Beginner guide
10 easy guitar songs for beginners
The fastest way to get good is to learn songs you actually want to hear yourself play. These ten are the ones I come back to most with new students in Dublin — each uses a handful of open chords or a single-string riff, and each one teaches a specific skill you'll reuse for years.
Before you start
Tune up, sit with the guitar upright, and play everything slower than feels natural. Clean and slow beats fast and messy every time — speed is a by-product of accuracy, not a goal on its own.
The songs
1. Tennessee Whiskey — Chris Stapleton
A · Bm · (two chords, whole song)
Slow chord changes and feel. Two chords swapping back and forth is the cleanest way to build a steady strum before you add anything else.
2. Come As You Are — Nirvana
Single-note riff on the low E and A strings
Your first riff. No chords needed, so it's a good confidence win in week one, and it trains alternate picking.
3. Knockin' on Heaven's Door — Bob Dylan
G · D · Am · C
Four open chords in a loop. This is the shape vocabulary most pop and rock songs are built from.
4. Wonderwall — Oasis
Em7 · G · Dsus4 · A7sus4
Keeping two fingers anchored while the others move — much easier than it looks, and the strum pattern is worth drilling.
5. Horse With No Name — America
Em · D6/9
Two shapes, one steady down-strum. Great for practising tempo with a metronome.
6. Zombie — The Cranberries
Em · C · G · D
An Irish classic with a driving strum. Good for building right-hand stamina and dynamics.
7. Love Yourself — Justin Bieber
C · G · Am · F (capo 1)
Fingerpicking basics and your first proper F — with a capo to keep it comfortable.
8. Three Little Birds — Bob Marley
A · D · E
Off-beat upstrokes. The single best song for learning rhythm placement.
9. Sweet Home Alabama — Lynyrd Skynyrd
D · C · G
Combining chords with a simple lick, which is the step most beginners skip.
10. Seven Nation Army — The White Stripes
Single-note riff
Position shifting on one string, plus a first taste of playing with distortion.
How to practise them
Pick two songs, not ten. Spend five minutes on chord changes alone — no strumming, just moving between the two shapes cleanly — then five minutes playing along with the record. Twenty focused minutes a day will move you further than a three-hour session at the weekend.
Want to learn these properly, in person?
I teach one-to-one guitar lessons in Dublin and online, built around the music you want to play rather than a fixed syllabus. If any of these songs is on your list, that's a perfect first lesson.