Guitar Beginner Tips

Aug 3
08:13

2009

Ricky Sharples

Ricky Sharples

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These guitar beginner tips concern your first efforts at practicing the guitar and some advice on buying your first guitar. There are a few things that take guitar beginers by surprise, but there is no need to panic.

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Quite often a novice guitar player will be looking for guitar beginner tips because they have been given a guitar,Guitar Beginner Tips Articles become interested in learning to play it and not been able to come up with the money for lessons. The most logical thing to do when you first become interested in learning to play your guitar is get hold of a chord book and start practicing some simple chords.

Guitar Beginner Tip Number One: Your Body Needs To Learn.

Trying to practice playing chords without any advice or help often overwhelms the  new guitarist with questions like, "should playing guitar hurt my fingers so much?" and "why do my fingers keep muffling the strings?".

Discomfort - even pain, is normal when you begin to play guitar. Think about it. You are training your muscles to do things that they have never had to do before. It's natural that they should complain. Although this is a small stage in learning guitar, in terms of time, the physical discomfort can often turn people off guitar playing for life.

Guitar Beginner Tip Number Two: You Need To Toughen Your Fingers.

Your left hand finger tips need to form callouses so that pushing down on the strings does not hurt. Unfortunately, the way to do this is to play on in spite of the pain until your fingers start to get tougher.

Guitar Beginner Tip Number Three: Relax.

When you first try to make chord shapes with your left hand, the fingers will tend to get in each other's way. The way to fix this is to slow down and work on getting each individual finger in place so that they do not muffle the strings. This entails beginning with how you hold the guitar and your general overall posture. Start with trying to hold the guitar in playing position without excess tension, then go onto making a simple chord shape like E minor in the first position. Stum it a few times, keeping an awareness of any changes in tension in your body.

After you get used to the sensation of trying to play the guitar in a relaxed manner, try extending your efforts to slightly more demanding chords like the C major and A minor. If you keep practicing chords with a weather eye on your whole body, by the time you get to practicing barre chords you will be in a position to make your guitar playing progress much faster.

Guitar Beginner Tip Number Four: Get A Guitar Your Body Likes.

My final guitar beginner tip is about the first guitar you buy. Be prepared to do a lot of searching and a lot of trying out guitars. As a beginner you need to get the feel of holding and strumming a guitar. Get advice from a friend or an online guitar forum as far as brand, condition or quality of a guitar you're interested in, but you should also be influenced by what feels comfortable for you. After all, you are going to be sitting in your room playing it for quite some time.