Acoustic Starter Guitars

There's a spectrum of guitar styles, and if you want to learn how to play acoustic guitar, whether your self-teaching is easy or hard will depend on which of those styles you're planning to learn. You can go with folk music all the way, and it may be enough to learn guitar chords and some strumming rhythms and be all set. Or you could go in the other direction, almost at the far end of the spectrum, and choose a really complicated musical style like flamenco.

Learning how to play a flamenco guitar will feel different from most other guitars. For example, you'll notice you get a different type of sound from the instrument. These guitars are made from a kind of wood that doesn't allow musical notes to sustain for long. This is because the style involves consecutive flurries of notes that would create an unbearable cacophony if they all held. Each guitar string is closer to the fret board than on a standard guitar, which can sometimes create a buzz in the sound. And the staccato taps on the guitar itself are as much a part of the music as the notes played.

What you may get if you try to learn how to play acoustic guitar in a flamenco style is a mix of styles that are all vaguely "Spanish." So you'll need to keep your eyes open so your chosen resources promise an undiluted product. One source of music books that might help you start out is the Mel Bay Publications website. Among its many other guitar-related instructional books, www.melbay.com offers "You Can Teach Yourself Flamenco Guitar." Mel Bay books contain guitar lessons beginners can start with that will lay down a solid level of skill.

A website you might want to check out is www.graf-martinez.com. Gerhard Graf-Martinez is a proficient flamenco guitarist who has created a whole course of study combining books, CDs and DVDs. Available in two volumes, these packages contain ninety-one flamenco acoustic lessons in total, starting with posture, working up through the flamenco-specific tremolo, picado and other picking and strumming styles, and ending with the history of flamenco music itself.

You can learn how to play acoustic guitar in a flamenco style, even without an instructor physically in the room. You just need to have a realistic understanding of the difficulty. Even with all the books, videos and CDs, you might still learn to play much better if you work one-on-one with a trained teacher. But if you're not aiming for the most professional levels of expertise, you can likely use all those resources and still become quite good at this most complicated of guitar styles.