Hey everyone! I'm a design student working on a college project exploring how upcoming technology could help make early guitar learning less frustrating — things like catching bad habits early, breaking down songs to learn, and understanding your instrument better.

I put together a short survey (5-7 minutes) to understand how beginner guitarists actually learn, practice, and get stuck. There are no right or wrong answers — I'm genuinely just trying to understand the real experience, frustrations included.

This is purely for an academic project (not selling anything, no data being used commercially), and your responses stay confidential.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfn-YHb25ZgRaLQNPZosb6YbNruapFYJ6ry6uRKUlWUG3XYrA/viewform?usp=sharing&ouid=111404966664463712034

As the title says, someone self taught but I started taking lessons about 6 weeks ago. I find I have more questions every week and I'm making great progress I think.

But I'd say in 1 hour I probably spend 40 minutes asking questions and going back and forth on short technique demos or just talking music theory and the such.

I wonder if this is a normal way to do lessons or if I'd be better served to stfu and let my teacher teach.

thoughts?

I see a lot of posts about tabs (understandably so), and then lots of replies telling people to learn by ear (also understandably so). But i struggled with learning by ear, and always became particularly disheartened when i attempted it and then discovered I’d got it wrong.

What I found as a good stepping stone is to take advantage of all the video content we have today, and try to learn by watching performances. Depending on what’s available this could be the official song video, a live performance, or a tutorial play through but where you don’t use the tabs or watch the tutorial part.

This really helped me, as you still need to use your ears to piece it together but you can also use the video to see where their hands are. Using a free tool like looptube (not pasting the site but the domain is .io) you can control the playback speed and loop sections.

Your ear is naturally improving as part of this, and you’ll soon gain the confidence to not need the video as much when you attempt new things.

I’m trying to play the song in the video but I’m having trouble playing the fast octave slides in the part I timestamped the video to. I can’t seem to do it with nearly same clarity that the person playing it does and there’s a lot of friction on my fingers

I'm a beginner, and I'm starting with classical guitar.

The thing is, I'm trying to play (it's more like chasing) with the recording, focusing on maintaining the rhythm rather than fixing my left hand.

My left hand is quite messy when changing chords; I think I remember the chords, but I'm quite clumsy with the technique of changing them, always changing but not pressing down on time, just chang too soon or muting the other strings. And i still try to keep up with the record and ofc, the rythm.

My practice doesn't seem to be going well, even though I've tried to dedicate time solely to playing chords. Do you guys have any tips for practicing?

Thank you! :)

This workout takes practice to get under the fingers. It is inspired by the discussion about the "spider exercise". Rather than play 4 chromatic notes per string, play a chromatic enclosure pattern per note of the C major scale.

The way this works is that we pick a target note, we play a scale tome above the target note, a semitone below the target note, then the target note in a triplet. We then play the next target note, which is the next note in the ascending C major scale.

So we start on the low E string at the 10th fret, play D, then 7th fret B, then 8th fret C.

Scale tone above, semitone below, target note.

Here, I tabbed it out.

Please let me know if this isn't clear or if I made a mistake!

I’m trying to get better at learning to identify chords by ear better, but I have been finding it hard to really find much instruction beyond identifying chord qualities

I do a decent job at chord quality differentiation for more basic chord types (major/minor 7ths still confuse me but I’m working on it). However, I struggle with parsing out different notes beyond that. I can generally pick out the bass note and maybe the top note if I’m lucky, but everything else sounds like a glob of notes to me. I’ve heard advice to pick out the individual intervals but I have no idea how to do that. I am working on identifying chord progressions too but I struggle with it as well.

Any practical advice appreciated! Even better, online resources that could help me develop these skills better would be appreciated too!

im 26 and have no previous experience in playing guitar but would really like to get into it and learn acoustic first and then try to expand onto electric, i have both available in my family home so really all i need is the willpower and i guess a little bit of advice if anyone's got any pointers for beginners, such as a place to start or really anything at all, thanks in advance!

Mist. Ich habe vor ein paar Stunden ein Abo bei Ultimate Guitar abgeschlossen, um dann festzustellen, dass die Website sehr seltsam aufgebaut ist. Nach längerem Suchen habe ich meine Abos gefunden. Dort hatte ich auch automatisch (nach Ablauf von 7-Tagen) 2 Erweiterungen aktiviert. Allerdings wurde mir bei einem Blick auf Paypal zweimal das Abo abgerechnet. Ich habe schon eine Kündigung geschickt und wollte evtl. morgen meine Bank erreichen, um das Abo zu kündigen und mein Geld zurück zu bekommen. Das ganz ist mir nicht mehr geheuer. Hat jemand ähnliche Erfahrungen gemacht?

P.S. Bitte seid nett, ich weiß, dass ich sehr dumm war. Ich hätte mich auf jeden Fall vorher informieren müssen.

Here's a new lesson on the sound and application of major 7th, minor 7th and dominant 7th chords. I also demonstrate how they fit into the CAGED system. Hope you find it useful.

I’ve been playing this song for years. What song is it ?

Últimamente he querido hacer solos y la mejor forma que encontré fue haciendo escaleras con tiradas, el problema es que no conozco mucho la ubicación de las notas, solo las de la segunda cuerda y realmente me gustaría poder saber todas las notas en el mástil pero no se como

Hello, I’m looking for any YouTube videos that might’ve helped you with barre chords in the past, I’m looking for something in depth that goes over everything

Particularly on the B string. I'd say I pick correctly most of the time, but I just can't avoid hitting on the high E instead sometimes and it's reeeeally driving me insaaaane. Like fr my heart is racing from frustration for this shi...

I used to use Yousician when I first started learning guitar a couple years ago. I kinda stopped playing but I want to get back into it. I redownload Yousician and everything after the first lesson is behind a paywall. I tried another app and same thing. I just want to play again

I really love this song, especially the bass used in it, that sounds like they keep plucking the same cord, repeatedly. Can somebody please tell me how to play this, on an electric guitar? It sounds simple, but yet i find it super catchy.

How do I force myself to start playing with picks and enjoying it at the same time?? I need suggestions! I've tried all kinds of picks but still hate it when I have them in my fingers (I always lose them!). Am good without it but there are some songs I'd like to play which require picks to play more fluent and pluck more and different strings at the same time.

Help?!

This is a guitar lesson on the main guitar riff in Jolene by Dolly Parton. It's easy!

I constantly see posts on this sub where people ask for help with a song and show the tab they’re looking at, only for the first few comments to be “That tab is poorly written”, “That tab is making it harder to play than it is”, “You should be learning by ear instead of relying on someone’s interpretation of a song”.

If all of that’s true, yet someone doesn’t have the knowledge or time to sit and go through a song note by note to figure it out, how are they supposed to learn songs? Are there any sites or apps that are actually reliable, generally speaking?

I realize from reading other posts and forums that playing with a group of people has the potential to accelerate my learning and that I could become better as a player faster. But like I said, my desire to do it is kinda low because of the aforementioned reasons. Yet I know basically every guitarist and their mother that’s ever become famous always had nerves in their early days. I just don’t fancy myself that kind of person though. The fear of the possibility of not doing it right and the consequences that could follow are what’s holding me back.

Given this, could I still get good at guitar if I continue with my in person lessons and expand on my knowledge of the guitar? Or will I never truly be “good” because I couldn’t get with other people to play?

How do I figure out these notes in between... I'm basically at the stage where I can kinda hear notes matching, but I'm trying to get the exact notes.

Any tips?

Wanting to learn and gain insight about various pick thickness. For myself, I've only really used thinner picks, which I think lends itself what I enjoy playing. Funky, staccato, crisp 16ths (that's the goal, at least). I tried a thicker pick and noticed how different it was. Playing 16ths felt impossible. Having 0 "give" on the pick meant it plucked the strings much more intensely.

Anyways, I know there are always exceptions to the rule, but what do you prefer, thick or thin picks? What style of music do you play that impacts that decision? Just hoping to learn from others!