Free Sample
The Purple Guide to Learning the Guitar in 10 Days
A 10-day starter plan to pick up a guitar, play your first real chords and riffs, and decide if this is the hobby for you.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: First Day
First Day
Welcome. You are about to sit down with a guitar for the first time, and we are going to make this first session count. We are not going to learn a song today. We are not going to learn a million chords. You are going to get acquainted with the physical object in your hands, find a way to sit comfortably, and produce one genuinely good, clean sound. That is the goal. That is the win.
Before you do anything else, let's first get rid of a common fear: you don't need to know anything about music to do this. You don't need to read sheet music. You don't need to have a 'good ear.' You just need a functioning guitar, a little patience, and about fifteen minutes right now.
Let's talk about the guitar itself. If you have an acoustic guitar, that's great. If you have an electric guitar, that's also fine, though you will probably want to find an amplifier or just play it unplugged for now (an unplugged electric is quiet, but perfectly fine for practicing the movements). The guitar has a long neck with metal strips on it. Those strips are called frets. The body is the big wooden part you rest your arm on. The six long wires running along the neck are called strings. They are not all the same; they have different thicknesses. The thickest string is the lowest in pitch, and the thinnest one is the