by New Age Content

Created on: October 17, 2009

The guitar is a great instrument but there are three main hurdles that need to be overcome before you can even begin your journey. Every guitar player experiences these at some point when they are a beginner up until 3-6 months of playing guitar at a serious level. During this phase, your future as a guitar player is determined. Some make it through and some do not but if you are armed with this knowledge you have a better chance at succeeding.

1.) Guitar technique can be difficult to learn. Fretting notes can leave your hands sore, some chord shapes you just won't be able to make at the beginning and it will be very difficult to get the basic technique down of strumming and picking. Just remember that you have to learn the notes on the strings and how those notes relate to each other. Music theory is a guitar players number one tool in learning the guitar in and out.

2.) Translating common musical notation for the guitar is difficult. Many use tab, but this is not going to be good enough sometimes and can be confusing. If you really want to be technical and write tight, rhythmic guitar parts you need to use musical notation. Learning how to read music and quickly translate it onto guitar can be frustrating. Some players don't ever learn how to read and this hinders their playing immensely. Guitar players are known to be bad readers. Get used to learning parts by listening and transcribing and you too can be great.

3.) Memorizing patterns over and over again can be confusing and hard to remember. When you first start out playing, there will be a lot of shapes and patterns thrown at you. These are the most important building blocks of guitar and you must learn them. The pentatonic scale, major scale, various triads and four part chords are extremely common. Just by learning 10-20 chords you can play hundreds of songs. Then all it takes is practice and you are on your way.

Learning the guitar can provide you with many rewards. Playing the instrument is a great experience and once you learn don't forget to keep listening. It will be easy to learn if you stick with it past the three main hurdles outlined in this article. Just keep in mind that if you feel discouraged, let it go. Don't be afraid to put the guitar down and come back later. You aren't going to be the next Hendrix overnight.

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