3 Hurdles to Learning Guitar Chords That All Beginners Go Through

There are 3 major hurdles to learning guitar chords. All beginners have to face and overcome these hurdles if they want to be able to play the guitar and sound good. Briefly these hurdles are learning to read and understand a basic chord chart, learning the chords to your favorite songs and developing the ability to play the songs and chords while singing or thinking of a trip to Boston.

The first major hurdle is simply learning to make sense of a basic chord chart. Chord charts are pictures of the guitar neck which will show you where to place your fingers so you know how to make the chord correctly and easily. Basically it shows the strings from the thickest to the thinnest with the thickest either at the bottom of the chart or as the first line on the left of the chart. The dots or numbers on the chart describe where to put your fingers. So the horizontal lines are the actual frets on the neck, if there is a number behind it, it means to place that finger on that fret. Sometimes they place a black dot on a fret and then at the bottom of the chart have a number to tell you which finger to place on that fret. The fingers are number 1 - 4 starting with the index finger as 1 and the pinky as 4.

The next major hurdle is figuring out the chords to your favorite songs. This is really the best way to learn guitar chords. The easiest way to do this is to go online and do a search for some of your favorite songs and chords. It's actually really easy to find the chords to your favorite songs, so that should be too much of a problem. What you want to do from here is to begin practicing the chords to the song one or two at a time until you can execute them easily. You should put a little routine together where you play the first chord and then the second chord and then go back to the first. You repeat this every day until you can easily perform the first two chords. Then you add a third chord and repeat with the second and third chord of the song. Follow this process all through the song and you will be playing it in no time.

The final and most important hurdle that needs to be overcome is developing the ability to play all your chords without ever thinking about them. This is called muscle memory and the truth is it takes a very long time to develop. Generally it can take as many as four to six months to get to the point of executing your chords without having to think about them. It may seem like a long time, but remember that every guitarist had to go through this same process to learn guitar chords.

Probably the best way to accomplish all these goals is to find a teacher or course that will teach you the correct process for learning guitar chords. By following a course you will learn the best way to learn guitar and will cut your learning time down considerably.

View the original article here