The Best Way to Learn Guitar

I'm pretty certain its been said before, but it seems to warrant saying again. If you want to become a good guitarist, you must develop good habits at the very beginning. A lot of folks pick up the guitar and immediately start trying to kick out their favorite songs. The problem here is that they can barley form the most basic chords necessary to play the song, let alone adding a strum pattern to it to make it sound good. So in that respect I thought I might cover a few tips that lead to what I consider to be the best way to learn guitar.

While this may seem common sense, most amateur guitarist do not warm up in any way before playing. They just grab the guitar and let it rip. This is a recipe for carpel tunnel if you practice a fair amount. Look at it this way, every athlete warms up the muscles they will be using in their sport before actually performing the sport. It's the same with the guitar. Just take 2 - 5 minutes to stretch out your fingers and then run a few simple 4 finger drills up and down the neck a few times to get the hands synched. That's all, it doesn't have to take too long

This is another area most guitarist are lacking skills in. By this I am not talking about painstakingly charting every aspect of your playing. No, all you really need to do is set up a short collection of the most fundamental movements on the instrument and perform them everyday.

On the guitar this will be things like the basic CAGED Chords and the scales that come from them. I also add a few generic licks for each scale pattern. I like to run through a few chord progressions that are very common and also those that are difficult for me.

Keep all this organized as this really is the best way to learn guitar when you first start out.

Learning by ear is probably one of the most difficult of skills to learn, but it can be done. This is hands down the best way to learn guitar. Start very simply by taking a very common and easy melody and singing it on a starting note. Then try to pick out the notes of the melody on your guitar. Start with a common children's song like Twinkle Little Star, or something like that. If you do it every day you will start to get better at it, and will be able to pick out more complex melodies. Take your time! This development process takes quite awhile.

This really is a great time to learn to play the guitar. I remember my first real guitar mentor telling my about learning guitar back in the 60's and all he had to go through just to find a basic chord book. You should be making use of all the resources at your disposal with the internet. This includes YouTube, Blogs, Online Lessons, Forums and more. Find a few blogs you like a engage the authors, ask the questions that have been bothering you. This will really help you to learn what the best way to learn guitar is for you.