Learn to Play the Guitar on Your Own: Read this Before You Start

Learning to play the guitar is no mean feat.  It becomes even more challenging when you try to learn to play the guitar on your own.  It is going to take a lot of practice and patience.  You're going to use your muscle memory and acquire new skills.  A lot of mind conditioning will be involved. You should therefore know how learn to play the guitar the right way.  Below are some effective tips to put you and help keep you on the right track.

1. Choose a good learning program.  Research and choose instruction websites online. The Internet has hundreds of web sites even offer free lessons, most of which are very well designed and can certainly be applied to your practice routine. However to save time, there are paid lessons that provide you with a program to hone your guitar-playing skills.  Since you won't need a lot of research, you will have more time to practice. Jamorama (other programs, etc.)
2. Learn to distinguish between better musicians and worse ones. If you are about as good as your favorite musician after playing guitar for a couple weeks, step up your taste a notch instead of adding to "mediocre musician" status quo and retiring with what you briefly learned.
3. Study the physical instrument itself, first. Learn the names and functions of the guitar parts, and how they work together to make sounds. A half hour spent on this basic understanding will be repaid many times over throughout your learning and playing time.
4. Get the optimal sound and performance by learning how sound is emitted from the guitar, how tension affects the strings, and how sound differs with increasing the size and length of the strings.
5. Teach yourself as many different ways to play a chord as you can. For instance, there are 10 different fret hand positions from which to play the C chord. Obviously, go for a 'perfect' open C chord first, but the more ways you know to play a chord, the more flexibility you'll have in moving from one chord to another. This can also come in handy if you decide to try composing new music.
6. Practice daily (5 out of 7 days minimum) for at least a half hour. If you want to learn quickly, you must force-feed your brain with guitar. This entails learning how to have a good ear for changes in sound/pitch/intonation, comfortably positioning your body (including leg, back, shoulder and arm positions), strum-hand coordination and technique, fret hand coordination and technique, and most importantly, fret hand muscle memory.
7. Practice the chords and hand positions silently while watching TV or talking to a friend. Learning fret hand muscle memory is much more difficult than learning strum hand muscle memory (excluding finger picking). You don't have to use your other hand at all, just go over the different chords over and over. Television or a conversation will help you avoid looking down at your hands too much. However, when learning the chord positions you should study your fingers intently - make sure you get the chord position correct so that your muscle memory is correct. Over time, look at your fingers less often, but still check that you have achieved the correct postion. Over time your confidence in your finger position for chords will grow and you will not have to look so often.
8. Press down on the strings as hard as you would if actually playing, to build up callouses on your fingertips. This will be painful, and will make your fingers hurt. Once you develop calluses though, the pain you once felt will surprisingly disappear. The length of time this takes is up to you. The more you practice, the faster it will happen.
9. Learn barre chords along with open chords. Don't skip barre chords simply because they're difficult. As with developing calluses, the more you play the easier it will become. Barring a chord is almost entirely dependent upon the strength in your fret hand.
10. Build up the muscles in your fret hand by repeatedly squeezing a tennis ball or similar object for 5 minutes, a few times a day. (Be careful though, this can lead to Repetitive Stress Syndrome)
11. Allow yourself to become frustrated. It's inevitable. It's normal. That chord you've been trying to voice cleanly for the past few days, or even weeks, will in time sound clear and distinct. Keep working at it and before you know it, just strumming along, you'll try again to voice that chord perfectly and will do so.
12. Take your guitar every where you go if you'll be sitting, waiting, watching, etc. Having your guitar with you in those situations will promote your playing ability when starting out. It's also helpful when establishing calluses. Always have your guitar with you so you can practice pressing down the strings using proper fret hand chord formation.
13. Practice. Practice. Practice. Practice makes perfect isn't just some old wives' tale. When practicing, strive for quality; if you practice sloppily you'll be making bad habits permanent. A better aphorism in fact might be, "Practice makes permanent." Also, just as weight-training athletes rotate their exercises, focusing on one part of the body one day, it's possible to practice passages focusing on different aspects - tone, smoothness, speed, accuracy. By concentrating on different practice facets of the music separately, you can hone your skills and improve your overall playing!
14. Play along with CD versions of songs you like. The CD player is a great tool for music learners because it is easy to 'rewind' and repeat even very small pieces of a song again and again until you figure out exactly how to do that riff you really like. Just hold down the 'fast rewind' button and watch the number counter (the number counts the number of seconds of music). Make a mental note of the seconds-count where the riff begins. Then you will be able to easily backtrack again and again to your start point.
15. Start to play songs! There are two ways to read guitar music. One technique is called sheet music and the other one is called tab.
16. You can get free guitar lessons online! Simply search Google for "Free Online Guitar Lesson" and also search in the Video section "guitar genre:EDUCATIONAL"
17. Play more than one type of guitar. Start learning the bass, play the classical guitar, play the tenor guitar, play the electric guitar. You will get incorporated with the sounds of the different guitars.
18. Hang out in campus and see other people who know how to play bass guitar, keyboards and drums. Then, Jam.

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