Easy guitar pieces

Finding easy guitar pieces can be easier said than done: the guitar is such a versatile instrument that there are pieces ranging from rock ‘n’ roll all the way to classical concertos! When searching for easy pieces for the guitar, it’s good to have a genre in mind to help narrow your search.

When tracking down classical guitar pieces for beginners, Peter Nuttall is undoubtedly the most accessible and tuneful composer of our time. The Guitarist’s Way book series will take learners from lesson 1, all the way to their first ABRSM exams. Nuttall’s ensemble pieces and intermediate books are equally solid for balancing technique studies with performance-ready pieces, and are a must for any classical guitar student.

For those looking for easy classical guitar pieces at an intermediate level and above, the staples have to be studies by Carcassi, Giuliani, Coste and Sor. These are often available on free sheet music platforms online in the public domain due to their age. Some useful sheet music sites for these are IMSLP, Mutopia, Gutenberg Sheet Music Project, and Sheet Music Fox.

For jazz guitarists, there’s nothing better than getting stuck into the huge collection of songs known as ‘jazz standards’. An important part of mastering jazz guitar (and all genres) is learning chord shapes and how these relate to the guitar. Whether you are learning classical, pop, rock, or jazz guitar, it is crucial to learn chord shapes as the guitar can create melody and bass lines, as well as chordal harmonies. Though these may be either picked or strummed, the left hand principles for learning chords is the same.

If you need to brush up your guitar chord knowledge, it is good to start with the ‘caged’ method, which looks at understanding where these repeating patterns and shapes can occur on the entire neck of the guitar.

Whatever style of guitar you are drawn to, PlayScore 2 can help take your playing to the next level. The PlayScore 2 app will playback your sheet music so that you can hear it and use it as a practicing tool. In the app, you can change the playback settings such as tempo and instrumentation, and loop sections if you wish, all while following the score. PlayScore 2 will recognise chords, polyphonic and homophonic pieces accurately, helping you maximise all the potential the guitar has to offer.