TIP 1: Practice Hand Dexterity Before You Begin to Play
To counter these feelings of ineptness, you need dexterity exercises to play the guitar.
I strongly advise you if you’re a beginner, do not take these basic exercises for granted, no matter how boring or mundane they might sound.
I have been playing for almost 19 years and I still do play each fret, go up and down strings, or up and down frets in a 1, 2, 3, 4 pattern. Or shuffle the pattern to create more independence.
Furthermore, you can also use these exercises as an opportunity to learn all the notes on the fretboard.
Say out loud the name of the notes as you play them. And before you know, you will have developed a good level of dexterity and learned the notes on the fretboard as well.
Building dexterity is a must for being able to have fun when learning to play the guitar.
Learning to play the guitar, or any musical instrument, can be one of the best things you can do in life.
Not only does it have a highly beneficial effect on brain development, but if learned properly, it leads to all manners of social and psychological prowess, like boosting confidence and improving discipline.
Including the life-long journey of being able to play an instrument in one’s life is something I highly recommend.
In this article, I would like to share some valuable insights and skill you need to work on that can help you start to learn to play the guitar. So without further babbling, let’s get into it.
I've heard a common thought amongst many people, students included, that the guitar looks 'easy to play'.
Afterall, it’s just pressing on a string and playing the string. How hard could that be, right?
But then their whining starts when they realize that their fingers won’t move as they want them to, or the strings hurt after like 2 seconds of holding them down, or their pinky finger is broken or has a mind of its own…
Here's some additional advice for guitar dexterity exercises:
Keep it short in the beginning. Don’t try to out all the notes of “Vexations”. It will just be...vexing.
If you create your own melodies, keep them short too. Give yourself 5-6 notes to play with and make something with them first.
Find the next note relative to the previous note. Is it going higher or lower? Often, students keep listening to the first note and compare that with every note. For example, if you have found the first 3 notes, use the 3(rd) note to find the 4(th) one.
Learning the major minor scales and using them for both dexterity and ear training is a great idea to get 5 birds with one stone. Brutal!
TIP 2: Train Your Ear To Recognize The Notes You Play
I really hope that these few pieces of advice encourage anyone beginning to learn to play the guitar to stick through all the tough moments.
The most important thing is for you to focus on having fun while improving your understanding of what’s going on.
Start training your ear to different musical notes with your favorite music, and practice your hand dexterity and strumming DAILY, even if it's just 10-15 minutes. And before you know it, you will be where you want to be.
Here's a simple way you can start to recognize notes in melodies:
Start with simpler short melodies. Preferably ones that get stuck in your head easily.
If you find yourself humming something constantly, challenge yourself to find the notes for it on the guitar. You might have trouble finding the first note. It’s ok.
Find the notes for any part of the melody and expand from there. And of course, creating your own melodies is a creative and fun way of training your ear as well.
If you're learning to play a song on the guitar from from tabs, or by watching videos, pay attention to the sound changes from note to note. Notice where your fingers move when the pitch is going up, and vice versa.
Dont just play what you learned like a zombie. Be aware of what you are doing and what is causing the change of tone, pitch, rhythm, whatever maybe happening. LISTEN!
Here's some additional advice on training your ear:
One thing you could do to make the time spent on 'guitar dexterity exercises' more bearable is to do them while watching something on your favourite streaming platform, or even while listening to music on your headphones.
But keep those fingers moving regularly, daily, for at least 15 minutes at a time.
A few rules to keep in mind when you run these exercises:
Keep it slow and clean. Rushed and buzzy notes will create a bad habit.
Arch your fingers and keep your thumb pressed comfortably.
If doing the exercises while watching something, pay attention to the amount of vibration in your fretting fingers. The less the vibration, the cleaner the note.
Shuffle your finger movement patterns to maximize independent finger movements. For example, if you started with 1, 2, 3, 4 (finger order), then switch to 2, 3, 1, 4. Seldom will you play in a linear fashion, so change again to another order.
I'll be working on a completely separate post to give you even more ideas for building your dexterity, so keep an eye out for that.
TIP 3: Practice Different Strumming Rhythms and Use Your Right Hand
Another best practice when learning to play the guitar is to begin training your ear to recognize the distance between notes from the very beginning.
This means learning to identify whether a note is higher or lower than the one before, which is the start of being able to figure out melodies later on down the road.
It’s ok if it takes time or even if you are unable to do it. I was perhaps 6 years old when I started to try and figure out cartoon themes on a toy piano my brother had.
Just keep at it, and your ears and brain will work miracles as time goes on.
It is very common to default to a particular rhythm pattern when you've just started to learn to play the guitar, especially when it comes to strumming on the right hand (if you are not left-handed).
Breaking out of the same old strumming pattern can be a little challenging at times.
To overcome this, first learn to write down rhythmic patterns using different note values e.g crochets, minums, or quavers. Just write down a random pattern (doesn’t need to be fitting a time signature) and then try to play it out.
Its Time to Learn the Guitar!
This will inspire you and break you out of a pattern that you might find yourself defaulting to.
Also, many beginners tend to strum quite harshly as well. First off, they hold their picks tighter than TSA security. After which, the pick is inserted inbetween the strings a little too much as well.
Second, a lot of the strumming movement tends to come from their elbows and the wrist barely moves.
Practice doing it the other way around. A majority of the strumming movement should come from your wrist, with the elbow being barely involved. Soften the way your pick brushes over the strings.
It will help you create a much more pleasing tone, which ultimately you will enjoy more.
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About the Author
Emad Khalid
Teacher/Founder@TeachMeSensei
Teaching learners of all ages with more than 15 years of experience.
Off-duty, I enjoy tech gadgets, a good coffee and managing the daily chaos of my three cats who think they own my keyboard.