Lauren Bateman shows why beginners quit: expecting perfect chords right away and learning too many at once. Instead, accept messy early playing and stick to four simplified chords (E minor, easy C, easy G, easy D) while you build muscle memory.
I'm going to talk about the two biggest mistakes that beginner guitar students make when trying to learn to play this instrument. But I'm going to give you two solutions that you can use immediately.
Hey, guitar enthusiasts, for those of you who don't know me, my name is Lauren Bateman, and here on this channel, I help you make guitar finally make sense so that you can have more fun playing your instrument. Now, one of the biggest mistakes that I see many guitar students suffer from is perfectionism. Wanting this guitar to sound amazing from the get go. And I just want to be honest with you guys, that's not going to happen for a little while. For example, most students when they're learning chords, maybe they sound like this in the beginning. You're kind of familiar with that muted sound, and you're trying to do everything that you possibly can. You've probably tried 20 different techniques, and no matter what you do, you can't get the chords to sound right. And I just want you to accept what right now, that most of your chords are going to sound like crap for at least six to nine months. Now, if they're sounding bad after that point, it could be your guitar. There could be that you're learning on a beginner guitar, and maybe it's not set up properly and it's hard to play. But for a lot of students, if you can get past the perfectionism of having this instrument sound perfect because it's not going to sound perfect in the beginning, if you can get over that and really focus on the mechanics, getting the chord changes to switch, getting your picking down, and just focusing on having fun with what you can do, it'll make this journey so much easier. I think the number one reason that people quit on the guitar is because it doesn't sound the way they think it should sound within the first three months, don't give up on the instrument. I promise you, as your hand gets more flexible and stretches out more, one day you're going to wake up in those chords are going to seem to miraculously all of a sudden start better. I have so many students who have the same story as you. Give it time, be patient, and don't expect things to be perfect. Now for the second issue. Let me start off by asking you a question. Do you think it's easier to remember a password that is 12 digits long versus a password that is 4 digits long? Well, if you said that it was easier to remember a password that's four digits wrong, well, guess what? You are correct. But constantly. I see. So Many beginner guitar students, they get a printout with a bunch of chords on it, and they start trying to learn 10, 12, 20, 30 chords all at the same time. If you have a chord sheet printout with a bunch of chords, I would recommend doing this.
With my students. We focus on four chords at a time. Why four chords? Because a lot of songs, believe it or not, are. Are made up of three and four chords, and oftentimes they're made up of the same three and four chords. So if you can get good at just four chords, then you are going to be much better at the guitar and start having fun a lot faster than you would if you were trying to learn 12, 15, or 20 chords all at the same time. So, Lorem, what are the four chords that I should be learning? Well, the ones I like to teach my students are the E minor chord, the easy C chord, the easy G chord, and the easy D chord. Now, why do I like teaching these chords? If you can see from the diagrams, they only use two fingers, right? And it's a lot easier to move one or two fingers versus three fingers. I know a lot of you guys are saying, lauren, I see you're making an E minor chord with your first and second fingers. While my guitar teacher or I watched another video on YouTube and they told me to do it with the second and third fingers. And. And that's totally a good method to play an E minor chord. I use it myself. But when I teach beginner students who are just learning guitar, I want to show you why. Let's take a look at the frettingham here. With the E minor chord, if I use the first and second fingers to go to my easy C chord, all I have to do is lift up my first finger and move it down in place. Okay. I just have to move one finger to go back and forth between. Between those two chords. Right? Okay, let's take a look at my easy G chord that I teach students. From E minor, we just have to pivot our second finger up and down to get between the two chords. Let's see if we do the E minor with the second and third fingers, I have to now move this finger down and move this finger. Or to go to a G chord, I have to. I mean, if you play it this way, that's fine, but you still have to move all your fingers. And that's what I tell students in the beginning. I'm like, wouldn't you want to focus on just moving one finger and getting used to the mechanics of actually playing chords. Wouldn't you rather play songs faster using a simplified method for learning versus having to do it the old school way, which actually a lot of my students find more difficult in the long run. And that's what we do in the seven level guitar system. We just take things step by step like this. I break things down. I have so many students who tell me, lauren, you're just so good at breaking things down into their basic components. You really do make the guitar make sense. And I've had so many students who have told me that I finally helped them have their breakthrough on the guitar. So if you're looking for a step by step system for learning to play the guitar and having more fun, then I highly recommend you scroll down to the description below and and you click on the Link. For my 7 level guitar system, I'm going to teach you about chords. I'm going to teach you about timing and strumming, going to teach you about picking. And not only that, I'm going to recommend to you which of my song lessons on YouTube go along with what you're playing. This way, you know when you're on YouTube, you're watching videos that are exactly for your level. So if you're ready to start having more fun with your guitar today, scroll down and click on the link below to get started with the seven level guitar system.
