Playing guitar for beginners should be a fun, exciting and enjoyable experience, but there are a few very common mistakes people can make when first starting out that if avoided will increase the likely hood you will continue playing and enjoying this fantastic musical instrument
Holding your guitar properly
It can be challenging for new players to learn how to hold their guitar correctly. The curves of a guitar when held properly hug your body and feel natural, but sometimes this takes practice and technique to master. When you’re standing you can use the guitars curves to hug your rib cage, when sitting the curve forms to your knee as well as rib cage allowing your arms to be free and your hands will be able to develop better strumming and fret work techniques
Forgetting to tune your guitar each time you play
All guitars go out of tune, some when you put them down or pick them up again to play so before you start playing you need to check and re-tune or make fine adjustments. This will improve the sound you’re making.
Learn proper techniques
When you teach yourself or learn from friends or videos, it can be difficult to learn the proper strumming and picking techniques as well as to make good chord changes. A professional teacher will help you master your technique early as once you have learnt an imperfect method, it can be very hard to re-learn the correct way. Learning the proper fingering techniques for playing chords makes playing much easier and more enjoyable
Learn to use the Barre Chord method
Barre chords a played by holding your finger across the frets while placing the other fingers in the appropriate positions for the tune you’re playing. Once you master this technique, it will really help you improve your playing
Don’t try to learn from too many people
It’s important to learn the basic playing technique from a competent professional teacher, once you have become comfortable with a concept you can move on to another. A technique that works well for one person may not work for you, A professional teacher will be able to help you develop your own unique style, too many different styles can cause confusion and result in a muddled style that’s hard to play
Avoiding playing in front of others
When you play in front of other people it helps to build your confidence, especially when playing in a group
Avoiding learning theory
Sometime learning theory can be a little boring, but when you have a good understanding of guitar theory, it helps you with your ability to perform chord progressions and improve your overall playing
Not building on what you already know
When you feel you have mastered one concept, it’s time to stretch your knowledge and abilities and try to push yourself to learn new things, innovative techniques and methods so you’re playing improves and advances. Don’t just keep playing or practicing the same old scales, chords tunes or songs. That way you will keep up your interest and develop your own personal style.
Guitar playing for beginners needs to be fun and light hearted as well as being done in a responsible and professional way to ensure new players don’t learn bad habits or techniques that will hold back their guitar playing enjoyment and development.
