Learn To Play Acoustic Guitar - A Guide For Beginners
Im experienced in teaching guitar and do it full time for a living. In the course of this article Im going to point out what I think are the most important considerations for anyone planning to learn to play acoustic guitar. Hopefully it will help you to avoid some of the more common problems beginners often fall into.
Your priority in this endeavor should always be to find the best quality instruction available to you. This can be the deciding factor in how easy you find it to learn and consequently how likely you are to succeed. I dont recommend self instruction as this often leads to frustration in the future.
If you cant find a good local tutor to go to for lessons then there are a few good quality sites online to learn to play acoustic guitar. Check out their sample lessons to see if the style, level and pace of the lessons succeed in teaching you. Learning online is also more economical and you can fit it around your daily schedule with relative ease.
The ideal situation is to have a combination where you learn from a variety of different sources simultaneously. For example, 1-1 lessons with a real tutor plus online guitar lessons or books and DVDs. Youll need to be self motivated and committed to daily practice which not everyone is (!) but assuming some kind of inspiration is driving you to learn acoustic guitar everything should be fine!
So how long should it take to learn? This is a generalized question but assuming you are of average ability for guitar and receiving quality tuition its going to take around 4 weeks before youre able to strum and play along to beginner songs on a basic level. How far you decide to go after that is a personal decision and honestly the sky is the limit.
Aside from quality guitar lessons the most important will be in knowing how to practice correctly. Practicing is a technique you have to learn! Learning how to practice correctly will shorten the time to takes you to learn to play acoustic guitar enormously, it may even mean the difference between success and failure.
