How to Learn Guitar on Your Own:10 Tips for Learning Guitar Quickly and Effectively

Introduction

To wrap up this 3-part series, we will look at three additional tips that will help you to learn guitar on your own.

8. If Your Guitar Playing Gets Stuck…

Most guitar players find their playing gets stuck from time to time.

It might be a part of a song that you just can’t seem to play up to speed. Or, it could be a part of a song that you just can’t seem to memorize. Regardless of what the problem is, there is one technique you can use to get unstuck…

Look for the Bottle-Neck

Identify the one factor that is holding you back in that area.

Zoom in to the trouble spot and ask yourself what one thing is holding you back in that area.

You might find that the reason you can’t nail down one part of the song is just one chord, or a tricky fingering in a riff, or solo.

It could be because your fret-hand fingers haven’t developed finger memory for the passage, and they stumble because they don’t really know where they need to go.

It might be that your pick is hitting a wrong string.

Or, it could be that your pick is extending too far beyond the string after picking.  The further your pick moves beyond a string, the further it has to return to pick the next note.  By minimizing wasted pick motion you will be able to increase your speed and accuracy.

There are many other possible limiting factors.  But, the bottom line is if you drill down deep enough, you will find the one thing that is holding your playing back.

Once you find what is limiting your progress in that area, your job is to focus on it and work on eliminating it.

9. Use a Good Method Book

By now you probably realize that there are many things you can do to learn guitar on your own. But you are probably wondering what the best plan of attack is.

Whether it’s guitar or anything else you want to learn, the best way is always to learn from an expert.

If you try to do it totally on your own, you will end up wasting a lot of time. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, or learn by trial and error.

The ultimate way to learn is to study privately with a top-notch expert guitar teacher. But, let’s face it, there are many reasons why this simply won’t work for many people. So the next best thing is a good guitar method that you can go through at your own pace.

In the recommended resources at the end of this tutorial you will find a good complete beginner guitar method.

10. Stay Motivated

Last but not least, is motivation. To make fast progress on guitar, it’s important to keep the fire alive.

You want to keep yourself as inspired as possible.  You want to really be looking forward to the next time you pick your guitar.

When you are away from your guitar, listen to as much music as you can. Load up your iPod and/or phone with your favourite music.

Watch concert videos of your favourite guitar players.

These will help get you to the point where you can’t wait to pick up your guitar and play. When you feel like that, you will have an absolute blast on the guitar.  Also, when you are in an excited and charged up mood, you will find that you learn things faster. This will start up a great positive feedback loop.  The better you get, the more you want to play.  As you continue to improve, you want to play more and more.

In this short tutorial series, we’ve only been able to cover the basics of these tips.  On top of that, we could have easily extended them to 20, 30 or even 100 tips for learning guitar on your own.

So what should you do next?  Put these tips to use.  If you use them, they will  work.

If you want to learn guitar even faster, check out the recommended resources…

Recommended Resources

The single most important thing you can do to ensure you learn guitar fast and properly, is to follow a good guitar method. Yes there are some good guitar tutorials on YouTube, but there are also some lousy ones too.

On top of that, the main problem with trying to learn guitar from YouTube is simply that you won’t get a effective way to learn guitar.

How do you know which video is right for you to watch and work on first and then second, and third?

You can see where I’m going with this. A good guitar method book takes away all of the guess work. It will save you tons of otherwise wasted time. And let’s face it, it’s easy to get distracted on YouTube and start watching one video after another, and suddenly there goes an hour, and you haven’t done anything constructive on the guitar!

With a good guitar method, you will learn the chords and scales you need to know in the best order for you to learn and understand them.  You will also learn some powerful ways to practice, learn and master them.

So What Do I Recommend?

If you want to learn guitar fast, I recommend that you learn from a guitar method that incorporates accelerated learning techniques. And that’s what I’ve done in my beginner guitar course called The EDGE: CORE Beginner Guitar Lessons. You can learn more about it here:

If you’ve already been playing for a while and are looking to fill in some gaps in your knowledge, here are some of my other courses that will improve your guitar playing in the key areas we looked at in this tutorial series.

To learn and master beginner to intermediate guitar scales, check out Guitar Essentials: Scale Master Expanded Edition.

To learn the most important guitar chords, consider Guitar Essentials: Chord Master Expanded Edition.

To totally understand guitar theory and apply it to the guitar, check out the Absolute Essentials of Music Theory for Guitar.

If you are a beginner to intermediate player and you want to improve your guitar technique, consider the Top 30 Most Powerful Guitar Technique Exercises of All Time.

If you are intermediate to advanced, check out Mega Chops Scale Mastery Beyond Hanon for some powerful ways to improve your guitar technique.

To learn two or more songs in the time it takes you to learn one, check out 21 Secrets to Learn Guitar Songs Super-Fast.

Have fun playing guitar!