For several years I have seen guitar player make many of the same mistakes when trying to tune their playing skills to the next level. I will today address 3 main ones.

Don’t think that you are the only one making these mistakes, most of us do. But these mistakes can cause major problems if you don’t correct them as soon as possible.

Avoid These 3 Common Mistakes:

The three main mistakes MOST people make when learning how to play guitar are:

1: Playing to fast when practicing.

As I have mentioned before when learning to play chords, you need to take your time. Play everything at half speed and with the correct fret positions and strums. This will help you avoid sloppy playing and give you more solid technique when it is time to play with some more speed.

You are trying to make perfect memory of the position of the song or chords you are playing. So make it right. It is harder to unlearn sloppy playing than it is to learn at an easy going speed and do it right.

Play it correctly 100% of the time and when you develop you will continue to play it correctly.

2: Don’t muscle your guitar.

There is a reason that the pros look so effortless when they play, it’s because it is effortless to them. The moral of the story here is that you do not need to grab the guitar neck like you are trying to strangle it. Soft and gentle is what you are going for.

Just like the golf pros, you don’t see them straining to try and hit it hard, they don’t need to. They got their swing down perfect do they don’t have to muscle anything.

When learning how to play guitar, and in all practice sessions, you need to be as relaxed as possible at all times.

Try to relax your fingers and wrist as you play. Once you play more and more the notes you want to you should be able to play them without using too much hand strength at all.

Once you get the motions down you should be using soft hands to play. Just a little practice of this each day will pay off huge.

3: Practice in 2 different ways

When you practice you should be practicing reading music, playing proper chords, practicing scales and all the usual stuff that goes into a daily practice routine.

Take the practice time seriously and do the classic training that all guitar players need.

That standard practice that you do is with patience and concentration. Play slow and always learn something new. Develop that finger memory.

The other kind of time that you should be spending on your guitar is fun time.

There are people that call this other names, noodling is one of them. However, the principal is the same. You are just spending time playing around. Trying to make up new sounds, new songs, playing along to one of your favorite tunes on a CD.

This is fun time for all players and is good to keep your attitude fun and practice a lot more interesting.
Noodling Time.

Just pick up your guitar and grab a seat. You don’t need anything just play around. Anything will do.

Just as any other practice stick to playing slow and patient. Don’t start any bad habits while playing around.

Keep practicing.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 2nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Playing Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.