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6 Common Beginner Guitarist Mistakes

Currently, the majority of beginners often learn guitar by themselves rather than taking any courses. That’s why it’s easy for them to make mistakes while playing guitar and make practice ineffective. In this article, Apps Nemo will point out the 6 most common mistakes that beginning guitarists tend to make. 

Not Tuning Before Playing

Ignore tuning the guitar before playing

Many newbies not only don’t know how to tune their guitar strings properly, but they also don’t even realize when their guitar goes out of tune. There are a few reasons why practicing on an out-of-tune guitar affects your progress. First of all, every time you play something your brain will try to memorize it and learn to do it again. If you play with a properly tuned guitar, your brain will remember the correct tone, pitch, and notes longer. On the other hand, if you regularly practice on an out-of-tune guitar your brain will start to think that the sound is right and won’t learn to recognize the right notes. In the long run, this is not a good thing. So, remember your guitar every time you play. 

The easiest, fastest, and most economical way to tune your guitar is to use the simple metronome built into the Guitar Tunio app or the Pro Metronome app.

Underestimate The Stage of Learning Guitar

Like a baby learning to talk, the first stage is the most important. The person who teaches the child to talk but mispronounces, the child will later say the same. If beginners play a poor-quality guitar, their ears will not able to perceive sounds well. That’s why many people play the guitar for 4-5 years, but when listening to others sing, they can’t feel the sound for accompaniment but always have to look at the sheet music to be able to accompany. 

Put Fingers on Each Note in the Chord

Put fingers on each note in the chord
Put fingers on each note in the chord

Guitar beginners are often not familiar with playing guitar chords at the same time, so they often place their fingers separately one by one. For newbies, this approach may seem easier to play a guitar chord, but it will cause a slowdown when playing a song. This mistake will make you even more confused when pressing chords.

Be Impatient When Practicing 

Like learning anything else, learning to play guitar takes practice, perseverance, and patience. When starting, beginners are eager to play as well as the veteran players, even when they do not know the basic knowledge, they have practiced difficult and advanced guitar techniques. Don’t be hasty because it will not bring good results. Practice according to a specific, methodical curriculum, go from easy to difficult, and set aside a certain amount of time each day to practice. Playing guitar is not as difficult as you think, hard practice and be patient!

Short-termism

Speed ​​when playing the guitar is sometimes necessary but sometimes not recommended. Speed ​​is not something you should aim for, at least as a beginner. Speed ​​is a secondary factor when it comes to practice. You need to learn to control your fingers and perform precise movements that can only be learned at slow speeds. Once your fingers start getting used to the guitar, you’ll pick up speed naturally, without even trying. One of the most important things you need to understand is that playing slowly but accurately is much more important than playing fast but sloppy.

Not Studying Music Theory

Disregard studying music theory
Disregard studying music theory

As with any subject, the theory is very important, it is the foundation for you to apply when practicing. When starting to play guitar, many skip the theory and play the guitar. That is not good. But learning too much theory is also not good because it will make us depressed and lose inspiration. So when playing the guitar the most important thing is to know which theories should be learned first to both learn and practice, and which theories do not need to be known, we will learn more later when we get used to it. This is also a weakness that self-study students often make.

The above are common mistakes made by those who are just starting to play guitar. If you have made any of these mistakes, please correct them immediately. 

Good luck!