Quite often, a novice guitarist will seek beginner guitar tips because they have been given a guitar, are interested in learning to play it, and have not been able to come up with the money for lessons. The most logical thing to do when you are interested in learning to play the guitar for the first time is to get a chord book and start practicing some simple chords.
Guitar Beginner Tip Number One: Your body needs to learn.
Trying to practice playing chords without any advice or help often overwhelms the new guitarist with questions like “does playing the guitar make my fingers hurt that much?” and “why do my fingers keep damping the strings?”.
Discomfort, even pain, is normal when you start playing the guitar. Think about it. You are training your muscles to do things they have never had to do before. It is natural for them to complain. Although this is a small stage in learning the guitar, in terms of time, physical discomfort can often put people off playing the guitar for life.
Guitar Beginner Tip Number Two: You need to toughen up your fingers.
The fingertips of the left hand should callus so that it doesn’t hurt to push the strings down. Unfortunately, the way to do this is to keep playing through the pain until your fingers start to stiffen up.
Guitar Beginner Tip Number Three: Relax.
When you first try to make string shapes with your left hand, your fingers will tend to get in the way of each other. The way to fix this is to slow down and work on getting each finger in place so they don’t mute the strings. This involves starting with the way you hold the guitar and your general posture. Start by trying to hold the guitar in playing position without excess tension, then move on to making a simple chord shape like E minor in first position. Play it a few times, staying aware of any changes in the tension in your body.
Once you get used to the feel of trying to play the guitar in a relaxed way, try extending your efforts to slightly more demanding chords like C major and A minor. If you keep practicing chords with an eye to your whole body, by the time you start practicing barre chords, you’ll be in a position to make your guitar progress much faster.
Guitar beginner tip number four: get a guitar that your body likes.
My final piece of advice for guitar beginners is about the first guitar you buy. Be prepared to do a lot of searching and trying out guitars. As a beginner, you need to get the feel for holding and strumming a guitar. Get advice from a friend or an online guitar forum on the brand, condition, or quality of a guitar you’re interested in, but also let yourself be swayed by what you’re comfortable with. After all, you will be sitting in your room playing the game for quite some time.
