Diagnosing and Solving Issues with Beginner Guitar Students

During my eleven years of experience teaching guitar, I have recognized a root problem in beginner guitar students. This problem is the reason for many subsequent errors in playing the guitar. You are probably asking what it is. Do not think you are in a hurry? Yes, the answer is the same uncontrollable urge to rush.

There is a strange tendency among beginner students to rush. They like to do everything quickly. Controlling this tendency is difficult and time-consuming for beginners. But if the teacher insists on going slowly from the beginning, he or she can overcome this problem better shortly. As guitar teachers, we must be able to overcome this tendency and replace it with patience in a practical way. 

At Stay Tuned Guitar, our mission is to help students recognize and overcome this common stumbling block in their musical journey. With over eleven years of experience in teaching guitar, we understand the significance of instilling patience right from the start. By emphasizing the importance of taking it slow and steady, our comprehensive resources, including high-quality articles, tutorials, and helpful links, guide aspiring guitarists towards a more balanced and rewarding path to mastery. Stay Tuned Guitar ensures that beginners not only learn to play the guitar but also cultivate the patience required to become proficient musicians.

The left-hand thumb and wrist play a very important role in controlling the guitar and the sound quality of the instrument. Beginners like to rush to play songs quickly. Holding the guitar and fingering correctly can be the subject of the first few sessions alone. Fingers that are flat and not rounded or broken finger joints are major issues that the student should avoid.

A blog on https://boyaguitarparts.com/ says, for more comfort, students put the soft part of the first ligament of each finger on the strings instead of placing their fingertips on the strings and behind the frets. This causes the strings to sound bad and the fingers of the left hand to be unrounded, which also has an ugly visual effect. During this rush, the students place their left-hand fingers on the strings diagonally, while they should sit directly in front of the strings. From the beginning, the teacher should emphasize that the student imagines that he or she has an apple in his or her fist. This gives students a much better understanding of fingers’ roundness.

Another problem is that students push the guitar forward so they can have a better view of the strings. But be careful that this causes the fingers to be further apart and makes fingering more difficult.

Beginners are in a huge rush to progress. This makes them engage in wrong fingering exercises when they pick up the guitar with too much pressure on their fingers, wrists, forearms, and arms. The result is a lot of pain in the hands and back, which may even lead to disappointment in going to class. It is very important to remind the students that after practicing for a few minutes at home, take a break and pick up the guitar again and practice. Practicing in front of the mirror for correct fingering will increase their concentration power and it will be a good practice to monitor what they are doing.

Students are also in a strange hurry to perform right-hand finger strokes or picking. There is a shocking tendency for beginners to play fast because it gives them the impression that they are great guitarists when it detracts from that goal. To solve this problem we need to tell them to listen to what they are playing.

When beginners start playing the basic fingering exercises, we can clearly hear that they are playing all the notes in a staccato way. However, they have to play the notes legato. The inability to keep the hard strings of the guitar in the first frets and escape from this difficulty are the factors of this problem. We have to prepare them to play continuously and smoothly.
Another point is the non-implementation of rests by beginners. It is clearly evident that beginners have no interest and attention to playing the rests and their existence. As teachers, we must explain to them that rests are an integral part of music, just like the pauses we have between sentences when we speak. Rests make music meaningful. So please teach beginners to perform rests and not pass them carelessly. Rests are as valuable as notes.

The way to perform rests on the acoustic guitar is that it is better to mute the open notes with the left hand. Muting the open strings with the left hand should be such that the sound of the left hand hitting the strings is not heard. As a result, this work should be done very slowly and softly. For the notes that are followed by a rest, it is better to reduce the pressure of the fingers on the string so that the sound of the string is muted (not to lift the fingers up).

Sometimes students should be asked to play all the notes they have learned on the guitar in ascending and descending order. Ask them to look at the guitar neck and their hands and say the names of the notes out loud. Many times they avoid looking at the guitar while practicing. This is a psychological problem that originates from impatience and a kind of escape from the burden of responsibility and hardship.

Beginners love to play fast and dirty and enjoy it and they probably do not know and do not recognize that this is not a beautiful and clean performance. The result of cultivating such an interest is irreparable, so kill this interest in them. They like to play with a minimum pressure of the left-hand fingers on the strings and maximum speed of the right-hand fingers. This causes noise and buzz.

Another problem is related to the hard parts of each piece or exercise. Beginners like to play the difficult parts carelessly and very faintly and skip them and get to the easy parts and just repeat them, while, they should learn to work on their weaknesses.

Teach beginners to break slightly longer pieces into smaller pieces. For a student in a hurry, nothing is better than shortening the exercises. First, tell them to play the pieces bar by bar, at low speed and high quality. Then tell them to try to play and connect more bars and then the sentences of the music and finally play the entire piece at the desired speed.

Sight-reading power is an important issue, and although it doesn’t seem amiss if students sometimes memorize pieces, developing the power of sight-reading will reduce their effort to memorize pieces note by note. Moreover, the solfege of notes by the teacher is a great help and guide for the student to find the correct notes when playing exercises or pieces with sight-reading.

Please don’t look back!
Amid all this rush, there are sometimes exceptions. For example, when a student practices with a metronome and misses a note, he or she should not go back to it and should play the remaining notes of the piece. I always give this example to my students imagine you are a soloist or in an orchestra and you miss a note. So what should be done? You have to move forward with the orchestra and the continuation of the music. The notes that have expired are left behind, so we must pay attention to what is left. Practicing simple new pieces with a metronome greatly improves the student’s sight-reading power.
Finally, it can be said that one of the main problems of many beginner students is their tendency to rush. So, if you have a beginner student, first remove the false sense of excitement and anxiety that causes rapid performance. There is a saying that says: “Good things come to those who wait”. After following this seemingly small but very important point, their success will be close.

Amir Davarzani is a teacher, guitarist, author, documentary filmmaker, and researcher in heavy metal music.