Beginner Guitar Lessons

Learning how to play guitar can be tricky at first. There is often a steep learning curve in the beginning because the skills required are based largely on muscle memory. If you approach guitar this way through proper practice it is actually as simple as walking into a dark room you are familiar with and intuitively knowing where the light switch is. We naturally learn things through muscle memory all the time, the difference with guitar is that there is often a psychological tie to the word "talent" which leads us to question our own abilities if we don't get results as fast as we think we should. Having worked with thousands of students over the years, I'm confident in saying that there are very few people who are not able to acquire the skills of basic guitar playing.

The most common thing I see as a guitar instructor is that students don't know how to practice properly. I'm not suggesting there is one correct way to practice, but that there are efficient methods to practicing that will give you better results faster. The trick is to play things slow enough to do them in a controlled, clear way so that the muscle memory can develop naturally and correctly. The bottom line is that people play the way they practice… if your chords don't sound clearly when you practice, they will be that way when you play songs. If you can't switch successfully at 80bpm, it's pretty unlikely it will be better when you're playing a song at 120bpm. The majority of beginner guitarists speed things up when they fail to play something correctly the first or second time.

It's no secret that there is a ton of free information on how to play guitar out there. For some people that information will be enough and there is no need to find a guitar instructor to play the things they want to play. Not all of the information is good and some people will find the initial period of getting comfortable with the guitar particularly difficult. This is where a guitar instructor can make things much easier. An experienced guitar teacher will be familiar with your particular set of challenges and will be able to show you how to practice efficiently. I have a ton of exercises that I use in my beginner guitar lessons that are designed to show you how to practice efficiently and get you playing fast. These exercises have been tested over thousands of lessons and can be adapted to your particular set of challenges.

Common Topics in Beginner Guitar Lessons

Building a chord vocabulary

Here we memorize chords at a pace that is comfortable for you.

Chord switching

Working with a metronome, we start at a pace that is comfortable and work toward speeding up how quickly you can change. It's not uncommon for people to quadruple their speed in the one or two lessons.

Strumming

My simple approach to strumming trains your muscle memory to be able to intuitively play new strum patterns by ear.

Barre chords

There are tricks to getting full barre chords to sound that are very difficlut to explain in free web lessons. This topic requires an interactive lesson for many beginning guitar students.

Songs

With just a few chords we can begin playing songs. As you become proficient with the techniques mentioned, new techniques can be addressed through new songs.

Single notes and melodies

There are literally thousands of exercises to help you get around the fretboard better.

What I Offer the Beginning Guitarist

If you are considering guitar lessons what I offer is personalized attention with a well educated guitar instructor who has taught well over 15,000 lessons and has seen almost every challenge a beginner guitarist faces. I would be happy to help you get a solid start with your aspirations to learn guitar.

Best wishes on your musical journey!
Eric