Deciding to play guitar can be exciting, frightening and overwhelming. Your mind fills with visions of you effortlessly shredding the fretboard and learning your favourite songs within half an hour.

Unfortunately, that’s not exactly how it’ll be in the beginning stages. If you’re looking to get into guitar and do it properly, there are four things you need to know before you make the commitment and pick up the six-string.

1. Wanting to Quit Guitar is Natural

• Every guitar player, even your favourites and the ones who seem to play without thinking, have been frustrated with progress at first.

• When I first started, I couldn’t understand why my fingers wouldn’t move in the way I needed them to. Fretting chords was unbelievably difficult and the steel strings of my acoustic painfully dug into my hands.

• While it’s hard in the beginning, if you stay consistent and retain your passion for music, there’s a better chance you’ll stick with it and you can rest assured that things will only get easier.

2. Learning Guitar Should Be Strategic

• Once you’ve decided to play the guitar, you now need to decide exactly how you’ll be learning to play.

• Between YouTube, traditional guitar lessons and online tabs, learning how to play guitar is more accessible than ever before. The only issue is that leaves you with a lot of options and it can be tough to decide which is best for you.

• The 1 on 1 of a traditional lesson was something that I found incredibly beneficial, but the relaxed pace of learning online definitely has its perks. Decide what you value, stick with it and you’ll see progress in no time.

3. Focus on the Basics of Guitar

• When you’re starting, it can be tempting to just jump straight into whatever you want to play. But if you haven’t built the proper basics and established a solid foundation, it only leads to discouragement and possibly giving up the guitar.

• I know it’s boring and repetitive, but you need to make sure you have the basics down. Here’s what I suggest learning before you attempt playing your favourite song:

• String names
• Names of guitar parts (i.e. headstock, bridge, body, etc.)
• How to hold a guitar
• How to hold a guitar pick (as well as what type of pick you prefer)
• Common open chords (i.e. C Major, D Major, G Major, E Minor)
• How to strum & basic strumming patterns

4. Learn Your Favourite Guitar In Slow-Mo

• Once you’ve been playing for a little while and are confident in your grasp of the fundamentals, the next step will likely be learning how to play your favourite songs. The only issue might be that your favourite songs change chords too quickly for you to play along.

• Don’t worry, it’s natural, you’ll build up to that level of speed. There are apps out there that allow you to slow down your favourite music to the point where you’re able to play along and they’re incredibly useful and you get a great feeling of the progress you’re making.

• The faster you get, just increase the speed until you reach the speed of the original song.