Getting your first guitar is pretty darn thrilling. As soon as you pick it up and strum that baby, you want to learn all you can—notes, chords, scales, bends, slides, all of it, everything!—as fast as you can so you can dazzle friends and family with your talent. Who knows. You may even have aspirations of making it onto the world stage with that guitar of yours.
In their zeal to learn to play, however, many beginning guitarists encounter potential stumbling blocks that, if not addressed, can hinder progress or halt it altogether. No matter your skill level, it’s important to evaluate your playing style from time to time to make sure you have good practice habits before you get too far ahead of yourself. Bad habits can become ingrained and are sometimes hard to break. Correcting them as soon as they crop up, or better still, avoiding them entirely, is essential if you are to keep on track to becoming the guitarist you’ve set out to be. Here then are ten common mistakes many beginning guitarists (and some seasoned ones as well) make, and suggestions for how you can overcome them.
Mistake #1 – Neglecting to Tune Your Guitar Before Every Practice
Many beginners not only don’t know how to tune their guitar properly, but they also don’t even notice when their guitar is out of tune! There are a couple of reasons why practising on an out-of-tune guitar hurts your progress. First of all, every time you play something your brain is going to try to remember it and learn to do it again. If you play with a prop