Justin Guitar, dude. On YouTube. Justin Guitar. Do it.

I know everyone tries to avoid this and I’m sure you’re trying to learn on the cheap like everyone else, but honestly, get a few lessons with a good local tutor. You’ll learn more from them in a few short hours than you will with months of trying to do it yourself.

Famous guitarists never seem to say how much hard work went in to perfecting their craft, but it is a lot. And all the good ones took lessons and some still take lessons even though they’re on international tours and have sold millions of albums.

Slow down. A lot. Slow down a painfully annoying and boring amount and rep the hard chord changes, the weird memories, any of it. All of good technique is just good muscle memory and muscle memory is only built up through repetition.

Remember that every bad habit that you don’t nip in the bud early can have after effects to your technique for years.

In my opinion, outside of some specific songs, strumming pattern will end up being your personal touch. You’ll strum in a certain way, and as long as the chord progression is right, it’ll sound correct. More attention will be paid when you’re playing individual notes. The rest is really up to you, and that’s probably going to seem frustrating at first, but it’s really liberating once you’ve been playing for a while.

My personal recommendation is to learn stairway to heaven by Led Zeppelin in its entirety. There are a lot of unusual chords, barre chords, techniques, etc in that one song. Additionally, you’ll need to either practice hybrid picking or finger picking. When you finally learn it completely, almost any other song will seem easy to learn. I learned it in my first few months playing guitar (20 years ago) and I’m so happy that i did, i still find it pretty easy to pick up most other songs, but also find myself playing it from time to time.

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Keep at it! The learning curve is not a straight line, just like with any skill. You’ll see fast progress, just to be followed by a long plateau of no progress or even feel you’re getting worse. And then you notice possibly big improvement again. And again.

Don’t worry about following sheets/chords initially. If chords are not in your muscle memory, you’re basically doing three complex tasks simultaneously, reading, figuring out chords and fingering chords. I’d try to memorize one or two simple pieces first, to get the chords under your belt. Start simple and stay patient, it’ll take time.

Don’t forget the rhythm. Play on top of recordings. You can be pretty liberal with the harmonics, but if you keep a steady beat it’ll probably still sound good.

I don’t wanna be a buzzkill, but if you’ve only been practicing for a month so far, I’m not sure there’s gonna be any particular resource that’s going to make you improve faster, short of taking formal lessons. It sounds like you’re already making good progress, so just keep doing what you’re doing! Read that book you downloaded, add new finger exercises to your daily routine, and drill the chords and scales and such into your muscle memory so you can do them in your sleep. But this all takes time.

The biggest factor, at least for me, was consistently practicing for years. I’ve been playing for about 17 years now and, by the end of the first year, I had spent hundreds of hours with the guitar in my hand (it was my primary hobby). I’m no rock star, but I got pretty decent by just practicing the stuff I wanted to play and learning the basic fundamental concepts like scales, arpeggios, chord structure, etc.

One good piece of advice my old man gave me: even when you’re not actively practicing, just having the guitar in your lap when you’re working on other stuff winds up making it extremely comfortable to handle. I’d sit with the guitar in my lap while doing homework, or using the computer, and would end up fiddling with it here and there, gradually getting better at navigating the neck, getting more familiar with the distances between the strings, etc.

And use. the. pinky. A lot of guitarists shy away from fretting with the pinky finger if they can avoid it, but they’re doing themselves a disservice. Put in the effort to train your pinky to fret and it will pay dividends when you start tackling more advanced stuff. Even if you can easily hit a note with your ring finger, hit it with the pinky to give the pinky more practice so it becomes second nature.

Find some finger exercises that help teach finger independence. I learned a great one from a Chet Atkins VHS tape back in the day, but I can’t find it anywhere online at the moment; I’m sure there’s a million similar exercises on YouTube though.

If you’re learning a song through a video on YouTube and it doesn’t tell you the strumming pattern or the tuning or whatever, you can probably find that info on Ultimate Guitar. I’m not affiliated with them, just been using their site for basically the entire time I’ve been playing. Has an absolute mountain of chord charts, tabs, yada yada. Very useful.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. 🎸

Practise by accompanying your favourite music. That way you don’t get hung up on the strumming pattern and focus on enjoying, which is what keeps you coming back for practice.

There are abundant beginner videos on YouTube that teach strumming. I think the important thing is to mix learning technique with just enjoying making music by any means.

(Source, self taught playing 20 years)

I tried it for a while. It was fun making basic open chords. But I could never figure out how to keep my fretting fingers from partially muting the non-fretted strings. I don’t have super fat fingers or anything, I just couldn’t figure it out.

And barre chords…forgeddaboudit.

I think early on, it’s really important to focus on getting comfortable with the instrument itself. When you start learning to play, it’s common to have a lot of stiffness in your wrist and fingers. It’s kinda foreign for your wrist and hands to move like that at first. Practicing frequently and developing your muscle memory will help get your hands to flow on the instrument.

It’s less important when you start, to focus on getting the notes and patterns right. When most people start learning, they sound like shit. It can feel discouraging when you do all this practice and you still don’t sound like your favorite band. I think that’s where a lot of people end up quitting. And it’s why that guy at every party knows how to play Wonderwall and nothing else.

Practice getting a good feel for the instrument. It’s a good indication you’ve become fairly comfortable when you realize you’re not looking at your strumming hand anymore as you play. The more comfortable you get, the easier things like the strumming patterns will get too.

Don’t be afraid to play something a little differently if it’s easier for you to learn. You can use it as a stepping stone to learning the original. Or you can just play your own version.

As far as resources go, I mostly have used YouTube and Ultimate Guitar. I think you’ll find that a lot of guitarists don’t use sheet music much. The most common form of written music for guitar is written in Tab, so familiarize yourself with that if you aren’t already. I have always learned by looking up tabs on a song I wanted to play. You can always look for something else if you are more comfortable with that. But I think it’s always easiest to get started on a song with some community-made tabs.

Keep practicing, don’t give up. You will get better.

Don’t give up.

If you want to get better, you have to practice every single day.

You’re going to suck at first, but then you’re going to suck less. You have to learn enjoy the process, which it sounds like you do, so great! I like to break up my play time into practicing something new and having fun; they’re both important.

One thing I’ve found is that keeping my guitar out and on the wall makes it a lot easier to get started playing, even if I don’t feel like it at the time. Once I’m about five minutes into playing, I’m into it.

Oh, and practice with a metronome. Most guitarists suck at rhythm (myself included). Using a metronome beats it into your head.

Best thing to do to make sure you enjoy playing the instrument is to take it to your local guitar shop for a setup. If it’s not set up well it takes much more pressure to fret the notes cleanly and it can be painful both on your finger tips and the muscles in your hand.

Get a setup so its comfortable to play and you’ll be able to play much longer.

I bought a poster of all the chord shapes and would constantly run through the whole thing while watching TV and a huge Beatles book because everyone knows Beatles songs. They literally taught us a bunch of them in grade school music classes growing up. After a couple of years of basic chord structure and strumming, I then moved on to learning scales. Mostly right now, concentrate on chord shapes, building up hand strength, and strumming. Pick easy three chord songs that you know and enjoy and play the heck out of them.

Hold the books and lesson videos for 6 months to a year. Learn by playing music you want to learn. Songs you love. Start with some easy 3-4 chords stuff. Get the strumming by playing along with the song. Add in a lick that you can manage. Gradually progress into more complex songs with new chords. Get comfortable with singing along. Enjoy it. Enjoy it enough that you want to play a bit more each day.