Having played guitar for over 10 years, I have a good idea of how to learn new songs relatively quickly! I also remember how frustrated I would get when I couldn’t learn a new song, so here are a few suggestions on songs to learn, why to learn them, and how you can learn them faster than usual!
Thinking Out Loud – Ed Sheeran
This song makes it into my top 5 for a few reasons.
- Its a very successful and popular song, and from my own personal experience, learning to play a song you already know or have heard before is so much easier than teaching yourself to play a song you’ve never heard before.
- Its relatively easy to play, and as long as you have a capo, the chords are basic.
- The songs general structure is basic, and repetitive which is useful as you don’t have to learn too much all at once.
- And finally, the line “And maybe we found love right where we are” has moderately fast chord changes (for a beginner), so it is good practice, and once learned, those skills will be useful in a large number of songs.
When learning this song, you should approach it in whatever fashion you feel comfortable doing so. I recommend repeatedly playing and pausing the song, listening and playing at the same time. Or singing the song in your head whilst playing the song. At the end of the day, practice does make perfect! You will learn at your own pace, so try and implement some of my tips and my reasoning and don’t be afraid to mix it up a bit by adding your own techniques in.
Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye
I personally would give this song the title of “Ultimate Beginner Song” as learning it is not that hard, but at the same time the song requires basic skills that are essential for good guitar playing; this song lays a good foundation down for any beginner looking to quickly improve their guitar skills. The song is also very recognisable, which makes the learning procedure easier as mentioned before. The song only used 3 different chords, that are very basic, and throughout the verses you only need to play 2 of them. The song is moderately paced and the chords aren’t really given time to be held for a long time. Because of this, after learning this song, you will be able to change between simple chords at a moderately fast pace, and hold a good rhythm using chords.
As mentioned before, when learning this song, you should approach it in whatever fashion you feel comfortable doing so.
Losing My Religion – R.E.M.
I wouldn’t recommend you tried to play this song unless you have the basic skills discussed above, and have a very basic idea of how to pick individual notes! This song can open many doors for you. Because you get to play chords and pick individual notes it gives you a good idea of which you prefer. This is a good beginner song because it was a massive hit, you will have heard it around somewhere! And because the chords are repetitive and easy, along with the tabbed section. This song requires you to change between playing chords and individual notes multiple times, but not in a very demanding way. The song has a good, moderate rhythm so all of your chords and notes should flow easily.
If you have mastered the above songs but you’re having trouble with the tabbed part of this song, consider learning some scales to give your fingers a feel for playing individual notes. Practice and repetition is the best and simplest advice I can give! It may sound easier said than done, but try and not think about the individual notes too much because you’ll end up convincing yourself that the task at hand is bigger than it is, and that’s when it doesn’t become fun anymore. My personal advice is split individual tabbed sections into smaller sections (made up of a few notes a time), and learn them separately before then putting them all together to complete the full riff/section.
All of the songs have tab/chord sheet links available to save you searching for ages to find a good tab, I know how hard it can be sometimes!
