Part 2 of 3

4 Not getting consistent practice

This is a big one… You need to practice nearly every day if you want to get better. Many beginners make the mistake of thinking that they will get better by just taking lessons online or from a teacher. But the truth is – most of your improvement comes from the time you spend practicing in between your lessons. You’ve got to spend time playing to get better. And you’ve got to practice consistently. Instead of practicing three hours on the day of your lesson its best to break that time up into six or seven sessions of 20-30 minutes throughout the week.

5 Not bending the fretting hand fingers

You need to play notes using the tips of your fingers. Your fingers should be curled so that they bend at the first two joints.

The right way to fret a note

The wrong way to fret a note

This may not seem important at first. After all you can probably play notes with flat fingers and they may sound fine. However, as you start to play more difficult things on the guitar such as chords or fast licks you’ll find that keeping your fingers flat will not work at all.

6 Not letting the notes ring out. Not playing clear notes.

Every note you play should ring out clearly. It should not sound muffled and you should not hear a buzzing sound. While this problem is sometimes caused by playing on a guitar that is not setup properly, most often its caused by not having your finger close enough to the frets or by not pushing hard enough.

I’ve taught guitar for many years now and over time I’ve noticed that a few mistakes are common to most beginning guitarists. Here is part one of a three part article that lists the top ten mistakes I’ve noticed and what you can do about them!

1 Not keeping the thumb at 2nd fret:
When you first start playing, you usually play between frets 1 and 4. This is sometimes called “first position”. When playing in first position, the fretting hand thumb should be between the first and second frets. Usually its close to the second fret.

Most beginners start out with their thumb in that position but while they are playing they tend to slide the thumb around because it is easier to reach some of the notes that way. But when your thumb moves out of position it makes it more difficult to find the right fret by feel.

When you are first starting out you have a lot of things to pay attention to and its easy to forget about keeping your thumb stationary. Make sure to check every so often to make sure your thumb has not wandered away from where it should be. It can also be helpful to have someone else watch your thumb while you are playing and let you know if you move it.

2 Holding the pick wrong

The pick grip that most experienced guitar players use feels strange at first. For a video and photos that teach you how to hold the pick see this blog post:
http://how-to-play-guitar-lessons-online.com/blog/2007/11/24/how-to-hold-a-guitar-pick/

3 Playing too fast!

Most of us want to be able to play fast. The problem is that most of us try to play fast before we are ready to. No one likes to hear this, but you NEED to start playing slowly. You need to play at a speed that feels “in control” to you. You should never feel rushed. When you are playing something that is new to you, you should take all the time you need to play it perfectly. Practice playing it perfectly over and over and THEN start to speed up just a little. If you speed up just a little bit every single day then you will be playing a lot faster in a month! AND you will be playing much cleaner and more accurately than if you had tried to start playing at a high speed to ostart.

If you play too fast and “out of control” then you will make mistakes. But the worst part is that you are actually training yourself to make mistakes in the future. By playing something over and over incorrectly, your hands will get used to making these mistakes and you will make them again and again.