When you get your first guitar and take some lessons, the first thing you want to do is learn to play a song or two. You are painfully aware of your status as a beginner guitar player but you want to learn a song or a riff or a tune that sounds really cool.

Maybe you're up to learning your first chord. You are feeling a little bit shaky getting your fingers around the first chord but you are looking forward to introducing it to your second. A beginner guitar tutor always helps but if you are going to make some progress, you will have to start learning some songs.

Guitar songs are songs that highlight the guitar in some way and they are often quite easy to learn. When you start guitar lessons the pressure is on from friends and relatives to "play something" so let's look at what's available.

Many songs by The Grateful Dead are great for beginners to learn. Some of their songs carry heavy bluegrass overtones. Give American Beauty a try. Or Workingman's Dead. Whether you are learning electric or acoustic guitar, these are ideal beginner guitar songs.

The Ramones recorded songs that a beginner guitar player could learn and so did Nirvana. Get some tabs for Smells Like Teen Spirit. Whatever you choose you will find that learning songs is the way to go if you don't need to go too far into the theory and mechanics of guitar music. If you are working on a song that you enjoy, the chord fingerings and the strumming patterns will get into your fingers all the more quickly.

One recommendation from an amateur guitar player I heard recently was to buy the Nirvana Unplugged DVD and the tabs for the album. You've got your intro to the world of guitar in one package. Psycho Killer by Talking Heads uses the chords Am, G, F and C and the strumming is easy. If you decide to learn to play songs from tabs, rather than just accepting the tab as being correct, play the tab along with the song and try and pick any bits where the tab varies from the CD. Or look for places where you can change the music to make the song your own.

Finally, let's depart a little from guitar songs and take in a reminder that power chords consist of just two or three notes that can be played up and down the fretboard. You can play any song using power chords even though it isn't a permanent solution.