The 10 BEST Tips for Guitar Beginners

Are you actually playing guitar the way you should? We’re going to cover how to learn guitar faster and easier in this lesson with 10 pieces of advice I am passing on to you as a seasoned guitar player! Don’t be in the high percentage of beginners who quit playing guitar early on. Follow these tips to help you expedite your proficiency on guitar and to have more fun playing. We’re going to cover how to practice guitar properly, what gear you should buy, advice on guitar chords, how to get over practice humps and more!

Download the Easy 2, 3 & 4 Chord Songs for Beginners List

Download the Bridge Hand Exercises PDF

Download the Nursery Rhymes and Easy Rock Riffs PDF

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As a musician passionate about teaching, I am here to show you how to play guitar and to make music! I’ve been through the ups and downs of playing being both self-taught and with multiple instructors along the way and my goal is to help move your guitar playing along as quick as possible. So let’s take this adventure through music together and have fun!

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Transcription

So are you a beginner guitar player, potentially wasting valuable practice time? In this video I'm going to give you my personal top 10 tips that you should be doing on guitar that'll help you learn to play faster. My name's Dan Essaf, I'm a guitar teacher who's been playing guitar for over 20 years, both self-taught and with multiple instructors. And a lot of this advice is going to be from my own experience, as well as scouring YouTube and the internet to come up with the best list possible, as well as provide you with some free PDF downloads to help push your learning along. So I want to start at a place that I find a lot of beginners quit, and that's making chords. Because they find out that it's harder than they expected. Especially chords that require stretching, like the C major chord. This tip is a shout out to everyone who thinks that their hands are either too big or too small to play guitar, when the truth is, they're not. You're going to find great, amazing players with all different hand sizes, both big and small. The truth is, it's just going to take time and practice, but you will get it if you just keep at it. Trust me. So this tip does require a capo, and if you don't have one already, you can get one on Amazon on the cheaper end for like, maybe $5. And I do recommend these spring-loaded ones, so that they're easier to take on and off the guitar. So what you do is you pop that sucker higher up on the fretboard, like the 7, 8 or 9 fret area. And the frets here are going to be closer together, smaller, than they are down here where they're a bit wider. That's going to make it easier for you to practice your chords, like the C major chord. So you don't have to stretch as far. And you can do any chords that you're working on like that. And then what you do is you just move it down when you get that good, and you practice those same chords here. And when those sound good, you move it down again, and you just keep going until you get down to the open position. You can also do this while practicing strumming with changing chords at the same time too. I mean, you may as well work on two things at once. For tip number two, let me take you back to my later teens when I hadn't been playing guitar very long, and I was really into the band Nirvana. So I'd found out that Fender was reissuing the Fender Jagstang, which is the guitar that Kurt Cobain designed. And I felt like I had to have one. All of my gear was pretty cheap, and I was like, "You know what? If I save up some money, get this $700 to $900 guitar," which was pretty expensive to me at that time especially, I was like, "It's going to make me want to practice more. It's going to make me this amazing guitar player." So I scrounged together every penny I could. And I went to the local store, and I special ordered it, and it took a few months to get. I got it home, and I played it for a while. But then it ended up sitting in a case, just sitting there. And honestly, it's because I just didn't end up enjoying playing it very much, and I enjoyed playing the other guitars I had more. So the lesson/tip here is, don't think that if you spend a ton of money on expensive gear that 1) it's going to make you a better player, or 2) it's going to make you want to play more. I've had plenty of students over the years drop thousands of dollars on gear, thinking it's going to make them either magically a better player or, “I’ve spent all this money, so I'm going to practice more." Because honestly, they just kind of end up quitting a lot of the time. The love of guitar does not equal to the dollars spent on one. To this day, I'll still play “cheap” guitars sometimes just because I enjoy playing them. Or sometimes I'll take a Squier guitar, and I'll install my own upgrades to it so I can customize it to what I like, and I don't have to spend that much money to do it. So if anything, start with more affordable gear, and then as you stick to it, use that as an incentive, a reward for, "Hey, I've been playing guitar for a couple of years now," or something like that, and then treat yourself to that guitar you really want. You should also, by that point, have an idea of what kind of guitar you like so that you're not just taking a shot in the dark with an expensive guitar or amplifier thinking that you might like it. The only other gear you should have besides the guitar to start is maybe an amp and then a tuner, which you could always download a free app like GuitarTuna, something like that, and a guitar stand. And an extra tip when it comes to the guitar stand, stick it somewhere that you're going to see the guitar pretty often, and it's very easily within reach. You can just grab it, because if you do that, you're going to be more likely to just grab it and play it for five minutes than if it's hiding somewhere, then you'll be less likely to think about it. Also, as just a quick note, because I do get this question from time to time, start with a guitar that plays the music you like. So if you like rock music, buy an electric with an amplifier. If you like country music, buy an acoustic. Don't get tangled up in what guitar is better to start with or practice with or anything like that. To start, just keep it simple and just stick to the guitar that plays the music that you like. Let me start this tip with saying that this is another place that a lot of beginners, in particular adults, get annoyed and end up quitting because they think that they can just jump straight into guitar soloing or playing their favorite songs quickly. No matter what age you start guitar at, everyone starts at the same place, the bottom. So when I start a new student who's brand new to guitar, I always start them with the same thing. I start them with single string nursery rhymes, then we move on to two strings, and then three string nursery rhymes. And I tell them to think about it as if it's like a preview to guitar soloing. Don't overlook the value that playing nursery rhymes holds. You're going to learn single note playing, rhythm, and how to connect notes well. Hey, that sounds a lot like guitar soloing. Once you have the hang of those, then you can move on to some of those like easy rock guitar riffs to really get the ball rolling. Now if you want a PDF that has some of those nursery rhymes and some easy rock guitar riffs TABs on them so that you have a starting place, you can get it for free on my website. No email sign up or anything like that. Just go on there, download, and it's yours. You can just check out the link in the description if you want to download that. Let me talk about a controversial opinion I have when it comes to tip number four, because I know I'm going to get a bunch of flack for it, but hear me out. So when I listen to some other guitar teachers, they recommend having a metronome, A-S-A-P, and I just don't think that's good advice. When you're first starting out, you're already trying to figure out how to hold the guitar comfortably, how to manipulate your fingers to make chords and melodies, how to use a guitar pick or to fingerpick, all while trying to sound good and do it all quickly. Why are we adding the stress of a metronome on top of that? It's like the stress of playing Perfection as a kid all over again. Now, I do agree that you should add a metronome into your practicing to help make your rhythm better, but add it after you're already pretty comfortable with basic strumming and making chords. So what I recommend doing instead is practice tapping your foot along with your strumming, in particular the down-strums, that way later you can line up that foot tap with the click of the metronome and you'll be a bit more comfortable with rhythm and playing along with the metronome. Rhythm is extremely important, so don't overlook it, but don't feel like you need a metronome from the very beginning. Pick one up or download an app after you've gotten pretty comfortable with both your basic chords and some strumming. So if you've jumped from YouTube video to YouTube video with conflicting advice about “make sure you play the guitar this way” or “make sure you have your hand specifically like this.” Well, I have some news for you with tip number five. They're wrong. How you play guitar and the technique is entirely up to you. As long as you're comfortable and it sounds good, it doesn't matter how you do it. Heck, I saw somebody playing guitar well with their foot on YouTube recently. So when you find that place that you like to hold the guitar pick or where you like to place your hand for fingerpicking, stick to it because what's really important is the consistency to move forward faster. So for example, I like to play with my hand resting on the bridge here and some people like to play with it floating over here. Both work, just find which one you like and stick to it. If you change your positioning every few days, every week, whatever, you're actually slowing down your progress and you may evolve the way that you play the guitar in the future. But to start, just stick with the simple, what is efficient, what is comfortable and what sounds good. And this goes for stuff like chords too. Like I could technically make this version of G major with three different fingerings or more, it doesn't matter which one you go with as long as it sounds good. So there are a couple of tips I would probably tack on to this one that are pretty good to follow. Like for example, you want to practice with a clean guitar so you can really hear the quality of what you're playing because if you're playing with like effects like distortion or overdrive, you might not be able to tell if you're really playing it well or not. Now when it comes to practicing your chords, some people are going to say don't start practicing with your thumb wrapped around and it'll just kind of come naturally over time. And that's true, but I have to agree with Rick Beato on this one where I think you should start as early as you can wrapping your thumb around to mute these lower strings. It'll take longer, but you'll thank yourself in the long run. Another sub tip here is to do your best to relax when you're playing and practicing. Players can get really tense trying to hold those strings down when really it's more about stretching and just getting your fingers in the right place versus raw strength. And my last little extra side tip here actually involves the guitar pick. Now if you're playing with a guitar pick and you're just starting out, carry one with you everywhere you go, especially because they're like a dime a dozen. So if you lose one, whatever. But if you fiddle with it throughout the day, your hand's going to get way more comfortable using it when you're playing guitar. One thing you can do is throw it in the air, catch it, and see if you can get into position without using your second hand to place it there. You're going to get way more comfortable faster with it. Wait, am I only halfway? If you have any additional tips that I don't cover in this video, let everyone know what your advice would be in the comments because who knows who you'll be helping out. Or if you're at those beginner stages of guitar, let me know how it's going. And of course, like and subscribe if you want some more free guitar stuff. So now let's move on to tip number six, and it's advice that every guitar teacher gives, but they don't necessarily elaborate on it. So everybody knows practice, practice, practice, practice. However, not everybody talks about practicing smart versus practicing hard. Before I move on to more specific points about practicing smart, let's start with how long you should be practicing, whether you've just started or you're in a practice rut. So it's going to vary for everyone, but start with just five minutes a day for like a week or so, and then grow from there. Add a couple minutes here, add a couple minutes there until you've hit 30 minutes minimum. The hard part here is getting into the habit of picking the guitar up and playing it every day, not the length of time that you play it. So even if you just pick it up and goof around playing whatever, at least you're getting in the habit of picking it up every day and playing something. Now onto the smart part of practicing. So the real key is repetition and consistency to form muscle memory, which takes time. We want to be able to play a guitar without having to think about it in the moment. But the thing is, you need to think about and prioritize at the end of the day what is most important to you when it comes to you playing guitar.So for example, let's take that common exercise that most people know, the spider exercise.If you spend the majority of your practice time working on this exercise that every guitar player says you need to know, you're just going to get super good at that exercise. But the thing is, you're not going to go on stage or in front of your friends and family and say, "Hey, check it out and do the spider exercise." Your priorities are in the wrong place. Just ask yourself, why are you playing guitar? Are you trying to play songs? Are you trying to be good at improvisation? Are you trying to write songs? Whatever it is, that's what you should spend the majority of your practice time on, especially if your practice time is limited, because those skills are going to transfer to other things on guitar. Of course, still do some exercises and all, just don't get hung up on them. Do them shortly and then move on to what's important. You'll also just have more fun playing guitar that way. Some other quick advice I would give here is, of course, make sure you're avoiding buzzing notes. Make sure your notes sound good and your playing sounds clean. Keep things simple, aim to just be better than you were the week before, and just make sure you're having fun when you play, because otherwise, what's the point? The last thing I'll say here when it comes to practice is that you can avoid roadmaps. With guitar, there's like a million roads you could take, so you will find your own way. Just stick with what you're interested in and you can't go wrong. This is probably my favorite tip to give, because I really believe that it moves beginners along if they follow it. Now if you find yourself doing this a lot, then you just need to stop, because all that head shaking back and forth is just going to make you dizzy and it's going to slow down your learning. Now what you should be doing is you should only be keeping your eyes on the fretting hand instead. Your fretting hand has all of these frets and strings to cover with both making chords and playing individual notes and such with soloing and whatnot. Our bridge hand, however, has a lot less to do. So our top priority as a beginner should be to be getting our bridge hand functioning on its own as quickly as we can. That way we can concentrate on the fretting hand and the fretboard, whether we're playing chords, playing solos, seeing scales on the fretboard, and we're not breaking our concentration to look back at the bridge hand. And that goes whether you're using a guitar pick, whether you're playing finger style, or whatever. When you're practicing, instead of creating neck pains, looking back and forth, and breaking our concentration, when your bridge hand makes a mistake, fight the urge to look at it. Let it make the mistake. So let's say you hit a wrong string. Instead of breaking your concentration and looking at it to figure out where the string is, figure out where it is without looking. Continue to do that, and before you know it, your bridge hand is going to be working entirely independently without you ever having to look at it. And you can really just concentrate and plan on what you're doing with your fretting hand and what you're doing on the fretboard. If you want to download a free PDF that has some exercises designed to get the bridge hand functioning independently, you can just by checking out the link in the description. Tip number 8. For number 8, I want to talk about something we don't want to become, and some tips on how to avoid it successfully. What I'm talking about is the guitar guy at the party. You know, the person who manages to find a guitar hidden somewhere and they insist they play and they can only play parts of a dozen songs and none all the way through. Unless it's Wonderwall. It's easy enough to just say, "Hey, don't be that guy." But I want to be more helpful than that. So I have a strategy that works out well for people. Because I know it's frustrating to spend a long time on just one song, or just part of a song, only to find that the next part is super difficult and you don't want to continue or you just want to play something else. So what you do is you work on one harder song and one easier song at the same time. Now the harder song should be that song that you are passionate about, that draws you to want to practice guitar. It's going to take you longer, but it's going to make you want to practice. Then the easier song. You might not be crazy about it, but the thing is you'll learn it quickly and that's going to build up your confidence and it's going to add to that list of songs that you can play in full. As you learn easy song after easy song, you're going to add them to your set list, which is like a collection of maybe 10 songs that you can play instantly in full when someone hands you a guitar. After you finish learning a song, don't just stop playing it. Play it every few days to get better at it and so that you can always just play it on a whim because you'd be surprised how quickly you'll forget how to play a song after you haven't played it for a bit. Then once you've surpassed those 10 songs, start swapping out old songs for new songs that you prefer. It'll keep you in practice. It's going to build up your confidence. It's going to get you wanting to practice more and best of all, you won't be the guitar guy at the party. If you don't know any easy songs or you need some new ideas, I've got you covered. Check out the link in description. I've got a list of easy songs for beginners to work on that you can download for free. So this next tip actually has to do with more of my history when it comes to playing guitar. To keep it short, I was 16 when I started, I'm 38 now, and for the first like 10 years or so, I jumped back and forth between teaching myself and multiple different teachers, all of which varied on how good they were at teaching. I then eventually landed on my last teacher who is just a phenomenal guitar player and he just pushed my skills to the next level in a bunch of different ways when it came to guitar. And he eventually told me that I should start teaching myself, which ended up being my career. So I've had experience in both the self-taught realm and the one-on-one private lessons realm. And when you're trying to learn guitar as fast as possible, a good guitar teacher is the best way to go. Notice that I said good, I've had some bad teachers and it did take me a while to find the right one. However, just because it's the fastest route, that doesn't mean it's the route you need to take. Because let's be honest, one-on-one lessons are not for everyone. I can tell you that you can be an amazing guitar player being entirely self-taught. And you can also do it with just entirely free resources like YouTube, Ultimate Guitar Tabs, Songster, and a bunch of others out there on the internet. You can use paid programs that cost money or apps that will guide you a little better, give you a bit more direction, but they're not entirely necessary. You can totally do it with just free stuff. In the end, you need to do what's right for you and what you're trying to accomplish on guitar. As someone who's tried all these different methods like following programs that are guided, self-taught, and private lessons, I can say that for me, private lessons were the best way to go. And I will recommend it to others that are trying to get the fastest results. But I'll say it again, it's not a necessity and it doesn't have to be. If you really love guitar, you're going to be great at it no matter what route you take. Just follow your passion for playing. With tip number 10, I think back about when I first started and I was teaching myself how to play. I didn't have a teacher and I was trying to figure out how to get chords, first just clean. But then the real struggle to get them clean quickly on top of that. It was not fun. But I eventually figured it out and I learned a few things along the way and I want to share those with you. So my first piece of advice here is to not work on too many chords at the same time. Memorizing an entire sheet of chords is not going to do you too much good. Instead work on just a couple at a time, especially if they're in the same song, before you move on to learning more chords. And like I mentioned in tip number eight, if you head to the link in description, there's a free PDF of a list of songs that only use just a few chords if you're looking for an easier place to start. By just learning one or two chords at a time, you're going to get the muscle memory down for those chords really well. So that when you're working on a song or starting a new song that has those chords, you'll already know how to play them really well and you don't have to pseudo relearn them or pull up a chord chart to remember, "Oh, how did I play those chords?" Now a quicker, more effective way to learn chords is that you can actually look for connections between the chords that you're switching between and the fingers that we use to make them. So for example, if we look at the A minor chord here, if I'm making the chord here with my middle, ring, and index fingers and I need to get to the C major chord real fast, I can just move my ring finger to the third fret A string and now I have the C major chord. So I can go back and forth, A minor, C major, A minor, C major. And it's not just about my fingers being fast, it's about being able to control them so that I can keep some fingers in place while moving others. So another example that we can look at when it comes to making connections between chords is between A minor and E major. If I again use my middle, ring, and index fingers for A minor, they make the same shape for E major, it's just up one string each finger. So all I need to do is keep my fingers bunched together as a group and move them up a string. So I have A minor, E major, A minor, E major. So now let's do one more with C major and G major. Here I am in C major with my ring, middle, and index fingers. If I want to get to G major quickly, I can move my ring and middle fingers grouped together up one string, drop my pinky on the third fret E string, and raise my index finger. Or in reverse, lower my ring and middle fingers grouped together, lift the pinky, and drop the index finger to make C major. Most people will make G major with their middle, index, and ring fingers, which is fine, but I'll do it this way to be faster at making C major. And if anybody tells you that there's only one way that you should make a chord like that, like you must use these certain fingers, just go with what works for you. As long as it sounds good, nobody's going to know nor care what fingers you're using. And actually it can be really beneficial later if you can do a bunch of different fingerings for chords. Like for example, if I need to get to a bar chord quickly from E major, I'll actually use my ring, pinky, and middle fingers to make E major so that I can slide them up to the bar chord I need without having to lift them. Of course, you're not always going to find connections between chords and fingerings, but when you can, use them to speed up your playing. You guessed it, I have a bonus tip for you. And this one's pretty simple, though you really do have to remind yourself of it over time. Be realistic with your goals both over time and what you're trying to achieve. This could be writing a song, learning a song, bar chords, improvisation, exercises, whatever it is. Be realistic with the timelines with how much work you're putting in. You're working on building muscle memory, which takes time, especially for beginners, so that practice time is really important. So practice smart, like I talk about in tip number six, to make the best of that time. So let's make a couple of examples geared towards beginners that are playing maybe 30 minutes a day. So let's say you're working on a nursery rhyme, which is pretty easy. Make a goal of playing it well within one week, meaning that it sounds good, you can play it relatively quickly, and it's easy for you to do. If you're working on the C major chord for the first time, have a goal of maybe within one to two weeks that you can just make the chord clean with how you're holding it. Then maybe within one to two weeks after that, you can switch between C major and another chord you know well, cleanly going back and forth. If you're trying to learn a simple strumming song that's made of four chords that you know well but you haven't done much strumming, maybe aim to have the song put together in two to three weeks. These are very general examples, but the point is, don't expect to pick up stuff quickly just because someone else can. Be realistic with how long something will take versus how much time and energy you're putting into it daily. Everyone starts at the beginning with that slow snail pace, but if you stick to it, you will get it. And expect lulls and humps along the way as well. We've all had them, we've all gotten stuck somewhere, but I do find that setting realistic goals and timelines has definitely at least helped me get over some of those humps. One last thing that goes along with this, do not compare yourself to other players when it comes to your skills and how long it takes you to learn something. We've all put time into the craft of learning guitar, just like you are, and we all learn at different paces. Playing guitar means that you're a part of this community, and I welcome you to it, no matter what your level is, so don't get hung up on, "I can't do this yet," or "I can't do that yet," because you will in time, and we're all cheering you on. Hopefully you've found these tips helpful and you're excited to play some guitar today. If you want to see some more guitar-related material, you can check out the video in the upper left-hand corner. If you need some more detailed instructions or you want to ask me a question directly, you can check out lessons or some coaching on my website, danessasfmusic.com or check out the link in the description. Now just get out there and have fun playing!