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I had a hard time when I was learning to play guitar. I had to learn from the start, and that made practice laborious. I wasn't one of those really lucky kids who were shown the trick to guitar playing when they were young and had inbuilt skills. I was one of the kids who had to learn from scratch, and as you can guess learning was one heck of a scratch on my mental processes.

I got the chords off an internet site, and began to hold the guitar. Yes, I refrained from using any strumming at first, because I did not know a single key. I had to learn to play a note, and so I looked at the diagrams I got from the nifty web site, and I began to gently place my fingers on the lines (which are actually strings when looking at a guitar off the page), and I began to talk myself through each string.

I knew I didn't need to know a lot when it came to guitar playing. Elvis the great guitarist, and singer – the king of rock n roll – was rumored to only know four basic strings for his songs, and so that was how many I was going to learn.

I put myself to the test after a week of just learning the strings – sure I knew the position of the fingers when I was placing them on the guitar, now I needed to make sure I remembered them.

So I hopped down to the local library and got myself a basic guitar book – it was filled to the brim with easy songs, that were perfect for the beginner. I hopped back home with the guitar book inside my hot little hand, and then I sat down with my guitar and began to play my first song.

I began to strum as I sang through a children's song. I was a little hesitant at first, however as I got warmed up I realized that I could play! My dream was fast becoming a reality - I could play and sing a really simple tune like a pro! It was amazing, and the best thing about it was that I had done it on my own without any help from anyone. I taught myself how to play guitar, and it felt great!

To reward myself I went out and brought a guitar book that was titled 'guitar playing – the next level'. I began to learn more strings, more tunes, and began to really love playing the guitar. It became my friend, as well as my hobby, and I haven't been able to put it down ever since.

Learn more about this author, M Pereira.
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