To learn the guitar is going to take practice. Here are some tips to help you make the most of your time.

Practice a little every day
A little practice every day is a lot better than doing a huge amount once a week. I would recommend trying to do 15 minutes a day for beginners.

Use a timer!
When you are doing your practice, devide your time up so you are working on different elements. Lets say you are working on your chords for 5 minutes, your strumming for 5 minutes and your songs for 5 minutes. Make the most of your time by using a kitchen timer or stopwatch to make sure that you do your full 5 minutes on each topic. Don't let yourself get distracted - focus your time for that 5 minutes. Don't get the phone, or a coffee - concentrate for that time. You will find that 5 minutes of concentrated practice with a timer is berr than a half hour of free loose practice in front of the telly.

Make sure you keep a practice schedule
Download one Here and then fill in what you will do each day and for how long. Keep a record of it and it will help you keep to your schedule, keep working on the right things and also make sure that your are doing the right amount of different exercises each day and not spending too long on any one thing.

Work on the songs
Playing songs is the most fun and the most rewarding - so work on those a lot. Once you can play a few tunes you will probably be inspired to work even harder :)

Beginners rough schedule...
A very rough guide would be as follows...

5 mins - playing chords, working on getting all the notes good (strum/pick out/strum).
5 mins - doing '1 minute changes' to get your changes faster.
5 mins - working on songs.

If you have extra time, double each time, or work more on the songs :)

 

Later you will want to add rhythm guitar, which can replace the playing chords bit if it is going well. If it's not then you must do all 4 parts and try to find the extra time!

 

Now calm down I'm sure you're keen to get started - just check out Before You Begin

 

 

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HELP!!!!

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