Don’t.
Plain and simple, like any other skill there is no “fast” way to learn to play guitar. Learning any skill takes time and dedication. The best way to learn guitar “fast” is to dedicate as much time as you can to it and to get some good structured lessons to follow. You should implement a routine that involves strengthening all the guitar skill sets: playing by ear, playing by reading music, learning music theory and learning songs you want to learn.
Now, I’ve already covered learning to play by ear, so I’m going to touch on learning to read music. Because if anything is going to help you learn guitar “fast” it will be being able to play songs because you can read them. There are 2 kinds of sheet music for guitar: so called “traditional” and tablature. (Funny factoid, tablature is actually the older type of written music for stringed instruments.) I recommend learning both. You can get lots of tablature on the internet, but there are some songs you just won’t find and since tablature is usually fan based it is often wrong. Fortunately, figuring out the wrong notes for yourself is a pretty good lesson in and of itself. Most tablature will be text based and look something like this:
1|----------------------------------|
2|----------------------------------|
3|----------------------------------|
4|------------5---------------------|
5|--------7---------------7---------|
6|----0-----------6---5-------------|
The numbers on the far left are the string numbers and basically you can picture is an image of your guitar neck if you were looking at it while you play. 6 is low E, 5 is A, 4 is D, 3 is G, 2 is B and 1 is high E. The numbers in the dashes are the fret numbers. 0 being playing the string without holding any fret down. So give that whirl you might recognize it. Congrats you just learned the intro to Metallica’s Enter Sandman! Excited yet?
The other kind of music is “traditional” sheet music. It is pretty much just as simple, but will require you to learn both the note names on the guitar neck, but also on the paper. This style has a set of 5 solid lines and will put little circles on the lines or spaces that represent the notes. This is called the “staff”. Guitar music will have what is called a “G clef” on it. The beginning of the staff will have a fancy script letter G on it. The notes just repeat in alphabetical order:
F----E
D----C
B----A
G----F
E----
They are usually memorized with the mnemonics: “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and FACE. Notes can also be added above and below. For those you can just say your alphabet in repeating order from A to G counting both spaces and lines until you get to the note to find out what it is. For guitar the low E string is the space below the third line below the staff. The A string is on the second line below the staff. The D string the space below the staff and rest of the open notes are on the staff.
Now for some basic music theory. These notes are the basis of pretty much all music. The letters from A to G represent what is called a scale. This particular scale that does not use the in between notes is called the C scale. You’ll notice that we’ve not use the notes that lie in between those notes yet. This is where you get into other scales. I’m going to now teach you something really cool about the guitar. Once you learn a few patterns you can play any scale on the guitar! We’ll use tab to show you the pattern.
1|-------------------------------2-4-5---|
2|-------------------------2`-4-5*-------|
3|-------------------1-2-4---------------|
4|-------------1-2*-4--------------------|
5|-------0-2-4`--------------------------|
6|-0*-2-4--------------------------------|
The notes with a * next to them are the major root of the scale. The notes with a ` next to them are the minor roots of the scale. You can move this up and down the neck of your guitar to play the major or minor scale in any key! Isn’t that cool? I highly recommend playing this pattern in at least 5 different positions on your guitar daily. This will get your ear used to hearing the scales.
Now go practice!
