Beginner Guitarist Mistakes

Quite a few friends of mine that are just beginning to play guitar tell me they haven’t been improving a lot since the last time I’ve heard them play. When I go to visit and help them out, there are a few things I noticed that seemed to be common between all of them. These are in my opinion the common mistakes that beginner guitarists make.

Not Tuning the Guitar:

Make sure to get a tuner when you first start out playing guitar. Tuning your guitar is the first step you should do when you pick up a guitar. You’ll never learn how the strings are supposed to sound if you play a guitar out of tune. Once you learn how those strings are supposed to sound, you’ll be able to tune a guitar just by your ear. Playing that song out of tune will never sound good.

Thinking Negatively:

You’re not going to get anywhere fast if you stop playing all the time to think about how you’re the worst. Everyone’s a beginner at some point in their life. Thinking negatively about yourself is just going to stress you out while you learn to play, and that stress is just going to make you want to give up.

Not Using their Pinky Finger:

There isn’t a lot of strength in your pinky finger when you first start to play the guitar. Using your pinky finger is going to help strengthen your fingers and stretch your fingers out. This is a need for when you get to the more advanced techniques.

Not Keeping Tempo:

Make sure you learn to play on time and how to count the beats of a song. This is a key concept for anyone learning to play a musical instrument, especially if you’re planning on playing in a band. If all the band members play at a different tempo, the music will just turn out to be just a big mess of sounds.