Revolves

I’m glad that you want to learn guitar. It’s a wonderful instrument. Imagine playing guitar for your friends and family. It’s really a nice experience. Also, I’ve read many a times that playing guitar (or any other musical instrument) helps relax yourself.

Now, learning guitar takes time and effort. However, if you learn to enjoy the learning process, you’d make good progress. There are times when you’d learn something fast, or sometimes, you’d get stuck on something for a long time. Never give up! That’s why you should NEVER compare your progress with someone else’s.

All right, let’s begin. Below is the Table of Contents for this article. You can jump to a section of your choice or read this post from top to bottom (recommended).

Table of Contents

1. Buying a Guitar (If you don’t have one yet)
2. Cultivating The Right Mindset For Learning Guitar
3. Choosing a Guitar Learning Resource
4. Practice Time Table
5. Conclusion

Buying a Guitar (If you don’t have one yet)

I’ve included this for people who don’t have a guitar yet. Even though it might seem as if buying guitar is as easy as walking into a shop and ordering one, it is not.

Many beginners opt for cheap guitar, since they aren’t sure if they’ll stick with playing guitar. There are many problems with these guitars. First is the high action (distance between the strings and the fretboard.) Action should be optimum (neither very high nor very low). High action means it’d take a lot of effort to finger a string, and it’d hurt your hands a lot. At the end of the day, you’ll just throw the guitar away and give up your dream of learning guitar.

Secondly, a cheap guitar may not sound good. When you hear someone else (both offline and online) playing guitar, you might think why your guitar doesn’t sound like his/her. This is more than enough to demotivate someone new. Remember, certain guitars are expensive for a reason.

So, go with a decent guitar. Now, should you get an Acoustic or an Electric guitar? That depends.

Acoustic guitars are larger in size due to the sound hole. Electric guitars are smaller, and are usually easy to fret (finger different chords) for beginners.

It primarily comes to your taste. If you like rock and roll, you can go with an Electric guitar. However, it can cost a lot more than an Acoustic, since you also need essential accessories with it.

I’d suggest going with a decent Acoustic guitar. Practice with it for a good few months. Then, you can choose your future course of action, depending on your progress and dedication.

Now, for details on what guitar to get once you’re in a music store, I’d recommend reading the site below:

How to Buy a Guitar

Remember: Steer clear of cheap guitars.

Cultivating The Right Mindset For Learning Guitar

Instead of jumping right into the resources which will help you with your guitar playing journey immediately, I want to talk about the right mindset you should be in. Few other sites do this, and it is necessary for you to know this.

First of all, guitar playing takes months of good practice. You never “reach,” you always keep on “travelling.” What this means is that you should aim at improving everyday. Even the best guitar players do. There is no destination.

There can be times when you’d learn something really hard. You’d think to yourself, “Now that I’ve mastered something this hard, I can carry on with the easy journey that lies ahead.” However, you stumble onto a bigger block this time.

This demotivates mostly everyone. There is another factor responsible for demotivating beginners, but I talk about it in the next section, since it has nothing to do with your mindset.

You learn chords. Then, you realize that chord changes are even tougher. Then, you realize that you need to learn a lot more to play your favorite song. This cycle continues.

However, realize that even the simplest thing you learn has applications. You just need to practice the right application for the thing you’ve learned, rather than trying to force on something else. There is a guitar resource that helps you do this, which I talk about in the next section.

Choosing a Guitar Learning Resource

What many people do after learning guitar is randomly visiting websites on the internet and learning random things about guitar. Due to this, they neither make systematic progress nor can they measure their progress. Their whole learning process becomes a mess. It’s not their fault, but the fault of many other sites which are not complete resources.

This also demotivates people. It’s not because of their inability, but rather the inability of their resources that is causing the problem.

The primary idea is to pick on resource, and stick with it. If you choose to learn with a guitar teacher, do what he tells you to. Don’t keep on switching between resources. That’s bad because you’d be only going round and round.

I’m assuming you want to learn guitar on your own and don’t have access to a teacher. I’ve listed two good resources below. There are more, but why unnecessarily overwhelm you with infinite choices?

1. FREE: Justin Guitar

   This is THE wonderful free resource for guitar learning. It’s basically tons of great videos by a guy named Justin, who’d take you from a beginner to a great guitar player. No wonder he has a lot of fans.

2. PAID: Jamorama

   This is a paid product. I own this thing and it is very good. It’s basically a book (actually, a bunch of books) supported by videos. It also includes a lot of additional resources (like tuning software, tuning guide, learning guide and some other tools.) The great thing about it is that you can learn two chords (and changing between them) and start jamming with the various jam tracks that comes with it.

I use both of the above resources. Jamorama gives me a complete view of everything I need to learn in guitar. Also, it helps me keep my motivation high by providing excellent jam tracks and exercises.

On the other hand, Justin Guitar provides some cool techniques of his own. I’d recommend paying special attention to his “1 Minute Chord Changing” exercises. For me, these two things complement each other in a great way.

There are other good resources like JamPlay etc, but you need only these two (or even any one of them) to become a good player. Don’t keep on snatching resource after resource hoping that you’ll find the secret of “easy learning” in them, you won’t.

Practice Time Table

Once you start learning, you need to give guitar some serious practice. For everything new you learn, you need to give it a good practice in order to master it.

Most of us have more free time during the weekends. However, I practice for at least 10 minutes during the weekdays (or even more if I get time.) Sometime, I miss on the weekday schedule.

During the weekends, I practice for more time (obviously) and it is the time when I learn new things. In short, I learn something new during the weekends and practice it, and use the weekday schedule to master what I’ve learned.

It is recommended that you write down your progress in a dairy or something. This way, you can measure the progress you’re making with time.

Conclusion

Finally, join a guitar forum, or watch other newcomers playing guitar in sites like YouTube. This way, you would know about the common problems newcomers are facing, and their solutions. You can also ask about the problems you’re facing in the forums and get replies from experienced people.

Anyway, good luck with your guitar journey.