Playing whole songs is really tiring!

The same thing happens to me. i notice that the more you play the song the more you hand get used to the feeling and position of the song and eventually i can play threw the whole thing. The more i practice with the song the less tiring and the easier it is is to play.

practicepracticepracticepracticepracticepracticepractice

practice makes perfect

Yep, sounds pretty normal. Odds are when practicing riffs, etc you really aren't engage in sustained playing for as long. Another thing to get used to.

At some point, you may be able to teach your hand to press with less force. As a beginner, we have trouble getting our fingers to go where we want, and so we press harder to keep them in place.

Every once in a while, I do a specific drill where I try to play with as little force as I can without getting too much fretbuzz.

Try it, it might help your endurance.

-Laz

Also make sure you are quite relaxed while playing (shoulders are down, fingers arent warped and the thumb is properly placed behind the guitar).

If your technique isnt correct, playing will require more effort than necessary.

Working on not using my thumb to press so hard really helped me overcome that. I was REALLY jamming my thumb into the neck to apply proper pressure, especially when I was playing acoustic and it was killing my hand, causing a lot of soreness in that muscle that's kind of between the thumb and first finger.

Relaxing helped, practice helped, and using the weight of my arm helped. I recommend all 3.

Try to conserve your strength also. You might be pressing to hard on chords that you don't require as much effort as, say an Fmaj. Try to pace yourself for a marathon rather than for a a sprint. If there is gas in the tank by the time you are required to hit that Barre chortd, it will be easier..

I have the same problem...with Space Oddity

:)

Its all about building endurance.

Try to lift a weight once, not to bad eh? Try that 60 times and it'll get tiring.

Try a progression, not to bad. Now try playing that prgoression 4 times for all the verses in the song. It gets tiring.

Keep doing it, build up the endurance.

Also, try to play longer songs. I used Dylan's Hurricane to build my endurance. At first that song HURT to play, my hand would cramp every single time. After a week or so of playing that, my hand got really strong. Now I can play for about 45 minutes to an hour without cramping up.

If your tired after playing one song, your doing something wrong. I've never been tired after just one song. My fingers where sore on my first song, but I wasn't tired. You need to focus on being relaxed. Tension will make you tired in a hurry.