4 Big Beginner Mistakes

Here’s an email I got the other day…

“Kenny, I m an old dog-50yrs old. I have a couple other courses that are supposed to be great for learning. I am an absolute beginner. I still can’t play a chord. I own a fretlight teaching guitar, jamorama lessons, and learn and master guitar which is rated the number one lesson source online.  I just can’t stay motivated or find the time. What can I do. I have always wanted to play.”

…I seem to get some variation of this email just about once a week….so there a good chance you will or have already run into these success killers yourself.

The biggest mistake people make learning to play guitar is trying to learn to many things at once. Here’s a list of the most common beginner blunders.

1. Reading Music

Trying to learn to play the guitar by reading music. You don’t need to read music to play guitar well. Jimi Hendrix couldn’t read a note of music, neither could Robert Johnson and they both did pretty well.

That’s the problem with every guitar course I have ever seen is they all use reading music as basis for learning to play. By the way I can read music really well on the guitar but I never use that ability to teach guitar, ever!.

The reason why is because there are much better ways to communicate guitar skills that don’t require music notation or tabs for that matter.

2. No System

Another big problem I see with guitar courses is they don’t usually have a system. Instead they are a series of half related ideas that you supposedly need to work on to be a great guitar player.

3. Too Many Styles

Trying to learn to many styles as a beginner…thinking this will make you a more rounded guitarist, there’s just no such thing as a well rounded beginner. (I recommend just learning to play the guitar with no style as a beginner…more on this in a minute).

4. Too Many Techniques

Trying to learn to many techniques at once. For example learning to strum chords in lesson one and learning to finger-pick in the next lesson. ( I recommend you learn to strum chords until you have mastered it. This is not only easier but it also develops the rhythm skills that you will use later to learn finger-style and also for single note ideas (soloing, improvising, scales).

Here’s what you really need to do right now if you are a beginner…

Start with the 8 basic chords (open chords). Some people refer to these as campfire chords or open chords. Basically they are the easy chords.

You need a system that will show you how to group the chords together. In other words you need to know what chords sound good together.

Don’t let strumming throw you off. All you need to do is play basic groups of 4′s. 99% of all songs are written in 4/4 time and will sound great strummed as groups of 4.(don’t worry if you aren’t sure what I mean by this it’s all in my course).

Next concentrate on the 4 Bar Chord shapes.

At this point you will have learned the 12 basic chords and will be able to play a lot of songs using those chord shapes. My course Guitar in 60 Seconds shows you how to take those 12 chords and use them as a template to create all the other chords you will ever play.  I call it chord cloning. You will find all of these lessons in my course Guitar in 60 Seconds.