1. Giving up too quickly.
As with anything, you are going to have problems when you first start out, and this is true for anyone, no matter who they are. The best thing you can do when starting out is to practice consistently and learn guitar chords. Even if it seems as if you’ve been practicing forever and still aren’t seeing any improvements, you still shouldn’t give up. Keep on trying and trying and practicing.
2. Not visualizing your success.
When you are learning to form a chord, it’s crucial that you visualize where each of your fingers needs to be placed and what needs to happen. You will speed up your chord changes if you: look at where your fingers are positioned now, visualize where they should be, and figure out the shortest distance in which you can move them. Keep visualizing and looking for ways to speed up your playing.
3. Making things too complicated on yourself.
Switching from one chord to another isn’t the best means of learning guitar chords. However, if you don’t pick the right chords to start out with you may become extremely irritated. You need to pick up some easy ones, such as G to A, E to A, or D to G.
4. Not strengthening your fingers.
You need to work on your fingers if you want to form and strum chords. This can be done by using finger weights, pressing down hard on the strings, doing some wide scale exercises, and doing some good ole’ finger press ups.
5. Looking down at your hands too much.
Believe it or not, you can learn blindfolded than you can looking down at your hands. You should learn to form the chord without looking down at it. After all, do you ever see professional guitarists looking down at their hands whenever they change chords? Of course not! You should be able to change from any open chord to another without looking. After all, practice makes perfect when taking guitar chords lessons.
6. Only practicing one single chard at a time.
This is an extremely bad habit that some people get themselves into. It’s really not their fault; it’s just the way they were taught by their instructors. It’s actually best to practice three chords at a time rather than one, so that you can learn more quickly. By giving your brain three different patterns to memorize in a variety of different ways will strengthen the pathways to your brain to make future learning easier!
7. Keeping your pinky out of sight.
This is a strange one indeed, but some people do it all the time. Your fingers need to hover over the strings ALL THE TIME! Meaning that, when you form a D chord, your pinky should be hovering over the high E string or B. Don’t tuck your pinky under the fret board or anything, as it will make playing guitar chords more difficult in the future. You’ll have a tougher time advancing to higher levels.
8. Not learning or understanding root notes.
The bass note of a chord is the root note. It is what determines which string you should begin strumming or picking from. An E chord’s note is an E, which you play as the open low E string on the guitar. This means you begin to strum or pick from that note.
9. Not picking the chord.
Occasionally, when strumming a chord, you will notice that you’re hitting a lot of dead notes. However, many beginners will begin strumming it until they finally get it right. As a more learned player, you’ll know it is better to pick each note separately. That way, you can quickly analyze what string it is that is producing the dead note. Then all you have to do is apply more pressure or better-position your finger.
10. Not using all of your senses.
You should utilize all of your senses when learning guitar chords. You should “see” the chords in a diagram, video, or even in your head. You should also listen carefully to the way each chord sounds as it is strummed. Getting information into your brain needs to be done from every angle. This is the best way to succeed when learning chords in the shortest amount of time.
Conclusion
These tips really aren’t in any particular order. They’re all strong, solid tips that will help you to learn simple guitar chords quickly. You should write down each method onto a sheet of paper and start using it in your daily practice—you will be surprised at how quickly you can see results.
Copyright Liam Gibson (Guitar Master)
