13 Effective Guitar Tips for Beginners [Best Ways To Start]

Guitar tips

Learning guitar is not an easy task. At first, you will be extremely excited and will do the tasks sincerely. But, slowly you will start feeling frustrated and drained as mastering guitar requires patience and constant practice and you will only go to the next level when you can perfect the former one.

For which, you will not be playing songs as soon as you want to. But, if you are serious about it, and want to invest time and energy into learning it, we have some valuable guitar tips for beginners!

Beginner Guitar Tips: Top To Bottom

So here are some effective tips for new guitar players who want to learn and improve their guitar skills and feed their soul harmony along with encouraging others.

1. Know Your Guitar

Learning to play guitar or any musical instrument without knowing its types, parts, and specific uses of the parts? Totally not a good start! Know your guitar before learning it. So, the very first step to learning a new instrument is knowing your gear first!

Types: There are many kinds of guitars- acoustic, electric, bass, etc. Electric and other expensive guitars are quite easy to play once you learn to play the acoustic one. It is best to start with an acoustic guitar.

Parts: You must know what each part of the guitar is called to be the master of your instrument. The terms like Fret, Tuning Bridge, Head, Body, Bridge, etc. will come across your lessons hundreds of times. Eventually, you will find yourself at a disadvantage if you cannot identify them. Besides, a guitar needs maintenance. You need to know how to clean and maintain each part to keep your guitar fit!

Use: All the parts of a guitar have their use or contribution. You should know the function of each part to immediately know what is wrong with your guitar once you find a problem.

2. Stick To Simple Chord Progressions Earlier On

guitar chord progressions

Songs with 2 to 4 guitar chords involved in its progression are great ones to start practicing with. Songs with four-chord progressions are probably best. You’ll get to practice changing from one chord to another more seamlessly plus there are several songs out there to choose from.

Plus, you get to learn about the relationships between minor and major chords early on without even knowing it. Chord progressions like D-A-Bm-G or G-Em-C-D are quite commonly used in songs albeit with different rhythms and tempos.

Soon, once you’ve nailed down the fundamentals you’ll understand why these progressions are commonly used and how you can apply them through the varying notes, chords, or scales along your entire fretboard.

3. Learn To Transform The Chord Diagrams Into Music

Another thing you will come across every day in your guitar life is the chord diagram. It tells you where to place your finger on a particular chord. They contain a picture of each of the six strings and make it easier for you to read your music.

Stress and rush are on the list of ‘things not to do’ while learning to play the guitar. There will be times when you will feel that you are incapable of playing the guitar. Especially, when you shift to learning the change of guitar chords. Your fingers need to change position so swiftly that you will not get it correct for days, even months. Well, it is not a quality you are born with. So, the key technique for getting it correct is to relax and practice!

Believe that you can instead of thinking you cannot. Keep your mind fresh and calm, body loose, and your muscles relaxed. Your mind will be able to focus on the chords your hands are playing only when it can lose focus on the stiffness of your body.

4. Focus On Perfecting The Basics

Here goes the fourth of all tips for a new guitarist!

I know how monotonous the basics of a guitar are! You are stuck practicing chords and fingering whereas your main intention behind learning the guitar was to sing songs. But, you are wrong if you think that this procedure is useless.

These basic practices help your fingers become more flexible and your finger placement become more accurate. As a result, become your gradual but solid road to playing better!

5. Do Not Run From Difficult Chords

Barre Chord Shapes
Sample of Barre Chord Shapes

You have been hearing that beautiful song for a few days now and want to play it on your guitar. But, you realize how difficult it actually is once you start practicing and end up leaving it for good.

This is something you definitely should not do. Do not be a pessimist, keep trying and you will excel at your work.

These difficult guitar chords i.e, barre chords are what make the easy chords easier and the most difficult chords, less difficult. Keep on working on the difficult chords and you may find a time when you find no chords difficult!

6. Practice Your Favorite Song(s)

Rhythm is one of the most important aspects of guitar playing as well as in music in general. Perfecting or catching your rhythm should be a good way for you to exercise your fingering skills and change from one chord to another.

And what’s a better way to practice developing your rhythm with fun than to sing along to your favorite song and something that you are already familiar with. This is also quite the same as listening to a record from your favorite band. You’ll be ultra-inspired to learn these songs instead of something else boring. It would also pay off quite nicely should you be practicing songs with varying tempos.

7. Learn Your DO-RE-MI

No, it’s not just a simple nursery rhyme of something from the Sound of Music, it’s the building blocks of music itself. One important thing that beginner musicians, in general, should understand is that music is just composed of these 7 notes within what you call a scale. The next note would then indicate one pitch higher as in C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C.

Do-Re-Mi: Guitar Tips For Beginners

That’s just the equivalent of DO-RE-MI-FA-SO-LA-TI-DO. Know that your chords are just composed of notes rung together to form a harmonious sound and then chords played one after the other form a melody creating music or a song.

Check here for a useful guide for beginners to learn guitar scales using Do-Re-Mi.

Also don’t avoid learning basic music theory, strumming patterns, open position notes & chords, barre chords, pentatonic scales, major & minor scales, etc. because those lessons will transform you into a good guitar player with proper technique.

8. Silent Rehearsing

You might find it very difficult to choose between your favorite TV show and guitar training. With silent rehearsing you can do both! You can keep on practicing the chords with your left hand without using your right to produce the music. As a result, you get to kill two birds with one stone by merging recreation and training in one slot of your schedule.

For silent rehearsing, you can use a silent guitar like Yamaha Slg200. Check our full review of the Yamaha silent guitar.

9. Focus More On Tempo Than Tune

A common mistake that beginners make is they focus on the tune rather than the tempo. Tune is important but tempo needs more practice. Besides, the tune will not make sense without the correct tempo.

If you play some of your notes too fast and some too slow, it’s not that harmonious, is it? So, focus on both but, on the tempo more during the initial phase of your guitar lessons. In the path of learning a musical instrument, this is a very crucial stage.

10. Practice Using A Metronome

This is also really simple to practice early on but can prove to be quite valuable later on in your musical journey. A metronome is a cheap device or nowadays an application on your smartphone that makes click sound continuously and can be pre-set on varying tempos or speeds to use as a guide as you exercise your harmonic progressions.

Metronome: Guitar Tips for Older Beginners

A metronome teaches you or should we say trains your body and gives it rhythm. Little by little, as you exercise with a metronome your playing style will be a lot cleaner as you won’t spill your chord or harmonic progressions over the next iteration.

This is a valuable skill you’ll need later on once you start recording your own music. Also, practice using a tuner to train your ears in the process. It is quite valuable to know how to tune by ear too not because you can’t rely on tuners but because the ability to recognize your notes is also valuable as you write your own songs.

Tuners are essential especially if you plan to perform on stage later on, so be familiar with it too.

11. Have The Patience And The Plan

In the frustrating situations of hurting your fingers, and holding your guitar in weird positions, keep in mind that all guitar players have faced these when they were absolutely new to the guitar. You do not lack anything but if you do give up the practice, you lack both guts and patience. So, make mistakes and correct them patiently.

Plus, develop a long-term training routine. Even set time to rehearsal only for 10-15 minutes on a busy day. Keep raising the difficulty of your practice chords gradually

12. Find A Guide

You will find lots of books, free videos, and free lessons or courses on the internet. But, all of them will give you only generalized instructions which might not suit your style. Even if it does, they will not point out your mistakes and help you correct them. Due to this, you better find a mentor or guitar teacher who will supervise your lessons and correct your mistakes manually.

13. Explore!

You must explore different guitar playing techniques, strumming patterns, styles, music theory, etc. as well as listen to a wide range of music. And, never stop yourself from trying out your own techniques! This will help you find your own style and forte.

Final Words

In conclusion, I would like to say, in whichever way you play guitar and whatever you play just enjoy playing it. Nothing compares to the mental peace and joy you get from playing guitar the way you want to. But, you can definitely follow these tips to build new guitar skills the way you want them to.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Scroll to Top