Guitar Progress - Why Beginners Are Advised To Start Slow

The main reason that anyone starts playing the guitar is because they want to learn to play songs, and want to play them now! Unfortunately, things don't really work that quickly, and most beginning musicians are advised to start slow and progress slow.

But why is that? Why don't most instructors tell you to dive right into the material and start learning the good stuff? Well, here are the main purposes why beginners should progress at a slow rate when playing the guitar.

You need to work on sticking to the tempo.

A song or scale is really no good unless there's a solid tempo that goes along with it. While you're still beginning, playing along with jam tracks or a metronome is very good practice to realize the pull of the tempo and how to stick to it consistently.

Mastering your technique is important at this stage.

You know how math teachers always wanted you to show your work because that was more important than the answer. If you're a beginner playing the guitar, it's the same thing.

It's nice that you can struggle through something and play it, but everyone knows that you had to struggle to get there. By learning the correct techniques for all of your skills properly by taking it slow, you can start nailing songs more accurately and without as much difficulty in the future.

Practicing correct posture can solve speed problems later.

Starting slow can be frustrating sometimes, but starting too fast can lead you to develop bad habits that won't help you later when your skills really depend on it. Take the time you need to develop correct posture in your strumming, picking, fingerings, and how you hold the guitar in order speed up the progress you make later shredding through faster licks.

You need to be used to the repetition.

If practicing music over and over again just doesn't sound like something that you're willing to tolerate, then playing the guitar isn't really for you. As a beginner, you'll learn very soon that playing is all about repetition and the sooner you make peace with it, the sooner you can impress your friends at the camp fire.

The value of your practice time will become more obvious.

It's advisable to play at least 20 minutes per day to make sure that you continue to progress on your instrument, but once you see how much really gets accomplished in that time, you might not think it can stand. Starting out slowly can teach you the importance of using all of the practice time you can to develop your skills into being a guitar monster.

You need to focus on the details.

This is almost a summation of everything, but starting slowly is all about paying attention to the details and not the broad ideas. As soon as all of the details are easy to execute for you, everything else should fall into place without as much effort.

It's a tricky game to play and learn the guitar well enough to entertain your friends with real songs, but you can't get to that point if you rush. Take all the time you need in order to learn everything properly and you should be passing up the competition down the line.