2- Bad Instructional Materials.

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1 1- Bad Guitar. While it s common practice to start with a cheaper instrument and get a better one later on when your skills are worthy, you CAN go too cheap. If your guitar sounds like crap and is hard to play, you re less likely to stick with it long enough to improve. A good beginner acoustic can be purchased between $100 to $200, playable electrics start around $120 without the amplifier and you can get a decent classical for only $80! Shop at a 1

2 good music store where you can try the guitars and compare them. Don t get a guitar from a box store. A hundred dollar guitar from a music shop trumps a 200 department store guitar every time. I go to Walmart to get paper towels and toothpaste, but not a tool for personal artistic expression. If money is an issue, shop Craigslist for a used guitar. If you can t buy a guitar, but really want to play, chances are you know some one who does own a guitar and doesn t play it. It then becomes an exercise for the beginner guitarist to convince this person how much better the world would be if the guitar was being played and loved instead of languishing in the closet. Spend the time and/or money to get a decent guitar when you start. 2- Bad Instructional Materials. It s tough to teach, even tougher to write down teachings for students to figure out on their own. So many guitar method texts have gaps that assume prior knowledge that Everybody knows. Some focus only on scales and exercises and have no real music. Often, the student gets frustrated, feels the problem is in them self and 2

3 quits. While some are better than others, different methods fit different learners. You have to find the one that fits you. Sample several. Use a combination of established books and online resources to find the techniques that let you play what you want. There are many styles of learning guitar just as there are many styles of playing. 3- No tuner Learning to tune by ear is an essential part of your music training, but it takes a while to learn to do it well. Until then, you still want to play in tune. A friend of mine who works at a music store hates to upsell customers. Says trying to get them to buy extra merchandise feels like saying would you like fries with that? Her one exception is a tuner. She says that selling a guitar without a tuner is like selling it without strings. Electronic tuners these days are inexpensive, easy to use and accurate. Tuning every time you play not only means your guitar will be in tune for that particular session, but it will stay in tune better over time. Even your mistakes sound 3

4 better in tune! 4- No Teacher. We all know some one who taught them self to play guitar. Thankfully none of these prodigies took up surgery or skydiving. While it IS possible to figure out tunes and licks on the guitar your self, why reinvent the wheel? If there isn t a guitar teacher near you that you feel comfortable working with you might try online video lessons with a live teacher via Skype. You can learn a lot from methods and online sources like UltimateGuitar.com, however, when you first begin to play you will be building habits that will stick with you for life. It s easy to develop bad habits that will be hard to break later. There are easier ways to play that aren t obvious at first. Even a few lessons with a teacher who teaches good technique will save you pain and hassle later on. 5- Practicing Too Little. Many people get stuck in the Four Chords To Forever phase. That s when you work really hard 4

5 for several hours to learn a song with three or four chords, then put the guitar down for a week or two because you got busy or family visited or you went on vacation. When you next pick up your guitar you practice that same song, same four chords. You put it away for another two weeks, and the cycle repeats till you decide that guitar is not for you after all. Daily practice is the key to learning ANY skill. Guitar is no different. Pick up your guitar every day with a specific goal in mind and you ll progress the way you want to. 6- Practicing Too Much. Most people are excited about their new guitar and want to play it non-stop the first day. However, this enthusiasm can actually cause you to give up guitar quickly. True story; a long time ago I had a girlfriend who was a marvelous piano player. She informed me that with her dexterity and work ethic (which she often implied I lacked) she could learn to play guitar better than me in 2 months. She worked on it for an hour, then gave up and never tried again because her fingertips hurt too badly. 5

6 Lots of people run into this. Pressing down steel strings with precise pressure and position is not a natural thing to do with our hands. You have to ease into it with short, daily, goal oriented practice. This will not only avoid pain in your fingers but will speed your progress. Give your fingers time to grow in new ways. Let the muscles develop, and the fingertips toughen. 7- Practicing Too Fast Most people s natural tendency is to play the lick like it sounds on the recording, that is, at the original tempo. If you try that at the beginning you are guaranteed to play it wrong. Every time you practice a mistake is a repetition that doesn t move you toward your playing goal. Better to start slow. At first; walk through a small portion of the lick. Smooth out the fingering and coordinate it with the picking. Next, set your metronome or drum machine to the slowest tempo you can stand and work the riff till it s smooth. Once you get that right, bump up the tempo 5 BPM (Beats Per Minute). Get it right at that tempo then move it up again. By working gradually up to performance speed, you ll be practicing the right notes instead of mistakes and get maximum benefit from your 6

7 rehearsal time. 8- Expecting Too Much At The Beginning You ve listened to music for a long time. Now you want to make some music yourself, but something is wrong. Why can t you make the guitar sound like the recording? This is a problem especially for mature beginners, but even at age 15 most people have been listening to and enjoying music for over 10 years. Their ears are way ahead of their fingers. The first notes and chords you play on guitar are not going to sound like Bucket Head or Eddie Van Halen, probably not even Johnny Ramone. It s frustrating, but part of the learning process. You have to cut yourself some slack, let it sound less than perfect for a while. There are many different aspects to making guitar music. Trying to learn them all at once will only end in frustration. In time you ll learn to break down the over all sound into elements of rhythm and tone and make the minute adjustments that will eventually let you make those sounds yourself. 9- Storing The Guitar in a Case 7

8 When you buy a guitar, always bargain with the shop for a case for it as well. Some really cool stores will even include them with your guitar purchase. A case protects your guitar from dust and casual bumps and dings. However, do NOT, under any circumstances store your guitar in the case! The case is for transporting your guitar to lessons, the park, your friend s house and gigs. At home, get a guitar stand and leave it out close to your practice space. If you can t safely leave it on a floor stand due to pets/kids/roommates then get a wall hanger. Both the stand and the hanger should cost around $10 each. This is one of the best accessories you can get. When the guitar is in the case, especially if you store it in the closet or under the bed, it s out of sight and out of mind. That makes it more of an effort to practice. If the guitar is out in the open you will walk by it several times a day. Each time you see it you ll be tempted to pick it up. The end result is you ll practice more often and improve quicker. 10- Giving up 8

9 Being a beginner can be immensely frustrating. Guitarists make it look so easy! Why can t my fingers move like that? There must be something wrong with me. I quit! The truth is, all of us have felt that way at the start. Well, maybe not Jimi Hendrix, but all us mere mortals have felt pangs of despair at the distance between what we hear in our head and what our fingers produce. Quitting will eliminate those feelings but leave fertile ground for the crop of regret that you ll feel later. I ve worked with some pretty low aptitude students. Two of them had what I thought were fatal timing issues. No amount of metronome, counting or stomping would keep them on the beat. One of them switched to bass and for some reason the pieces fell together. His first recital piece was Money by Pink Floyd which is in 7/8 time (not easy to dance to in other words). The other joined his high school marching band in the percussion section. Two years later he s the guitarist for the jazz band and the percussion ensemble. A third student started playing in his late 40 s, left handed with a damaged thumb tendon on his right hand. He was brilliant, but his mind set was better suited to math and logic than music. Once I told him You ve got to Feel it! He 9

10 responded, I don t feel things, write it down for me! Three years later, he s got a basement music room full of cool left handed guitars and loves jamming with his friends. The point is, while you might occasionally need to change the direction of your study, you only fail at music when you give up. Keep playing, keep practicing and enjoy the sounds that you make. Want More? Check out: Check it out now at Amazon.com! 10

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