5 Essential Guitar Practice Tips For Beginners

So let’s look at 5 essential guitar practice tips for beginners!

1/ Strength VS Precision

The first trick is something every guitarist should know, and you can practice that with any exercise or scale you already play.

Let’s focus on the pressure we’re putting on the strings. There’s no need to press too hard. What we’re looking for is precision! Try your best to target the bottom of each fret you’re playing.

Something important to understand is that the note we play isn’t created by the string touching the fretboard, but by the string “locking” on the metal fret that follows.

If you press on the string too far from that metal fret, you’ll need to compensate by pressing harder, which would can make the note slightly sharp or buzzy!

By placing your finger just behind the metal fret, the contact between the string and the metal fret will be a lot more solid, reducing or eliminating any buzz. You’ll see that if you do that, you’ll instantly sound better and cleaner, it’s also a great habit to pick up on early in your guitar journey!

To practice your precision, start with a spider exercise where you really focus on having clean notes. Remember that there’s no need to press too hard, so make sure you’re relaxed!

2/ Looking away

When you start playing guitar, something very instinctive is to look at where your pick is, and what string we want to play. Of course, you can do that the first few weeks, but as you get more familiar with the instrument, try and look away from your picking hand!

Going back to spider exercise, try and practice it without looking at your picking hand. Sure, you might pluck the wrong string here and there, but that’s how you learn! If you constantly look at your picking hand, it won’t learn where the strings are, you’ll just rely on your eyes to guide your movements.

Of course, feel free to practice that with any scale you might already know!

3/ Strumming

Strumming can be super challenging for any beginner, a really good tip here is to practice that without chords.

I know it can sound a bit counter-intuitive, but if you have your fretting hand flat on the strings, and mute all of them, you can now really focus on what your strumming hand is doing. Make sure that you’re not pressing too hard on the strings, so you get a nice “dry” sound out of them, and set your metronome at a speed you think you can manage. Chords are now out of the way, so your timing becomes your main focus!

Go through different patterns like these, and try to count out loud:

Feel free to try targeting the lower strings, or the higher strings, as it’s something that would make you sound a lot more dynamic when strumming chords.

You can also try and experiment with patterns, ask yourself “what if I strum the “and” of 3” or “what if I don’t strum beat number 1”

This trick is also something I still do when I’ve got to write down or understand a new pattern, it’s such a simple way to put all your attention to your counting and rhythm!

4/ Grouping Chords

Let’s now dive into chords! Open chords are chords that you’ll play your whole life, they aren’t just “beginner” chords. You’ll come across them in lots of your favourite songs too, so we need to make sure you’re confident with them, and that you know their names!

Also, open chords will be the foundation of your barre chords and the CAGED shapes you’ll see in the future, so we really need to understand and remember them.

To remember your open chords, try to visualise them as “families”. Chords that have a similar name will often look similar as they follow a lot of the same rules. For example, the difference between a minor and a major chord is always one note.

That means E minor and E Major will look very similar, except for one note! But of course, you can apply that to most of the open chords you’ve seen, such as A minor and A major, or D minor and D major.

It makes remembering them a lot easier, and it will also help you know from which string you’re supposed to strum them from.

5/ Play every day

If there’s one secret to becoming a better guitarist, it’s to play every day.

I’m not saying you should play 4 hours everyday, but picking up your guitar everyday is important, even if it’s only for 2 minutes!

The idea is also that if you pick your guitar up, even for a minute, you’ll probably start playing more than a minute! But again, don’t put too much pressure upon yourself, especially if you’re just getting started.

By picking up your guitar everyday, you’re training your brain to feel like this is normal, it becomes a habit, and you’re paving the road for an effortless practice routine that leads to real progress over time.

To facilitate this, the best thing you can do is to leave your guitar out of its case. Leave it on a stand, so there’s no extra steps between you and your practice. If you’re playing electric guitar, leave it plugged in. Again, no extra steps!

And one last detail, I called this fifth tip “play every day” and not “practice every day”. I know it can sound weird, but you’re here to learn how to play guitar, and not to learn how to “practice” guitar.

Practicing is of course important, and we need to practice. But playing is the main goal, so don’t feel bad about yourself if after a long day you don’t have the energy to practice, just play!