Top 10 Most Common Mistakes Beginners Make When Learning Guitar Chords

Whether you are new to playing the guitar, or you have been playing for many years, you may be blaming your lack of success on the fact that you either don’t have the time, or the skills needed to be successful at learning guitar chords. While a lack of practice can prevent many from achieving guitar playing success, most commonly failure happens simply because they are practicing incorrectly. Here are the 10 most common mistakes beginners make and how to avoid them.  

First, when learning guitar chords, many will give up too soon. While many choose to learn to play guitar chords because they think that it will be a skill they can master in a short amount of time, many give up simply because it ends up being much harder than they may have thought. It doesn’t matter what you skills are, nearly everyone experiencing some level of difficulty when it comes to learning guitar chords. If you just stick with it, eventually success will happen.  

Second, may do not visualize their success on the road to learning to play guitar chords. When it comes to forming a chord correctly, it is extremely important to visualize where your fingers need to move to and how you will make it happen. If you get distracted, you increase the chance that you will make a mistake that will frustrate you on your road to guitar playing success. A simple tip proper visualization is to look at where your fingers are now and visualize where they will need to move to. You will then need to determine the shortest distance you need in order to move your fingers to the next chord.  

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Third, many players end up making learning guitar chords much too hard for themselves. While changing from one chord to another is the easiest way to learn guitar chords, choosing chords that are too complex can really turn you off on the idea of practicing chords. In order to avoid this, choose easy chords when you first start out. An easy one is G to A, E to A, D to G. 

Fourth, many avoid working their fingers. While you are probably more than well aware that you use your fingers in order to form chords and strum them, many neglect exercising their fingers in order to build up finger strength. This can be achieved either by using little finger weights, pushing down hard on the strings, by doing wide scale exercises or doing finger press-ups. Regardless of the option you choose, you need to find a way to exercise your fingers.  

Fifth, a big mistake that many make when learning guitar chords is that they look at their hands too much. While this may help when you are first learning to play, relying on your eyes as a way to make sure you are playing the right chord can hinder you more than it helps you. Think about the last guitarist you saw play. Do you remember seeing them looking at their guitar, probably not, unless they needed to execute a tricky chord change. In order break yourself of this habit, consider wearing a blindfold while you practice. This will help prevent you from looking at the guitar so you can practice changing from one chord to another. 

Sixth, many fall victim to only practicing one chord at a time. While many are taught to learn the guitar chords one by one, practicing 3 chords at the same time gives you the chance to learn the finger placements for each one a lot faster than if you forced yourself to learn one at a time. Your mind tends to learn quicker when moving from one chord to another, which increases the chances that you will learn the chords sooner rather than later.  

Seventh, many tend to leave their pinky out of sight. While this may sound like an unusual mistake, it is actually one that occurs quite often. Regardless of what chord you are playing, your fingers should be hovering over the strings all the time. This means that if you are forming a D chord, your pinky finger should be hovering somewhere over the high E or B. Many opt to tuck their pinky finger under the fret board or in another place which can make learning more advanced chords much more difficult in the future.  

Eighth, another equally common mistake players make in learning guitar chords is that they don’t understand the root note. The root note is commonly known as the bass note.  It determines which string you should start stringing or picking from. A good example is an E chords root note is the E which would be played as a open low E. Simply translated this means you would start strumming or picking from that note.  

Ninth, many avoid picking the chord. If you have ever noticed a lot of dead notes while practicing you chords, this is most commonly because you are not hitting it right. In order to fix this problem, many will take the brute force approach to learning guitar chords by playing the same one over and over until they get it right. While this may work, an easier approach is to pick each note separately so you can analyse the note that is giving you the problem. This way you can fix the problem either by applying more pressure or moving the finger slightly so you can learn from your mistakes where with retrying you will never know what exactly you were doing wrong.  

Lastly, the biggest mistake many make when learning guitar chords is that they avoid using all their senses. In order to be successful in learning guitar chords you need to see, hear and feel the right chords. You will want to see the proper chord in a photo of someone else playing it, refer to it in a diagram so you can get the right finger position, watch it in a video so you can see how someone else gets their fingers into position and listen to the sound that the chord makes. This gives your brain has the chance to experience it from every angle which gives you a better chance of succeeding in learning guitar chords in the shortest amount of time.  

These are 10 of the most common mistakes beginners make when learning guitar chords. Make sure you avoid these mistakes as much as possible and you are sure to be successful in learning guitar chords no matter how long you have been playing the guitar.  

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by Liam Gibson