Tony’s Acoustic Challenge – The New Way to Learn Guitar › Family Forums › Community Support › Never played guitar before and could use some help please. › Reply To: Never played guitar before and could use some help please.
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Hi @Jolene welcome. I will be the dissenting voice and encourage you to explore the daily lessons. I will try to encourage you to feel new rather than useless. New is good we can work with that and in time you won’t be new. They will seem extremely challenging at first but over time they will reveal their absolute brilliant utility. Don’t worry about speed or if you could play the whole exercise rather take the time (10 minutes required for completion, it is time in the saddle, not how you ride) to explore the sound of your guitar and how you interact with it. Take some time holding your guitar get comfortable with it on your leg, in your arms. For the exercise take a portion of it slow it down to the place where your mind is comfortable and work on the fingers. For me this has a times been as slow as 30 beats per minute. That is one down stroke for every 2 seconds. Or a downstroke 1 second and an upstroke on the next second. Focus on the first measure of the exercise. Most of the time this will be the first eight notes you hear. If that is too much do the first four and just take some time on that. Always work to eliminate tension in your mind and then your arms and hands and fingers. Press hard enough to make a clean sound but not overly hard, just hard enough. This is how progress is made. This is how guitar players are made. Some folks are born players but I was a learner and a slow learner but this is the path of my progress. I like the suggestion of finding a song you want to learn and the other suggestion was the 30 days to play challenge should yield some satisfying results. Check back in the forums and let us know when you have a good moment and also if you find the road blocked. Every one of us has been right where you are. We walk together now. I wish you fast easy progress.