What To Practice When Learning Guitar

One of the most frustrating things for guitarists in this day and age is not finding resorces for learning guitar but trying to decide which resources to use. With online learning being more popular than ever the options for what to learn are becoming almost limitless. Add this to the wide variety of books, DVDs etc it becomes very hard for someone who has chosen to go it alone with their learning to know where to start.

The obvious choice is to find a good teacher (**ahem**) who can give you what you need when you need it but if you are looking to do things on your own then it can be quite daunting. it['s not impossible though and this falls under one of the 'essential skills' that any good tutor should teach you - how to play, how to practice, how to understand and in this case, how to learn.

Everything boils down to what you want to be able to do. You need to identify what you goals are, as in what is the end result that you want. Let's say, for example that you want to play Oasis songs with your friends, not in a band but just in a jamming, casual and having fun kind of way. What skills do you need and how will you need to develop those skills in order to play those songs?

1. Knowledge of open and barre chords. This requires you to be able to not only read and play chord diagrams but also to know how to find barre chords up and down the neck which in turn means that you need to know how to find the root notes of those barre chord shapes and how to use them to find the chord that you are after.

2. Develop a sense of timing. You need to be able to play in time so learning how to make best use of a metronome or drum machine in your practice. Learning how to change your chords quickly is a good thing but also learning how to hear, understand and play a rhythmic strumming pattern is also necessary.

3. Learning Songs. If you are playing songs then you need to know how to learn songs effectively and not be put off. It's also useful to know which songs to start with that are more easily attainable rather.

So, with this big list of things you need to order them into what to learn first. Obviously starting with the stuff that you can do and then working from there so.