TOP 5 REASONS WHY BEGINNING GUITARIST STRUGGLE TO LEARN
By Randy Garcia
As a guitar teacher, I’ve worked with quite a number of beginning guitar players. And with all these beginning guitarist they all tend to have a few common problems, whether they come to me first, or they try learning guitar on their own. So here are the top 5 reasons, beginning with number 5:
5. Trying to learn songs that are too difficult for a beginner
Most beginners tend to jump the gun most of the time when they start learning the guitar. Sometimes you might listen to a song you like and thing “wow, that sounds pretty easy! I should try and learn that!” Only to find that these songs are actually much more difficult then they appear. Then you eagerly grab your guitar, open YouTube or tabs on the internet and try to learn it, only to become discouraged to find the song is a little to hard for you. This starts to make you question whether if you can actually play guitar or not. It’s very important for beginners to start off small and simple, because if a beginner begins to play something, only to feel discouraged, they’re not likely to get far in their guitar playing. So when you try to learn a song, start off with something simple. Here are a few song/riff suggestions that most beginners will be able to play:
4. Try to learn from YouTube
This is probably the worst things you can do when you try to learn guitar. YouTube is very overwhelming, and there is just so much information. Even if you look up something like “Easy songs for beginners,” you’re likely to find a lot of confusing and bad information out there. Especially because when a lot of guitar teachers create these “simple” lessons from their perspective. To them these songs seem like very simple songs that a beginner can play, but really these songs are simple to them because they’ve been playing as long as they have and it’s not easy for them to play.
3. Learning notation over tabs first
This idea may seem somewhat counter productive, but it’s VERY true. As guitar players, we are blessed with having another form of reading music, called tablature. Tablature is MUCH easier to read over standard musical notation, and it is a lot more straight forward and takes us to playing a song a lot quicker as opposed to music notation. With standard music notation you have to learn the names of the notes, where the notes are on the fretboard, what the rhythms of the notation means, and it’s just a lot going on at once. Usually to make this easier to learn, books will usually give you some really simple examples that shows you the simple rhythms, with simple melodies, but these examples are always very boring and unsatisfying to learn, and will only end up leaving you feeling discouraged and unable to learn how to play guitar. As opposed to tabs, where all you gotta do is learn the frets and the strings, and hear how the song or melody sound, and you’re in action.
2. Trying to learn chords first
Learning chords first is almost ALWAYS a bad idea. Why? Because chords require a lot of coordination, calluses in your fingers, strength in your fingers, as well as being able to transition from chord to chord. The best thing to do is to start off with a simple song, as stated earlier.
1. Learning guitar without a guitar teacher
This has to be the BIGGEST mistake any beginner can do. Having a guitar teacher is like having a map, and not having a guitar teacher is like trying to get somewhere without it. You would get to your destination a whole lot faster by having this map. So your best bet is to get a guitar teacher. And when looking for a guitar teacher, look for one who has helped a lot of beginners, and a good track record with helping these beginners.