A beginner’s guide to masterpieces.
By Tom Taylor
Nobody has ever said that learning to play the guitar is easy, but it is made a lot harder by striving to tackle Igor Stravinsky compositions one week into the journey. Technicality takes time, a hell of a lot of it. You have to face up to the reality that Jimi Hendrix might always be out of hand, and finger-plucking like John Fahey is for a select few.
However, that does not mean that you can’t have fun learning the guitar. In fact, within a few weeks, you may well be able to play a masterpiece. Some of the greatest songs of all time are a mere two chords, and, in fact, many of the greatest songs use just four. That is the beauty of pop music, and it gets sweeter still when you can even simplify that further to a beginner’s level that strips a song to the bare bones but remains recognisable.
Our first tip is to learn on an electric. This might sound counterintuitive given that the very notion of an acoustic seems to simplify things, but the slimmer neck of an electric makes it much easier to handle, the strings are harder to snap, and if you don’t plug it in the more muted tones are a blessing that won’t serve to discourage you.
So, when you’ve picked one up, learn five or six simple chords and try to change between them on a single strum. Then when you’ve got that dexterity nailed down, you can move on and give the masterpieces below a bash. From the riffing ways of Black Sabbath to the sing-along stylings of Ben E. King, these epic tracks are all within reach of even the most primitive beginners.
The 10 easiest masterpieces to play on guitar:
‘Paranoid’ – Black Sabbath
Everyone assumes heavier songs are tricky to play because of the wall of sound they produce. However, one of the most orchestral wallops in rock history entails just a few very simple power chords. Two slow downward strums on the E power chord on the 7th fret, and you instantly get a feel for the whole song. With time, you can learn to throw in the quick hammer-on hammer-off that follows, but for now, that chord should give you enough flavour.
Then you simply rattle off A and D power chords in the same position – all with a steady slow downward strum – and you’ve pretty much got the track in the bag, and you’ll build up the strength of your power chords as you go. Of course, Tony Iommi is one of the most inventive guitar players of all time, literally helping to invent a genre, so there are flourishes to his work, but with that simple power-chord riffl, you’ll have tapped into the essence of the 1970s dark side.