For beginners with a steel string acoustic guitar or a nylon string classical guitar, Guitar Coach is the most complete and exciting way to get started.

If you get the basics right when you first start out playing, you’ll find that the rest of your progress is pretty smooth. In Level 1 you’ll learn the essentials like how to get good hand positions, and how to tune the guitar, and you’ll have lessons in 5 important aspects of acoustic guitar playing: Technique, Classical, Chords, Fingerstyle and Strumming. Levels 2 - 5 will then increase your skills in all these areas, and you’ll learn to play lots of good music along the way.

Level One Lesson Guide

‘Playing Tunes’ is a Technique lesson that takes you through the fret hand and strum hand positions, then through 3 exercises that will get your fingers moving really well. By the end of this first lesson you will have developed enough technique to play some simple tunes.

‘First Tunes’ is a Classical guitar lesson where you’ll learn 3 distinctive tunes: Love Me Tender, a Spanish study, and Morning Mood by Greig. Even though these tunes are fairly simple they’re very enjoyable to play because once you've learnt them you can practise them by playing along with a guitar accompaniment.

'G & Em' is a chords lesson. Playing chords is a crucial part of guitar playing and needs different skills to those needed to play tunes. In this lesson you’ll learn how to read chords and finger them properly so you get a good sound. By the end of this lesson you’ll be confident with G and Em and be able to change between them easily.

Fingerstyle ‘Getting Started’. Fingerstyle, sometimes called ‘picking’, is a way of using chords to play an accompaniment to tunes. In this lesson you’ll first learn about strum hand fingerstyle technique then use the chords of G and Em to play a fingerstyle accompaniment.

Strumming ‘Getting Started’. Strumming is another way of playing chords, and requires skills completely different to those needed for playing tunes. In this lesson you’ll get your strumming off to a good solid start, and learn a strumming accompaniment to the Morning Mood tune you learnt in the classical lesson.