Playing Guitar For Beginners
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How To Play Guitar For Beginners - Practice Makes Perfect
Hopefully you're reading this article because you want to discover a little more about what's involved when you start to learn how to play the guitar for beginners. One thing you must reconcile yourself with is that you are going to have to spend a lot of time practicing. The transformation from a complete novice to guitar axeman (or woman) is not going to happen overnight. However, as the saying goes, the good news is, all good things come to those that wait.
When I started out on the path to learning the guitar, when I was about thirteen, I asked myself a very important question. How much did I really want to learn to play the guitar and why? Maybe that's actually two questions but you should also be asking yourself that very same thing. Once that was clear in my head the next thing was being true to myself when committing how much time I had to practice. Why should you be asking these questions of yourself? Well, if you truly want to learn to play the guitar you will be totally true to yourself, totally focused and committed to seeing it through to the end. When you are in that zone, you don't make excuses that you can't practice today, that you haven't got the time. If you tell yourself you haven't got the time, you've actually just admitted to yourself that you're not really that bothered after all.
Learning to play the guitar is like pretty much anything else. If it's worth doing it's worth doing well. In other words, doing it well takes time, willpower and discipline. That is why setting aside time to practice instead of watching television or playing on a computer game is so important. Once you start telling yourself you've got time to watch American Idol instead of practice, you're on a slippery slope.
When talking about learning to play the guitar I like to use the analogy that it is like learning another language. I say that because when you already speak a second language you are more likely to be able to speak a third and pick it up relatively quickly.
As an example, I speak Spanish. You may have noticed my name. Spanish is not my first language though, I had to learn it. Anyway, a few years ago a friend and I started learning Italian. My friend didn't speak a word of any other language besides English. Well, you probably won't be surprised to learn that I picked up Italian a lot easier than my friend. Same principle can apply to instruments. If you already play another instrument, chances are you might find learning the guitar easier than someone who wouldn't know an A chord if it hit them on the nose.
My preferred method of learning visually, which is a great bonus for me because there are so many great online courses and videos out there teaching you how to play the guitar. Because of the plethora of video sharing sites on the web there are an almost infinite amount of free guitar learning videos available for those wanting to learn. However, a word of caution. These free video lessons are free for a reason. They tend to be short and miss out vital information. You have to jump all over the place from one to another and nothing is taught in the correct sequence. And you'll probably end up having as many different teaches as free videos you watch.
Some of the lessons are great in themselves and I personally use them but only as a supplement, as a practice aid, to a proper, well structured course. Yes, free is good but please don't use free material online exclusively to try to learn the guitar. I guarantee this will simply lead to frustration and the probability that you will give up due to lack of real progress.
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