Stretch out your fingers. Get the cobwebs out and get some finger exercises in. Pretend you are making a claw or know how to play guitar. Also, if you can, learn some easy scales like the pentatonic to help you get a feel for it.

Make sure the guitar is in tune. If you don’t know how to tune a guitar, ask a pro or use a tuner. The tuning goes from thickest to thinnest stings, E, A, D, G, B, E.

Get your handy chord book out and learn the chords. Unless you already know them, then why are you reading this?

Practice the chords one at a time. My personal favorite is the E chord. Simple, yet arguably the most powerful in music. When learning the chords, make sure you know when to leave some strings open and when to mute other strings, or not play it during a chord.

After getting the hang of the chords, practice chord progression. Going from one chord to another. There are a ton of ways you can go from one chord to another. Find what progressions you like. A progression I love is C, D, Am, G, D, C, Am, G.

Can you guess what classic song this is?