help please

[Blayd3r]

hey i need help. i think im struggling and not getting anywere. how do i practice muscle memory? what chords do i play? ok say if i play just the D chord will i learn muscle memory for the other chords instantly? if you dont mind can you give me a step by step tutorial or a video that tells me how to practice it cause im afrad im migth be doing it wrong.

oh and i want your opinion on this guys guitar skills i think hes really awesome at guitar playing but i want your opinion on it since youve played for longer. is he good? or bad? in your opinion i want to be able to play like him or better

can you play like that?

http://www.youtube.com/user/conkdeeznuts

[min7b5]

If you’re just getting started I highly recommend finding a good teacher in your area. People can send you various links to things on the internet all day, but five minutes with an actual person that can truly evaluate where you’re at will be huge.

[David Hilyard]

I think you would benefit from the answers in your previous threads in answering these questions. Some of the same advise applies.

When you do something repeatedly, your muscles become accustomed to being put in that position. They remember. They have a memory. But you have to do each thing over and over. Playing a D chord 100 times will help your muscles remember how to make that D chord. Nothing else, just that D chord. If you want to remember how to make a G chord, you'll have to play a G chord repeatedly. Then you may have two chords your fingers remember how to make. Add another chord, and so on, and you'll get there. It takes time. Not minutes, not hours, not days and not months, to learn how to play the guitar well. It takes years.

IMO, the guy in the video, strums chords well enough. Sounds like that's what you want to do. Find a song with 3 or 4 chords that you want to learn, and learn the chords by repeatedly playing of them, learn how to keep time and strum rhythm. Play that song 100 times. You'll be better on the 100th time than you were on the 10th time through. That's progress. Expect progress to be slow. Play that song 500 times, and it'll be pretty good.

Learning to play the guitar well won't happen in a short time. The video guy has probably been playing a few years. Expect it to take that long to do something like that.

Post a reply, so we know you read this and understand.

[ewalling]

An excellent response, David. I would also say measure your progress in small steps not huge strides; don't think, "It's been a week and I still can't play this song yet!" If D feels a little easier today than it did yesterday, then you're on your way.

[shawlie]

I'm just a very enthousiastic amateur, but would offer this as advice. I wouldn't worry too much about "muscle memory" as such, or be overly concerned that you're doing it "wrong".

Everyone does it wrong in the beginning. That's why I like the saying "practice makes perfect" and like very much less the saying "perfect practice makes perfect", as it's impossible to practice something perfectly if you can't do it yet.

In my humble opinion (again, as an overly enthousiastic guitar fan), don't worry about other chords if you're wanting to play a song with (say) D, G and A (or whatever). Learn those chords and the changes in the context of that particular song, and if you want to learn another song with different chords, learn those chords and changes in the context of that song. And keep doing that everytime you want to learn a new song. Don't worry about learning other chords when you play a D chord, worry about learning the D chord.

And (but once again, I'm an extremely keen amateur player with perhaps more motivation than talent), I agree that a lesson would maybe help put you on the track you want - it may help you to put together a practice scheme you'd have confidence in. If that's not possible, give yourself a little time and listen to what you're playing, keep trying to slowly make it more like you want to hear.

And I thought the guy in the link played just great and I can't play like that.

edit: wrote this while others were posting a response - the one by David Hilyard I agree with very much.