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!
Practice regularly until you get blisters. Go on minimum amount of time until they’re good enough you can play some more until you build callus where you need it.
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.
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.
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.
I bought a poster of all the chord shapes and would constantly run through the whole thing while watching TV and a huge Beatles book because everyone knows Beatles songs. They literally taught us a bunch of them in grade school music classes growing up. After a couple of years of basic chord structure and strumming, I then moved on to learning scales. Mostly right now, concentrate on chord shapes, building up hand strength, and strumming. Pick easy three chord songs that you know and enjoy and play the heck out of them.
Dude, The Beatles Complete Chord Songbook? Totally how I taught myself guitar too. My only beef with it was that I need to tune Beatles songs down a whole step for my vocal range, which was not practical as a beginner, but I learned all the chord shapes really quickly
Yep, that’s the one! Sucker is fucking heavy too lmao.
I photocopied pages back in the day so they were easier to put on a stand
Depends on your goals. Two things are magic: playing with other people and playing live Other than that focus on the basics - always practice with a metronome. You can instantly tell who is ready to play together and who is used to used to doing their own thing all over the time signature.
Most importantely have fun. Most people will tell you to practice regularly, but that’s only possible if you genuinely enjoy playing. If you go for a daily routine of boring exercises, there’s a chance it will create a loathing for the instrument and the practice, whereas if you do a bit of everything (cool riffs & refrains, tedious exercises, wild experiments, etc), you will build up a virtuous & pleasant realtionship with your instrument, and you will pick it up every day without even thinking about it.
Justin Guitar, dude. On YouTube. Justin Guitar. Do it.
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.
The best advice I have for strumming patterns is to just listen to the song and try and just focus on the rhythm. Down strokes sound a little beefier and up strokes are a little more jangly. I’m terrible at identifying chords by ear but can get the rhythm down pretty much immediately. It just comes with time.
As far as playing songs I would not worry about playing just like the recording but just getting close enough that it’s recognizable.
Try new songs that seem easy till you find one that actually is easy, drill it till you can do it decently, try another song and do the same. That was me 25 years ago and I still love to play.
Learn to read guitar tabs, listen to single parts of the song till you can play that part and keep going till you have each part.
I found it way easier with songs I liked. They were probably harder to play but it kept me interested.
A video of someone playing the song might help with the strumming pattern but you get an ear for it pretty quick.
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!
Grab a circle of 5ths app and lean chords in these progressions.
I found an app called chord ai I don’t particularly like AI but an AI that can tell me a chord in any song. I kind of fuck with that.
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.
Keep at it! The learning curve is not a straight line, just like with any skill. You’ll see fast progress, just to be followed by a long plateau of no progress or even feel you’re getting worse. And then you notice possibly big improvement again. And again.
Don’t worry about following sheets/chords initially. If chords are not in your muscle memory, you’re basically doing three complex tasks simultaneously, reading, figuring out chords and fingering chords. I’d try to memorize one or two simple pieces first, to get the chords under your belt. Start simple and stay patient, it’ll take time.
Don’t forget the rhythm. Play on top of recordings. You can be pretty liberal with the harmonics, but if you keep a steady beat it’ll probably still sound good.
