Learn To Play and Practice Guitar Correctly

We're going to look at some of the most important points for learning to play guitar successfully. For this first post we'll discuss the important subject of practice and the importance of doing it properly.

Firstly, just sitting down to play guitar is not really practicing. Real practice is done in a concentrated way in that you need to decide upon a specific thing your going to practice before you begin and stick to that goal for the entire session.

Also, practicing is done at a VERY slow pace and this goes for any musical instrument you might be learning. All good musicians from classical pianists to jazz drummers to rock stars became proficient on their chosen instrument by practicing slowly. It's actually hard work to do that and you'll need dedication and patience but trust me, 10 minutes of quality slow practice is worth 2 hours of hurried practice full of mistakes.

The science behind this is that your brain needs time to correctly record what you are trying to do. By playing slowly and without mistakes you are giving your mind the best chance of being able to record the information perfectly. Most musicians would do this a minimum of 10 times.

Once this slow foundation has been laid you can start to speed up gradually. The idea being that your mind has now been correctly programmed to play the piece and will continue to do it without mistakes even though you are speeding up.

Through developing a correct practice technique your fingers will get something known as finger memory and simply go to the right places on the guitar fretboard on their own. This is why great guitarists seem to be able to play effortlessly - to them it is effortless! All because of finger memory and correct practice.

You shouldn't practice guitar to much because there is a point where you'll actually find yourself getting worse instead of better! I would recommend practicing for no more than 1 hour a day if you are a beginner.

To learn guitar successfully it's really all about making daily contact with guitar and keeping up that consistency for at least a year. Over the long term you'll become great on guitar, it's not a short term contract - you have to really earn it.