4 Beginner Mistakes That WRECK Progress

0:02 There are four mistakes I see almost every beginner make and they absolutely wreck progress. I made some of these mistakes myself and if I had fixed them early on, I would have saved years of frustration. Today I'm going to show you exactly what they are so you can avoid them and start leveling up your guitar skills way faster than you ever thought possible. And at the end, I've got a really great bonus tip that's going to make playing chords [music] 10 times easier on your fingers. When you start with guitar, everything feels kind of difficult which makes sense because you've never played before. But something else could be going on. Something else that can severely hinder your progress and steal all the fun that the guitar offers. And the crazy thing is, it's not your fault. You get your first guitar and you feel like playing anything from single notes to full chords is a complete wrestling match. Your fingers may even feel like they hurt more than they should. It's

0:49 frustrating and this is where many folks just quit. They assume that it's their fault and that, well, this is just how it goes. But chances are it's actually your guitar. I've seen this countless times. Ryan, a student of mine, was so frustrated he almost sold his guitar. But after a quick $50 setup at his local music store, he couldn't stop smiling. He finally was able to play without discomfort. The mistake here is trying to learn on an instrument that's physically working against you. A guitar that's too big or a guitar that's too small. A guitar with high action where the strings sit too far off the fretboard. Old strings or ones that are too heavy. A poor overall setup. All of these can make even the simplest chords feel like a battle. The thing is, nobody tells beginners that the guitar itself

1:35 really matters. Learning on a poorly set up guitar is like trying to drive with a fogged up windshield and flat tires. You're going to work twice as hard to go the exact same distance. All because your tools aren't helping you. If your guitar fights you every time you play, there are two things you can do. Make sure your guitar fits you and get it properly set up. Here's how to do that. First, double-check that the size of your guitar is right for you. Is it hard to hold your guitar comfortably? Do you feel like it's hard to bring your arm around the body of the guitar? Does the neck feel too big for your fretting hand? Is it hard to hold in your lap? Head to your local shop to try guitars of different shapes and sizes. If you don't have a store locally, ask around to see if any friends of yours have guitars and just give them a spin. Number two, get a basic setup to ensure your guitar can perform at its best. It

2:20 usually costs around 50 bucks and it can completely transform how the instrument feels. And if you're not sure whether your guitar needs a setup, just ask a local shop to check for you. Sometimes it's just a 5-minute fix and they'll tell you right away. Most beginners think that the harder they try, the better that they're going to play. But sometimes all that effort backfires. This mistake is so sneaky that it affects nearly every guitar player in existence. It slows your fingers down, it makes movements stiff and unnatural, it kills your tone and long-term it can lead to pain and injury. When my student Carol was trying to learn her first chords, she visibly had a death grip on the neck of her guitar. Like full-on white-knuckle grip. She suffered from hand cramps that would make playing absolutely miserable for her. When I helped her address the tension she was holding in her hand, wrist and

3:05 shoulders, she became more relaxed and as she put it, "No more kung fu grip for me." As she continued to work on that, her hand cramps completely disappeared. So the mistake here is playing with too much tension. And if you catch this early, you're going to save yourself years of aggravation. Now, tension can come up in any number of places. In your fretting hand, your picking hand, your shoulders, your jaw, your arms, sometimes even your breath. Tension works against you in every single way. Guitar is supposed to feel fluid and relaxed. And I want you to think of relaxation as a skill to learn and develop. Much like learning a new chord shape or even a new song. You won't get it right away, but with repeated effort it becomes easier and easier. The fix is actually pretty simple. As you play,

3:51 just simply check in with your body. Are your shoulders creeping upward or starting to hunch over the guitar? If so, imagine a string pulling your head upwards. Straightening out your posture, moving your shoulders away from your ears and ultimately reducing overall body tension. Is your fretting hand squeezing the neck too hard? If it is, remove your hand from the guitar neck and shake it out. Almost like you're throwing the tension away or throwing it across the room. Is your picking hand stiff instead of loose and flowing? To remedy this, do some quick arm circles and a general shakeout. And more on the picking hand here in just a bit. Are you holding your breath without noticing? This one is actually the easiest to fix. Pause and do a slow inhale with a slightly longer exhale. Then try your best to keep breathing naturally as you play.

4:37 Relaxation is not optional. It's required for good technique and it's a skill that you're developing. One that frees your hands, improves your sound and protects you from injury. Your fingers are in the right spot, but you're getting buzzy notes, muted strings and everything just sounds terrible. You get that sinking feeling of, "Maybe I'm just not cut out for this." I had a brand new student Dan. I actually taught his sister as well. And he started lessons with the best attitude, but by week three his hopes of playing country roads were crushed. After I showed him how to fix it, he was back on track by the next lesson. Every new guitar player makes this mistake, which is why it's a big focus in the 30-day beginner jumpstart course inside our program. The mistake here is having improper fretting technique. But there's great news. You can follow this simple checklist to immediately fix this

5:23 problem. Number one, fret in the sweet spot. You want to be next to your intended fret, not on top of it, not way far behind it. Cuz that'll be a buzzy note, this will be a fuzzy note. You want to be right next to that fret. That'll give you the cleanest note with the least amount of effort. Number two, I want you to arch your fingers so you're fretting with your fingertip. A lot of times I see beginners fret with the pad of their fingers. You can get a good note, but you don't have solid contact with the strings and when it comes to chords, you're going to end up muting those neighboring strings. So to introduce arch, I want you to take the palm of your fretting hand and move it closer to the bottom edge of the fretboard. You can see right here how it takes a flat finger and moves it into an arched position right on the fingertip. This is going to give you the best [music] contact with the string and like

6:08 I said, it's going to make chords sing nice and clear. And finally, number three, I want you to use the optimal amount of pressure. Fretting too hard is going to pull the note sharp, it's going to hurt your hand. Fretting too softly is going to create buzzing notes. So how do you get the optimal pressure? Here's what I want you to do. Go ahead and fret the note as light as you possibly can. It's going to buzz and this is okay, this is part of the process. And then slowly introduce more pressure until it cleans up. This is going to show you the ideal amount of pressure. You don't want to monkey grip the fretboard. You want to use nice delicate fingers and still get clean notes. This one can be challenging to get right, especially when you're in that sore finger phase in the beginning. But with patience and persistence, this will start to happen automatically. Now, if I had a nickel for every time I had a

6:53 new guitar player baffled by how to properly hold a pick, I would have at least $715.35. As you can probably gather, the mistake here is not learning the foundations of proper pick technique. Smooth picking doesn't come from muscle and force, it comes from flow. A relaxed pick grip lets your whole arm move naturally and your entire picking hand feel effortless. Like most things, this is not an overnight fix. But with some time and repetition, the pick will become your best bud. Here's a quick guide to correct picking hand technique. Number one, hold the pick so that the point is perpendicular to your thumb. Now, to do this, I want you to pretend like you're holding a remote about to change the channel. Lay your pick on your curled index finger and then press your thumb on top of it like you'd be pressing a button on the remote. Make sure that point is

7:39 perpendicular, this is proper pick grip. Number two, loosen your grip by about 20 or 30%. I don't want you death gripping the pick. It's going to cause clunkiness and it's going to feel strange in your hand. So loosen your grip almost like you're handing a credit card to somebody else. That same type of grip I want you to use here on your pick. Number three, angle the front edge of the pick down towards the floor by about 45°. This isn't exact, I don't need you to get a protractor, but just have that front edge of the pick angled towards the floor. This is going to allow you to pick through the strings as opposed to getting hung up on the string. And it's going to allow you to use both the downstroke and the upstroke with ease. Again, as opposed to getting hung up on the strings or feeling like the pick is dragging you down. I want that pick to move through the strings fluidly. Like

8:24 think think like hot knife through butter type of thing. Number four, I want you to loosen your wrist, okay? The best way to do this, the best way I can describe this feeling is if you had water on the back of your hand and you're just trying to flick it off, right? That's the kind of looseness I want in your wrist. And then number five, and this is just a check-in reminder, remove tension from your picking hand. If you feel like you're tense or that your wrist is locked up, take a second, shake out your hand and then resume playing. After helping over 41,000 beginners learn guitar, I know that the start can be tough. I don't really believe in hacks or shortcuts, but if there's one I can get behind, it's the final bonus tip that I have for you. But first, I just want to mention that if you found value in this video and you want a clear path to start your guitar journey, every new student in our program gets a free 30-day beginner

9:10 jumpstart course to guide you through this exciting and sometimes frustrating phase. Click the link in the description below to get started. When you start your guitar journey, you're going to encounter chords that you just won't be able to play yet. But here's the thing, when I was first learning guitar, I had no idea that every chord can be played in many different ways. The beginner mistake here is thinking you have to play the full chord every single time a song calls for it. Here's the shortcut. You can play partial chords. Just a couple of the strings and you'll still be able to play the songs that you love. Okay, let me show you how this works. We're going to take a G chord, I'll show you the full version and then I'll show you how to trim it down so it becomes a little bit more manageable. So the full version is going to be your middle finger third fret of the low E, index finger second fret of the A, ring finger third fret of the B, and pinky

9:57 finger third fret of the high E. You strum all six strings. It's [music] a big chord. It's a full chord. You're all your fingers are doing something. So, if this is difficult to get, I just want you to strip those low two strings away, and just play the high three or four strings. >> [music] >> You still get the sound of the chord. Now, let's take this example even further with the F chord. The F chord is a pain in the butt, quite simply. It's a hard chord to make. I don't even like playing the full version, but for the sake of example, I want to show you the full version, so then you can see how we trim things away and make it a little bit easier to play. So, for the full version, you're going to take your index finger, lay it across all the strings on the first fret. You're going to take your ring finger, grab the third fret of the A, your pinky finger the third fret

10:44 of the D, and your middle finger the second fret of the G. You're going to strum all six strings. >> [music] >> I'm like tensing up just playing it right now. It's a really difficult chord. So, why not strip it away to make it easier to use in song. So, what I'm going to do is just look at the four high strings here, and I'm going to see what's fretted, and then adjust my hand accordingly. So, I'm going to take my index finger, grab the first two strings, the high E and the B at the first fret. I'm going to take my middle finger, grab the second fret of the G, and my ring finger and grab the third fret of that D string. >> [music] >> You still get the sound of an F chord. And if that's too difficult to manage, you can take the low strings. First fret of the low E, third fret of the A, and third fret of the D, right? You're going to use your index, your ring, and your

11:30 pinky. It's [music] a partial chord. It's not going to give you the full sound, but it's going to allow you to still play songs that call for that chord. And just keep in mind, you can do this for any chord that you want. It's not a shortcut, it's just a way to work up to those full versions of those chords. Now that your fingers are cooperating, it's time to get your mind on board, too. If you want 13 science-backed strategies to beat perfectionism and overwhelm, watch this video next.