7 Beginners Mistake that Most Students Do While Learning Guitar from Online Courses

Learning guitar is similar to learning any other form of art. With the advancement of technology, it has now become very convenient to learn guitar from anywhere. Like the old days, you do not need to go to a guitarist for learning to play guitar. However, sometimes while learning guitarists make some common mistakes. These mistakes soon develop into the lousy habit until they are dealt at an early stage. In the later stage, these bad habits become hard to break. Hence, it is essential to identify the mistakes in the beginning.

Learning guitar online is beneficial. It is cheap, convenient, and gets you in touch with the best guitarists in the world. But, as you do not have a constant teacher to look after you or point out the mistakes, you will grow these bad habits pretty fast. Every bad habit can be broken, but you have to recognize your problems first.

Here is the list of 7 common mistakes that beginner guitarists do while learning guitar online.

1. Putting in too much pressure

From my experience, one of the most common mistakes is using too much effort. This is a common problem among all the musicians. However, this is mostly observed among the rising guitarists. This is because some of these guitarists believe that by pressing themselves down on the strings they can learn guitar in one night. The truth is, if playing guitar is physically strenuous, you will gradually lose interest.

So, if you believe this, you should remove the thought from your mind right now. Playing the guitar should be comfortable and relaxing. By this, I do not anyway mean that playing the guitar is easy. Of course, it’s not. But, pressing the fingers on the strings should not feel like working out in a gym. Here, the main issue is positioning the finger right.

In such a case, when you are playing guitar, remember to place fingers near the fret wire towards the body of the guitar. Do not press it above the fret wire. This point requires very little pressure for producing a clean and nice note.

Practice it yourself. You might find it a bit difficult at the beginning, but with practice, this will become very easy.

2. Not getting a professional guitar setup

This section is quite similar to the first section because getting professional guitar setup results in a musical instrument that is easy to play and requires very less effort for getting the notes right.

I have been playing guitar for more than ten years and did not have professional setup in my early times. I used to think playing the guitar puts lots of pressure on your hand, and it is supposed to hurt your fingers. This wrong setup made it hard for me to progress. I would get exhausted just by practicing for half an hour. So, you can understand from this how important it is to get a professional setup.

The more you practice, the better you will become.

This is very true if you are trying to learn guitar online. Once I got myself professional guitar setup I could feel the difference. Suddenly, playing guitar was not strenuous on my fingers; instead, it became really easy and relaxing. I could play it for two hours straight without having any pain on my hands-on fingers.

The main thing that the professional setup has is lower string action. The string action is the distance between the fretboard and the strings. This affects how much pressure you put for pressing down the strings. So, if there is a fraction of millimeter difference, then, this can be felt by the hands.

Often the lower-end models have very high string actions, although those are in the factory setup. This changes mostly during the shipment as humidity and heat affect the guitar setup.

Even if you are learning guitar online, get a professional to do the first setup for comfortable playing.

3. Going way too fast

This is another common guitar mistake of online learners. When you try to play a whole song at once, you often misunderstand the right notes, and this leads to terrible habits. So, it is essential to go slow. Do not try to play the song 100% at once instead break it down. Start a small. You can try 25% at once then advance gradually.

At slower speed, you will focus more on the technique rather than just playing the song at once. As a result, you will not have sloppy techniques, and as a guitarist, you will know what you are doing.

Another vital lesson is practice makes things permanent. If you keep practicing bad techniques, then, you will keep used to it. It would become tough for you to change your habit. So, remember to get perfect practice to get an ideal technique.

You will not be able to make things right in one night. Also, I didn’t mean to get 100% perfect. We all are human beings, and there will be some problems and mistakes. But, when you are practicing better and trying to learn the technique right, you will get a much better result. This will help you a lot in future.

4. Inconsistent practice

A lot of playing guitar or any other musical instrument comes down to muscle memory. Just like any other activity, playing music needs complex motor skills. This is the best way for making the movements feel effortless as well as automatic with regular practice or consistent repetition.

In most of the online guitar learners, inconsistent practice is noticeable. As they do not have a professional to look after, they do not practice regularly. This creates a harmful effect on the learning skill of the newbie. With time, they even grow a lousy form of playing guitar.

You have seen soldiers doing drills every day at the same time for months. The situation is similar here. Instead of pushing yourself to practice 10 hours in one day, practice at least 15 minutes every day. As you have the flexibility of time and place, it will not be much of a pressure on you.

5. Trying to learn too much together

Yes, you are not the only one. Most of the online guitarists are guilty of making this mistake. This happens with the students who are very motivated and want to learn guitar overnight.

Being enthusiastic about learning something is very good. We are not saying this is bad, but problems arise when you move on from an easy note and do not practice well.

Learning even the simplest guitar notes help you to shape your scales and also increases you’re playing skills. You need to make your foundation strong while building the structure. Otherwise, you will end up with a wobbly structure. This is also the case of guitar learning. So, learn slowly but learn rightly.

6. Trying hard to be perfect

As we mentioned, we all are human, and only a machine can be 100% right. What makes our music unique is the small quirks and inconsistencies that we pick up while learning or practicing. This is the reason, and everyone sounds different from each other.

Humanity is imperfect, so why do even expect our guitar skills to be perfect?

Many times during the performances, we get too busy to make the notes perfect that we make our entire body tense. If you are putting on pressure on your body, your mind will lose the freedom of playing the guitar. When you are putting on more pressure, you are prone to make mistakes more. This is why trying too hard to be perfect is prohibited in guitar.

Of course, it is easy to tell than done but remember perfection is for robots and you, as a human, are allowed to make mistakes.

Try to practice correctly but do not put on much pressure on yourself. When you are practicing, focus on the notes and the guitar, turn off the inner critic and play.

7. Not knowing the music theory

Do you find this one odd? It might be, but most of the newbie online guitar leaners make this honest mistake.

According to most of the beginners, they avoid music theory because they believe this will affect their playing and make them more technical. However, the truth is, most people do not find the concept exciting, and it becomes difficult for them to understand the idea. After all, music is about playing, not learning.

This is where they make a mistake. Learning music theory can be time-consuming and tedious, but it will help you to understand the true essence of music.

Music is a language. So, if you don’t understand it, it will be hard on you.

Conclusion

Learning guitar online is very easy, and it will save lots of your money. But, at the same time, you need to keep your mistakes on the check so that you do not grow one easily.