"Chord guitar" or "chord style" guitar playing is a great way to approach learning and playing the guitar for pop songwriting because it's fast and efficient for songwriting and song playing and frankly can be a lot of fun.

Typically, if you plan on having lyrics sung in your songs and your main interest is in having a nice sounding accompaniment that you can play yourself then chord style playing is likely the fastest and easiest way to get playing the guitar.

Chord style playing gets playability results fast. No offense to the classical guitar approach but if you want to learn to play guitar quickly for your pop songwriting compositions and even song performing and not have to learn to read music then chord style is the way to go.

That's Right, You Don't Need To
Learn Music Notation To Play

You'll learn much faster how to play songs, literally you can start playing songs the first day you try this approach, and you don't need to learn music notation unless you want to. In this system you learn to read chord symbols, essentially musical shorthand.

And because you'll learn chord symbol shorthand you'll learn how to write and or follow lead sheets for yourself and other musicians you may have play along with you. Chord based lead sheets are standard written musical renditions of today's typical pop songs.

Chord guitar is readily applicable to essentially the whole span of contemporary music including pop, rock, country, etc..

Just Play Chords As The Melody
Part Can Be Sung

Because the melody part of your song will typically be sung that leaves just the chords to be played on your guitar.

Accordingly there's no need to learn how to play the melody as in traditional methods.

You simply concentrate on playing chords as you accompany yourself or a singer singing the melodic part of your song.

Also, if you've learned some basic chords that are played at the top of the neck area on the guitar, typically referred to as first position chords, and want to learn how to expand to different chords on different parts of the guitar you can with chord style guitar.

With chord guitar methods you can begin to use the entire neck by learning barre chords which are all available as part of chord style guitar.

Get Playing Now And Learn Bite Sized Bits
Of Music Theory As You Go If You Want

Even if you've taken traditional guitar lessons and feel like playing is just too difficult you'll likely find chord style playing a refreshing and very doable alternative and you can start playing songs the first day you begin this approach even if it's totally new to you.

As for music theory there are many items that when applied will definitely help your songwriting but you'll employ them faster if you can play the ideas. Chord guitar makes this very practical.

Learning to play first with chord style technique and then learning bite sized bits of theory as you go can serve as a learning boost tool. This is because if you're not enjoying the fun of playing then learning theory may not go very far because you won't as readily learn it let alone put it to use.

It's nice to be able to play what you're learning and the nice thing about music theory that you can easily apply is that it enhances your ability to write better music for your songs.

Courseware For Learning Chord Style Guitar Playing

For guitar oriented chord style playing check out Songwriting Software Plus' From Guitar Owner To Guitar Player by singer-songwriter Evyn Charles, a graduate of Berklee College of Music. This book is geared towards songwriting from a full-time performer. It's suitable for beginning to advanced players.

Click here to get more information about the From Guitar Owner To Guitar Player courseware.

Just Starting Out?

If you're totally or fairly new to the guitar or even at the point where you're considering buying a guitar here are a couple of pages that can get you oriented:

Click here to check out this good basic introduction to the guitar, its parts, some playing instruction and even how to tune it.

If you're contemplating buying a guitar click here for tips on what to consider and even some recommendations on good starting guitars.

Looking To Buy A Guitar?

When you're ready to buy a guitar check out the great deals at zZounds.com. BizRate.com rates zZounds.com as a Top 35 Retailer from over 40,000 sites considered. Bizrate.com is the leader in Web retailing customer satisfaction ratings and research.

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