For a good long while when I was starting to play guitar, I wondered what the hell was going on with my hands and my forearms. When you’re not used to the strain of fretting or hitting notes, you will notice some discomfort in your forearms.

This will pass as your arms adjust to playing for long periods. Make sure you take a rest when you feel this discomfort, as you don’t want to hurt yourself and thus impair your ability to play. Take it steady, and you’ll soon notice the progress you’re making. Perhaps you could try a different right hand technique.

Another thing to take note of is the change in the fingertips of your fretting hand. When you start out you’ll notice that the skin may be sore or split a little. This is normal.

Before too long the skin will harden a little in those fingertips and will stop being painful or splitting when you play. This is a normal thing, and once your fingers are accustomed to fretting, you’ll be able to do so without discomfort forever more.

Initially you have to understand that sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We procrastinate, put things off, and it is human nature to try to think of shortcuts. What we forget is that the key to doing anything well, is practice and persistence.

These two personal attributes will be your friend for life as you strive to master the guitar if you really want to learn to play well.

Skill cannot be bought, it takes time.  Even owning the best guitar in the world, will not make you an awesome guitarist.  You must be willing to practise, practise and then practise some more if you want to become a good guitarist.  Remember that mastering playing the guitar will give you years of pleasure.

Secondly, check your action. You should always ensure that the distance between the fingerboard and the underside of the string is appropriate for your fingers. If in doubt about this, ask any experienced guitar friend of yours for advice on this issue or pop into your local guitar dealership and ask them directly for their advice.

Thirdly, apply the K.I.S.S. principle. This usually stands for Keep It Stupidly Simple.  Don’t make learning the guitar more difficult than it has to be by jumping straight in at the deep end.  If you start simple, as your confidence increases and your guitar playing ability improves accordingly, then you can move on to the more complicated sounds that you want to be able to play..

You will probably get frustrated if you start off with the more complicated chords and/or riffs, and this will not serve you at all well.

Remember there is a learning curve to go through whenever you attempt to acquire a new skill.  Enjoy that learning.  So don’t make it any more difficult for yourself than it has to be – have fun learning the guitar.

Fourthly, always keep in mind that rhythm is the key. To have a good strong, consistent flow to your guitar playing ability, you need to keep the beat from the outset, at the start. It will help you a great deal if you use a metronome or even your foot to keep pace.

Fifthly, I am sure you love that guitar classic song which reaches deep within your soul. However it’s not good for you to choose the most complicated of songs to start you off learning the guitar.  Instead, keep to simple songs which are suitable for the guitar beginner, limit yourself at first to songs that just use two guitar chords. Then as you gain confidence and guitar playing ability, you can step the pace of learning up a bit and learn more complicated guitar pieces.

So try to put these five simple steps into practice and have a lot of fun in so doing. Then learning to play the guitar really will not take you too long at all and you will become highly proficient,

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