{"id":6575,"date":"2015-04-07T01:47:50","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T08:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/?p=6575"},"modified":"2015-04-07T01:47:50","modified_gmt":"2015-04-07T08:47:50","slug":"5-most-common-beginner-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/5-most-common-beginner-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Most Common Beginner Mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"

So recently a new guitar player was commenting on the member forum that he was really struggling…<\/p>\n

And after asking some questions and getting some more info, a couple of things came to mind that might be holding him back.<\/p>\n

You see, there are some very common mistakes that almost all beginning guitar players make (and even some not-so-beginning players) that can be pretty easily avoided.<\/p>\n

So let’s run down the top 5 here now:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Believing that you have to start on acoustic…<\/strong> I don’t know where this old wives’ tale started but it’s simply not true. Now if you prefer the sound of acoustic over electric, that’s one thing. But if you think it’s going to be somehow easier you are mistaken – in fact it will be more difficult. If you like the sound of the electric, get an electric.<\/li>\n
  2. Trying to make a badly setup guitar work…<\/strong> This is one I see a lot. The student drags a guitar out of the closet and brings it straight to the lesson. The neck is warped, the strings are old, and there’s about 6 feet between the strings and the fretboard – and he wonders why it’s hard to play a chord. Even a brand new guitar can need a setup and a few weeks after you get it home it’s almost guaranteed to need some TLC as it adjusts to its new home. Guitars are wood and wood will change with environment.<\/li>\n
  3. Using heavy strings…<\/strong> Your fingers will hurt at first. Acoustic guitars especially are setup from the factory usually with a medium gauge (thickness) that is really hard to play for a beginner. Get extra light strings (as light as you can) and have them put on by someone who knows what they are doing. Keep in mind that changing the gauge of the strings will change the overall system and you may have to get the neck adjusted soon after (see #2.)<\/li>\n
  4. Sitting poorly…<\/strong> When you sit to play, your guitar can be on your right or left knee, but your knee must be higher than your hip (or at the very least even with your hip.) Don’t lean back, sit up as straight as you can so that the guitar is not leaning back at an awkward angle for your wrist. With an acoustic guitar, you’ll likely have a hard time seeing the strings when you do it right (yet another argument for #1 above.)<\/li>\n
  5. Trying too hard…<\/strong> This is a brand new thing for some very small muscles and your patience will<\/em> be tested. Guitar has a high barrier of entry, meaning it takes longer on a guitar to play seemingly simple things. When you push a piano key it makes a sound but when you play a note on guitar it might not always work out at first. Don’t practice more than 20 minutes at a time or possibly even less if you find yourself zoning out. But feel free to practice 2, 3, 4, or more times per day in short spurts.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    If you’ve been playing a while, chances are you even made at least 1 or 2 of those mistakes. If you’re new to the guitar, hopefully this will shortcut that curve a little bit.<\/p>\n

    The important thing is not to give up on it in the beginning. If you can make it past that initial hump there’s a lot of great music and fun to be had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So recently a new guitar player was commenting on the member forum that he was really struggling… And after asking some questions and getting some more info, a couple of things came to mind that might be holding him back. You see, there are some very common mistakes that almost all beginning guitar players make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,27],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6576,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions\/6576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluesguitarunleashed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}