Hello, I recently bought an acoustic guitar, and this is my second attempt at learning to play.
I made some progress, teaching myself basic chords and strumming, but I’m having trouble following sheet music/chord patterns and similar resources. Sometimes, when I’m watching a YouTube video on how to play a song, they don’t provide the strumming pattern or other details.
I’ve only been playing for a month, and I really enjoy it, but I feel like I’m starting to slow down again. I did download a book on how to improve my playing, which I plan to read later today.
I was wondering if anyone had a few resources they’d be willing to share.
Thank you!
Practise by accompanying your favourite music. That way you don’t get hung up on the strumming pattern and focus on enjoying, which is what keeps you coming back for practice.
There are abundant beginner videos on YouTube that teach strumming. I think the important thing is to mix learning technique with just enjoying making music by any means.
(Source, self taught playing 20 years)
This is how I did it. Play, play, play, a lot is key to learning but if you do it accompanying music you love then practice never becomes a chore.
Put the sheet music down and noodle around every day for a few months
Slow down. A lot. Slow down a painfully annoying and boring amount and rep the hard chord changes, the weird melodies, any of it. All of good technique is just good muscle memory and muscle memory is only built up through repetition.
Remember that every bad habit that you don’t nip in the bud early can have after effects to your technique for years.
Yes this is amazing advice. Playing slow but consistently will eventually sound better. No breaks in the music or pauses to adjust fingers.
If you want to get better, you have to practice every single day.
You’re going to suck at first, but then you’re going to suck less. You have to learn enjoy the process, which it sounds like you do, so great! I like to break up my play time into practicing something new and having fun; they’re both important.
One thing I’ve found is that keeping my guitar out and on the wall makes it a lot easier to get started playing, even if I don’t feel like it at the time. Once I’m about five minutes into playing, I’m into it.
Oh, and practice with a metronome. Most guitarists suck at rhythm (myself included). Using a metronome beats it into your head.
In my opinion, outside of some specific songs, strumming pattern will end up being your personal touch. You’ll strum in a certain way, and as long as the chord progression is right, it’ll sound correct. More attention will be paid when you’re playing individual notes. The rest is really up to you, and that’s probably going to seem frustrating at first, but it’s really liberating once you’ve been playing for a while.
My personal recommendation is to learn stairway to heaven by Led Zeppelin in its entirety. There are a lot of unusual chords, barre chords, techniques, etc in that one song. Additionally, you’ll need to either practice hybrid picking or finger picking. When you finally learn it completely, almost any other song will seem easy to learn. I learned it in my first few months playing guitar (20 years ago) and I’m so happy that i did, i still find it pretty easy to pick up most other songs, but also find myself playing it from time to time.
Yeah, learn Stairway to heaven and then go try out guitars in stores.
Convince yourself that you’re not improving because you need that one guitar, only to play for one month and let it catch dust afterwards.
Don’t give up.
Practice everyday, look into adjusting the action on your acoustic, and build calluses. Seriously though, practice everyday. There are no shortcuts to get around practice. If you practice anything enough you will get better at it.
I tried it for a while. It was fun making basic open chords. But I could never figure out how to keep my fretting fingers from partially muting the non-fretted strings. I don’t have super fat fingers or anything, I just couldn’t figure it out.
And barre chords…forgeddaboudit.
The person who taught me put colored bits of tape on the instrument to denote basic chords like G, C, D, and Am. It really helped, using a different color for each one, so I could learn to move quickly between them and build the muscle memory I needed.
I think early on, it’s really important to focus on getting comfortable with the instrument itself. When you start learning to play, it’s common to have a lot of stiffness in your wrist and fingers. It’s kinda foreign for your wrist and hands to move like that at first. Practicing frequently and developing your muscle memory will help get your hands to flow on the instrument.
It’s less important when you start, to focus on getting the notes and patterns right. When most people start learning, they sound like shit. It can feel discouraging when you do all this practice and you still don’t sound like your favorite band. I think that’s where a lot of people end up quitting. And it’s why that guy at every party knows how to play Wonderwall and nothing else.
Practice getting a good feel for the instrument. It’s a good indication you’ve become fairly comfortable when you realize you’re not looking at your strumming hand anymore as you play. The more comfortable you get, the easier things like the strumming patterns will get too.
Don’t be afraid to play something a little differently if it’s easier for you to learn. You can use it as a stepping stone to learning the original. Or you can just play your own version.
As far as resources go, I mostly have used YouTube and Ultimate Guitar. I think you’ll find that a lot of guitarists don’t use sheet music much. The most common form of written music for guitar is written in Tab, so familiarize yourself with that if you aren’t already. I have always learned by looking up tabs on a song I wanted to play. You can always look for something else if you are more comfortable with that. But I think it’s always easiest to get started on a song with some community-made tabs.
Keep practicing, don’t give up. You will get better.
Justin Guitar, dude. On YouTube. Justin Guitar. Do it.
Strumming patterns you’ll just develop a feel for. You can practice that against your knee while just casually listening to the song. An exercise you can do for this is to practice three-chord rock songs. A LOT of songs are written with a progression of A, D, Em. Two examples off the top of my head are Louie Louie and Wild Thing. The difference between them is the rhythm.
I’ve been playing guitar for 25 years now, I do know how to read sheet music from band class in school, but I’ve never combined those two skills. I’ve been handed sheet music for Piano or some other part that had guitar chords over it, and a lot of the more intricate pieces I know I learned via tablature. The nice thing about tabs is they can be fairly easily made with ASCII.
You want a fairly easy way to make yourself sound WAY more impressive? If you’re comfortable strumming chords, you can start picking individual strings instead. I like to use House of the Rising Sun as an example for this. The chord progression is Am, C, D, F, Am, E, Am, E. You can just strum along with a fairly simple rhythm, but, instead of strumming all strings, pick them individually as found in this tab. Your fret hand still does the exact same thing, but your pick hand does a little bit more. This song is a good introduction to this because your pick mostly goes “down” (physically toward the floor toward the higher strings) then back up a couple. It’s also a fairly easy introduction to finger picking.
Fun fact about House of the Rising Sun: It’s in common meter. Which means you can swap the lyrics for other common meter songs into it to interesting effect. Many of Emily Dickenson’s poems are in common meter. So is Amazing Grace and the theme tune of Gilligan’s Island. You can have a lot of fun mixing and matching lyrics with melodies. It’s a fun trick to have in your repertoire when you’re passed a guitar at a bonfire or something.
I really enjoy it, but I feel like I’m starting to slow down again
This is how it goes for me and I’ve been playing for quite awhile. Feels like I stagnate then an “aha! moment” happens and I’m rejuvenated. Eventually I started taking lessons to improve.
Don’t bother with sheet music IMO. Tabs are all you need. Learn the major open chords first, they’ll get you farther along quicker than anything else. Don’t fret (pun intended) if you are learning a song and it doesn’t sound 100% the same.
Learning guitar takes some dedication before you feel like you’re really getting it. Practice at least 30 minutes a day and it will come to you but it may be months before it sounds like music. As long as you’re having fun. I tell people it’s like learning to tie your shoe laces. All muscle memory. It was difficult at first but now your hands do it without you having to think about it or even look at it. Soon your hands with form those chord shapes the same way. Good luck!
Don’t watch any more videos. No more instruction and forced repetition of songs that already exist. Just play and play and play at least 10 minutes a day. Strum your fingers, listen to the sounds you are making, try to find pleasant ways to stitch together chords and strums into unique novel arrangements. Don’t try to memorize twinkle twinkle or your favorite song. Make something new with the pallette you have unlocked in yourself.
A lot of music instrument people are academic theorist in their mentality. It saddens me to see creative types take what should be beautiful expressions of spontaneous whimsy and turns playing into dry formalized literature. Theres a reason its called playing the guitar and not working the guitar.
If you spend your time trying to learn the ‘right way’ as defined by so called guitar experts, you’ll never experience learning how to play your way. Theres joy in finding new chords by chance, learning how to turn cacauphany into melody by sheer practice over the months/years and feeling the music come from inside. The art ends up more authentic and original that way, I feel.