Just Starting to Learn Guitar? Don’t set yourself up for Failure

When you start on your journey to learn guitar often people expect too much of themselves too quickly. This can lead to beginners getting frustrated quickly and sometimes putting the instrument down never to pick it up again. Don’t let this happen to you.

In this short post I’ve got 4 quick tips to help you get started and stay on track.

1 – Get yourself a good method of learning. This might mean buying a guitar lesson dvd or signing up for private lessons. No matter what you decide choose a method and stick with it. Probably one of the biggest reasons beginners don’t stick with the guitar is because they decide to use free videos or articles from the internet to teach themselves and find it tough to get quality content.

2 – Start slow, this will be taken care of if you opt to go the route of using a dvd, book or private teacher. Of course if you try and teach yourself you can end up try to learn chords right off the bat which aren’t that easy to play. I’d suggest learning the names of each string first then follow with the notes on each string then on to chords. Trying chords first can be a recipe for failure.

3 – Get a tuner, this will save you frustration of going out of tune. As you learn you’ll discover that you can get all your strings in tune with one another via the strings themselves but it’s not so easy at first. If you have a tuner this will be taken care of. I suggest all beginners get an electric tuner when they buy their first guitar.

4 – Get a practice buddy if possible. Just like exercising, learning to play guitar is easier to do with a friend. I’d suggest either finding one of your friends who plays guitar, or consider posting an ad on craigslist or kijiji to find a jam friend(s) in your area it will make things a lot more enjoyable especially when you’re first learning.