3 BIGGEST Mistakes Beginner Guitarists Make

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here, sharing my top three tips that beginner guitar students make when learning how to play guitar. Let's get into the video.

So I'm going to go over three mistakes I think almost every single beginner guitar player makes. I don't want you to make those same mistakes. I'm going to go over my top three that I think are the worst for students to make. And I hope you guys stay to the end, because I think point number three is probably one of the most important ones. Well, let's start out with mistake number one. Now, one of the biggest mistakes I see with guitar students, particularly those that are learning on their own, is that they start by learning too many things at the same time. So say, for example, we're learning chords, and most students what they'll do, and a lot of guitar teachers, unfortunately, do this too. I try not to do this with students because they don't want to overwhelm you. A lot of students, they'll look up a chord diagram, and they'll see 12 chords, and they'll go and learn. Try and learn all 12 of their open chords at once. And they're trying to learn, and they're getting frustrated because one, they're not memorizing any chords, or two, their fingers just aren't working the way they want to. What I recommend is focus on less. When I start with students, we start with four chords. We pick four chords, and we beat them until they are a dead horse. Those four chords are the G chord, the C chord, the E minor chord, and the D chord. Okay. And I'll put up an easy version up here because I teach easier versions of these chords first. Why do I do this? Well, we focus on four chords because it's so much easier to remember a password that's four digits long versus remembering a password that's 12 digits long. All right? A lot of guitar is muscle memory. So. So if you're trying to build muscle memory for all of the open chords at once, it's just going to take so much longer. It will happen over time. It'll get there. But if you really focus on four chords, and I picked those four chords because they're found in tons and tons of songs. You can do a lot with just those four chords. We work on that because the less you work on, the faster you can build your muscle memory, and the easier it is for your brain to actually memorize what you're trying to do. All right, so just keep that in mind. Don't try to focus on too many things. Focus on less, and you'll actually get better at those things much faster than if you were focusing on a million different things at the same time. Mistake number two, and this is a huge one. I see so many students make this mistake, and I see students get frustrated, and I'm like, are you practicing with a metronome? And usually the answer is no, Lauren, I'm not practicing with a metronome. Now, why would you want to practice with a metronome? If we go back to chord changes, usually a big question I get from students is, how do I make my chord changes go faster? Well, how do you know your chord changes are going faster if you don't keep track? The metronome is a very important motivational tool, and it's a scorecard. I have a student. His name was Dave. I'll put a picture up over here. And Dave messaged me, because when I work with my students, we pick two chords. We call it chord change practice, and say you're working on a G chord to a C chord, which tends to be a very difficult chord change, and we'll work back and forth. And, you know, Dave was frustrated because he said, hey, I've been practicing these chords, and it actually looks like I went slower than I did the week before. Okay, this stinks. I want to give up. And I asked Dave, I said, are you using a metronome? And he said, no. And I said, well, listen, do this. Practice with the metronome and practice for speed. Push yourself. When we're working with speed and chords, you want to get these things going as fast as possible. So that means the chords might not always sound so pretty. So what Dave did is he practiced with the metronome for a week. And as you can see here, when he messaged me, he was like, wow, okay, I'm happy. I'm seeing progress. And that's the great thing about a metronome is it really is a scorecard, and it keeps a tally on how well you're doing. Because when you're a student and you're just getting started, the difference between chord changes at 30 beats per minute versus chord changes at 40 beats per minute probably isn't going to sound like, you know, eureka for you. Okay? Going from 30 to 40 isn't really that big of a difference, but. But it is a difference, and it is moving in the right direction. We are getting faster. Okay? But you won't know that unless you're writing things down. So use the metronome as a tool to Keep a scorecard for you week to week, month to month. Because what's going to happen is when you get to those plateau points, everyone does, every guitar player reaches a plateau where things get a little bit tricky, a little bit difficult. You feel like giving up and you're like, I'm not getting anywhere with this. Go back, keep a journal. Go back and say, wow, three months ago I was doing this at 30 beats per minute, but today I'm doing it at 120 beats per minute. Okay, I guess I've really come a long way in the grand scheme of things. Alright, so be patient when learning guitar, but put yourself to a metronome as soon as possible. Go download a metronome app on your phone. I have an Android, I use metronome beats. I, I'm sure iPhone has something else that's similar. Get on a metronome, start writing it down, keep a journal. And I promise it's going to be a great motivating tool for you moving forward. And mistake number three. And this is a huge reason why a lot of students give up. Guitar is working without a game plan or a structure. And unfortunately, I know you're watching this on YouTube, but YouTube is suffers from this greatly and I've done that too. You know, you're trying to figure something out and then you click on a video and it's recommending this video. And then there's that video. But I should have watched this video before that video. And you get confused. Now when I work with students, we focus on three things, okay? Going back to the beginning, focus on less. A lot of people get stuck on learning this song, learning that song, learning this song without even knowing if they're able to learn those songs. You know, there's a lot of songs that say this song is for a beginner and then you go and play it and you're frustrated because you're like, well, I'm a beginner and I can't play it. So I don't feel so great about myself. So I focus on the three fundamentals for learning songs. Okay? And that is rhythm. So strumming. Okay. Dexterity. Getting your hands to actually move faster on the guitar and coordinating both hands together and then three chord and chord changes. If you learn those three things, you'll be able to play any song that you want. So instead of just learning a bunch of songs, learn the fundamentals within the songs and, and get a structure behind your learning. So many people get overwhelmed and frustrated by not having a step by step process and that's why I made my seven level guitar system, because I worked people. It's kind of like a karate belt system. All right, we start at the white belt level, then we move to the yellow, the orange, and everything builds one right up top of each other. And all of the skills that you need to learn in level one are in level one. If it's in level two, you shouldn't be working on it yet. And I also make song suggestions to my YouTube song so that you know, hey, if you go and click on this song, you probably have the skills and you probably have the knowledge to be able to do this song without getting too frustrated with yourself. So if you guys are tired of suffering from the three biggest mistakes that guitar players have when they're learning guitar, go check out my seven level guitar system. I highly recommend it. There's so many students who have told me that this has been their godsend. They were feeling lost and confused and they finally got the structure that they needed. So make sure to go check that out. And YouTube's going to pop up a couple more videos over here. Feel free to go check those out, but don't get overwhelmed by watching too many of my YouTube videos. If you're looking for a real structure, I highly recommend you go check out the seven level guitar system.