One of the most common questions I am asked by guitarists who have been paying for six months to a year is… “What do you wish you’d known when you first started playing the guitar?”
It’s a great question, so I thought I’d share my thoughts on the subject, starting with…
#1 - It's not hard - it just takes practice and motivation
I’ll start with a shocker… playing guitar is not difficult. If you are willing to put in the time and effort, you will become a good guitarist, maybe not the best, but more than good enough to impress your friends and family and play in a band.
The problem is that the hardest stage of learning to play the guitar is at the very start when you are a complete beginner. There is so much to remember, you can’t get your fingers in the right place, so all the chords sound terrible, and you can’t keep time because your rhythm is all over the place. Plus, the ends of each finger hurts from pressing those horrible metal strings down!
It takes a few weeks to get over this stage and for things to start sounding better and be less painful. From then on, there will be challenges, such as mastering the dreaded F and B chords. But you’ll get through them and every other hurdle the instrument throws at you with practice and dedication.
BTW: If you're wondering how long the entire process of becoming a great guitarist takes, check out my in-depth look at How long does it take to master the guitar?
I’ll finish with the Radiohead song “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, something you should bear in mind when things aren’t going to plan in your practice sessions, please ignore the first 16 seconds, it’s a bit of a noisy beginning…
#2 - Practice Makes Perfect - No! Quality Practice Makes Perfect!
I’m not going to go into all my thoughts on how to practice effectively here, or you’ll be reading for hours/days! But, basically…
You can only practice what you can’t play
As soon as you can play a chord progression, exercise, riff, scale, solo, or whatever, perfectly with zero mistakes, then you can’t practice it anymore. That’s why, if your practice routine currently consists of you playing through songs and scales that you already know, you are not getting any better.
To improve, you have to play things that you can not currently play - harder songs, solos, riffs, etc. Or exercises, scales, etc., with a metronome or drum loop at a faster speed than you can currently play them at, etc., etc.
And it doesn’t take hours! 20 minutes of focused practice five days a week is all you need to do. But for those 20 minutes, you are ONLY playing things that you currently can’t play, and concentrating on absolute perfection. After you’ve finished your session, you can play anything you want, for as long as you want, and have as much fun as you want!
But it’s those focused 20 minutes that will guarantee continual improvement on a daily basis.
#3 Practice with a Metronome, Drum loop, Backing track, etc.
Nothing sounds worse than a musician with a dubious sense of time. So, make sure you’re not one of them by practicing with either a metronome, drum loop - online, in a DAW, or on a drum machine/keyboard, or a good backing track.
I’m a big fan of using a metronome when practicing everything from finger exercises to scales. But many guitarists prefer drum loops because they are more realistic. It doesn’t matter what you choose; any of them will improve your rhythm and keep you in time.
I normally start with the metronome set at 60 for any new exercise or scale, then increase it by 3 beats every few days as my abilities improve. However, there are a few things to bear in mind…
Don’t play on every beat
Either play on the one and three beats (normally kick drum beats), or preferably, the two and four beats, where the snare drum usually lands. This is highly effective because the beats you aren’t playing on and only listening to are the ones that keep you perfectly in time. If you play on every beat, you could be slightly ahead or behind the beat and never realise it.
But can’t practicing with a Metronome make my playing rigid?
Many guitarists think that to replicate the ‘sloppy’ style of legendary players such as Jimmy Page or Jimi Hendrix, you should play a little bit out of time. However, this was not random; they both knew exactly what they were doing 99.5% of the time.
And that’s what practicing to a set rhythm will create in your playing. So, don’t think that drum loops or metronomes will kill your vibe; they won’t, they’ll let you create any vibe you like because you will be a master of timing and rhythm.
Which leads us nicely on to…
Don’t always only play exactly on the beat
If you’re really worried about becoming some type of guitar robot, then learn how to phrase on, behind, and ahead of the beat. This will give you the rhythmic flexibility to play what’s needed depending on the song.
Limit the beats to improve your natural timing
As mentioned, when you start using a metronome, play on beats two and four; however, as your timing improves, experiment.
Try slowing the metronome down or turning beats off if possible. Start with only a single note on the first beat of the bar, then play the next three notes without the metronome using your natural rhythm, and carry on to see if the fourth note is back on the first beat of the next bar. With practice, it will be.
This exercise helps you avoid the rhythmic jerkiness that can develop from constantly tapping your foot or counting “1, 2, 3, 4” in your head.
Be Patient
You will never play anything fast if you can’t play it perfectly at a much slower speed. So, forget about the speed of your favorite lick or solo, learn to play it perfectly at half or even a quarter of the speed.
Over time, you will naturally speed up, but don’t cheat; always play it perfectly. If you’re making mistakes, you are playing it too fast, so slow down and practice it at a speed that means no mistakes, then slowly speed it up again over a few days or weeks. With time, you will be playing it the same as the song, with zero mistakes!
Play Along with YouTube, Spotify, or wherever
As much of your practice time as possible should be spent playing along with songs on whatever platform you get your music from. Learn a whole song that you love - intro, riffs, verses, choruses, solo, ending - everything, then play along with it.
You will basically be playing along with some of the best drummers, bassists, keyboardists, guitarists, and singers that have walked this earth. And they are all available anytime, for free, to jam with you.
This also makes going to your first band rehearsal a breeze, because you’ve already played the song through a hundred times with John Paul Jones on bass, John Bonham on drums, and Robert Plant singing, so it’s not going to get better than that!
#4 - Learn what you love
Sounds simplistic, I know, but practice and learn songs that you love by your favorite bands and artists. You might be thinking that they are all too hard, but they’re not. Search online for “Easiest songs by (insert name of artist)” or “Easy (insert band name) riffs”, etc.
If you’re a beginner, you might only be able to play the verse and not the chorus, or the other way round, but it doesn’t matter. Put the song on YouTube, and play along. It’s much more fun and motivating to play songs that you already enjoy listening to, than the standard guitar tuition songs, which you might think are OK or might hate and make you want to not practice, or worse still, give up.
BTW: I’m not saying that learning scales, doing exercises, understanding music theory, etc., are not important, they are. But you don’t need them at the very start. Playing your favorite songs will give you the foundation you need to build technique and your knowledge of theory.
#5 - All the Rest
I’ve covered the four most important things I wish someone had told me when I first started playing guitar, so I’ll end with some shorter bullet points…
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Every guitarist spends about 80% of their time on stage and in the studio playing rhythm, so spend at least 50% of your practice time perfecting it
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The song is more important than your technique, so play what’s needed, not what you think will impress
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Don’t get stressed when you make a mistake. The greatest guitarists of all time have made countless mistakes, so why not you? If it happens while playing live, just smile and pretend it was on purpose, 98% of the audience won’t even realise
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Learn songs from different genres of music, not just the ones you listen to. You will find lots of techniques that you can incorporate into your personal style
And finally…
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Wear earplugs when it gets loud. As you get older, you’ll thank me for that one
Wrapping it Up
There are more, but these are the most important things that every guitarist, regardless of how long they’ve been playing, should be aware of.
How many of them did you know? A few, I bet, but not all of them. Try and incorporate as many as you can into your guitar idiology as well as your practice sessions, every one will make you a better guitarist, musician, and entertainer!
