Teaching yourself guitar

Teaching yourself guitar can be tricky, and there are many ways to do it, whether that be via YouTube Videos, Tutorial Books or even just by listening to songs. Here are the main tips that you need to know.

Learn The Fundamentals

Chords

Guitar chords make up 99% of guitar music, so you must learn them.

Start with A minor, C major, D major, G major.

These basic chords are not only the easiest to play, but they also make up many of your favourite pop songs, so once you know these, you will be well on your way to learning the next Justin Bieber number 1 hit.

A Minor C Major

D Major G Major

Once you know how to position your hand on each chord, you need to learn how to strum. Let’s start with a guitar pic. A guitar pick is a useful tool to help bring your chords to life and stop you from hurting your thumb on the strings, so it is important to learn how to hold one.

Using a guitar pick

Place the pic in-between your thumb and index finger. Once you have done this, place your hand above the strings with a straight wrist and strum from top to bottom using a consistent and smooth movement from your elbow.

When you are just using your fingers instead of a pick, make sure to strum on the fleshier part as you don’t want your nail to get caught. Flattening your hand out a little bit will also help stop this from happening. Finally, keep your fingers open and strum from your elbow, just like you do when using the pick.

Create a Learning Plan

A lot of people fail at teaching themselves an instrument because they don’t know what goals they want to hit or they don’t know what technique to focus on in their practice, this is where a teacher comes in handy as they can guide you with ideas to play with.

Nevertheless, if you are strict enough with yourself and know where you want to go then creating a learning plan shouldn’t be a problem. Creating milestones will also give you something to work towards. For example, telling yourself that you want to learn a song by a specific date will make you determined to practice to reach that goal. But on the other hand, don’t feel as if you have failed if you haven’t reached the goal, nothing is a race, and as long as you work hard, you’ll be able to reach where you want to go eventually.

Resources

There are millions of resources to help you learn to play the guitar, this can be incredibly useful but incredibly overwhelming. It is all about sifting through them so you can find what is most helpful for you. Try tutorial Youtube videos from actual teachers as they will be better at explaining concepts to you as well as giving you useful technical tricks for you to work on rather than showing you how to play chords for a certain song which yes may be fun but won’t help you improve in the long run.

Books are also a great way to learn. Books that imitate lessons and takes you to step by step from the basics are very useful. When choosing the book, you read reviews to check if a trusting guitarist/teacher wrote it and that it is comprehensive and goes through enough detail to ensure you understand it and are doing everything correctly.

Solid Practise Routine

Practice is so critical!

There is no point in trying to learn without practising as it’s the only way you will get better. Think about it, when you first start riding a bike, could you ride straight away without stabilisers? No, most probably not. But after practising you were able to, it’s the same with learning an instrument.

Although you may know in words how to do something without rehearsing, you may now be able to physically do it as you wouldn’t have tried enough times. It also stops you from forgetting, muscle memory is a huge factor when learning an instrument and if you don’t practise, it is very easy to forget what you just did/how you do it. In contrast, if you keep going over it your muscles won’t be able to forget it. So try and practise for 30 minutes a day and see how well you progress over time.

It’s not easy but it’s worth it.