Stop 1 of 6
Before you set out: how this journey works
The map, the stages, how to practise effectively and what you need to start.
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Stop 1 of 6
The map, the stages, how to practise effectively and what you need to start.
Every long journey starts at a base camp: a place where you check the map, pack your gear and learn to walk at the right pace. This first stop doesn't ask you to play anything hard. It shows you how the journey is organised, what you need and, above all, how to practise so that every minute with the guitar counts. It's the shortest stop, but the one that will save you the most time.
The journey crosses fifteen regions, from this Base Camp to The World Tour. Each region is a stage devoted to one big idea: first chords, rhythm, the blues, playing lead, harmony, modes… They're ordered the way good methods and exam syllabi do it: first you play, then you name what you played.
| Level | What it is | How long it takes |
|---|---|---|
| Stage (region on the map) | One big musical idea, with its own colour and landscape | 1 to 3 weeks of practice |
| Stop (lesson) | One concrete step within the stage | 15 to 40 minutes of study, plus daily practice |
| Scene | Each section of a stop, like a rest point on the trail | A few minutes |
| Milestone | The last stop of each stage: final challenge and self-assessment | One or two weeks of routine |
This camp has seven stops: this welcome, meeting your guitar, posture and pick, tuning, reading tab and chord boxes, your first notes and the milestone. By the end you'll play your first , a short repeated phrase like this one:
Press Listen. It uses a single string and three hand positions. It doesn't look like much, but playing it well means holding the guitar without tension, fretting clean notes, reading tab and keeping the beat. That's exactly what you'll learn here.
Every stop follows the same structure, so once you know one you can find your way around all of them. They open with an intro paragraph and an "On this stop" box listing the goals. Then come the scenes, numbered like stops on a trail. You can read them one after another or switch on presentation mode, which shows one scene at a time, full screen: very handy for keeping the lesson on your music stand while you play.
In the text you'll find underlined words, like . They're glossary terms: hover over them (or tap them on your phone) to see their definition without leaving the page. Every term from every stage is collected in the journey glossary.
You'll also see coloured boxes with different jobs:
To read
To play and listen
Your progress (stops visited and completed, practice blocks ticked, quiz results and the last scene you read) is saved only in this browser, on your own device. There are no accounts and no servers. So if you switch computers or clear your browser data, you'd lose it: from Settings you can export it to a file and import it on another device.
The good news: for this camp you need very little.
Essential
Highly recommended
Which guitar is best to start on? The one you have and want to play. Nylon-string (classical) guitars are gentler on the fingers; steel-string acoustics sound brighter and louder but hurt more at first; electrics have light strings and a comfortable neck, but need an amplifier. You'll get to know them properly at the next stop. If your guitar is very hard to press down, it may need a setup at a guitar shop: we'll come back to this when we talk about action.
Practising isn't the same as playing. Playing is enjoying what you already know (and it matters a lot). Practising is working right at the edge of what you can do, with a specific goal. That's called , and it has four ingredients:
The metronome is your best ally: a steady click that marks the beat and stops you from speeding up without noticing. Its speed is measured in BPM (beats per minute). Try this one at 60 BPM, one click per second:
Your hands learn exactly what you repeat. Repeat fast and sloppy, and they learn the mistakes. Repeat slowly and cleanly, and they learn the right movement, and speed comes on its own. Listen to the same phrase at two tempos: the first is the one you should practise; the second is where you'll get to in time.
A simple rule: when you can play something three times in a row without mistakes, raise the metronome by 5 BPM. If you fail twice, bring it down.
Research on motor learning agrees: several short sessions spread over different days work better than one long session. This is . Between one session and the next, especially while you sleep, your brain consolidates what you practised. That's why something that wouldn't come out yesterday often works "by itself" today.
For this camp we suggest 15 to 30 minutes a day, split into blocks of 5 to 10 minutes:
| Block | Minutes | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Tune | 2 | Always first. An out-of-tune guitar trains your ear badly |
| 3–5 | Something gentle and slow: open strings, the chromatic spider | |
| New material | 5–10 | The main practice block of the stop you're on |
| Review | 3–5 | Something from an earlier stop |
| Play for fun | 2–5 | Your riff, improvising, whatever you like. Always finish with something you enjoy |
The practical takeaway: little and often beats a lot every now and then.
The first weeks are the strangest. The guitar feels huge, your fingers won't obey and notes buzz. That's normal and it happens to everyone. Here's a realistic idea of how it usually goes:
| When | What usually happens |
|---|---|
| Days 1–7 | Fingertips are a little sore; notes often buzz. Looking at the tab and your hands at the same time is hard |
| Weeks 2–4 | Calluses start to form; the soreness drops a lot. Notes ring clean most of the time |
| Month 2 | You move between positions without looking as much. You play your first chords and simple songs |
We haven't covered how to sit or how to tune yet (that's coming in the next stops), so this first practice is just a meeting with the instrument and the metronome.
Goal: Play each open string four times in a row, one stroke per click, from the 6th to the 1st, without rushing or dragging.
Open a notebook or the portal's sketchpad and write three lines: date, minutes and what's next tomorrow. After a few weeks, this diary will be the best proof of how far you've come, and it'll stop you from always repeating the same thing.
Goal: Write down today's date, how many minutes you practised and one thing you want to improve tomorrow.
Practice blocks ticked: 0 · Self-assessments taken: 0