When getting started learning to play the guitar, it can be easy to drop it after a few hours because it’s much harder than it first looked. We’ve put together these tips to help you master your first few songs and keep you from giving up too early. There are some simple things you can do, such as leaning the correct chords when you start, as well as the way to practice to get the most out of your sessions.
1) Start with the easy chords (and take it slow).
If you’re a huge fan of guitar music, it can be tempting to find a lesson about your favorite song and try to learn it straight away. Depending on the song, this may be difficult, if not impossible, for a new guitar player. What’s far more gratifying is to find a song with just two or three basic chords that you can learn in an afternoon. That way, you can be playing a song all the way very quickly. If you do this every day for two weeks, you may be able to play ten songs with the track, and you would have learned a dozen chords in the process. Some good examples of simple chords are those that happen at the base of the neck (no bar chords). Many pop songs use the same four chords in the same pattern. By learning this simple progression, all of a sudden, you can play lots of well-known songs. As you get more comfortable with changing through the chords, you can start to look at the more difficult songs. It’s also worth practicing with an amp or speaker like the presonus products at mc. These will let you better hear what chords you’re playing, and if you aren’t fretting a certain string correctly.
2) Don’t stare at your fingers.
This is a common habit formed at the start of people’s guitar journey, as you don’t yet have the special awareness to know where your fingers are without looking. If you don’t start practicing looking away or closing your eyes early on though, it can be difficult to get rid of this crutch later on. We recommend starting to learn a song by looking at the neck to start with, but then looking away as soon as you start to become more comfortable with the song. This way, you’ll be able to play the whole song without looking. You’ll begin to learn the hand coordination you need to do without thinking too much.
3) Don’t avoid difficult chords.
Focus on the simple chords, but don’t let this make you too comfortable. You can get away with a lot by only learning a few chords and songs and sticking with this. But then, if you want to get better, you need to push yourself. This usually starts with trying to learn bar chords, which involves fretting all of the strings along the neck with one finger, as you make the chord with the remaining fingers. This is a vital tool in the guitar players’ arsenal, but can be difficult at first. An excellent place to start is by looking up an F chord, which means only barring two strings. This is a good transitional chord. Once you have this down, you can start working on a full bar.