm going back to my day job now.