The Best Ways to Learn Guitar on Your Own with Good Technique

Are you looking for the best and fastest way to teach yourself guitar?

There is a lot of confusing information in the guitar world and I wanted to create something simple; something that people could use to learn easily and also something that they could enjoy.

What is the Best Way To Learn Guitar?

1. Choose the right guitar
2. Choose the fastest guitar training course
3. Learn simple chords
4. Exercises with the right fingers build muscle memory and accelerate learning
5. Challenge yourself with new things
6. Play your music backward
7. Make practice easy
8. Have fun playing real songs
9. Find a responsible partner for impromptu sessions.

The best way to learn guitar requires hacking the brain and gamification the learning process. Following these six rules has helped me to progress faster, which is key for adult learners. Remember that daily practice is essential to retain muscle memory, even if it’s only 10 minutes a day.

I always wanted to play an instrument, but I never had the resources or the interest to discipline myself to do it.

Guitar instructors are not always the best way to learn guitar

Cons of hiring a guitar instructor:

• Instructors cost a lot of money
• Instructors depend on location.
• The instructors depend on the schedule.
• It is uncomfortable to practice in front of an instructor.

Also, if you are an introvert, the fear of meeting someone new and creating a relationship makes it extremely tempting to cancel the whole idea.

For me, the time commitment to drive to the lessons was too intense.

I tried it for a few weeks and I felt like I was seeing the progress I was expecting for the time I was spending on learning.

Unfortunately, we soon ran into scheduling conflicts thanks to a shift change at my job, and I was looking for a new instructor and a new system.

However, their systems and secrets to help me make the most of each session are now mined to keep them.

It’s my turn to pass them on and make it easier for you to teach yourself guitar.

What is the Fastest Way to Learn Guitar? (9 Steps)

As with most blog posts in this genre, some “secrets” will seem pretty obvious, and a couple will look so stupid that no one will prove them. I encourage you to practice these exercises for a week and let me know what you think in the comments below.

It may sound easy, but some of these are surprisingly difficult to follow.

The objective of each exercise is designed to help you focus on your practice and help you get the best learning from every second you spend practicing.

By using these best practices, you can synchronize the brain with your muscle memory.

1. Choose the right guitar

If you have not yet purchased a guitar, the first thing you want to do is find one that is of sufficient quality so that it does not impede your ability to play.

Your first guitar will have a surprisingly big impact on how easy it is for you to play chords. Something to consider is that an electric guitar will be easier to play since the guitar strings have a lower action and are much easier to pull. However, electric guitars require an amplifier.

Most beginning guitarists go with an acoustic guitar since they can be played anywhere. These range in price from $100 to $10,000. For most of our readers, I found that investing between $ 400 and $ 600 in your first acoustic guitar offers you the best guitar for your investment. I have made some criticisms about the sound of the guitar and the gameplay to facilitate that purchase decision.

Finally, most of my readers will be right-handed and need the right guitar. I recommend that left-handed readers invest a little more in a left-handed guitar. Sure, you can save money by restricting a right-hand guitar, but in my experience, it’s generally too much frustration to deal with.

2. Avoid scattered practice

There is a lot of free information available online on how to learn to play the guitar. You can easily upload to YouTube or Vimeo and find tabs and chords with demos of how to play almost any popular pop song.

While these videos are fun and engaging, they can slow your progress. They are inefficient

As you jump from video to video, you create gaps in your knowledge. It is a difficult way. It is inefficient.

The result is that, with enough patience, learning songs is doable and you can be popular at parties with the few songs you know. But you never develop the fundamentals of music theory and how to read the music necessary to be able to play any song.

Thus, not only will you be limited in when and what you can play, but this method of jumping from one video to another can slow down your progress. Lacking the foundation of proper positioning and fingering, you’ll find yourself trying to make superhuman leaps in your skillset as your search for impossible chords for which you lack the proper foundation.

Also, you often have to incorporate extremely difficult fingerings into your practice long before your muscles are ready. It is like trying to teach a baby to run before he can walk. A better way would be to find a course that teaches you in a natural progression.

You can also end up wasting time, jumping from one video to another, trying to fill in all the gaps. You learn when you PRACTICE, not when you browse YouTube.

With structured lessons, I was able to progress in a very stable and predictable way. At first, it felt a little slow, but in the end, we were mastering the techniques much more quickly, and I could notice a noticeable improvement in my progress.

While in-person training helped, the key that helped me progress was a proven system.

These days, I recommend Guitar Tricks, which offers a direct, deep training program for 35 cents a day. I suggest setting an alarm and every day, stop everything and play for 25 minutes. With your system, you can visualize your progress, which encourages you to do even more. Jamplay is another good program.

It is so simple that there is no way to ruin it.

The alarm goes off. You practice. Boom. Everyone thinks you are amazing.

I really think they have created the fastest system for learning guitar online. I have seen people be confident enough to lead worship in their church in 6 months or less with daily practice in their program. They have a painless practice system that allows them to make unwavering progress.

3. Learn basic chords in the first week

Most of us just want to play the guitar so we can sing or play with friends. Learning chord patterns is the best way to learn guitar for this easy activity.

The chord is when you play 2 or more notes simultaneously in harmony. Learning chords are quick and relatively easy compared to note execution. Once you’ve mastered 2-4 chords and strum patterns, you can start playing songs in your first week of practice.

One reason I like guitar tricks is that you start learning chords, which shortens the time it takes for absolute beginners to feel competent. So you know what you’re about to bump into, let’s talk briefly about chord types:

Open Chords

These are the chords where one or more strings are open when you strum. Therefore, you can press one or more strings, but the rest remain open and vibrate freely. These chords are the best way to learn since you only have to master a few fingers at a time. Some of these include (A, Am, Bm, C, D, Dm, E, Em, F, G).

Even better, most of these open chords have a “Simple Version” where only one or two strings need to be pressed. Master these beginner chords first.

These easy-to-play versions of chords are hands down the fastest way to play the guitar. However, you will be somewhat limited in your repertoire if you stop just to learn easy chords. Read on for insider tips on how to learn not only the guitar faster but also become a better guitarist!

Barre Chords

These guitar chords are a little bit more challenging. These require you to “sweep” chords that would otherwise be open with one finger. It may take more practice to master these chord forms, but they open up a whole new realm of music. A dirty little secret is that you can use a Capo as your “bar” and only use open chords. So once you have mastered the open chords, you can use a Capo to play any song you want to while practicing the most difficult chord forms.

Once you beat the chords in the bar, you can be sure that you have the courage to follow through. Invest in some training in pentatonic chord progressions (good for rock and blues), music theory, and tablature.

As you learn these finger shapes, take time to master chord changes until you can do it without looking.

4. Finger drills are the game-changer for learning the guitar quickly

Most people don’t think about this much. They simply think that the mind needs to learn the shape of each chord pattern. And then they get frustrated and discouraged when their fingers don’t do what their mind says to do.

You can overcome this frustration and accelerate your success by daily forcing your fingers to practice the most common patterns. I spent 15 minutes every day (half of my daily session) practicing these exercises with my fingers.

It was surprising how much this discipline accelerated my development.

Within weeks, my learning leaped, and we tackled new music pages every week.

For a nerdy klutz like me, it was surreal for my body to master a skill like this.

Here is a video of some of my favorite finger exercises:

5. Don’t relearn stuff

Most of us have a tendency to play our songs or musical exercises from “the top” or from the beginning of our piece of music. We play until we stumble, and then often we start again from the beginning (or we throw the guitar up the wall and start playing Call Of Duty. That happens too).

The downside to starting the song from above is that we are practicing the parts we are good at and then when we get to our “problem areas” we give up and start again. This means that those problem areas never receive adequate attention and we get “stuck.”

The best way to learn to play the guitar is to tone those trouble spots like a sniper hunting his prey.

As I mentioned earlier, those problem areas are where we generally lack neuromuscular development. And by drilling them, we can build those synapses and move on.

Scientifically developing neural synapses by constantly working on the next novelty that is about 2 percent more difficult than your current skill level is scientifically proven to be the easiest way to learn to play the guitar. A good guitar program should be spaced properly so that you learn a little more each day.

6. Play Your Music Backward

One of the most random tips my instructor had was to play my piece backward.

The trick here is that sometimes our brains start to predict what the song is supposed to sound like, and we’re in a hurry. We even got to the point of playing songs.

Playing the notes backward forces us to hone our technique and give our muscles the opportunity to store that memory pattern in different ways. It is a fun way to master the material without getting bored.

Okay, that’s a bit strange, but it allowed us to get more practice out of a single score.

Also, we could always boast that we knew a piece of music “back and forth.”

7.  Improve your practice environment

I will always remember the fourth lesson I had with my instructor. It was so embarrassing.

I didn’t know the music he assigned me, and my fingers stuttered throughout the piece. Frankly, you would think that with a $40 lesson on the line, I would have been much better prepared.

Finally, he interrupted my sorry performance to ask, “How much did you practice this week?”

I had my excuses. It’s hard to find time to practice. Especially as a parent with children.

This is when he gave me one of my best “hacks”

Stop thinking of it as “guitar practice time”

Make that guitar a part of your life.

Stop thinking of it as a time you must reserve.

The best way to learn to play the guitar is to treat it as part of your life rather than as separate practice time. Start by leaving it out of the box, on a stand, easily accessible. I like to leave mine near the sofa.

Then pick it up. Two minutes here. Three minutes there.

What we have done is make playing the guitar as easy as being on Facebook or watching TV.

Within a month, picking up the guitar for random practice routines becomes second nature.

Sure, invest in long practice sessions (at least 10 minutes a day. I liked doing 30 minutes). But what I soon discovered was that three minutes turns into ten minutes and the next thing you know is that you “accidentally” have done 3 ten minute sessions.

8. Learn faster by playing songs

I know that before I encouraged you not to get on the YouTube train to learn pop songs.

However, there are many easy songs that every beginning guitarist must learn immediately. They do not require a lot of investment time and are very rewarding.

Mastering one of these pieces gives your brain an immediate “victory”.

Now your brain can better understand the importance of what you are doing and makes you more anxious to tap into that knowledge and use it. Synergizing the ultimate goal of learning a song with the mastering new chords and finger activity is the easiest way to learn to play the guitar.

It is important to progress along with the study program you have chosen. These fundamentals are what will make you a great guitarist.

But these easy wins are what keeps your brain in a state of learning.

My guitar teacher helped me find my balance by making me spend the last 10 minutes of each session working on a simple song.

This little exercise was fun and gave me a reason to keep learning.

9. Accountability that hurts

Ok, here goes the least favorite tip.

None of us wants to be publicly humiliated.

Ok, here goes the least favorite tip.

None of us wants to be publicly humiliated.

An instructor fulfills this role of “responsibility partner”.

If you are taking guitar lessons online, you may want to establish a local friend as a responsible partner.

This is common in bluegrass circles. It is common to find weekly impromptu sessions where people gather to learn new songs and play favorite songs.

I remember hearing my grandfather play with other strangers. It is the way popular music has been broadcast for hundreds of years. Children are often given instruments and encouraged to play along with a simple chord.

Meetups and buddies are where you can recreate this in multiple ways every week and month.

Create a group where they meet and exchange tips on the best way to learn to play the guitar. Do it once a week, or once a month, and it will soon become the highlight of your week. Jam it. Exchange tips And inspire each other.