A lot of guitar players are searching the web for guitar practice exercises. Unfortunately, many beginner guitarists do not know how to practice correctly. But this is a common issue and I suffered from it as well when I was first learning how to play. So, the purpose of this article is to teach you how to practice correctly. After reading through, you should know exactly how to approach any exercise out there on the internet (I’m not going to provide you with specific guitar exercises). Alright, with your guitar hand, let’s dive in!
Practice Slowly
What I have noticed among many beginning guitarists is that they try to play strings and chords way too fast without first mastering the fingering and technique. This bad habit leads to developing poor technique such as weak fingering, “flying fingers”, muscle straining, and other bad habits that can develop from practicing incorrectly.
As a solution, it is very important that you approach all chords, tabs, licks, etc. with a practice mindset. What I mean by this is that you approach your lesson with the idea of learning how to correctly play it instead of just jumping into it and trying to play up to speed.
The solution is to practice slowly. You want to keep your fingers as close to the fret board as possible when you transition from note to note or chord to chord. Do this SLOWLY. Always practice slowly like this. If you notice, when moving quickly, your fingers may “fly out”, which is a bad habit that many beginners develop. I personally had this problem for years. I had to go back and practice my scales moving very slowly from note to note until I could move quickly while keeping my fingers close to the strings.
Let’s say you have a song with 3 chords that you are trying to learn. What you want to do is practice getting your fingers on the correct strings so that the chord rings out nicely. When you are able to play the chord correctly and smoothly, practice moving your fingers to the next chord slowly and efficiently, keeping your fingers close to the strings.
The “flying fingers” is one of the worst guitar bad habits to develop. The reason is because when you move onto learning fast guitar licks, you are going to have a lot of trouble playing fast when your fingers are 2 inches away from the strings. This habit took me a few months to crush because I developed it over the first couple of years when I was a beginner. So don’t follow in my footsteps. Practice correctly and you will be able to correctly play any lesson out there while improving faster than 95% of all beginners.
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This is an exceptionally good site offering some basic understandings regarding the guitar. Whenever we see a great guitar performer on stage, and we witness the smoothness and ease with which he/she utilises their fingers, we conclude that it must be a very easy instrument to learn. This is not always the case and with a bit of persistance, determination and practise, the guitar can be something that you can enjoy playing. Without the ongoing practice, the ability to effectively realise your dream of playing the guitar, will be just that – a dream. Thanks again for putting together such a well rounded site.