Sometimes beginners on the guitar become frustrated at what they perceive to be a lack of progress and wonder if the problem lies with them personally or their choice of guitar. Sometimes a cheap guitar can be behind lack of progress in guitar technique.Start out with the best guitar you can afford. If you sacrifice quality in the name of economy you may not stay with leaning to play the guitar. This sometimes happens with parents who decide to pay for guitar lessons for their child but skimp on the actual instrument. The logic behind this sis that maybe the child won’t stay with the lessons so you do not want to lose too much money in buying the guitar. Really, if you get a cheap guitar you are not giving yourself a fair chance at succeeding in learning to play.

When you buy a guitar get someone who knows something aboutr guitars to check it out for you before you hand over your money. As a novice, you may not be able to spot flaws that are obvious to someone who has done some playing.

Another question beginner guitar players ask a lot is about the difficulty in learning the guitar compared to other instruments. The answer is that stringed instruments in general could be considered to be a little harder to learn that a keyboard instrument. Although learning chords on the piano involves learning to use your hands in a new way, the added discipline of applying the correct pressure on the strings adds to the difficulty of learning to play the guitar.

But really the idea of one instrument being harder to play than another lies only at the very beginning of musical training. Once you are over the hump of getting simple tunes and chords from the guitar, progress will be much more rapid and you will be able to enjoy the advantages the guitar has over other instruments.

Now we com to the question of whether or not to get a guitar teacher or learn by yourself. First of all, it IS possible to learn to play the guitar by yourself without the benefit of a teacher. But as you begin to learn to play, the challenge of learning a skill that involves using your body in an entirely unfamiliar way can often be too much. A few lessons with a qualified guitar teacher will help with the inevitable questions that come up in your mind as you attempt to learn chord changes and scales.

Another question for beginners is whether to learn to read music and guitar theory. Well, some people actually enjoy the process of reading guitar books and magazines, searching for the chords for their favorite songs and finding out how to turn scales into solos. Others want the learning curve to be as flat as possible. If you do not want to go to too much trouble to learn guitar, then you could learn to read tab, which should take about half and hour, and find the guitar tabs for songs that you know and love.

If you want to learn music other that what you are already familiar with, then take the time to learn to read music. It really isn’t hard and it will give you versatility and the ability to quickly learn music from many different genres.