The Best Guitar For You – Part 1

New students often ask what is the best guitar for a beginner to use. Is one particular type better, or easier to play than another?

This is an important question to answer since the instrument you choose is meant to be your close partner for the next several years, or maybe even life, so you want to be sure you can get along with each other.

The idea of getting a new guitar is very exciting to most students. Just one step inside the music store can be a dazzling experience when confronted with the shear multitude of stringed instruments hanging on the wall. It can be a little overwhelming too.

With all the different models, shapes, sizes and colors there are to choose from, how does a person know which guitar is “best” and right for them? The answer to this question can seem even more daunting for the beginner who doesn’t even know how to play anything yet.

Identifying your musical goals is a crucial step toward finding the best guitar and making the right decision. It can also save you a lot of money in the long run. Its helpful to consider the style of music are you most interested in learning how to play. I suggest you think seriously about this before whipping out your wallet and making a purchase that is based primarily on “love at first sight.”

Now, I need to qualify this suggestion a little bit before going any further. My own first musical “partner” was a Classical guitar. In case you may be wondering, I did not have any interest at all in learning how to play instrumental “classical” music when I was a teenager. I just wanted to learn how to play my favorite songs; the ones that I heard on my albums and on the radio.

Was this the best guitar for the job? Maybe not, but since it was a gift, I gladly accepted it!

Was I able to achieve my goals using a Classical guitar? Yes. I just learned how to play classic rock music instead. =)

I used this guitar to learn and play songs from groups such as… Led Zepplin, The Moody Blues, Ten Years After, The Beatles, Yes, The Rolling Stones, Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Jimi Hendrix, and many others…

And it was probably the best guitar to have for playing some my favorite folk/rock songs by artists such as… Neil Young, Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Joni Mitchel, Elton John, etc… because many of these songs used a fingerpicking style and that is what the classical guitar was designed for.

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