Things to Consider When Taking Guitar Chord Lessons
Wednesday, December 30th, 2009When learning how to play the guitar, the chords tend to be the most difficult thing to master. Learning them can be a massive challenge. To begin with, you are using multiple fingers to play multiple strings all at once! The combinations and finger placements can appear very confusing.
There are a couple of misconceptions when it comes to finger placement. For instance, don’t think that the size of your fingers has anything to do with lack of success. This is absolutely not true. However, most of the problem when playing guitar chords is hand PLACEMENT. You especially need to learn how to properly place your left hand and fingers.
Are you struggling with your lessons? Check to see if your left thumb is positioned high up on the back of the guitar neck. If it is, then the placement is wrong. Your left thumb should sit on the LOWER portion of the back. It needs to be behind the second finger. Sure, it will probably feel uncomfortable at first, but it is the correct posture for many styles.
You need to remember this posture. Sure, it’s simple to play a couple of songs or notes and then return to your old habit, but that will only encourage the bad habit. Remember: practicing good habits is crucial when learning guitar chords.
Common Mistakes
Successfully learning is heavily prevented by lack of support and knowledge. When you are struggling to play a five string chord, you are probably making two big mistakes:
1. For starters, attempting to master a five string chord is a mistake when you’re just learning. Instead, you should focus on a two or three string chord, as they are much easier to learn. Later on down the road you can move on to more complex chords.
2. Secondly, proper placement of the fingers is essential. For instance, it wasn’t until after a few months of playing when I realized that I was practicing incorrectly. The tutorial videos at the Learn & Master Guitar website showed me that I was incorrect with my finger placement.
If you want to learn chords, it is important to learn the correct way, which can be tough without an expert, or at least some type of formal training. However, guitar lessons usually aren’t cheap.
You need to check out a resource such as Learn and Master Guitar. That way, you will have access to many techniques, lessons, and tips that you would learn from a private teacher. The best thing is, these online lessons are way more affordable!
Lessons + Practice = Tons of success!
Make sure you take some lessons, no matter what form they come in. You aren’t going to learn guitar chords and songs without good lessons. Whether you have the money and time for private lessons or simply come across a good lesson online isn’t relevant. Just find yourself a good lesson, learn from it, and practice!
Practice is crucial. It’s recommended that you set aside a half hour to an hour every single day for guitar practice. This may not seem like a lot of time, but it’s actually best to not play more than a half hour or so each day. This is because you may become more or pick up bad habits. Instead, just set aside 30 minutes or so every day and make sure there are no distractions.
Spend a good fifteen minutes focused exclusively on the chords. Begin with basic and simple chords. Within a couple of weeks, you will not only play them like a pro, but you will also switch back and forth between them with ease!
Successful guitar chords learning requires practice and dedication just as much as it requires skill. Make up your mind that you are going to learn no matter what! You really can do this. Remember that chords are pretty much the foundation for every song, therefore you should be able to play a TON of great songs once you learn the chords!
Are you ready to dive in and get some awesome video lessons so that you can learn from the pros?
Copyright Liam Gibson (Stage Guitarist)